‘Reading’ picture stories

1. ‘Reading’ picture stories Explorations in Picture Story Tasks of the LESLLA Learner Susanna Strube, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands, svenemastrube@casema.nl

2. Introduction • Little research on the Leslla classroom • Mezirow, Dakenwald, and Knox (1975) • Beder and Medina (2001) • Condelli, Wrigley et al. (2003) • Kurvers and Van der Zouw (1990) • Strube

3. Research focus • The research project strives to find those characteristics which are specific for the Leslla learner in an educational setting. • The focus is on oral skills practice.

4. Method - design • Longitudinal study • Based on classroom observation (during one school year) • Pre- and post assessments

5. Method - Participants • Five centers of adult education • Six literacy classes • Six literacy teachers • 68 literacy students

6. Participants - selection Selection based on: • Type of classroom organization (oral and written skills) • Geographical location • Institution size • Classroom size

7. Classroom organization

8. Nova College – 1 • ROC Amsterdam – 1 • Nova College – 3 • ROC Midden Nederland – 3 • ROC Rijn IJssel – 2 • ROC de Leijgraaf – 2

9. Learner Characteristics of Literacy Students, January 2007.

10. Classroom data Observation Classroom structure Audio recordings Classroom instructional interaction Learner data Learner background Pre- and post assessments Data collection

11. Assessments • Interview • Vocabulary – receptive and productive • Retention task • Picture description task • Picture story task

12. Picture story task

13. Analysis picture story tasks • Relevance • Coherence • Morphosyntax

14. Relevance • A relevant utterance is one in which the words of the speaker have a direct bearing on the picture; the relationship between what is said by the speaker and what is seen in the picture can easily be perceived.

15. Minimal distinctive elements for a picture story task.

16. Minimal distinctive elements - illustrated

18. Coherence • Coherence concerns the continuity of a text. • In this case a text is the whole picture story. • Throughout, the utterances for the picture story must in some way be connected and it must be easy to infer the relationships between them. • Explicit - cohesive elements and deictic markers • Implicit - reasoning and mutual knowledge

19. Explicit coherence - cohesion • Linguistic devices that connect utterances. (Halliday and Hassan, 1979) • Reference - I wash my apple before eating it. • Substitution - I like red apples, but my friend likes green ones. • Ellipsis - I bought red apples, but my friend green ones. • Conjunction - She washed her apple and ate it. Then put on her coat to go to school. • Lexical cohesion – I eat a lot of fruit. Just yesterday I ate six apples.

20. Implicit coherence • John can open Bill’s safe. He knows the combination. Hobbs, J. R. (1979)

21. Coherence in three picture stories

22. Coherence – a comparison

23. Syntaxis Verb presence Verb position Agent presence Morphology Uninflected Inflected – correct Inflected - incorrect Morphosyntaxis – focus on verb

24. Morphosyntax in the picture stories

25. Morphosyntax in the picture stories

26. Verb use in four picture stories

27. Verb use in picture story of 14 students

28. Noteworthy characteristics Telling characteristics Picture-by-picture telling Overuse of deictic elements Picture misinterpretation Dialoging Overall lack of coherence Verb use ca. 60% of the utterances contained a verb Verb position usually incorrect Agent usually absent Prominent use of uninflected verbs - little verb inflection