Language and Literacy: Studying Discourse in Communities and Classrooms

By Eleanor Kutz

Book Overview

Teachers, parents, and policymakers need an informed understanding of language--of how it is acquired, how it is used, and how we can best support the learning of new languages and literacies. Yet in most language education, whether in the high school classroom or the college linguistics course, little connection is made between formal study and our real world experiences with language.

Language and Literacy makes that connection. It introduces the study of language as discourse--language as it is used by speakers and writers for authentic purposes. It offers prospective teachers of both first and second language learners the formal underpinnings about language that they need for their teaching of language and literacy. And it provides a model for how teachers and students may engage in an active, exploratory approach to studying both the talk and the texts of their own communities and classrooms.

Kutz draws on studies carried out by students and teachers in a range of classrooms--kindergarten through college, urban and suburban, monolingual and bilingual--and in a variety of communities, including the authors own racially and culturally mixed community. Together, these studies shed light on the nature of discourse competence in a multicultural society and the ways in which it can be supported through effective educational practices.

Language and Literacy has broad appeal to students of language and to educators at any level.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0867093862
• ISBN13: 9780867093865
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
• Length: 319 Pages
• Weight: 2.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 12 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

An innovative and useful approach to language teaching.

Eleanor Kutz presents a broad and complex body of theory with clarity and competence in preparing beginning students of language to engage in their own research. The book is laid out in eleven chapters that examine language and literacy from the perspectives of first and second language acquisition, social constructivism, and discourse analysis. Two key features distinguish this text from other surveys of the same topic. First, the use of language by individuals and communities at variety of different ages, from infancy to adulthood, and from a range differing cultural backgrounds is explored in some depth. This exploration is consistently sensitive to nuance and respectful. Second, readers are offered clear directions for approaches to their own research about language. This inquiry model approach not only makes the subject matter more appealing and approachable, but offers readers opportunities to extend and concretize their learning. Responses from Kutz' own students in fact make up many of the examples she uses to illustrate language theory. These were the most enlightening examples. However, like many other language and literacy researchers, she also uses examples culled from interactions with her own children. These examples, as a group, were less interesting. This book would make an excellent choice for professors, especially teacher educators, and high school teachers who seek to allow students to engage in authentic inquiry and address the complex social, political and psychological connections between the uses of language and literacy.