RE< Request for interesting
Geoffrey Williams (geoffrey.williams who-is-at english.su.edu.au)
28 Nov 1995 14:23:25 U
Angel,
Your request raised lots of interesting questions about literary narratives in
literacy development. Have you seen the book by Margaret Meek and others
called Achieving literacy: Longitudinal studies of adolescents learning to
read? I'm mentioning it not because it directly addresses the learning
situations you describe, but because its discussions of the roles of written
object text in the development of literacy competences might be of use for
your project.
In a research project here on young learners' development of metasemiotic
knowledge we have found young adolescents are very attracted to Sciezcka and
Lane's The stinky cheeseman and other fairly stupid tales (Penguin). I
realize that it may seem at first like the kidstuff that you mention - but we
have found 11,12,13 year olds enjoy the satire on narrative conventions and
the opportunity to play with them, laugh at them.
Your question about narrative form in relation to content prompted me to think
about some recent Australian Aboriginal texts which are complex collages of
narrative form. Of these one of the most complex and I think interesting is
Elsie Jones, The story of the falling star. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies
Press. It uses contemporary oral narrative, the inscription of the landscape
through events in the Dreaming, cave paintings and contemporary photographs to
"tell" a set of stories centred on the one locality. It raises some very
interesting questions about the speaking positions available to readers.
If this type of metafictive text is of any interest let me know and I'll send
some more titles.
Geoff Williams