Mixing Memory and Desire: A Family Literacy Event

Faust, M. (2004). Mixing Memory and Desire: A Family Literacy Event. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 4/12, 47:7, 565-572. Retrieved from http://www.reading.org/General/Default.aspx.

Salient Points:

• "When we open our eyes each morning, it is upon a world we have spent a lifetime learning how to see. We are not given the world: We make our world through incessant experience, categorization, memory, reconnection" (Sacks. 1995. as cited in Faust. 2004. p. 565). This quote means that our world exists in how we personally see it. We create our own memories and experiences and organize our perceptions into categories that can later be recalled. 
• The author wants to see how people's memories work and use that to his advantage in language and literacy classrooms. He went about answering these questions by interviewing his grandmother and recording what she said using video and audio technology. Next, they visited some of the places she mentioned in her stories. Then he and his older daughter transcribed it onto the computer in a digital story format, using audio and video from the interviews and photos from their road trip. 
• The author keeps going back to Hilts (1995) and his study on memory in human beings. Memories are constantly changing and being remolded, so that when you tell a story from your personal history, you reshape it in the act of storytelling, so that fits your current needs. Hilts says, "The central feature of memory is its malleability. Memory is, at the end, a  site of endless construction...in response to one's current, and most urgent needs" (Hilts. 1995. p. 224. as cited in Faust. 2004. p. 566). 
• People are constantly making stories with their memories and exercise their brain when they recall them to others. For example, the author's grandmother enjoyed being able to communicate her life's story to others and liked having a space to perform her life's story. The family learned not just about her life, but learned something about themselves and their situation in life. As Faust (2004) says, "Our lives might unfold differently as a result of what we are learning, not only about GG, but also about one another through this event" (p. 568).  
• "Among the various effects of this moment was the disruption of the logical boundaries separating past, present, and future" (Faust. 2004. p. 569). The author and his family thought differently about their lives, after learning about the past. For example, Faust's father and older daughter thought about how much technology has changed their lives for them and how simpler things were in the turn of the century and early twentieth century. A connection between the past and present was made and new possibilities were created for the future, as well. 
• "The work of memory provides an opportunity to shape our identity according to what we hope for ourselves, and the resulting configuration of memory and desire reveals the character each of us is in the process of becoming" (Faust. 2004. p. 570). We control our memories and shape them to our own ideals, so that they reveal not only who we are, but what we hope to be. When we tell our personal stories, we are hoping that others will see us how we want to be seen. 

Implications:

• Faust (2004) says that "as students begin to see their own life history as a composition through memory that is subject to constant revision, it is possible to imagine a process approach to reading and writing that makes more sense to them. Activities that require students to pay attention to and craft their own memories can be directed toward helping them become more thoughtful readers and writers in other contexts"(p. 570).  
• Faust provides various digital storytelling projects teachers can use in their classrooms. They are multiple perspectives on individual history, family history, national and world history, and literary reading. Students interview each other, their families, and members of the community to learn about each other, the different types of families, and historical events in the community. They can also use this approach to recall events in literature in literary groups. 
• Students can then create digital stories and projects to present what they have found. This is a skill that they can use later in college and in life to present to others information about themselves and other topics of research. 
• Teachers can use digital storytelling to make students recall events in their lives and in their schooling better. I know that when I was a student, doing a project about a topic made me remember the details of that topic better than studying for a test. It required close examination of the subject, but was more enjoyable than just studying for an exam. It is almost like a study group--each person brings to the table a different perspective as they each remember different details about the topic, whether it is an event in history or a story in literature. 
• One of my favorite projects in elementary school was interviewing a relative or someone in the community who was alive and old enough to remember what happened during the Depression and World War II. For me, that was my grandparents, who were first generation Americans. For others, they interviewed Holocaust survivors. I really learned a lot of details that were not covered in the textbooks. 
• When I was older, I interviewed my grandfather about his life with my Bubbe, using audiotapes to transcribe his words. Then I wrote it up in the style of a first-person autobiography, with some fiction stylistics thrown in, so that it looked like a piece of historical fiction. I gave it the rough copy for his 90th birthday. But now that I have learned more tools of multimedia, I think I might make a digital copy of it for posterity. 

      As for the article, I liked this article, because it brought back memories of when I interviewed my grandparents on separate occasions. Bridging the gap between school and family makes a class more personal for students. Children and adults get some real enjoyment out of the project and it furthers the learning process. Memories are stories and they are constantly changing. I also thought that the article did great job talking about teaching implications, which was relevant to me, a budding teaching candidate. Since English Language learners have a wealth of different experiences, digital storytelling projects as well as literacy events can really help them open up and not be intimidated about the curriculum and the language. They will feel more comfortable in their new school after they get to share their stories. Finally, literacy circles can really help them learn the language and material more efficiently.

Digital Storytelling: Bridging Old and New

McLellan, H. (2006). Digital Storytelling: Bridging Old and New. Educational Technology, Sept.-Oct. 2006, 26-31.

Salient Points:

• Digital storytelling is when you tell a story using various forms of technology to reach more people. The first digital storyteller was Dana Atchley, a professional storyteller, who, in the 1980s, when computers first came out, started creating digital stories using family photographs, movies, images, and stories using technology and multimedia. He coined the term "digital storytelling." Eventually, in the 1990s, he and other theater friends create the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkley, California.
• Over half of today's teens use some form of technology to communicate and tell others about their lives. They are indadvertedly telling digital stories through social networking sites, blogs, Youtube and other video sharing sites, etc.
• "The premise of digital storytelling is very simple. It is designed to help people tell stories from their own lives that are meaningful to them and to their audience using media to add power and resonance, and to create a permanent record. Digital storytelling is aligned with the importance of capturing personal, family, and organizational memories" (27). 
• Digital storytelling is different than digital spectacle, because during the spectacle, whether it's a multimedia formatted opera, circus, or presentation, the audience members are only spectators. Digital storytelling is interactive with its audience members and connects to them emotionally, which is a very effective way of communication. 
• "Good stories make you feel you've been through a satisfying, complete experience. Stories are a form of "expert system"for remembering and integrating what we learn" (28). 
• Digital storytelling can be used across the curriculum and subjects. Many universities and public schools teach digital storytelling techniques to their students to help them communicate and collaborate on projects. 
• From personal stories, to digital archives, to memorial stories and avocational stories (stories that come from victims of domestic violence and other traumatic experiences), digital storytelling 
• Today, there are many forms of digital storytelling, from applications on the iPad and other Apple products to Blogger, the current most popular blogging website,  to Facebook and Tumblr. People tell stories with photos, words, etc. 

Implications: 

• Teachers can use different forms of technology in their classrooms to reach today's diverse student population, most of who have connections to digital media. They can bridge gaps between different learning levels and cultures that populate their classrooms. Many students respond better to technology than traditional methods of teaching. 
• Teachers will be able to manage their classroom better, because many students feel more comfortable opening up and telling their stories in a digital form. Lessons can be more interactive and engaging.
• Teachers can use digital storytelling to get students to become aware of the challenges they face. Then they can use digital storytelling media to tell their stories and help solve problems in the community. 
• Digital stories are a great way for students to express their frustrations they may feel in school, especially English Language Learners, who often feel that the other mainstream students do not understand them and their situation. They can tell their personal stories to the other students in their class.
• Sometimes students have experiences that are difficult to cope with, such as what is happening in current events. For example, they may have trouble today with the economy, racism, death, etc. These problems can affect their learning and a great way to help them cope with such problems is by making digital story. Xtranormal is an example of one therapeutic digital storytelling tool. 

      This article was useful, but I would have liked to see more of a connection to English Language Learners. How can we use digital storytelling media to help English Language Learners? Over the course of the semester, many digital media tools have been presented to me, but I did not see any mention of it in this article, although its focus was not necessarily on ESL. I just think that since there are so many ELLs in schools today, the author might have addressed them with respect to digital storytelling.

English L2 Fluency

Birch, B. (2011). (2nd Ed.) English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom. New York, NY: Routledge, ch. 10

Salient Points:

How do we get our learners to acquire automaticity to be come fluent readers and expert decision makers?

Comprehensive reading instruction leads to reading improvement and changes in brain function. It creates linguistic awareness, knowledge of the alphabetic principle, fluency, and reading comprehension. We need to give a balanced approach of bottom-up and top-down strategies.

Listening comprehension: The first step is segmentation skills and practicing sounding out words without worrying about mistakes in pronunciation. Teachers should provide feedback on the phoneme-grapheme connection.

Fluency: automaticity should be the goal for reading instruction and not oral fluency. Oral fluency tests used as a measure for assessment is not always the best case for ELLs. They need to be assessed against each other and not against native speakers.

Oral fluency: Oral fluency is more difficult than silent reading. ELLs need the cultural background and world knowledge to understand syntax and words, and bottom-level letters and sounds. They need to learn the knowledge of English and basic and common vocabulary. They also need to be taught about punctuation. Too often, ELLs struggle with punctuation, as is evident in the run-on sentences in their writing and their irregular patterns of speech. Teaching them punctuation will help solve those problems.

Some strategies to think about are:

• word callers--reading word by word is counterproductive. Readers should read phrase by phrase.
• eye movement--readers should minimize regressive eye moments and whispering (subvocalization). This will only slow them down.
• Teachers should allow wait time. They can also ignore omitted words or substituted words if the meaning is intact. They should then model to-down strategies to help fix the problem.
• Reading tasks should cover intensive practice with the passage with repeated exposure to it. The students will become familiar with the text and be more comfortable reading aloud.
• Teachers should teach about reading rate and phrasing (chunking).

Implications:

• If teachers want to teach fluency, they should not focus on perfect pronunciation in the beginning. They should get their students to start reading at a faster rate and not subvocalize as much.

• Students should focus on learning phrasing, intonation and stress. To achieve these skills, teachers can teach reading strategies such as chunking and paying attention to punctuation.

• Choral reading can help students practice oral fluency and it will lower the affective filter of the low-level readers, as they can hear more advanced students read and practice along with them. Teachers should focus on lowering the affective filter and making the oral reading environment comfortable for their students.

• Good oral fluency can attribute to good silent reading fluency as well. "It may also be the case that oral reading fluency contributes to general oral fluency in speaking; the better one can read out loud, the better one can use intonation, pronunciation, and proper rate in speech" (pp. 174).

• Teachers must revise their assessments and advocate on behalf of their ELLs to the administrators. ELLs are unfairly compared to native speakers, however their learning processes are different than native speakers'. There is some interference that causes struggle.

Vocabulary Acquisition

Birch, B. (2011). (2nd Ed.) English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom. New York, NY: Routledge, ch. 9

Salient Points:

How do teachers teach vocabulary with reading comprehension? There are bottom-up and top-down strategies. The top down strategies comprehension include:

• looking at the headings or summaries making predictions
• skimming for the gist
• scanning for important information, etc.

Word learning strategies include:

• providing background knowledge to create context for new words
• pre-reading practice
• vocabulary journals
• finding textual cues
• the cognate strategy
• morphological rules
• collocations

Skipping unknown words--There are three assumptions of reading instruction:

1. ELL L2 readers can compensate for lack of specific language knowledge with background knowledge.
2. Readers don't have to understand everything in a text to achieve adequate comprehension.
3. Vocabulary learning takes up too much time in a lesson. Teachers assume readers will "get it" the more they read.

Reading for short term task only allows for a short-term memory of words. It is detrimental to long-term vocabulary building.

There are some learner variables in vocabulary acquisition: the ability to repute new words easily and using probabilistic reasoning and analogy to know spelling patterns.

The phonological loop is when a word is heard, creating a phonological image. The loop consists of two parts--a knowledge based called a phonological store and a rehearsal base that refreshes representations that disappear from short-term memory. Active word processors attempt to pronounce words and start up the phonological store.

Lexical variables in vocabulary acquisition are:

1. acoustic similarity where words with acoustic differences confuse the phonological loop in the ELL L2 learner
2. word length, which affects storage and retention in the phonological loop
3. pronounceability where more pronounceable words are easier to learn
4. orthography: l1 orthography can help in reading the L2, because of overlap between two systems, although this is only if the orthographies are similar.

Nouns are easier to learn than verbs. Transparent languages make connections between the L1 and L2 more easily, even with opaque parts of speech. Probabilistic reasoning can identify parts of speech.

Words can e formed in many ways: borrowing from other languages, compounding (common in English), acronyms and abbreviations, back formations and clipping, conversion, and blending.

Word meaning can be taught in many ways: metaphors (denotations), reasoning by analogy, polysemy (metaphors that are so common they lose special status as a figure of speech), and homonymy.

There are many word learning strategies including repetition and the key word strategy (associating unknown word with L1 word by means of a mediating word (bread is pan in Spanish, and bread is made in a pan). However, the keyword strategy does not always work.

Implications:

• There are a variety of ways to teach vocabulary and teachers should get creative and make it a fun process. They can teach the top-down strategies, because they are useful for reading comprehension, but also teaching the bottom up strategies and straight vocabulary activities are also useful.

• The old assumption of skipping a word you do not know will not work for ELLs (and native speaking readers). They can use top down strategies to help, but they can also use vocabulary building strategies as well. For example, they can keep a vocabulary journal (with pictures) of all the words they do not know, a definition, the sentences where they found them in the text, and their own sentences.

• It is true that with extensive exposure to reading, readers will acquire more vocabulary, but there still needs to be direct instruction in vocabulary, and teachers can teach their students what to do before they read the text, during their reading, and after they finish reading the text.

• We as teachers want to make our students word conscious and excited about words. If they are excited about words, they will want to read more. We want to create voracious readers who enjoy discovering new worlds and new vocabulary.

• Often times, ELLs can get discouraged, because they do not know a lot of the vocabulary in the assigned texts from their mainstream classes. As ESL/EFL teachers, we can help them build a decent vocabulary set that they can use in their future classes. We can make reading more accessible and not so daunting.

• We have to be advocates for our students and collaborate with the mainstream teachers. They need to know that vocabulary is important and that they should not brush it aside.

English Morphophonemic Writing

Birch, B. (2011). (2nd Ed.) English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom. New York, NY: Routledge, ch. 8

Salient Points:

There is no real definition of a word. For this reason, linguists talk about morphemes. Morphemes have three parts:

1. the form, or "a unit of language that usually consists of a sequence of sounds" (pp. 122).
2. meaning--grammatical meaning or meaning with content.
3. minimal form that can be broken down into smaller meaningful units.

There are several kinds of morphemes as well:

1. free morphemes--words themselves, like "sun" or "moon."
2. bound morphemes--morphemes that are attached to other free or bound morphemes, such as words with prefixes or suffixes, like "undo" or "comical."
3. derivational morphemes--a new word created from a base word and prefixes or suffixes are added, such as "careless" or "carelessness." They also change the part of speech of the base word.
4. bound roots--a root that has to have a prefix or a suffix and cannot stand alone, such as "precept" and "supervise."
5. inflectional morphemes--a bound morpheme that "adds additional grammatical information or inflections to a word, without creating a new word" (pp. 124), such as the "-ed" ending or "s" ending. The part of speech does not usually change and the inflectional morpheme in English is always a suffix.

Sometimes pronunciation changes with morpheme changes. This is called assimilation, because the mouth is trying to make it easier to say. It makes speaking the word more efficient. The kinds of assimilation are palatalization (suppress to suppression), velar softening (electric to electricity), vowel laxing (divine to divinity), stress change with vowel reduction (when vowels are reduced to a schwa--grammar to grammatical), and stem changes (receive to reception).

Our writing system has both morphemes and phonemes, making it morphophonemic. It represents the sounds and the consistency of morphemes. Why do we have spellings like "physics" and not "fiziks?" Why do have two letters for the /k/ sound? Why does "ph"=/f/? Why does the "s" in physics sound like /z/? The problems with the English writing system is in writing and spelling, not reading. "The expert reader can read grammar, definite, or misspell with no difficulty" (pp. 129). Native English speakers build up a morphological storage in their brains of all kinds of morphemes and phonemes. They develop word recognition from their semantic memory. They then use words in their semantic memory to figure out the meaning of new words. However, this can be difficult for ELLs, because they do not have this automatic processing of patterns. Some ELLs do not use the grapheme to phoneme strategy at all (phonological processing) and instead use a meaning-based strategy. There may be some morphological interference between the L1 and the L2.

Pg. 133-134--Not all language follow the same morphological patterns. There are four types of morphology:

isolating (Chinese)--(segmentable morphemes) one segmentable morpheme per word or words

fusional (Spanish)--(nonsegmentable morphemes) more than one morpheme per word and the morphemes canon be broken down into parts

polysynthetic (Tuscarora)--(nonsegmentable morphemes) words can be made up of many morphemes, but the individual morphemes are difficult to separate

agglutinating (Turkish)--(segmentable morphemes) many morphemes and easy to segment the morphemes within a word.

Implications:

• We as teachers must be experts at English morphology, so that we can better understand how to teach the language as well as understand the struggle of some students, who make experience interference with their language and English.
• We can also know the four types of morphology, so that we can understand how to teach the variety of ELLs in our classrooms. For example, if we know that Spanish (a fusional language) has multiple inflectional verb ends and gender subject-verb-object agreements, we can understand any mistakes they may make. If we know that Hebrew or Arabic has infixed morphological changes, than we can teach them about the prefixes and suffixes in English.
• We as teachers must teach the morphological patterns in English, and the different pronunciations.
• We must also teach how writing is morphophonemic and that the spellings themselves are pronounced differently than they look. Even these different spellings have patterns that we can teach. We want to reduce the cognitive load on our students, so teaching them the consistencies in English morphology can do that. It will also lower the affective filter of our students.

Approach to Phonics

Birch, B. (2011). (2nd Ed.) English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom. New York, NY: Routledge, ch. 7

Salient Points:

There are many approaches to teaching phonics.

Synthetic method: phonics generalizations. It is deductive and taught using clever rules. Teachers use worksheets and blending. However, this method is involves learning about a language rather than acquiring it.

Linguistic method: learning key spelling patterns. It did not provide early readers with motivation and did not emphasize meaning as the purpose to reading. Teachers use nonsensical words or silly stories.

Smart phonics: both phonics and whole language. Expert readers use resigning by analogy and contextual info in the form of frames. They store knowledge of typical rimes and onsets, morphemes, and syllables that show consistent spelling patterns. They also apply chunking of a graphic image and obtain a storage of chunked info on frames. They have a reduced memory load because of this chunking ability and can understand words better. The smart phonics method uses rhyming games and rhyming books.

Ehri (1998) has four stages in the acquisition of expert English L1 reading, which are:

1. The Pre-Alphabetic Stage: Readers connect the graphs on the page to the phonemes in their heads.
2. The Partial Alphabetic Stage: readers use knowledge of consonants, such as the rime and and the onset of work.
3. The Full Alphabetic Stage: Readers have a good knowledge base of the probabilities of the words and can read accurately and automatically. They can see the separate sounds and tap them out.
4. The Consolidated Alphabetic Stage: Readers have a large knowledge base of graphemic and phonemic patterns and use frames to soon out words. They blend graphemes together and read more fluidly.

Implications:

We as teachers must give our students practice in using an analogy to frame strategy (patterns) so they can sound out words correctly. ELLs can have a storage of frames (patterns) in their head that they can use to help them sound out difficult words. If we know the different first stages of reading, we must create differentiated reading activities in our classrooms.

We also have to model reading strategies such as tapping out words and play games with our students--anything that has them practicing oral language such as making up rhymes, singing songs, or using the Benchmark Method.

The Benchmark Method can be used by having a wall of pattern words, where the students break up the unknown word into syllables and onsets and rimes. They find words on the wall that have similar patterns to the different syllables, onsets and rimes.

We can also have our students read aloud, but it must be in a supportive environment. Sometimes it is helpful for the students to practice silently by themselves before their turn comes up. They can listen to a book on tape and read silently with it or low-level students can be paired with high-level students practice reading together. The high level reader starts reading and the low-level reader waits a little and then starts reading. The low level reader can hear the high level reader and try to match their pronunciations with them (shadowing). This also works with choral reading, where low-level readers can hear how words should be pronounced.

Approach to Spelling

Birch, B. (2011). (2nd Ed.) English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom. New York, NY: Routledge, ch. 6

Salient Points:

Pg. 88--"To use the strategy of probabilistic reasoning in reading, readers need to learn the probabilities that certain graphemes will represent certain phonemes." This quote applies to phonics in kindergarten.

There are also raw probabilities of graphemes, and they are "information from statistical analyses of a written text and its pronunciation" (pg. 89).

Pg. 89 Chart--The language processing strategies for consonants are as follows:

Phonological processing strategies feed into probabilistic reasoning and adjusting probabilities, which feed into orthographic processing strategies, which feed into lexical processing strategies. The latter two are used in processing the text.

The knowledge Base for Language is knowledge that a grapheme is associated with a phoneme, which in the case of consonants means:

b=/b/ (almost always)

bb=/b/ (always)

c followed by a, o, or u =/k/ (usually)

Spelling versus reading rates: the reading rule is quite regular, but the spelling rule may be more difficult to apply. The reading rules are matching incoming graphemes to abstract mental units to access words and meanings.

Probabilistic reasoning with vowels is less useful than with consonants, because vowels are less predictable. Transparent languages have an easy transfer of orthographies than opaque languages. Still, English has strange graphemes. Students need to read in and outside of school for the transfer to happen. They need direct instruction in phonics and accurate listening discrimination activities. Secondarily they need pronunciation activities. They also need visuals of recoding of graphemes to phonemes.

Implications:

We as teachers still need to teach phonics. We need to instruct our students on recoding graphemes into phonemes and show spelling patterns. They can use these patterns, or raw probabilities to predict the spelling of words in writing and decode/recode in reading.

We must also take into account the different writing (and spelling) systems of our students. This means: (Pg. 100-101)

• Learners from a logographic writing system will have to start at the beginning. These learners will require a lot of direct instruction and activities to develop their writing and reading abilities.

• However, readers from an alphabetic writing system, even a Roman alphabetic writing system, may not be used to the strange graphemes in English. These readers will also require some direct instruction in the strange graphemes of English.

• Readers from transparent languages will probably have an easier time than readers from opaque languages, because it is a one-to-one grapheme to phoneme process.