This much-needed book addresses the role of literacy instruction in enhancing content area learning and fostering student motivation and success well beyond the primary grades. The unique literacy needs of middle school and secondary students are thoroughly examined and effective practices and interventions identified. Reviewing the breadth of current knowledge, leading authorities cover such important topics as: How literacy skills develop in grades 5-12 Ways to incorporate literacy learning into English, social studies, math, and science. Struggling adolescent readers and writers: what works in assessment and intervention. Special challenges facing English language learners and culturally diverse students. Implications for teacher training, policy, and future research.
"This book has it all. Neurology, heredity, cognition, motivation, prevention, assessment, intervention, and policy are just some of the topics covered in this comprehensive guide examining the links between language and literacy learning. This is a 'must-have' book for anyone who is interested in reading and writing development and disorders. As a sourcebook for researchers and a text for graduate-level seminars in literacy, special education, and speech and language, it is without equal."--Steve Graham, EdD, Department of Special Education, University of Maryland
Literacy skills are fundamental to all areas of learning in the school curriculum but also have a profound impact on an individual's chances of finding satisfying work in the years beyond school. "Reading and Writing Difficulties" draws on the latest research from around the world to explain some of the causes of literacy problems and gives practical advice on methods to support students with their own difficulties.
The author shows how teachers can enable their students to acquire skills and knowledge, as well as to recognize the value of aesthetic experience, emotional literacy, and spiritual and moral response to literature in their own lives and in their communities.
Text messaging has spread like wildfire, especially among young people, who appear to spend most of their time texting, and are unwilling to write much else. Indeed the phenomena is so widespread that many parents, teachers, and media pundits have been outspoken in their criticism of it. Does texting spell the end of western civilization? In this humorous, level-headed and insightful book, David Crystal argues that the panic over texting is misplaced. Crystal, a world renowned linguist and prolific author on the uses and abuses of English, here looks at every aspect of the phenomenon of text-messaging and considers its effects on literacy, language, and society. He explains how texting began, how it works, who uses it, and how much it is used, and he shows how to interpret the mixture of pictograms, logograms, abbreviations, symbols, and wordplay typically used in texting. He looks at its manifestations in different languages, and explores the ways similar devices have been used in different eras. He finds that the texting system of conveying sounds and concepts goes back a long way--to the very origins of writing. And far from hindering children's literacy, texting turns out to help it. Illustrated with original art by Ed MacLachlan, the popular cartoonist whose work has appeared in Punch, Private Eye, New Statesman, and many other publications, Txting: The Gr8 Db8 is entertaining and instructive--reassuring for worried parents and teachers, illuminating for teenagers, and fascinating for everyone interested in what's currently happening to language and communication.
