Literacy skills are declining in The Netherlands. In preparatory vocational education (vmbo) this trend is more visible than elsewhere. Educational professionals are looking for alternative ways to...Show moreLiteracy skills are declining in The Netherlands. In preparatory vocational education (vmbo) this trend is more visible than elsewhere. Educational professionals are looking for alternative ways to stimulate reading activity, particularly the sustained reading activity that is carried out when reading long-form fiction. Reading long-form fiction has considerable cognitive and emotional effects, but many vmbo-students struggle with this type of sustained reading activity. It is currently being discussed if literacy can perhaps be improved through audiobooks. However, it is not clear if ‘reading’ through other modalities has similar intended and unintended effects on literacy as the reading of alphabetic text has. In this thesis, the properties of visual and auditory reading technologies are compared to see how different methods of reading influence the reading process, both cognitively and in terms of reading motivation. The question is explored along the attentional, cognitive, emotional, phenomenological and ergonomic dimensions. The thesis considers embodied reading, modality-specific affordances, impact of (environmental) factors and the way these affect mental interaction with the text. This demonstrates that audiobooks can be used to improve skills related to literacy, but they do not invoke every skill used when reading alphabetic text. The most significant shortcoming of audiobooks is that decoding skills and attention retention are not strengthened as they are with print reading. However, audiobooks can increase vocabulary knowledge, comprehension and reading motivation, particularly for struggling readers. For them, the underexplored option of dual channel reading can also be a worthwhile reading alternative. Existing research suggests that dual channel reading diminishes the cognitive load and working memory effort which typically interfere with the development of high order reading skills. Ultimately, the question which reading method suits best is dependent on the abilities of students and the intended effects and purposed with which is being read in school.Show less
This study will search for evidence of a transition period from orality to literacy by looking at the corpus of fifty-one manumissions recorded on blank pages and in margins of the Bodmin Gospel...Show moreThis study will search for evidence of a transition period from orality to literacy by looking at the corpus of fifty-one manumissions recorded on blank pages and in margins of the Bodmin Gospel Book. These manumissions documents were all added to the manuscript between the second quarter of the tenth century and the first quarter of the eleventh century, a relatively early date; only three other manumission documents are from earlier dates. The text of the documents will be examined by building on the previous research by Danet and Bogoch. Their research has studied the different means of strengthening the performative potential in Old English wills, along the lines of speech act theory and discourse analysis. This study will do the same but focus on manumissions. The literate practice of vesting written texts with performative power was still developing during the tenth century, which is visible in the Bodmin manumission documents. These documents incorporate both oral and literate elements into their text, which demonstrates that while not fully trusted yet, the written word was slowly gaining ground.Show less
It has been argued that handwriting is slowly becoming less important in favour of typing. This is because handwriting seems to take up more time and effort than typing does. The underlying...Show moreIt has been argued that handwriting is slowly becoming less important in favour of typing. This is because handwriting seems to take up more time and effort than typing does. The underlying objective of this study is to examine the importance of handwriting. The aim of this study is to determine what factors are important to take into consideration when it comes to handwriting and to provide further evidence for the importance of handwriting as opposed to typing. This study covered four main topics in order to examine the importance of handwriting. This was done by looking at whether handwriting practice and the teaching of handwriting was decreasing in schools, then by looking at the differences between handwriting and typing, before establishing the importance of handwriting by examining the movement involved. Finally it drew a connection between handwriting and literacy. In order to examine these topics, a multitude of sources were examined and consulted. These ranged from neurological research articles, where the results were achieved by test subjects, to organizations testing the literacy of people, to websites that described concerns voiced by educators. This dissertation aimed to give an accurate representation of these sources by citing them appropriately. Taken together, these sources provided an overview into the main topic of the importance of handwriting. From this study it became clear that cursive handwriting is no longer an obligatory part of school curriculum in both the United Kingdom and the United States, and that there is a decrease in proper handwriting. In addition it also identified that bad handwriting can have disastrous consequences in professional fields. In regards to the differences between handwriting and typing, it has become clear that handwriting has a significant influence on the recognition of characters that typing lacks. Furthermore, handwriting aids people in their memory retention, helps build more complicated sentences than with typing, and leads to a better composition of a written text. Finally it described that handwriting and literacy were connected and a better handwriting performance lead to a better reading performance. It was concluded in the dissertation that handwriting continues to take up an important position in education, and should therefore not be given a secondary place next to typing. Handwriting attributes to academic success and higher literacy rates and bad handwriting would soon lead to a worse literacy rate. The study has indicated that a further education in handwriting should always be present in order to sustain the future for literacy, readability of text, and memorization of characters.Show less
Reading is an activity that is realised in a specific place and period by individuals with different backgrounds, interests, expectations, and degrees of literacy. Reconstructing reading and its...Show moreReading is an activity that is realised in a specific place and period by individuals with different backgrounds, interests, expectations, and degrees of literacy. Reconstructing reading and its different practices throughout history is therefore an elaborate task. This paper proposes the use of the 'reading spaces' model as a methodology to outline the reading possibilities for various social groups in specific historical periods and places. The study goes beyond the basic divide of the literate and the illiterate by considering a wider context and analysing the elements that can foster or limit reading. These influences have been determined through a review of existing historical reading studies and can be summarised into education, profession, socio-economic conditions, culture, and the legal and political system of any certain period. This particular approach to reading studies was developed as a method to study the activity of reading in seventeenth-century New Spain. The paper provides a theoretical framework for the reading spaces model as a basis and it then examines the various differentiators and conditions that influence reading in seventeenth-century colonial Mexico. Finally, it presents the analysis of three book inventories from that period and compares them to their corresponding reading spaces.Show less
This study investigated home literacy environment in relation to emergent literacy, through a cluster analytic approach. Fifty eight parents of kindergartens completed a HLE questionnaire, an...Show moreThis study investigated home literacy environment in relation to emergent literacy, through a cluster analytic approach. Fifty eight parents of kindergartens completed a HLE questionnaire, an author recognition test and a child book recognition test. Included were scores on literacy activities, watching television, emergent literacy as well as socioeconomic status. From the findings emerge three home literacy profiles differing in engagement in literacy activities: (1) high engagement in literacy activities and low television watching, (2) low engagement in any activity, and (3) low engagement in literacy activities but high in watching television. Socioeconomic status did not differ among clusters.Show less
In order to extend knowledge on the influence of a rich home literacy environment (HLE) on children’s reading attitude, this study investigated the unique effect of three predefined HLE domains ...Show moreIn order to extend knowledge on the influence of a rich home literacy environment (HLE) on children’s reading attitude, this study investigated the unique effect of three predefined HLE domains (frequency of shared storybook reading, parents’ exposure to literacy and number of books at home) on boys’ and girls’ reading attitude. The data, previously gathered for another study by means of standardized questionnaires, was used and counted 256 children from the Netherlands. A rich home literacy environment was a predictor for a positive reading attitude, however boys’ reading attitude was slightly more influenced by it than girls. Girls’ reading attitude was especially influenced by the frequency of shared storybook reading, whereas boys’ reading attitude was mainly triggered by the number of books at home. Parents’ exposure to literacy had a significant negative effect on the reading attitude of both genders.Show less
