ETEC 540: Text Technologies-The Changing Spaces of Reading and Writing
The history and evolution of text.
Writers have a deep and meaningful relationship with words. The language that they carefully select and lovingly craft into sentences, chapters and entire books has a profound effect on both the writer and the reader. In this course, I was able to discover the history of text and gain both an understanding of and an appreciation for the way in which text has evolved and will continue to evolve in the future. Technology is opening new doors to writers and readers; it is changing the way we create text and interact with it. |
Gaining an Understanding
Much of the content in this course required me to do some deep thinking on topics that I had not previously examined closely. Although I consider myself to be an avid reader and a creative writer, I had not really ever realized just how much the origins of language both oral and written have shaped human development. Throughout this course I consistently had my thinking both challenged and transformed. Although I have studied linguistics in the past, I was struck by a number of points made in some of the module readings that for some reason had not really penetrated my thinking previously. After completing the Biakolo and Gaur readings, I came away with a feeling that the advent of writing was both a blessing and a curse; it is a challenge to become literate, but it opens doors that would have remained shut if humanity had not crossed the bridge to literacy. My Perspective is Changed Having been a learning assistance teacher for four years, an instructor and an assistant to the director of education at a remedial learning center for 11 years, and a classroom teacher for 10 years, I have had a wealth of experience working with students who struggle to both decode and encode text. With my specialized training, I felt that I had some understanding of the barriers that were potentially standing in the way of struggling learners as they worked to become proficient readers and writers. It was not until I read Gaur’s (1992) breakdown of the complexity of phonetic writing that I began to get a much clearer picture in my head of just what is truly involved in the encoding process. When I examined this process through the lens presented by Gaur (1992), the true complexity of it became readily apparent. Humans are first tasked with constructing the sound (or thought) of words, then they must deconstruct that sound into individual phonemes, and finally they are required to reconstruct the word using symbols that we have assigned to represent the individual units of sound. Add to this the need to attend to all of the established writing conventions and you have a very complicated process that we expect young children or people of any age who are trying to learn how to read and write, to be able to grasp and become proficient at. I will be sure to keep this idea in mind when I work with my students who are still struggling with their literacy skills. Writing allows us to express ourselves in ways beyond the spoken word, but it is not by any means, easy to learn and master. One of the other points in our readings that resonated with me was the noted differences in regard to language storage in oral cultures and literate ones. As Biakolo posits “the basis of oral thought and style is memory’ and ‘[t]o serve this mnemonic purpose, this language must be rhythmic and narrativized’ (Biakolo, 1999, p.44). Tied to this need to be able to remember and then recall information in oral cultures, discourse in oral cultures is predominantly ‘traditionalist and conservative’ and ‘demands continuity and stasis, and eschews experimentation’ (Biakolo, 1999, p. 44). The ability to store information for future perusal opened the door to new ways of thinking. Thoughts no longer needed to pertain to the confines of the concrete and familiar human life world (Biakolo, 1999, p. 44). According to Biakolo, ‘[s]ince information storage and retrieval no longer present any problem, the spirit of novelty is given free rein’ (1992, p. 44). In support of this same notion Gaur states in his work ‘A History of Writing’ that ‘[a]ll writing is storage’ and ‘[t]here is, in theory at least, no limit to the amount of information that can be stored in written form’ (Gaur, 1992, p. 14). The ability to write our thoughts down, return to them later and alter them as we see fit provides literate cultures with a great deal of freedom to create and recreate recorded discourse. A spoken word, especially those shared in an oral culture to a listening audience cannot be taken back and refined and reworked in the moment. Classroom Applications A final thought in relation to how an understanding of the orality and literacy connection can be used to better develop literacy skills in our learners came out of the information shared by Biakolo in regard to the work of Hildyard and Olson (1999, p.56). Their conclusions indicate that readers and listeners exhibit different approaches in comprehending information. ‘[L]isteners pay primary attention to the theme of the story, and ‘readers, on the other hand, are able to pay closer attention to the meaning of the sentences per se, recalling more incidental but mentioned details and being more accurate in their judgments of what was in fact shared in the text’ (Biakolo, 1999, p. 57). This difference in approaches can be utilized in our efforts to teach literacy skills to our students. By using a balanced literacy program in our classrooms that includes both oral and text foundations, we can create children who read well and listen well (Biakolo, 1999, p. 58). Oral practices such as using rhyme, rhythm and language patterns can help students memorize and master some of their core language skills and give them a more solid foundation upon which to build their literacy skills when they begin to delve into the text rich world of reading and writing. References: Biakolo, E. (1999). On the theoretical foundations of orality and literacy. Research in African Literature, 30, 2, 42-65. Retrieved from http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/journals/research_in_african_literatures/v030/30.2biakolo.html Gaur, A. (1992). A history of writing {revised edition}. London. Retrieved from http://lmc.gatech.edu/~xinwei/classes/readings/Gaur/History_of_Writing/p1-58.pdf |
Artifacts of Learning
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