Teaching reading and writing: Developing

critical learners
By:
Emi Emilia
Presented in a one day seminar and workshop on
the teaching of English in Gunadarma University, Jakarta
19 April 2010
Structure of the Presentation
Reading and writing and the success of
learning
Text and Context?
What is reading?
The teaching of reading: Critical Thinking,
Critical literacy, critical pedagogy
What is writing?
The teaching of writing: The SFL genre-based
approach
Literacy, the ability to read and write,
encourages a more abstract form of thinking,
it brings greater precision to the definition of
terms, and it allows us to refer back, to think
about our thinking, to weigh arguments, to
supplement memory, , to communicate with
others, and to learn in autonomous ways. No
wonder such a powerful form of intelligence
provides the key to success in school and
beyond (Fisher: 1990: 5).
The term text, comes from the Latin word for
weaving, referring to:
Words and sentences woven together to create a single
whole (Christie and Misson, 1998: 8).
The socially and contextually complete unit of language
(Kress, 1993: 24), which may be written or spoken (Eggins,
1994:.5).
The coinsideration of text has nothing to do with its size or
length or form, but with meaning of the stretch of language
working together as a unified whole (Feez and Joyce,
1998:4).
The word context originally meant being woven
together, where the prefix con carried the sense of
being together and over the passage of the
centuries, it has come to refer to those elements that
accompany a text (Christie and Misson, 1998: 8).
Context of situation - immediate environment of
language (Field, Mode, Tenor).
Context of culture - a broader background against
which the text has to be interpreted (Halliday,
1985c:46).
Field: the ongoing activity or subject matter,
or what is happening, the topic that is written
about.
Tenor refers to who is taking part, or the role
relationship between interactants; their
relative status and the amount and type of
contact they have with each other, the way we
relate to other people when doing what we
do.
Our society, like other human societies we know of, is structured
in such a way that people have power over one another. This
power is various kinds: mature people tend to dominate
younger ones, commanding their respect; bosses dominate
employees; teachers dominate students and so on. There is
no escaping this, however nice we try to be about it. When
you think people are bossy or above themselves it is usually
because they are asserting an inordinate amount of power
over you. When you think someone is quiet, evasive and
looking insecure, it is often because they are being overly
diferential to you. And of course you can resist, as when
feminists struggle to renovate the power relations between
women and men. Renovation is hard work as we all know, and
however democratic our ideals, there always seems to be a lot
of power pushing us around (Martin, 2010:16).
Mode refers to the channel of communication
(Martin, 2010:16). The distance between the
people communicating in terms of time and
space, whether they are face to face or
separated by time or space fundamentally
determine the nature of the language (Feez
and Joyce, 1998a).
Context of culture refers to the broader cultural
context in which any context of situation
occurs. Any culture has accepted ways of
conducting any social activities, all of which
affect what occurs in the particular context of
situation. For example, Australia and
Indonesia both have context of situation in
which people trade with each other. In the
Indonesian culture, it is appropriate that one
bargains, but that is not acceptable in the
Australian culture in most situations.
Suppose you are sitting in a room, and hear someone yell:
John, dont do it there mate! (if you know about another
language, think about how you would say this in that
language). Now, however faithfully you translate this sentence
into another language, it will still be the case that unless you
know what John was doing, you cant really know what the
person talking to him meant. You dont know what John was
doing, what he was doing it to, and where he was doing it. If
however you had a translation of this sentence, and a
description of the context of situation in which it is uttered
(say John dumping a load of broken mud bricks inro a
drainage through), then you would be able to understand the
text. So, in order to explain the meaning of a sentence, you
need both a description of that sentence and of the context
in which it was used (Martin, 2010:15).
A critical social theory of literacy:
Literacy must be seen not so much as a monolithic
entity but rather as a set of contextualised social
practices (Barton and Hamilton, 2000; Pennycook,
2001); or a social action (Kress, 2003), embedded
in social contexts (Hamilton, 2000).
Writing and reading are social activities. That is,
we are always reading something, written by
someone or writing something for someone.
These others are always in some relationship to
us-often materially or symbolically unequal
relationships of power but always relationships in
which versions of ourselves and others are
implicated and constructed. Even those texts we
read or write that come from or are intended for
people we do not know assemble versions of our
identities and positions as readers - as men and
women, students and teachers, taxpayers and
newspapers readers, and so forth. (Luke &
Freebody, 1997: 193).
What is reading?
Reading can be seen from two senses:
A narrow sense: Getting meaning from printed
material.
A wider sense: Understanding the world
around me.
The teaching of reading should
lead the learners to play different
roles while reading, including as
a code breaker, text participant,
text user, and text analyst and
critic (Luke and Freebody, 1990: 8-
14; 1997: 214, see also Gibbons,
2002; Comber, 2002).
As a text analyst, students should be encouraged
to recognize that:
All texts represent a particular view of
the world and that readers are
positioned in a certain way when
they read it
What does this text do to me?
(Luke and Freebody, 1997: 114; Comber,
2002:1).
Who would feel left out in this text and why?
Do any of the claims made in this text clash
with your values, beliefs, or experiences?
How is the reader positioned in relation to the
author (e.g. as a friend, opponent, someone
to persuade, invisible, or someone who agrees
with the authors views)?
Are there gaps or absences, or silences in this
text? If so what are they? Is there a group of
people missing who logically should be
included? (Love et al, 2001)
Pre-reading
Why is this topic (the text) being written
about?
How is this topic being written about?
What other ways of writing about the topic
are there?
Who is writing to whom and what is the topic.
What the text is (seemingly) about drawing on
a scan of the headline, pictures, photos,
subheadings, etc.
While-reading
Offering students alternative readings of a text,
devise tasks which offer the reader a possibility of
more than one way of reading a text. This strategy is
important given a disparity of values which may exist
between a writer writing in the past and a
contemporary reader.
Identifying parallel discourses: identifying where
contrasting people, places, countries, or phenomena
are described, the writers use of language which
favours one person or social group over another.
Analysing linguistic choices using the
Field/Mode/Tenor.
Who takes what subject positions in
sentences?
What types of process and participants
dominate?
How are active and passive constructions
allocated?
What modal constructions are employed?
Post- reading tasks serve the purpose of
heightening the readers awareness of other
ways in which the topic could have been
written about.
For example: Comparing two texts which deal
with the same topic, comparing lexico-
grammatical choices in the texts, identifying
unspoken beliefs of the writers (see Perkins,
1998; McGregor, 2002a,b).
Text to Text
Text to Life
Text to the World
Critical Thinking Standards:
clarity, precision, accuracy, relevance,
significance, fairness, logic, depth, and
breadth, evidentiary support, probability
predictive or explanatory power, stereotypes,
ambiguous and vague language.
Activities that make up CT:
Carefully exploring situations with questions;
Viewing situations from different perspectives: a
willingness to listen to and examine carefully other
views and new ideas; a willingness to learn from
others, often from the voices he/she dislikes
(Askeland
http://www3.wittenberg.edu/laskeland/critical_think
ing.htm)
Discussing ideas in an organised way,
Exchanging ideas in the process of take and give
(Chaffee, 2000, p. 69; see also Tsui, 2002).
Critical Pedagogy
Dialogic education
Reading the word and the world
Reading and writing are transitive verbs; that is texts are always
about something in the world. Reading, accordingly, always
entails engagement with problems and values of the social
world (Freire, 1970, cited in Luke and Walton, 1994, p. 1195).
Classroom as a democratic public sphere
A concrete set of learning conditions where people come
together to speak, to dialogue, to share their stories, and to
struggle together within social relations that strengthen
rather than weaken the possibility for active citizenship
(Giroux, 1997: 106).
The teaching of writing: A genre-based
approach
Genre: a staged, goal-oriented social
processes which integrate field, mode
and tenor choices in predictable ways
(Martin, 1993 cited in Kress, 2003: 93)
Basic principles
Reading and writing multiple texts
Learning as a social activity
Learning is, above all, a social process, and the
environment in which educational learning takes
place is that of a social institution ... . Knowledge is
transmitted in social contexts, through relationships,
like those of parent and child, or teacher and pupil,
or classmates, that are defined in the value systems
and ideology of the culture (Halliday, 1985: 5).
An essential feature of learning is that it creates
the zone of proximal development, that is
learning awakens a variety of internal
development processes that are able to
operate only when the child is interacting with
people in his environment and in cooperation
with peers. Once these processes are
internalised, they become part of the childs
independent developmental achievement
(Vygotsky, 1978: 90).
Explicit teaching: The shematic structure and
linguistic features of a text students have to
write.
Students learn under the guidance of the
teacher in apprenticeship with the students as
an apprentice and the teacher in the
authoritative role of expert on language
system and function
Stages of a genre-based approach
Building Knowledge of the field
Modelling
Joint Construction
Independent Construction
Personal Responses to literature
Element of the structure
Orientation: Tells the reader what the writer is
responding to and prepares the reader for
what the writer is going to say.
Text description: Tells the reader about the
text the writer is responding to. This can be
about the events in the story or the way the
text is constructed.
Comment: Gives the writers personal
reaction to the text.
An example of a personal response to literary
work (From Joyce and Feez, 2004:37).
Orientation
The Prelude to the gathering by Isobelle carmody sets an evil
atmosphere for the novel.
Text Description
The Prelude tells us about the main character Nathaniel coming
into the new town that he and his mother are moving to. As
Nathaniel and his mother drive into the town we see the town
through Nathaniels eyes and we get some idea of his
background. For example, we learn that he is moving here
with his mother and that he is not particularly happy.
As soo as I read the first line I felt scared as the author
developed a sense of foreboding. I kew that this would be a
story about good versus evil as soon as I read the first line.
Some times you get a feeling about something that you cant
explain, a premonition of wrongness. I knew immediately that
the main character would be involved in strange and unusual
events.
The description of the twon and the school made me feel creepy
which is the way Nathaniel feels. I could clearly see the
treeless and cold playgroun d of the school and when
Nathaniel said: Fear crept through skin and bone and folded
itself in my chest, I shivered. I think the author is very clever in
the way she throws the reader instantly into an atmosphere
of eeriness. This makes the reader afraid and then it is easy to
predict something very unusual will happen to Nathaniel.
Comment
I think that the Prelude is very effective. It
cleverly drew me into the atmosphere of the
novel so that I wanted to continue reading to
find out what would happen to Nathaniel.
Linguistic features:
Use first person pronouns (I, my and me).
Contains words which refer to the whole or parts of the text;
the novel, The prelude, the first line, main character.
Contains verbs (processes) to show how the writer feels and
thinks about bthe text., e.g. I think, I feel.
Contains opinion words which clearly show the writers
reaction and which aim to make the reader agree with this
reaction; ... she throws the reader instantly into an
atmosphere of eeriness. This makes the reader afraid ... . The
description of the town and the school made me feel creepy.
The writer discusses and evaluates texts and use words to
evaluate. e.g. I think that the prelude is very effective. It
cleverly drew me into the atmosphere of the novel.
Thank you