Quliriuralta (Lets keep telling stories): pace model with traditional Yup'ik storytelling in a second grade dual language classroom
Chair
Siekmann, SabineCommittee
Martelle, WendyPatterson, Leslie
Samson, Sally
Keyword
bilingual educationCentral Yupik language
Yupik languages
study and teaching
endangered languages
Alaska
languages in contact
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This research was conducted in a setting where the students are losing their Indigenous language. It is centered around the retention and revitalization of the Yugtun language. The goal of the research was to gain insights into how second graders in a dual language enrichment school constructed meaning and focus on form in their classroom. The instructional model employed as part of this investigation is the PACE Model, which is a story-based approach to teaching grammar through focus on form with an emphasis on meaning making. The model is consistent with Indigenous oral storytelling, cultural values, traditions and expectations. The study involves myself and fourteen second graders in Napaskiak, Alaska. ZJW Memorial School is one of 28 schools in the Lower Kuskokwim School District. Of these fourteen students, only one spoke Yugtun as his first language. The others were immersed into Yugtun as a second language. I implemented the PACE approach over the course of 25 days. Data was gathered through field notes, student artifacts, video and audio recordings. The data reveals that meaning making and building background knowledge can be a challenge for both teacher and students. It also reveals that the teacher should be implementing multimodal approaches to build comprehensible input so that students may produce output in the target language.Description
Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2019Date
2019-12Type
ThesisRelated items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Postwar reconciliation: parental attitudes towards Sri Lanka's trilingual education policyAfter 26 years, the ethnic-based civil war in Sri Lanka ended in 2009. The Trilingual Education Policy seeks to reconcile the estranged Sinhalese and Tamil communities by teaching each community the other's language in this postwar context. Scholars argue that national reconciliation through Trilingual Education is unlikely to succeed because of the continued mistrust and prejudice between the two communities and the demand for English as key to social mobility and economic prosperity. Since these claims are not supported by empirical evidence, this study seeks to find empirical data to support or counter these claims. The study investigates parental attitudes to their second languages, Sinhala, Tamil, and English, the three languages of the Trilingual Education Policy to understand its likely success. Twenty-one parents whose children receive Sinhala, Tamil, and English L2 tuition in Colombo 5 were selected through convenience sampling. The study uses the constructivist grounded theory, mentalist approach to language attitudes, and concepts of capital and linguicism for data analysis. The study found that Sinhala has capital for the Tamils and is valued and glorified by them, whereas Tamil has no capital for the Sinhalese and is devalued and stigmatized by them. Both groups valorize and glorify English, for it has more capital than Sinhala/Tamil both locally and translocally. Concluding that the Trilingual Education Policy is unlikely to succeed because of linguicism, the study recommends providing incentives for learning Sinhala and Tamil and advocating dual language education for reconciling the two communities.
-
Preliminary notes on the Nedebang languagePreliminary report on the Nedebang language (ISO 639-3 code: nec), based on 65 pages of field notes collected by the author on Pantar Island July 27-30, 2004.1 Nedebang is one of four non-Austronesian languages spoken on the island of Pantar in the Indonesian province of Nusa Tenggara Timur, in the region of 8.275 S latitude, 124.202 E longitude. To my knowledge the only previously published data from Nedebang are to be found in a 117 word basic vocabulary (Stokhof 1975), recently re-elicited by Pampus (2006). The present paper will attempt to provide a more current picture of the Nedebang language situation with an eye toward preparation for more comprehensive language documentation project. The content is necessarily limited by the short duration of the fieldwork.
-
Slowing down: how collaborative pairs support meaning making and the writing process in an elementary classroomThe teacher action research study was conducted within a third-grade classroom. The participants of the study were eight English Language learners who worked in pairs to write a retelling of a storybook. The need for this research developed from observations made by the classroom teacher focusing around the animated oral storytelling of her students and how that joy did not translate to writing. Data was collected in the forms of video and audio recordings, student samples and a research journal. The study attempted to discover what decisions students made as they focused on their written retelling in a collaborative pair. Increasing interaction between students became a main focus of the study and the ideas of sociocultural theory were the main themes that drove the analysis of this research. The study showed that students utilized a variety of mediational tools available to them as they made meaning and participated in collaborative dialogue. They also spent time supporting each other by utilizing those mediational tools to increase the success of their retelling, as well as by giving social support when their partner was flustered or overwhelmed.