|
|
 |
| |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
| ScriptLog - Analysis of
text production |
Users
Per Henning Uppstad
 
| Keywords: |
bilingual literacy
|
| |
|
| Description: |
Per Henning UPPSTAD and Åse Kari H. WAGNER, Center for Reading Research, Stavanger University College, Norway
Bilingual Literacy: Narrative Performance in Bilingual Students
The present study focuses on the bilingual situation of six 11-year-old students and on their narrative performance in two languages. All the students have Norwegian as one of their languages, and English, Bosnian, Tamil or Swiss German as (one of) their other language(s). All of them attend Norwegian schools.
The material consists of four oral and four written texts from each of the six students, collected in May/June and December 2002. During each of these periods, two oral and two written texts will be collected from each student with equal representation of their two languages. Both the written and oral texts will be created by using a series of pictures. The written texts will be recorded by means of ScriptLog, a tool developed by Professor Sven Strömqvist and Henrik Karlsson for exploring the on-line process of writing. This study will focus mainly on these written texts.
In the first data collection, the children write first in Norwegian and then in their other language. Although the written context is the same for the two languages, there are nevertheless important distinctions, such as the order of the languages, which is reversed for the second recording. The same applies to the oral texts.
A corpus of oral and written texts in different languages, collected over time, offers several interesting fields of study. In the written context (ScriptLog), the student is presented with one picture at the time in a linear structure. This means that she has no opportunity to look at previous pictures. However, she can edit all parts of the written text while writing. When presented with the first picture, the student can form ideas about what the story is about – ideas that might be revised as the next pictures appear. This situation is quite demanding for text coherence. Most likely, the student will have to work harder with the narrative structure in the first writing task, something that probably will lead to longer texts with more and longer pauses.
In the second writing context, the student is already familiar with the narrative structure. It is likely that the student will be able to work more on shaping the second text than with the narrative structure itself. One would nevertheless expect minor revisions of the text structure, seen by tighter composition and fewer and longer referent chains.
The paper will focus on certain aspects of the development of narrative structure on the one hand, and linguistic performance on the other. One interesting aspect will be elements of text coherence and use of direct and indirect speech. We would like to follow Berman’s (2001) distinction between a more general “narrative competence” and the linguistic choices each student makes (“storytelling performance”). The “narrative competence” is related to the student’s cognitive development, while the “storytelling performance” depends on how well the student masters the actual language.
The six students are bilingual in different ways, and we do not wish to compare them, their situation and bilingualism being far from homogeneous. Nevertheless, we hope to be able to present some general hypotheses concerning bilingualism and text production on the basis of our material. In a wider context, generalisations are relevant, since these students also took part in the international PIRLS-study, which tested their reading competence in Norwegian. We would like to conclude by relating these portraits to the national PIRLS-data.
Reference:
Berman, R. A. (2001). Narrative development in multilingual contexts: A cross-linguistic perspective. In: L. Verhoeven and S. Strömqvist, (eds.), Narrative Development in a Multilingual Context. Studies in bilingualism, vol. 23. Amsterdam: J. Benjamin.
|
Back
|
|
|
|
|
