Research in English: Research Briefs.

10-second review: Regular class vs. reading intervention class. Training tutors for reading. Overcoming the achievement gap for low-income students.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” R Beach, et al. Research in the Teaching of English (November 2007), 188-227.

Summaries:

Regular reading class and reading intervention class: Same teacher for each. Findings: regular-reading class was student-centered. Reading intervention class was test-driven with less student participation. L Valli and M Chamnbliss. P. 189 (2007)

Training tutors for adult reading instruction. Concludes that tutor training did not always transfer to practice, and it did not always deal effectively with the complex topic of teaching reading to struggling adult readers. A Belzer. P. 191 (2006).

Achievement gap and family involvement in education. High family involvement negated the achievement gap evident for other low-income students. Recommends that family involvement in schools should be a primary goal of educators and policy makers looking to decrease the achievement gap. E Dearing, et al. p. 192 (2006).

Research in English: Linguistic Sexism

10-second review: Interesting examples of linguistic sexism in online grammar guides.

Title: “Where Is She? Gender Occurrences In On Line Grammar Guides.” Nicole Amare. Research in the Teaching of English (November 2007), pp. 165-187.

Criteria for Analyzing Linguistic Sexism

Generic he: When an employee asks for a raise, he should be brief.

Generic man: mankind, chairman, businessman, etc.

Titles, Labels and Names: stewardess, ballerina, actress, executrix, Miss, lady vols….

Gender Stereotypes: All girls cry at Chick Flicks, but men never cry.

Order of Mention: Nena and Arcturo, husband and wife, he or she….

Male-to-Female:  Measures how often female and male words appear in the text.

Comment: Gives many examples of linguistic sexism, some of which I was not sensitive to.

I still think most problems in maintaining neutral linguistic sexism is to avoid singular constructions like the following: Every one returned to their houses in which the singular subject does not agree with the plural pronoun. Instead, begin with the plural: The students returned to their schools.” In addition, avoids the ugly she/he, her/him, his/her etc. constructions. Also reads smoother. Useful article. RayS.

Resdearch in English: Attitude Toward learning

10-second review: “They do not have to accept the notion that they are an exception to the rule if they are successful in learning.”

Title: “ ‘Every City Has Soldiers’: The Role of Intergenerational Relationships in Participatory Literacy Communities.” M Fisher. Research in the Teaching of English (November 2009), 139-162.

Summary: Examples of group activities in which successful practitioners of literacy participated with the audience. The purpose of these groups was to demonstrate that literacy activities like poetry reading are within the reach of everyone in the community. They can be successful in literacy.

Comment: The 10-second review quote set me to thinking. Where and when does the culture of wanting to fail in school set in? It occurred to me in my high school years and I did not come out of it until I was a junior in college. For some reason, I decided to be “cool” and “cool” meant taking a nonchalant attitude toward school and learning.

I think the solution begins with goals or lack of them. When you don’t have any idea what you want to do with your life, you are not motivated to follow the prescribed curriculum.

When I began my career in teaching, my first high school English class stood out. I had these students as freshmen and then again as juniors. They were responsive, gobbled up everything I could teach them about spelling, writing, vocabulary and literature. When they graduated, I took the time to scan the information that accompanied every photo of the graduating seniors. I was astounded at how many of them could clearly state their career goals, whether nursing, journalism, engineering, farming, etc. If I had been asked that question at the end of high school, I could not have responded.

Fifty years later, I took out the yearbook from that first class in high school in preparation for their 50^th reunion and was equally astounded that so many of those students had achieved exactly what they set out to do. I think there’s a lesson in that. RayS.

Research in English: Adults Reading Aloud to 2- and 4-Year-Old Children

10-second review: Studied comments by adults and 3- and 4-year-old children when adults read storybooks and information books. Comments are longer by both adults and children when reading information books aloud.

Title: “Talk During Book Sharing Between Parents and Preschool children: A Comparison Between Storybook and Expository Book Conditions.” LH Price, A VanKleek, CT Huberty. Reading Research Quarterly (April/May/June 2009), 171-194.

Quote: “…parents were more likely to read the entire text during storybook sharing than they were during expository book sharing. Expository book sharing was longer in duration and resulted in higher rates of extratextual utterances by both parents and children.”

Quote: “The mean length of parent extratextual utterances was significantly longer in the expository book condition, and their talk contained significantly greater vocabulary diversity. These findings indicate that the genre of books can influence the amount of talk that takes place during book sharing, and it can alter the content, vocabulary diversity, and sentence length of extratextual utterances.”

Comment: Reading aloud nonfiction books leads to longer and more diversified vocabulary in discussions by both adults and children. RayS.

Research in English: Some Examples of Critical Literacy

10 second review: “…we never observed her teaching the group or encouraging a child to question another’s perspective in their texts, challenging privileged lives portrayed in children’s books, critique stereotypes of people and places represented in texts, engage in multiple readings of a text from different perspectives or any other practices that might signify an incorporation of critical analysis in critical literacy.”

Title: “Engaging the Intellectual and the Moral in Critical Literacy Education: the Four-Year Journeys of Two Teachers from Teacher Education to Classroom Practice.” S Jones and G Enriques. Reading Research Quarterly (April/May/June 2009), 145-168.

Comment: The authors look at English education as a method for achieving social justice through the classroom. There’s a thin line between propaganda, preaching and educating. RayS.

Research in English: Modeling

10-seocnd review: As teachers we need to recognize that our students have different values from ours. But this change in looking at our students has to begin in teacher education classes in which students have different values from teacher educators. How is that to be accomplished? By engaging in critical literacy. See an example in my next blog.

Title: “Engaging the Intellectual and the Moral in Critical Literacy Education: The Four-year Journeys of Two Teachers from Teacher Education to Classroom Practice.” S Jones and G Enriquez. Reading Research Quarterly (April/May/June 2009), 145-168.

Comment: In other words, teacher educators need to model how to deal with student differences and how to deal with them in a positive way. The method suggested is engaging in critical literacy. In the following blog, I give an example from the article. I think teacher educators need to model most of what occurs in their instruction. If teacher educators are going tell students to use the directed reading assignment, then the teacher educators need to use the directed reading assignment with their students. RayS.

Research in English: Comprehension Instruction in Reading

10-second review: Does comprehension instruction in basals (Core Reading Programs) follow the recommendations of researchers in reading? Not altogether.

Title: “Comprehension Strategy Instruction in Core Reading Programs.” P Dewitz, J Jones and S Leahy. Reading Research Quarterly (April/May/June 2009), 102-126.

Quote: “The results of the authors’ analysis revealed that core reading programs (basals) recommend teaching many more skills and strategies than the researchers recommend and may dilute the emphasis on critical skills and strategies. In addition, comprehension strategy instruction does not meet the guidelines of explicit instruction as recommended in a number of research studies. Rarely do the five core programs (Houghton Mifflin, Scott Foresman, Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, and Open Court) follow the gradual release-of-responsibility model nor do the programs provide the amount of practice for skills and strategies that were employed in original research studies.”

Quote: “Core reading programs can more closely reflect the research base on comprehension instruction, but schools must allow for teacher judgment and innovation in comprehension instruction, and publishers must attempt to adhere more closely to what the research says about the content and methods of reading instruction.”

Comment: My experience has been that elementary teachers using basals, once they have experienced the sequence and methods of a coherent reading program, soon complement and select what works from the basal sequence of instruction in reading. RayS.

Research in English: Basal Reading Programs Updated

10-second review: Now called “Core Reading Programs,” basals have been adapted to the era in which they were published. At the present time, they have been adapted to meet the current interests of our contemporary era of the No Child Left Behind law.

Title: “Comprehension Strategy Instruction in Core Reading Programs.” P Dewitz, J Jones and S Leahy. Reading Research Quarterly (April/May/June 2009), 102-126.

Quote: “Although the dominance of basal reading programs waxes and wanes depending on the zeitgeist of the era, basals, now called core reading programs, maintain their prominence by adapting their materials to the dominant educational trends of the moment. When skills management systems were in vogue in the 1970s, skills instruction, worksheet practice and criterion-referenced tests were at the core of the basal programs. In the 1990s, when literature-based instruction and authentic texts were driving the field, the core programs built the content of reading around selections from the children’s literature canon and built instruction around response to literature. With the passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act and the Reading First mandate to use scientifically based reading-research programs, core reading programs have adapted by augmenting the phoneme-awareness and phonics instruction, incorporating more work on fluency and providing auxiliary materials for intervention.”

Comment: I think only positive results can come from adapting basals or Core Programs to the latest thinking in reading instruction. I believe the main value of basals is in providing sequential instruction in reading for teachers, most of whom have had only minimal instruction in teaching reading. Once teachers have worked with basals for several years, they begin to make their own adaptations to compensate for the inadequacies of the basals. RayS.

Research in English: Achievement in Informational Reading

10-second review: A sharp increase in fourth grade of informational text in standardized tests is the cause for a corresponding decline in achievement test scores. Remarkably, the instructional use of informational text at that level is with worksheets and round-robin reading. Conversely, narrative is the genre of choice at that level.

Title: “Availability and Use of Informational Texts in Second-, Third-, and Fourth-Grade Classrooms.” J Jeong, et al. Research in the Teaching of English (May 2010), 435-456.

Comment: Need more emphasis in the early grades on informational reading and writing. The fact that teachers are using round-robin reading as a major instructional tool is astounding to me. It’s a time-waster and serves no useful purpose unless for diagnostic reasons. What can teachers do in a constructive way in using informational texts? For one, they can begin early to teach the students how to use SQ3R—with questions to establish purpose for reading. If you haven’t heard of SQ3R, write to me at raystop2@comcast.net. RayS.

Research in English: Questions about Global Revision.

10-second review: What does “global revision” mean? “Local revision” means, according to this article, revising (or editing) at the word, phrase or sentence level. Revisions involving idea clusters and paragraphs apparently are “Global revisions.” Do students understand what is meant when they make global revisions using a word processor?

Title: “Drafting and Revision Using Word Processing by Undergraduate Student Writers: Changing Conceptions and Practices” AM Dave and DR Russell. Research in the Teaching of English.(May 2010), 406-434.

Quote: “For example, what do students mean when they report doing global revisions? How do students do global revisions? To what extent and in what circumstances do they revise directly on the computer screen? To what extent do they use printouts to do global revision? Is global revision linked with students’ or teachers’ perceptions of improvement in quality? Indeed, where and to what extent is global revision a meaningful term?”

Comment: Good questions. However, beyond understanding what is meant by “global revision,” the term is superfluous. As a matter of fact, I think—again, beyond understanding the distinction for the purpose of teaching—the terms “editing” and “revision” are superfluous. The student is trying to develop a coherent piece of writing that causes readers, once they have started, to complete their reading without interruption, except to reflect on ideas. Revision and editing are intertwined and one can stimulate the other.

The distinctions are important for the purposes of teaching, but the terms are superfluous. In the act of revision, no one is going to ask, “Now did I complete a global revision? Or was I editing?” Crafting a coherent document is the goal, no matter what one calls the acts of “revising” and “editing” on the way to achieving that goal. RayS.

Research in English: Word Processing and Revision

10-second review: Analyzed how students revised when using the word processor.

Title: “Drafting and Revision Using Word Processing by Undergraduate Student Writers: Changing Conceptions and Practices.” AM Dave and DR Russell. Research in the Teaching of English (May 2010), 406-434.

Quote: “However, the analysis suggests that the common classroom practice of assigning multiple drafts to encourage global revision needs to be rethought, as more drafts are not necessarily associated with global revision. The survey also suggests that printing out to revise may be in the decline. Finally, the analysis suggests the very concept of a draft is becoming more fluid under the influence of word processing.”

Comment: When I know what I am going to say, I usually write with the word processor—memos, etc. When I do not know what I am going to say, I usually begin by writing with a pencil on a yellow pad as I am doing now.

As for revising using a word processor, I find that I revise/edit as I write. For me, the concept of multiple, discrete drafts is an anachronism. Still, when I think I have completed my task, I print it out and read it as a whole, making changes by hand on the paper. I suppose I could consider that copy as a draft. I find it difficult to go over the entire piece on the screen. As one wit said, people found out long ago that reading pages is better than reading a scroll, which is the same thing as reading the screen from beginning to end of a piece. RayS.

Research in English: How to Bullshigt Academically.

10-second review: A student sets out to write a paper on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, realizes she doesn’t know enough about the play and therefore sets out to produce academic bullshit. How did she do it?

Title: “Bullshit in Academic Writing: A Protocol Analysis of a High School Student’s Process of Interpreting Much Ado About Nothing. Peter Smagorinsky, et al. Research in the Teaching of English (May 2010), 368-405.

Quote: “When students are put in a position of having to sound more learned than they are, they often bullshit their way through their assignments to create the appearance of knowledge according to scholarly specifications, even in its considerable absence. Their writing often is garbled in what Macrorie (1970) called Engfish: the spuriously elevated language seemingly endemic to school writing.”

Quote: “I absolutely did not think of my actions as a deliberate deception, but rather a filling of space with the inconsequential.”

Quote: “The theorists…conclude that bullshit is not possible without a receptive bullshittee.”

Comment: You’ll have to read the article to learn the details of Susan’s method of bullshitting. Delighted with the title of the article, and conscious that I have completed a few bullshit assignments in my time in college, I thoroughly enjoyed the article, but still am not completely sure that this article was not a “put-on.” RayS.

Research in English: Computer Literacy in Schools

10-second review: Computers were used more at home than in schools. 189 sixth and seventh graders.

Title: “Changing Conceptions and Uses of Computer Technologies in the everyday Literacy practices of Sixth and Seventh Graders.” J Agee and J Altarriba. Research in the Teaching of English (May 2009), 363-396.

Quote: “In the past decade, American schools have made great progress in getting connected to the Internet. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)… reported that only 3% of American schools were connected in 1994 while 94% were connected in 2005.”

Quote: “The most interesting finding across these two middle schools where computers and access were not generally an issue was that these sixth and seventh graders were learning about computer technologies primarily on their own. Except for a sixth-grade class that focused on using basic programs such as Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, the majority of students did not use computers in school, nor did they have assignments except in one seventh grade health class where they were required to use the Internet for finding information. Their language arts teachers said they did not take students to the school computer labs or integrate computer technologies into their instruction. Consequently, these students’ conceptions and uses of computer technology and the Internet rarely included academic work or learning.”

Comment: Incredible. At least students’ writing instruction should include using the word processor for instruction in revising and editing. Not to mention research on the Internet. Incredible. I’m more persuaded  than ever that computer technology in the schools is a dead end—technology that is not being used for instruction. For keeping grades by teachers, maybe, and maybe communicating with parents. But not for instruction. RayS.