Chapter 7 Literacy Instruction for English-Language Development and Response

Literacy instruction within a sociocultural framework features a highly interactive classroom, in which students talk as they read, collaborate as they write, listen to one another’s ideas, and give presentations about projects. When English learners are led to believe that only literacy in English is socially useful and acceptable-and are then given literacy education that emphasizes narrow decoding skills at the expense of their reading and writing about the world as they see it- the literacy that they acquire, often imperfectly, serves the interests of others. Macedo cautioned that educators of English learners must pay greater attention to sociocultural context for literacy to be transformational.

It is clear that some instruction in reading is better than no instruction in reading. A variety of instructional approaches is used to teach English learners to read. In summary, current approaches to literacy vary in emphasis, but the best teaching supports the following principles: integration of language and current teaching, use of authentic language and materials, recognition of student diversity and learning styles, development of cognitive strategies, use4 and support of students’ first languages and cultures, importance of interaction and collaborative learning, and student engagement in purposeful learning tasks.

Response to Inyoung Choi
Inyoung Choi mention about plagiarism at the end of her writing. She said instructor should be really careful with the plagiarism for the ESL students. In my case, I am not concerned about plagiarism so much before I am taking MA Tesol course because I didn’t have many chances to be instructed about how serious plagiarism can be. I was just told not to copy other’s writing. So I want to emphasize on how significant job for the instructors to show the way to students how to put the citation and in reference in their writing as she siad.

Response to Jua Lee
She divided reading processes into three: into, through, and beyond act of reading. As “Into” activities, teachers can use films, texts, field trips, visual aids, graphic organizers, brainstorming ideas, making predictions and so forth. I want to mention this part - as “Beyond” reading, recommendable activities are writing poems, reviews of literature works, letters to authors or pen pals and so forth. In my class I teach reading part focusing on how to choose right answers for the exam. In this respect, the method now I am taking for reading needs to be changed. Even though it is hard for me to make reading just aimed for exam to “Beyond” reading it is a necessary job of teachers!