1st Edition

Teaching Writing to Children in Indigenous Languages Instructional Practices from Global Contexts

Edited By Ari Sherris, Joy Kreeft Peyton Copyright 2019
    312 Pages
    by Routledge

    312 Pages 29 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This volume brings together studies of instructional writing practices and the products of those practices from diverse Indigenous languages and cultures. By analyzing a rich diversity of contexts—Finland, Ghana, Hawaii, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, and more—through biliteracy, complexity, and genre theories, this book explores and demonstrates critical components of writing pedagogy and development. Because the volume focuses on Indigenous languages, it questions center-margin perspectives on schooling and national language ideologies, which often limit the number of Indigenous languages taught, the domains of study, and the age groups included.



    1 Teaching Writing to Children in Indigenous Languages: Introduction



    Ari Sherris & Joy Kreeft Peyton



     





    2 Early and Emergent Literacy Practices as a Foundation for Hawaiian Language Medium Education



    Candace Kaleimamoowahinekapu Galla



    William "Pila" H. Wilson



     



    3 Early Writing in Torwali in Pakistan



    Zubair Torwali



     





    4 Early Childhood Safaliba Literacy in Ghana



    Ari Sherris



     





    5 Emergent Writing in Notsi in Papua New Guinea



    Gertrude Nicholas



     





    6 Emergent Writing in Numanggang in Papua New Guinea



    Samuel Saleng



    Gertrude Nicholas



     



    7 Teaching Task-based Writing in Zapotec in Oaxaca, Mexico



    Katherine J. Riestenberg



    Raquel Eufemia Cruz Manzano



     



    8 Cherokee Writing in an Elementary Immersion School



    Lizette Peter



    Tracy Hirata-Edds



    Ryan Wahde Mackey



     





    9 Writing Instruction in Xitsonga in South Africa



    Tinswalo V. Manyike



    Nkidi Phatudi



     



    10 Early Writing in Nungon in Papua New Guinea



    Hannah S. Sarvasy



    Eni Ögate



     





    11 Mother Tongue Instruction and Biliteracy Development in P’urhepecha in Central Mexico



    Kate Bellamy



    Cynthia Groff



     





    12 Ngäbere: An Orthography of Language Revitalization in Western Panama



    Ginés Alberto Sánchez Arias



    Manolo Miranda (Tido Bangama)



    Mary Jill Brody



     





    13 The Global in the Local: Young Multilingual Language Learners Write in North Sámi (Finland, Norway, Sweden)



    Kirk P. H. Sullivan



    Kristina Belancic



    Eva Lindgren



    Hanna Outakoski



    Mikael Vinka



     





    14 Re-centering Pedagogy on Oral Traditions: Examples from Southwest Indigenous Languages



    Christine P. Sims



     



    15 What Matters for Indigenous Language Writing



    Kendall A. King

    Biography

    Ari Sherris is an Associate Professor of Bilingual Education at Texas A&M University, Kingsville, USA.



    Joy Kreeft Peyton is a former Vice President and currently Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC, USA.

    As the world cascades toward sameness in languages, this volume puts up a huge stop sign. With convincing historical accounts and a wide range of instructional practices, this book is an absolute must-read for any social scientist or linguist. Dedicated to language revitalization, the experts represented here stress the vitality of entry into the social and cognitive worlds of children from different cultures through a substantial dedication to writing and reading.

    Shirley Brice Heath

    Margery Bailey Professor of English and Dramatic Literature; Professor of Linguistics, Emerita

    Stanford University

    This exciting book focuses on an under-researched topic that fills a hole in the fields of both literacy education and language revitalization – teaching the writing of Indigenous languages to children. Centering on the role of literacy education in language revitalization, the chapters range the world, with chapters on languages with millions of speakers, to a handful from revitalizing writing systems that have a past history of literacy, to new orthographies developed for the first time for re-awakening languages. Importantly, attention is paid to debates over possible negatives of putting oral languages to paper, but shows the importance of writing for the survival of endangered languages, for many reasons including (re)valorization, revival of genres, increased functions of the language, and present-day communicative needs. While both written documentation and orthographic development have been topics of research and activism in language revitalization, this volume is a very welcome first, with its emphasis on the pedagogy of writing.

    Leanne Hinton

    Professor Emerita, University of California, Berkeley

    The UN has issued alarming declarations about the state of learning for disadvantaged linguistic minorities. UNICEF[1]<