Graphematics is the study of the relationship between the basic elements of a writing system and the basic elements of the phonology of the same language. With a theoretical model, this relationship can be captured with correspondence rules from letters to phonemes. These rules form the core of a writing system, although many other aspects must be integrated into the model to comprehensively address an orthography. Writing systems that share the same script (such as the Latin script) use sometimes similar, sometimes different letter rules. These differences must be considered primarily when learners who have mastered a particular writing system attempt to learn the spellings of another language based on the same script.
Die Think-Aloud-Methode im Kontext der Untersuchung von Lese- und Schreibkompetenzen (in German)
Eye Movements in Reading by Heritage Language Bilinguals
This talk will continue and complement the talk by Dr. Victor Kuperman (McMaster University) by focusing on how adult bilingual heritage speakers learn to read in their heritage language (HL). Literacy is an important difference between HL adults and L2 learners. HL adults often cannot read in their heritage language especially if its orthography is not Roman-based (e.g., Cyrillic, Arabic, and logographic). We present the results of a 2-part eye-tracking study that investigated contrasts in learning to read between heritage Russian-English bilinguals and L2 Russian-L1 English learners. In Part 1, we describe eye-movement benchmarks of the 2 groups of participants in 3 reading tasks in Russian (isolated words, 209-word reading assignment for monolingual 8-year-olds, and 36 sentences from the Russian Sentence Corpus (RSC). In Part 2, we go beyond reading of individual words and explore scanpaths (patterns of reading words in sentences) that characterize 3 different reading strategies. Describing the challenges HL adults face in acquisition of literacy are critical in designing better materials to teach reading in HL and using appropriate written stimuli in experimental HL research.
Literale Alltagspraxis empirisch erfassen (in German)
Methoden wie die teilnehmende Beobachtung, das Verfassen von Feldnotizen und Beobachtungsprotokollen, das Führen von Interviews, das Sammeln von Gegenständen sowie die dichte Beschreibung der Daten eignen sich sehr gut, um die Lebenswelt der Forschungspartner*innen von ‚innen heraus‘zu verstehen und sich ihren alltäglichen literalen Handlungen zu nähern. Im Workshop werden zunächst methodologische Grundlagen der ethnographischen Feldforschung vorgestellt und diskutiert. Zur Veranschaulichung werden im Feld erhobene Schreibprodukte und ethnographische Notizen herangezogen. Die Workshopteilnehmer*innen bekommen die Möglichkeit, anhand des Datenmaterials alltägliche Schreibhandlungen von russischsprachigen Zweitschriftlerner*innen interpretativ zu rekonstruieren sowie Möglichkeiten und Grenzen ethnographischer Zugänge zu erörtern.