It has become increasingly clear that we as communication center professionals must confront the deeply rooted linguistic assumptions and traditions that underlie notions of speaking well. In this essay, we argue that one place to start is to look closely how and why conceptions of speaking well have come to rest on an unquestioned ideal of what…

Languages differ in the way that speech and meaning are represented in written form: in English, the correspondences are variable. Thus, in learning to read in English there is need for an approach that combines alphabetic decoding and a mastery of sight vocabulary. Teaching children to read should develop from an analysis of the skills and…

Cumulating evidence suggests that the establishment of high-quality phonological representations is the "cognitive precursor" that facilitates the acquisition of language (spoken, signed, and written). The authors present two studies that contrast the nature of bilingual profoundly deaf children's phonological representations derived…

"The Oxford Handbook of Deaf Studies in Literacy" brings together state-of-the-art research on literacy learning among deaf and hard of hearing learners (DHH). With contributions from experts in the field, this volume covers topics such as the importance of language and cognition, phonological or orthographic awareness, morphosyntactic…

This paper responds to Michael Rosen's blog entries, "How Genre Theory Saved the World", arguing that genre theory in the tradition of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) has made an important contribution to language and literacy pedagogy. It emerged in the Australian context in about 1980 and was initially developed in response to…

Age-normed tests of listening comprehension, oral expression, reading comprehension, and written expression were administered in Grades 1 (n = 128), 3, and 5, or 3 (n = 113), 5, and 7. Confirmatory factor analyses compared 1- and 4-factor models at each grade level and supported a 4-factor model of language by ear, mouth, eye, and hand. Multiple…

Literacy is examined from the viewpoint of systemic linguistics. It is proposed that "literacy" means intervening in the social processes by working with written language, and this can not be accomplished by an individual alone. "Using written language" can not be isolated from "using language." While sociologically,…

Discusses the forces responsible for the high level of articulacy in the People's Republic of China, and describes a set of texts for teaching Chinese as a second language compiled by the Peking Language Institute. (CLK)

Argues that it is children's development of knowledge of written language that is key to literacy development. Offers models of emergent literacy and identifies differences between oral and written language. Poses implications for policy, research, and practice in home and school. (DLH)

Literacy of Navajo Indians within an isolated community of a northeast Arizona Navajo reservation is discussed, based on an ethnographic investigation. Functions for English and Navajo literacy in two community settings where Navajos use standard and vernacular print are described. Using literacy artifacts, participant observation, and interview…

The properties of written, textual language with which children deal in school can be distinguished from those of oral language by examining the manner in which interpersonal and logical functions are stressed and by assessing the degree to which interpretation is confined by meaning explicitly stated in textual matter. The developmental process…

Intended for both classicists and nonclassicists, this volume explores the beginnings of literacy in ancient Greece and Rome and examines the effects of written communication on these cultures. The nine articles, written by classical scholars and educators in the field of communication, discuss the following: the superiority of the alphabet over…

This study focuses on the language and literacy worlds of three profoundly deaf preschool children, whose lack of a strong spoken English base provided an opportunity to explore the relationship between spoken language development and written language development and to investigate young children's written language development in light of the…

The decontextualized nature of literacy has been a recurrent issue in discussions of the consequences of literacy over the last twenty years. The central thesis of these discussions is that the nature of written discourse itself leads directly or indirectly to changes in cognitive processing, linguistic progressing, cultural development, and/or…

An ethnographic study of kindergarten through grade two classrooms was conducted of various sociolinguistic contexts in which young students were developing oral and written language competencies. Nonparticipant observations were conducted in both regular classrooms and Chapter I small group classroom settings. The observations were analyzed from…