Foundations of Literacy

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Australian Catholic University *

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100

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Linguistics

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Oct 30, 2023

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docx

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Uploaded by BrigadierTitanium12167

Foundations of Literacy Analyse a learner’s language sample to identify and evaluate language development with reference to key theories. Throughout School, Children learn new parts of language every day. A significant part of this includes writing. Though language is used every day through speaking, writing has its own unique features that make it make sense. For an individual - writing is a powerful vehicle for learning. Writing promotes social, emotional, and cognitive development (Thomas & Thomas, 2021). Texts 1 and 2 demonstrate this. Text 1 is a spoken text and uses spoken language through the dialogue of two Year 2 students comparing two pictures of snails. However, Text 2 is a written text from a young student discussing how carnivores hunt. Although both texts are informative reports, they differ majorly. This is where they start to differ. Text 1 is comparative whereas Text 2 is descriptive. Comparing the two texts we can find the tenors are similar. Both texts include young children as the main source. Text 2 is written by a child acting as the expert whereas Text 1 is a written dialogue of two children discussing. Through these texts, we can see the levels of language development in the mode continuum. The most evident difference between these two texts is that one is in written monologue and the other is in spoken dialogue. The spoken language in Text 1 makes it spontaneous as what comes next in the discussion is unknown. Although the two students are discussing the two pictures, the audience of the text cannot see them. This would be more helpful in understanding the context in question. For example, student 2 describes the snail shell as “The shell with all those colours”. To the audience, this is not an in depth enough description for us to understand exactly what they are looking at. This, therefore, demonstrates a ‘processlike’ text which relates to Thomas and Thomas’ (2021) idea. Teachers understanding more specific qualities of the spoken language would be beneficial to students as they can receive feedback in changing it to written language. Understanding and using the mode continuum throughout teaching can help support the children for this reason. Through Text 1, we see verbal cues and conversation, but we are unsure if there are physical cues in the process of the conversation. From this, Text 1 is “embedded in a context”. This means to understand the conversation fully, it would be much easier to be in the same context to pick up verbal and physical cues.

In comparison to Text 2, this written text provides context through monologue. This is a ‘productlike’ text as we don’t need much more context to understand the main idea. For example, the sentence “some of the smaller meat dinosaurs ate lizards” needs no more context to understand. With a very clear idea through an information report, the planned text doesn’t include any physical or verbal cues the audience is unaware of. Being a monologic text, all contexts can come through grammar and graphic features including, clauses, full stops, and layout. Through both texts, they remain similar in the context of grammatical intricacy. Both texts are relatively grammatically intricate. Text 1 includes more conjunctions, filler words and clauses, making it more grammatically intricate (~2.6). Words such as “because” and “and” being repeated very often, make it less informational and give less context. This could be because of the dialogic aspect making it spontaneous and ‘off the top of the head’. Because of the overuse of conjunction words, this makes it lexically sparse (~0.3). This makes it harder to understand as there is less importance in the metalanguage used throughout the text. As mentioned, Text 2 is also relatively grammatically intricate (~1.3). This has fewer conjunction words and clauses throughout the sentences and has more, straight to the point, metalanguage. The lexical density also implies this by using more nouns, adverbs, and adjectives. The proportion of lexical words to grammatical words is more implying there is a straighter forward idea in comparison to Text 1. Being a monologic text, we can assume this information. Overall, the two texts portray great differences in language development. Both texts have clear differences. We can assume by the fact that Text 1 is dialogic and Text 2 is monologic, the texts will have clear differences, but by the tenor being similar, they come to have close metalanguage and similarities in language development. Through the lexical density and grammatical intricacy, we can discover the similarities in more depth. Understanding the mode continuum and the differences, is important for teachers in understanding how to support children and developing metalinguistic awareness.

References Thomas, A. and Thomas, D. (2022) Teaching and Learning Primary English. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Derewianka, B. (2011) A New Grammar Companion For Teachers . Sydney: PETAA. Myhill, D. (2018) Metalinguistic Awareness. Video resource, retrieved from: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literac y/Pages/expertvideos.aspx#link95 Wallace Chafe, Deborah Tannen (1987) The relationship between written and spoken language.

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