Young adult literacy learners describe the text–orality nexus

2015 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Sligo ◽  
Elspeth Tilley ◽  
Niki Murray ◽  
Margie Comrie
Keyword(s):  
Young Adult ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Adult Literacy ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Barriers To Learning ◽  
Literacy Training ◽  
Literacy Learners ◽  
Print Literacy

AbstractResearch has described the importance of orality at work and in everyday life but little agreement currently exists on how to theorize modern orality. This study explores how young adult literacy learners thought about and employed their textual (print) literacy within the oral contexts of their lives. We interviewed 88 mainly unemployed young persons undertaking literacy training to assess how their literacy fitted within their everyday lives, exploring their learning, employment, motivation, persistence, barriers to learning, and power dynamics. Respondents saw their textual literacy as situated within a matrix of everyday interpersonal communication more than as stand-alone functional skills, describing how literacy integrates with oral-experiential lifeworlds such as at work. Empirical evidence was provided to support the recent work of scholars who are building theory in the text–orality nexus. This study provides insights into the oral world of people with liminal (threshold) textual literacy; since such individuals are necessarily more oral than literate in their everyday life experience, they provide unique insights into how their orality intersects with use of textual information.

Moving Forward

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet B. Ruscher
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Spatial Metaphors ◽  
The People ◽  
Stationary Objects ◽  
Study Participants ◽  
Affective Forecasts

Two distinct spatial metaphors for the passage of time can produce disparate judgments about grieving. Under the object-moving metaphor, time seems to move past stationary people, like objects floating past people along a riverbank. Under the people-moving metaphor, time is stationary; people move through time as though they journey on a one-way street, past stationary objects. The people-moving metaphor should encourage the forecast of shorter grieving periods relative to the object-moving metaphor. In the present study, participants either received an object-moving or people-moving prime, then read a brief vignette about a mother whose young son died. Participants made affective forecasts about the mother’s grief intensity and duration, and provided open-ended inferences regarding a return to relative normalcy. Findings support predictions, and are discussed with respect to interpersonal communication and everyday life.

A “Hired Girl” Testifies Against the “Son of a Prominent Family”: Bastardy and Rape on the Nineteenth-Century Nebraska Plains

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donna Rae Devlin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great Plains ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Primary Component ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
Successful Outcome ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Civil Suit ◽  
Sexual Power

Abstract In Red Cloud, Nebraska, in 1887, Anna “Annie” Sadilek (later Pavelka) pressed bastardy charges against the “son of a prominent family,” even though she could have, according to her pre-trial testimony, pressed charges for rape. To the literary world, Sadilek is better known as Ántonia Shimerda, the powerful protagonist in Willa Cather’s 1918 novel, My Ántonia. However, it is Sadilek’s real-life experience that allows us to better understand life on the Nebraska Plains, specifically through an examination of the state’s rape laws and the ways these laws were subsequently interpreted by the courts. The Nebraska Supreme Court, between 1877 and 1886, established the need for the state to prove force as a primary component of the definition for rape, drew boundaries around acceptable reporting times, and solidified their stance on the requirement of corroborating testimony. These factors led Sadilek to charge Charley Kaley not with rape but with bastardy, a civil suit, which almost guaranteed a successful outcome for Sadilek and her child because it would not burden the county or state with their financial welfare. In analyzing Sadilek’s choices before the law, this article demonstrates the complexities of the gendered legal systems facing women like Sadilek who sought justice for crimes of a sexual nature. Additionally significant, this article draws attention to a space and place that lacks significant study in regard to the sexual power dynamics of the nineteenth-century Great Plains West, a multicultural contact zone highly susceptible to the influences of hypermasculine control.

Development of an Interactive Narrative for Adult Literacy Learners

2018 ◽  
pp. 238-262
Author(s):  
Amy M. Johnson ◽  
Elizabeth L. Tighe ◽  
Matthew E. Jacovina ◽  
G. Tanner Jackson ◽  
Danielle S. McNamara
Keyword(s):  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Adult Learners ◽  
Adult Literacy ◽  
Intelligent Tutoring ◽  
Intelligent Tutoring System ◽  
Strategy Instruction ◽  
Interactive Narrative ◽  
Tutoring System ◽  
Active Reading ◽  
Literacy Learners

This chapter describes development efforts that build upon the Interactive Strategy Trainer for Active Reading and Thinking-2 (iSTART-2), an intelligent tutoring system that provides self-explanation strategy instruction to improve reading comprehension. The chapter reflects on considerations of the unique needs of adult literacy learners, and outlines the specific guidelines followed to adapt the system to these learners. Several modifications have been made to adapt iSTART to adult learners, including the following: 1) two additional strategy instructional modules for summarization and deep question asking, 2) a text library with life-relevant texts for adult learners, and 3) an interactive narrative which allows instantiated practice of reading strategies using life-relevant artifacts. The authors also describe results from two attitudinal studies examining learners' perceptions of the interactive narrative.

Marginality and Liminality in Tara Sullivan’s Golden Boy

Utafiti ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 294-313
Author(s):  
Mpale Yvonne Mwansasu Silkiluwasha
Keyword(s):  
Young Adult ◽  
Real World ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Social Geography ◽  
Global South ◽  
Economic Order ◽  
Brute Fact ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Life Threat ◽  
In Virtue Of

Abstract In Tara Sullivan’s Golden Boy, the protagonist Habo is a young adult with albinism who struggles and eventually succeeds in navigating his multiple marginal spaces before eventually finding his position in society. Employing Victor Turner’s concept of liminality, I adopt a postcolonial lens to scrutinize in greater depth than literary critics have so far revealed the positive aspects of the marginal space occupied by Habo in virtue of the layered complexity of his social geography. Because his whole society is located in the global South, this disabled young adult faces a variety of marginalisations. Rather than an end point, the multiple margins traversed by Habo become for him a liminal space. Margins serve as a threshold for this teenager to discover and establish his position in his society. I deviate from Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s theorising about disability as a social construct, since her analysis overlooks the brute fact that Habo’s albinism is a disability which constitutes a constant life threat. The disambiguation of marginality and liminality argued here is particularly important to maintain when critiquing narratives that depict the life experience of protagonists overcoming the very real-world challenges encountered at the margins of the global economic order.

scholarly journals Effects of a Structured Decoding Curriculum on Adult Literacy Learners’ Reading Development

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith A. Alamprese ◽  
Charles A. MacArthur ◽  
Cristofer Price ◽  
Deborah Knight
Keyword(s):  
Adult Literacy ◽  
Reading Development ◽  
Literacy Learners

Strategy instruction in writing for adult literacy learners

2008 ◽  
Vol 22 (9) ◽  
pp. 1021-1039 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles A. MacArthur ◽  
Leah Lembo
Keyword(s):  
Adult Literacy ◽  
Strategy Instruction ◽  
Literacy Learners
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