Master Of Applied Linguistics Theory And Practice Of Literacy

Interview one of your students, and record all the texts they read on an average day in the table provided for you. Observe the types of text your interviewee engages with on a daily basis, and consider how these texts reflect their literacy lives. Guiding questions will be provided for the essay. [*If you do not have access to students at the moment, you can interview one of your classmates/colleagues/family members/friends]

Objectives:

1. recognize and be able to engage with different positions on literacy education put forward in political and social debates around literacy education.
2. develop a critical understanding of approaches to literacy education, including their theoretical influences and proposed pedagogical practices.
3. describe and critique teaching practices in relation to theoretical models.
4. develop a strong pedagogical framework for programming and teaching literacy to diverse groups of learners.

The subject of the interview was Jack (name changed), my cousin, who is just in the 8th grade at the present. He has an intense interest in technology, using his 6th phone in a time period of two years. Any person in our family approaches Jack to know about the latest gadgets and technology. He has collected pocket money and has purchased gaming consoles and other up to date gadgets which other kids of his age do not even know of. This essay will discuss the various readings done by Jack and how they pertain to his interests along with brief descriptions of the various readings. I have chosen him because I myself have an interest in technology and science and love to converse with people with the same interests. The interview was conducted with the internal recorder of a MacBook Pro. The recording has taken place under natural circumstances. The register used was informal.

Jack reads two newspapers on his latest android smartphone daily. He first reads the articles in the Technology section of the Daily Telegraph (Reuters, Technology, 2015) and then shifts to the science page in the same newspaper (Reuters, Science, 2015). Later he opens another app for the Sunday Morning Herald and reads the page on technology (Reuters, Technology, 2015) to be up to date with his technological appetite. There is very little variation in the genre of texts he reads except for the part where he reads the column on science in the Daily Telegraph. All these newspapers use the formal style of writing in lucid English. These newspapers also use imageries to describe the textual content being described. There are no abstractions used in the articles.

Jack takes pride in the fact that people approach him to understand new technology and him being able to explain things that adults do not understand. Jack is highly averse to reading the textbooks supplied to him by his school but he takes a lot of interest in reading the technical articles. The only subject he loves is physics and hence he reads up a lot on physics in the science articles. Jack has a huge interest in the articles pertaining nano-physics and quantum physics which amuses me as well as surprises me because I have very little understanding of both whereas he has quite a foothold in both the fields. 

Jack only reads English pieces because he only knows one language. He was never taught any other language. Fortunately, this does not bring down his tenacity to read. He reads voraciously whenever he can. Jack also reads articles and readings from other related blogs and sites. Jack generally prefers posts with pictures and descriptions which use easy English, as stated by him. 

The table highlights the register of the texts read by Jack and the imageries used in the texts as well as their significance. The write up further speaks on how Jack satisfies his need for studying stuff related to technology and science.