Literacy Development in British Schoolchildren - Literature review Example

Introduction: Equity in education is a common principle for educationists all over the globe. Providing opportunities for girls had been the priorityfrom early days, but, the trend seems to be shifting in the modern times. Equitable opportunities for boys is a very recent issue, especially in literacy classrooms, due to the gender differences that has been noted and proven in the performance of girls and boys in the various aspects of literacy. It is no doubt a concern in United Kingdom schools and many a research has been conducted on boys and literacy. Also, reports show that girls outperform boys in reading and writing, and boys find it very difficult with writing. Though in general, both the gender find writing challenging, the differences in learning styles, and attitude to literacy, and cognitive abilities make teacher’s work challenging in the classroom to ensure delivery of equitable education. This paper gives an overview of the general difficulties faced by literacy pupils and moves on to have a closer look at boys and literacy, with specific reference to their writing skills. It also strives to suggest teaching strategies, learning resources and activities to enhance writing skills of boys in literacy classroom. National Literacy Trust (2009) says that “national tests have indicated that writing scores lag behind reading generally”. Teaching language involves four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing, of which writing is of the highest difficulty level and comes at the end. This partly explains the challenge faced by pupils in any literacy classroom. Writing is a complex skill that involves critical operation of the thinking abilities that works hand in hand with the knowledge of language structure, vocabulary, syntax and grammar. It is obviously challenging to learn this complex skill of writing. Literacy and language teachers adopt various teaching methodologies and classroom techniques to develop writing skill in their students. Different tools like journals, notebooks, and group sharing strategies are widely used in the classrooms. Equal importance is also given to pre-writing tasks as much as that is given to the actual writing itself. Beyond this, revision also is insisted. In general, there are a few apparent reasons for writing being one of the challenging skills to learn. Firstly, it is a complex activity that requires the use and coordination of multiple faculties like cognitive and linguistic abilities. Also, genre-specific conventions are to be adhered to and require knowledge of the genre as well as the audience is required. Writing as a communication process is by itself so complex and is closed unlike spoken communication. So, this makes the skill even more challenging. There could also be problems due to the student’s language abilities. If writing is to be done in a second language or a foreign language, then, the chance to practice writing becomes very few adding to the challenge. Also, sometimes, there is an imbalance between the basic writing skills and competitive writing style. The curricula and teachers are to be clearer about what they require of their students in a literacy class; if it does not happen, and then it makes the skill more difficult for the pupils of certain levels. The quality of instruction also decides the learning. If there is too much insistence on mechanics of writing, such as spelling and handwriting and very less importance on composing meaningful text, or if more focus is on engaging writing tasks but not on writing strategies (Palincsar, & Klenk, 1992). then learning becomes difficult. Furthermore, writing instruction has to be a blend of practice and instruction to help student learn writing skills more effectively (Troia, & Maddox, 2004). World wide data from Assessments of progress in literacy classroom indicate that only one quarter of the students in any class are proficient in writing skills. So, wider research is done about new and effective techniques to teach writing skills in a literacy classroom. In addition, it has also been proven and accepted that there are gender specific problems with learning writing skills (National Literacy Trust, 2009; OFSTED, 2003). Boys’ underachievement is a major concern. Nationally, boys fall behind girls in early literacy skills and this gap in attainment widens with age. The challenge of raising achievement directly addresses the learning needs of our students and the professional growth of our teachers, and enhances the role of the school as an agent of social change. We want to give boys and girls the best opportunity to become powerful learners (UK Department for Education and Skills, n.d.) National Literacy Trust (2009) says that “In 2007, Government figures showed that 76% of 11-year-old boys reached the expected level 4 in English, compared with 85% of 11-year-old girls… Boys performance is lower than girls in all literacy related tasks and tests in England.” As research over the previous ten years show, boys have been shown disengaged with literacy and with lower attainment, when compared to their female counterparts. (EB, 2004). Few other “research has shown, literacy is often more associated with women and girls and this may have a negative effect on boys’ attitudes to school-based reading (Solsken, 1995 cited in EB, 2004) As EB (2004) says “gaps remain in national scores for boys’ and girls’ reading – and particularly in writing”. This highlights writing as a major area of concern with boys’ performance in literacy. Also, “writing was a relative weakness and the low achievers were often boys” (Arnot et al, 1998; EB, 2004) In addition to writing, reading is another area in which boys underperformed. Though they read at home, those who did not have a chance to read aloud in the class were often found to struggle with reading. “Early investigations showed that in contrast with national trends, boys’ achievements in reading were lower than their writing scores” (EB, 2004). In general, learners have individual learning styles. Research on gender based differences in learning styles have shown that various factors such as motivation and personal factors play a significant role in deciding the success levels in literacy. Even, the sub styles in writing, and the various genres in writing may not be inculcated so easily in both the genders (OFSTED, 1993 and 2003). The fact of different conceptions of literacy achievement also has to be acknowledged. However, overall results show that there is definitely underachievement in boys than in girls and that there should be reasons enough that cause that. Ofsted (1993) and HMSO (1993) look into the various possible reasons for boys’ underperformance in literacy. They attribute the underachievement to personal factors, lack of motivation, teachers’ perception of pupil behavior and learning style and the content of the literacy curriculum (QCA, 1997). They base their analysis on national test data and observational data from literacy classrooms. The diverse settings of the classroom were also a determinant factor. Research in gender differences in learning has taken various approaches such as psychological, cognitive, sociological and feminist perspectives. The perspective decides the kind of answers that they give about the reasons for boys’ underachievement in literacy. For example, as much as the choice of reading materials is a crucial factor in helping develop reading skills in both the genders, so much is the choice of the different genres and topics in writing. However, variety is inevitable to cultivate real writing skill. But, boys are not comfortable with certain topics or show less interest in such ones. They may be fluent in certain writing styles such as arguments but may find narration tough. These are just observational facts, but research into gender and language learning has proven much beyond these. There are, of course, many teaching strategies that help boys upgrade their writing skills in a literacy class. Though the differences among boys and differences among girls are greater than the perceived differences between boys and girls, teachers and educators have to consider cognitive and other learning characteristics in addition to gender in order to ensure equity in education. However, there are certain gender related characteristics that help teachers understand boys’ learning style. Teachers need to incorporate the understanding of these characteristics in their teaching strategies and classroom activities in order to achieve the expected outcome. For example, the report titled Can Do Better - Raising boys achievement in English says that boys work best when they work on tightly-structured tasks and when they find themselves working on purposeful tasks (QCA, 1997). This is similar to what Wilson (2003, p. 12) says: “boys respond best when the work seems relevant to them – that is, when it has a purpose they can understand”. However, the length of concentration differs. Boys find it difficult to focus on tasks at length and are quire reluctant to be reflective or narrative. Rather, they prefer to be active. Understanding such learning characteristics of boys is one key for the teachers to employ suitable teaching strategies and learning activities to promote writing skills effectively in literacy classrooms. Skills have to be developed right from the early years, from the primary level. According to Grainger, (National Literacy Trust, 2009), "bridges need to be built between widely accepted and required pedagogical practices, such as shared writing and imitative modelling, and the more open-ended nature of activities such as improvisational drama, playful poetic exploration and oral storytelling." National Literacy Trust, UK, says (2001) that teachers should learn to “accept the humorous responses and language play often evident in boys’ writing and offer a choice of writing formats when assigning a task” in order to make boys perform better in writing. In addition, understanding the connection between the various language skills, especially between reading and writing help teachers make connections between then and enhance the writing skills of pupils. Reading helps pupils get rich models for their own writing. “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write” (King, 2000, p. 117). OFSTED (2003) suggests the following to teachers: Explicitly discuss models of good writing in detail, pointing out elements such as sentence structure, paragraphing, and vocabulary, so that students become aware of the choices that the writer has made; Emphasize how the writer’s choices reflect the intended purpose of the text, and how the text affects the reader; Maintain a balance between the development of skills such as spelling and grammar and the exploration of content, meaning, and effect; Identify different genres and text types that students will encounter in particular subject areas and provide reading and writing opportunities in those subjects, using the appropriate genres and types (pp. 9–19) OFSTED recommends the necessity to link the task with purpose; it also suggests that teaching strategies have to focus on both the mechanics of writing and the content development and organization in a balanced way; this way, the students will be able to learn both the higher order and lower order skills, with reference to writing skills. Though these are generally applicable to both boys and girls, teachers can customize these for boys by fitting the choice of passages with the interest of the boys and make them practice a wide range of topics in which they find a purpose. Barrs’ research as reported in National Literacy Trust (2009). Emphasises on the use of drama as an important tool to enhance writing skills. It says, “A drama session introduced in the literacy hour enabled children to "relate much more closely and personally" to the text and enabled the children to write stories by placing themselves in the role of a character. Children delved more deeply into the meaning of the text and used language creatively”. This caters to the learning style of boys and can be effective in improving their writing skills. Also primary school children can be made to talk about their writing, which again brings their writing work closer to them as well as gives their writing a purpose, as boys expect. To make writing structured, pair or group writing work can be assigned (National Literacy Trust, 2009). Furthermore, boys’ interests have to be considered to firstly make them like writing and be a writer by encouraging them to write on their favourite topics, then on technology, then on other general stuff. But, teachers have to be aware that all genres have to be practiced by their students, though in different disguise of topics. It is also wise to use visual tools in addition to drama texts (Waxler, 2008). Various classroom activities can be used to promote writing skills in primary school boys in a literacy class. One such activity is the use of writing frames. These are outlines or templates that are structured and are according to the boy’s learning style. These give a fair outline of suggested sentence starters; connectors, modifiers and help students organize their ideas using these structures. Writing frames can be used to promote non-narrative as well as narrative writing as laid out in the Welsh Curricular standards (Literacy World, n.d.). These frames help the students choose and use appropriate vocabulary and opportunity to frame different sentence structures and connect sentences and ideas as required in the Welsh National primary school literacy curricular standards. An example of a writing frame is given below: Comparison and Contrast Essay Although and are both They are different in many ways Thehas whilsthas They are also different in that Another way in which they differ is Finally There are also explanations frames that help the students brainstorm and gather ideas. It also helps them speak on their writing. For example, An Explanation Frame I want to explain why . . . There are several reasons for this. The chief reason is . . . Another reason is . . . A further reason is . . . So now you can see why . . . (Wray and Lewis, 1996, p. 11) Furthermore, for narrative or fiction based writing, Recount writing frames can be used. An example is given below: Yet another example of an effective classroom activity for boys is to create boys-only writing group with specific themes. For example, “a Spiderman web containing connectives - this group were excited about the prospect of choosing their words and inspired by the Spiderman theme” (Waxler, 2008). Conclusion: As discussed, primary school children are at their most effective period of learning and writing skills have to be inculcated here, irrespective of the gender. Both the genders have problem with this complex skill, it is boys who face more challenges according to test reports. However, suitable teaching strategies, choice of learning materials and linking them with their requirements can prove effective in helping them learn writing skills more efficiently. Similarly, activities that address the various learning requirements, as specified by the Welsh National Curricular standards, such as writing frames and role plays, group and shared writing can be useful to address the specific learning style of boys and cater to their challenges. References Arnot et al (1998) Recent Research on Gender and Educational Performance for Office for Standards in Education London, The Stationery Office. boys and girls. EB (2004). Raising Boys’Achievements in Literacy. Available at http://www-rba.educ.cam.ac.uk/Paper%20EB.pdf HMSO. 1993. The Gender Divide: Performance Differences Between Boys and Girls, London: HMSO. Literacy World. n.d. The National Curriculum for Wales and Literacy World. Available at http://www.pearsonschoolsandfecolleges.co.uk/Primary/Literacy/AllLiteracyresources/LiteracyWorld/Resources/WelshUserSupport/Welsh%20Curriculum%20for%20Writing_Match%20to%20Literacy%20World.pdf National Literacy Trust, UK. (2001). Suffolk study into what works for boys and writing. www.literacytrust.org.uk/research/boysact.html. National Literacy Trust. (2009). Literacy changes lives. Available at http://www.nationalliteracytrust.org.uk/Research/writing.html OFSTED (Office of Standards in Education, UK). (2003). Yes he can: Schools where boys write well. Norwich, UK: Author. www.ofsted.gov.uk. Ofsted. 1993. Boys and English, London: The Office for Standards in Education. Palincsar, A. S., & Klenk, L. (1992). Fostering literacy learning in supportive contexts. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 25, 211-225. QCA. 1997. Boys and English, London: Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. Troia, G. A., & Maddox, M. E. (2004). Writing instruction in middle schools: Special and general education teachers share their views and voice their concerns. Exceptionality, 12, 19-37. UK Department for Education and Skills. (n.d.). The standards site: SEU policy initiatives. http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/seu/policy. The “Gender and Achievement” website of the Department for Education and Skills available at http://www.standards. dfes.gov.uk/ genderandachievement/ Waxler, David (2008). Bexley project to develop boys writing in Year 2. Available at http://whatworkswell.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/upload/pdf/2647/casestudy.pdf Wilson, Gary. (2003). Using the National Healthy School Standard to raise boys’ achievement.Department for Education and Skills, UK. Available at www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/genderandachievement/nhss_boys_achievement2.pdf?version=1 Wray, D and Lewis, M. (1996) Writing Frames: The Extended Exeter Literacy Project. Read More