Literacy and language teaching

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This book discusses the need for foreign language programs to teach literacy. It suggests approaches to curriculum development using a wide range of modern media texts such as newspapers, music videos, and film as a basis for cultural analysis.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• Shifting perspectives on literacy
• Literacy and issues in language education: major themes
• Overview of the book
• Part 1
• 1 Notions of literacy
• Principles of a sociocognitive view of literacy
• Shifting paradigms in language teaching
• Multiple perspectives on literacy
• Conclusion
• 2 Communication, literacy, and language learning
• Conduits, containers, and communication
• An alternative metaphor: design of meaning
• Available Designs: resources for making meaning
• Conclusion
• 3 Available Designs in literacy
• Linguistic resources
• Schematic resources
• Conclusion
• Part 2
• 4 Reading as design
• Reading as a dynamic rhetorical process
• Reading as a social and individual process
• Design and reading
• Reading in a non-native language
• Reading and teaching reading across cultural contexts
• Conclusion
• 5 Teaching reading as design
• Four curricular components
• Situated practice (immersion)
• Overt instruction
• Critical framing
• Transformed practice
• Putting it all together: an outline of an integrative lesson
• Conclusion
• 6 Writing as design
• Writing in a non-native language
• Three orientations to teaching writing
• Conclusion
• 7 Teaching writing as design
• Situated practice (immersion)
• Overt instruction
• Critical framing
• Transformed practice
• A sample teaching sequence
• Conclusion
• Part 3
• 8 Computers, language, and literacy
• Reading and writing
• with computers
• Social interaction via computers
• Conclusion
• 9 Evaluating learners' performance
• The interpretive nature of assessment and evaluation
• Three desiderata for literacy-based assessment and evaluation
• Rethinking the assessment and evaluation of reading and writing
• Conclusion
• 10 Rethinking language and literacy teaching
• Goals of a literacy-based curriculum
• Roles of teachers and learners
• Potential obstacles to implementing a literacy-based curriculum
• Implications for teacher education
• Implications for research
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index