- Title
- Writing and signing to develop written genres : a study of Nigerian hearing-loss students' writing
- Creator
- Milaham, Rahila Samuel
- Creator
- Lundgren, Berit
- Subject
- Hearing impaired children -- Nigeria -- Writing
- Date Issued
- 2020
- Date
- 2020
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Doctoral
- Type
- PhD
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10948/47314
- Identifier
- vital:39842
- Description
- The competence in writing of students with hearing loss has continued to generate concern among educational administrators, school authorities, teachers and parents (Oyetunde, 2009). Acquisition of written and signed language is vital for effective functioning of students with hearing loss in school. Writing and signing helps students to interact socially, culturally and intellectually with one another and within their social environment. Therefore, this study explores the writing of specific genres by students with hearing loss using signing and the Language Experience Approach, LEA, among Junior Secondary School (JSS 3) in a Nigerian school for the deaf. The study is a qualitative research study which was underpinned by an interpretive paradigm and was theoretically framed by Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory, semiotic theory (Pierce, 1991) and socio-semiotic theory (Thibault, 2004: Kress, 1988 & Van Leeuwen, 2005). The ideological literacy perspective (Street 1984) and literacy as a social practice have provided a lens to analyse and explore the findings Class observations, students’ signed and written text samples as well as communication with teachers were used as the methods for data collection. The intervention study, which went on for 9 weeks, involved teaching and learning of three genres, namely retelling, narrative and descriptive writing. Twenty six students and two teachers were involved in the study. For the purpose of the analysis, six out of the 26 students’ written, and signed texts were purposively selected and analysed. The students’ signed and written texts were analysed according to the structure and special features of the genres. In the retelling genre, two concepts, breadth and depth vocabulary knowledge as special features, were used for the analysis of the texts. While in the narrative, students’ signed texts and written texts were analysed to know how the students use characters, settings and events in their texts. In the descriptive genre, students’ sign and written texts were analysed to see whether they gave concise descriptions, specifically using adjectives, of the object they identified in their signed text. The findings indicate that the students could retell the contextualized event with signs, using a vocabulary mostly from a breadth perspective. They also used the structure of retelling in a chronological order. In signing the narrative genre, the students were engaged in giving examples of the genre from which they derived the components of the story form such as character and events. Some could include aspects of character vi and events in their text, while others missed one structure or the other. In general, their narrative signed texts were better developed and showed a basic understanding of the storyline. In the descriptive genre, the students could describe some objects in their classroom and school environment. These descriptions were limited to adjectives like colours, as only colours were used in the teacher’s example. In general, their descriptive signed texts were short and seemed to follow a list structure. The students’ signing in descriptive genre showed an initial awareness of the genre. In this study, the teachers scaffolded and modelled the different genres with examples, stories and prompt pictures to a varying extent. The narrative writing had more scaffolding and modelling compared with the other genres. It also generated longer texts and an awareness of the structure. The teachers also supported the students with deeper exploration of examples in the narrative genre than in the retelling and descriptive genre. Data shows teacher’s interactions with the students while signing narratives indicates an understanding on how to develop a text in story form using narrative structures. LEA turned out to be a fruitful start in the retelling genre but was not as central in the teaching practice and meaningful in students’ writing.
- Format
- xix, 259 leaves
- Format
- Publisher
- Nelson Mandela University
- Publisher
- Faculty of Education
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Nelson Mandela University
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NMU School for Education Research and Engagement
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Milaham, RS 215333004 Thesis April 2020 (1).pdf | 7 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |