The black box of delegated writing: Early Modern scribes and female literacy in The Netherlands

Apart from literacy rates and reading and writing acquisition, the actual writing practices of the past, which include the phenomenon of delegated writing, belong to a history of literacy. Delegated writing occurred when illiterate or partly literate individuals wanted to keep in contact with relatives at a distance and had to rely on the assistance of professional or social scribes. The details of this process and the role played by the sender of a letter and its actual, usually unknown, scribe often remain unclear, although different scenarios may be assumed. Cultural historian Lyons explored scenarios for delegated writing in France, Italy and Spain in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on the writing of ordinary people during the First World War and in the age of mass migration. For the Dutch language area, we have the opportunity to delve further back in time by exploring the late-seventeenth-century part of the Letters as Loot (LAL) corpus. This corpus previously allowed us to establish linguistic differences between autographs and non-autographs. For a detailed view of the delegated writing process, however, the LAL corpus also provides us with instances of two types of letters written by the same, identified, female scribes: their own letters and the letters they wrote for others. A comparative analysis of these different letters will be shown to contribute to opening the black box of Early Modern delegated writing.

The Effect of Contextual in Teaching Materials on Writing Kid Stories Grade 4th Elementary School in Surakarta

Children learn to use symbols, combining their oral language, pictures, print, and play into a coherent mixed medium and creating and communicating meanings in a variety of ways. From their initial experiences and interactions with adults, children begin to read words, processing letter-sound relations and acquiring substantial knowledge of the alphabetic system. As they continue to learn, children increasingly consolidate this information into patterns that allow for automaticity and fluency in reading and writing. Consequently, reading and writing acquisition is conceptualized better as a developmental continuum than as an all-or-nothing phenomenon. But the ability to read and write does not develop naturally, without careful planning and instruction. Children need regular and active interactions with print. Specific abilities required for reading and writing come from immediate experiences with oral and written language. Experiences in these early years begin to define the assumptions and expectations about becoming literate and give children the motivation to work toward learning to read and write. From these experiences children learn that reading and writing are valuable tools that will help them do many things in life. The aims of research consist of the following to know effect contextual in teaching materials on writing kid stories grade 4th Elementary School in Surakarta. The study employs experiment method which the data are collected by interview, observation, document analysis, and Forum Group Discussions (FGD), questionnaire, and test. Result of the research sig value. <from α or 0.03 <0.05, so Ho = rejected and H1 = accepted which means there is a difference of effectiveness between learning with conventional teaching material used by teacher with teaching material on writing kid stories based on contextual.

Facebook assisted students' peer assessment in writing descriptive text

The present study aims to investigate students’ responses toward peer assessment in students’ descriptive text writing assignments by using Facebook. The author built two research questions: (1) In what way does Facebook assist students in giving peer assessment on students’ descriptive text writing? and (2) What are the students’ responses toward these activities? The current study recruited seventeen students in tenth grade as the participants. Drawing on action research through interviews and observation data, qualitative findings show positive results, those are (1) the use of students’ peer assessment through Facebook had an impact on raising the students’ revised drafts, (2) the students expressed an optimistic response towards using Facebook for peer assessment, and (3) the students’ difficulties on peer assessment through Facebook, and (4) the students’ involvement during peer assessment activities on Facebook. Furthermore, the quantitative findings of the observation checklist show that the average percentage is 88.4% (15 students of the class were actively involved in the writing activities = very good). Therefore, this present study shows the provident of the importance of peer assessment through Facebook as an assessment method to help enhance learners’ English writing acquisition.

Estudo acerca da representação gráfica do fonema /s/ na escrita de alunos do 3º ano do ensino fundamental / Study About the Graphic Representation of the Phoneme /s/ in the Writing of Students of the 3rd Year of Elementary School

Resumo: Este artigo trata de um estudo sobre a aquisição da escrita infantil, em específico, sobre a multiplicidade de representação gráfica do fonema /s/ por alunos do 3o ano do Ensino Fundamental. Ressalta-se que a aquisição da escrita relacionada ao fonema /s/ é uma das mais complexas para o aprendiz da escrita no português, por envolver várias relações, inclusive de irregularidade, entre esse fonema e grafemas que o representam (LEMLE, 1994; MORAIS, 2008). Este estudo tem como fundamentação teórica Modelos Baseados no Uso (BYBEE, 2001; PIERREHUMBERT, 2001). Nesses modelos, que consideram a experiência de uso da língua na estruturação da gramática e do léxico (FERRARI, 2011), efeitos de frequência são importantes. Para proceder ao presente estudo, foi realizada uma coleta de dados escritos por alunos do 3o ano do Ensino Fundamental, de uma escola pública, do município de Bom Sucesso – MG. Os resultados deste trabalho indicam que o desenvolvimento da aquisição da escrita é baseado no uso, na experiência e que o fator frequência é relevante para o aprendizado da criança que se encontra no processo de aquisição ortográfica.Palavras-chave: aquisição da escrita; fonema /s/; ortografia, fonologia de uso.Abstract: This article reports a study on the acquisition of children’s writing, in particular, on the multiplicity of graphic representations of the phoneme /s/ by students of the 3rd year of Elementary School. It is noteworthy that the acquisition of writing related to the phoneme /s/ is highly complex for the learner of Portuguese writing, as it involves several relationships, including irregularity, between that phoneme and the graphemes that represent it (LEMLE, 1994; MORAIS, 2008). This study has Usage-based Models (BYBEE, 2001; PIERREHUMBERT, 2001) as theoretical basis. In these models, which consider the experience of using the language in structuring the grammar and lexicon (FERRARI, 2011), frequency effects are important. In order to proceed with the present study, a collection of data written by students of the 3rd year of Elementary School, from a public school in Bom Sucesso - MG, was carried out. The results of this work indicate that the development of writing acquisition is based on use and experience and that the frequency factor is relevant for the learning of the child in the process of orthographic acquisition.Keywords: acquisition of writing; phoneme /s/; orthography, phonology of use.