5 Outcome 1.2 How NZ adult literacy and numeracy relates to our learners
Description includes an outline of the development of adult literacy and numeracy initiatives that relate to learners in the programme.
Our learners are learning in New Zealand. Many if not most of them will continue to reside here, most likely for generations. It is therefore important for them to understand the cultural background and environment that they have entered.
They, themselves, are embarking upon a lifelong literacy journey, and their descendants too. What applies, therefore to New Zealanders applies equally to them.
Personally, I know what that involves as my parents immigrated to New Zealand in the 1950's. Even though I was born here, my mother tongue is Dutch. Furthermore, because of moves back and forth between The Netherlands and New Zealand, I underwent four changes of language.
Our learners as immigrant need English not as an academic subject. They have no more need of a classical grammatical understanding of English than English speakers do (most of whom have little or no understanding of it, and who learnt their mother tongue entirely naturally).
Unless our learners are led to enjoy and imbibe real authentic English, they are likely to find themselves, after years of living in an English-speaking land, not being able to read or communicate. This research paper describes an example of that, together with a possible solution.
And so, I interpret the embedding meme in a reverse sense. I suggest that the teaching of English, literacy, spelling, grammar etc needs to be embedded within a whole-language culture, the same as that in which Maori skills, values and knowledge traditionally occurred. We return to the concepts of holistic, authentic and human learning.
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Our learners are learning in New Zealand. Many if not most of them will continue to reside here, most likely for generations. It is therefore important for them to understand the cultural background and environment that they have entered.
They, themselves, are embarking upon a lifelong literacy journey, and their descendants too. What applies, therefore to New Zealanders applies equally to them.
Personally, I know what that involves as my parents immigrated to New Zealand in the 1950's. Even though I was born here, my mother tongue is Dutch. Furthermore, because of moves back and forth between The Netherlands and New Zealand, I underwent four changes of language.
Our learners as immigrant need English not as an academic subject. They have no more need of a classical grammatical understanding of English than English speakers do (most of whom have little or no understanding of it, and who learnt their mother tongue entirely naturally).
Unless our learners are led to enjoy and imbibe real authentic English, they are likely to find themselves, after years of living in an English-speaking land, not being able to read or communicate. This research paper describes an example of that, together with a possible solution.
And so, I interpret the embedding meme in a reverse sense. I suggest that the teaching of English, literacy, spelling, grammar etc needs to be embedded within a whole-language culture, the same as that in which Maori skills, values and knowledge traditionally occurred. We return to the concepts of holistic, authentic and human learning.
NEXT
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