Reading, Writing, and Assistive Technology - Essay Example

Title: Your full name: Your ID no: Unit code and name: Lecturer name: Assignment: Due Date: TASK 2 – Article Summaries Summary 1: Reading for academic purposes: the literacy practices of British, French and Spanish Law and Economics students as background for study abroad. Nowadays, there has been an influx of students pursuing studies in foreign countries. Such students in a different country are required to adapt to the literacy demand of another culture and language. Cross-cultural research in the past 10 years have found that most foreign students are often left on their own in preparing and learning another literacy culture. This has brought many challenges on foreign students (Taillefer, 2005). A study conducted in 30 countries, which involved 100,000 foreign students from 2,000 institutions; has brought out challenges in reading and writing that foreign students encounter in their studies. For example, In French students pursuing either Law or Economics in northern Europe have been found to require many months to learn English. Many reports on academic literacy in specific country’s cultures suggest that there are many challenges that face students who travel between academic cultures. This difference can be found among Anglo-Saxon institutions. For example, in Spain mode of teaching relies heavily on lecture schedule, students are not expected to do much individual work or reading. While in France, undergraduate student pursuing Law and Economics are taught an average of 22 hours per week and further 15-17 hours of personal work. This means, Spanish students had most hours of class, followed by French student, and that the British students had the fewest hours of class (Taillefer, 2005). In the article, two pedagogical implications can be drawn. First, faculty, students and study-abroad advisors need to understand literacy culture differences between two countries because these differences can occur on many levels and this may include: basic approach to studying, attitudes and expectations, student and teacher role models, assessment etc. Second, foreign students should be taught or helped to acquire coping strategies (Taillefer, 2005). Institutions should have programs that enable students to discover for themselves what they need and how to go about getting it. For example, students should be encouraged to diagnose their individual literacy problems and should also be encouraged to read critically (Taillefer, 2005). Summary 2: Reading, writing, and assistive technology: An integrated developmental curriculum for college students. In the U.S, there is a worrying trend because the number of student in secondary schools who can’t read well has been increasing over the years. This concern has made educators and legislators to deal with the gaps that are there in the school curricula and teacher training, so that they can be able to address reading problem in the elementary school-age students (Engstrom, 2005). While legislators and educators have continue debating the merits of meaning-based vs. code-based instruction for elementary school-aged students, many student have been found to continue to move in other classes and are often placed in reading classes that teach reading skills in isolation. Thus, their counterparts have been found to leave school without acquiring reading skills necessary in real life (Engstrom, 2005). Recent development in technology is being used to bridge the gap between learner’s abilities and needs. Technologies are being used to help student’s access course texts through a text reader. For example, a student who has low writing skills but who can speak well can use voice recognition software. Voice recognition tool allows a learner to access higher education that was to him/her in the past. Therefore, developmental writing and reading course have been seen to improve a learner achievement in secondary level (Engstrom, 2005). Technology can be used to integrate writing and reading skills curriculum, and this will help to address many challenges students face in their effort to have good reading skills (Engstrom, 2005). With technology, it is possible to individualize a curriculum that can suit a small group of people. When students are given many learning profiles; for example through exposure to syllable, sounds, patterns etc, and students are able to recognize and are able to focus on written language (Engstrom, 2005). Summary 3: Nursing Instructors must also teach reading and study skills. Reading skills have been found to be crucial in all disciplines, yet most colleges don’t incorporate training in reading into their courses. In many institutions, many professors believe college textbooks are not different from general books and that students in colleges are able to read various academic materials without problem (White, 2004). Some faculties in universities have been found to abandon reading requirements because they feel their implementation at their institutions will be inconvenient and time consuming. But in-order for a nursing student to be successful, he or she must be able to read and understand large volume of materials or books. Therefore, this will require different types of study and reading skills from other course in which the student has been exposed to (White, 2004). A student is required to possess problem solving skills, critical thinking skills, decision making skills and interconnected skills, in order to adequately understand materials that are found in nursing course (White, 2004). Moreover, these skills are needed and will be used by a nurse at all levels of his/her practice. In-order to be a successful nursing student, a student will be required to learn or possess these skills. However, these skills usually take second place to the teaching of skills such as medication administration, physical assessment, documentation and care plan development. Because teachers in nursing schools are not academically empowered to teaching reading and other related skills, they don’t know what to do or how to do it when it come to such a topic (White, 2004). Sometimes reading problems will require a reading specialist to solve the problem because the nursing faculty is good in nursing. Because the reading specialist knows the concepts and specialized words to be mastered, the activities and materials to be used, the sequence of maturity and growth and the kinds of learning to be evaluated and measured in nursing. Therefore, it is important for the nursing faculty to collaborate with reading specialist and other university staff who can help students with reading problems to master reading materials in nursing (White, 2004). Reference List Engstrom, E. U 2005, ‘Reading, writing, and assistive technology: An integrated developmental curriculum for college students’, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Volume 49, no.1, pp 30-49.pp. 30–39) Taillefer, G 2005, ‘Reading for academic purposes: the literacy practices of British, French and Spanish Law and Economics students as background for study abroad’, Journal of Research in Reading, Volume 28, no. 4, pp 435–451. White, H 2004, ‘Nursing instructors must also teach reading and study skills’, Reading Improvement, Volume. 41, No. 1, p. 38-50 TASK 3 – Personal Reflection The following is my reflection on the steps I took to search for article used in this assignment. The first step which I undertook was to search for the Catalogue because I already knew the each title of the journal which was going to be used in this assignment. Therefore, I searched the journal title in the website catalogue. In addition, the library journal has an option to refine my search results that was to enable me to search the stated journals only. Sometimes database from the library index articles published in magazines, journals, conference proceedings, newspapers and other sources found in the online library. In the online library, specialized databases have been provided for various subjects areas. It will be easy for a student to find an article if he/she known the areas the journal fall under. Because the used journals were available, the library catalogue gave me both the print and online holdings for each journal. Furthermore, the articles were available online, I was provided with the link to the online journal by the catalogue. After being given the different links on the same topics, my next step was to check if the library holds the volume and issue of the journal which I was going to use in this assignment. The next step is downloading: I had to download the journals which I was going to used for this assignment. After downloading the three journals from the university library I had to save them into my desktop computer so that I can easily access the journals in the process on doing “Task 2- Article Summaries”. Read More