A. Luke and P. Freebody’s pedagogical model of educating critical literacy of future interpreters: application experience within domestic pedagogical practice

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A. LUKE AND P. FREEBODY'S PEDAGOGICAL MODEL OF EDUCATING CRITICAL LITERACY OF FUTURE INTERPRETERS: APPLICATION EXPERIENCE WITHIN DOMESTIC PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICE

Discussions of the literacy teaching techniques and approaches remain topical over years. The goal of the current research is to analyze two reader roles, introduced by Luke and Freebody in their Four Resources Model in literacy education of future interpreters in the Ukrainian Institutes and Universities, in particular objectives, functional applications, and their efficiency, basing on practical examples. The educationists Allan Luke and Peter Freebody designed their Four Resources Model in 1990 and later reconsidered in 1997, encouraged by the demand for enhancing social literacy level. This Model represents competencies, which a reader needs to comprehend the text successfully going from breaking the code of the abstract to making meaning of it, using the text and analyzing it. N. Melda evaluated these competencies as «necessary for being literate in a multimodal world» (Melda N., 2015, p. 3). This essay will explore two of the mentioned roles: text code-breaker and text meaning-maker. Besides, this paper will also discuss the implications of two suggested roles as appropriate to the context of the practical Foreign Language classes as part of the training process of Bachelors of Philology and Translation.

The goal of this article is to explore two of the mentioned roles: text code-breaker and text meaning- maker, and to discuss the implications of two suggested roles as appropriate for high education context, in particular for training Bachelors of Philology and Translation.

Text code-breaking. The initial stage of the Model belongs to the part of text code-breaker. This function expects reader's productive decoding the symbols in the reading, whether they are letters or figures, and associating them with verbal elements and context of usage. In fact, it means recognizing and understanding. According to G. Tompkins, R. Campbell, D. Green and C. Smith, «This role is often seen simplistically as referring only to phonics, but it also includes semantic, syntactic, pragmatic and paralinguistic knowledge» (Tompkins G., Campbell R., Green D., Smith C., 2014, p. 3). M. Strop and J. Carlson described the code-breaking process in action and compared it to the athletes' conduct in sport, basing on the strategy with preparation phase (identifying semiotic elements) and reproducing them in appropriate context and structure (Strop M., Carlson J., 2011, p. 133). Students can break codes within learning activity of different types: writing, reading, discussion, vocabulary comprehension and intertextual connecting, where they must explore and analyze the text, after which interpreting might follow, instructing and consulting one another about better dealing with the concrete material. Therefore, the aim of the code-breaking role is to achieve the understanding of the content that is possible only in the case of awareness of the nature of the relationship between sounds and symbols, which leads to the development of coding competence of a reader. B. Moss, D. Lapp, M. Grant and K. Johnson underline, that students' successful application of code-breaking skills proves their ability to realize the text «at a surface of basic level» (Moss B., Lapp D., Grant M., Johnson K., 2015, p. 56).

Text meaning-making. After having broken the code, students can construct the meaning, which comprises the next reader role of text meaning-maker, previously known as text participant. The current position is responsible for students' semantic competence and expects them to make conclusive meaning of the text basing on their experience and background, by actual participating in it. As it follows from the study of J. Larson and J. Marsh, «Participating in the meaning of the text inspires understanding and composing meaningful written, visual and spoken text from within the meaning system of particular culture and so forth» (Larson J., Marsh J., 2014, p. 35). The duty of the meaning-maker is to summarize the content of the text consciously, especially non-traditional reading like tables and images and define them clearly to others (Nokes J., 2013, p. 37). Evidently, the newly constructed meaning can be subjective. That is why it is important for a teacher to provide clear instructions while identifying the problem, which is possible through some supportive strategies such as guided reading, reciprocal teaching, information gap and three level guides (reading from the lines of the text, between the lines and beyond the lines). The chief goal, which meaning maker strives to achieve is to make the comprehensive interpretation of the author's information in the «multimodal text» over successful «interplay between different modalities» and comparing his experience with the notions of the passage (Ho C., Leong A., Anderson K., 2011, p. 77).

Practical application. Applying code-breaking and meaning-making roles of the Four Resources Model of Luke and Freebody provides a lot of positive experience in foreign literacy teaching practice. Firstly, let us introduce our experience of practical using codebreaking resources with Bachelors of Philology and Translation during the classic literature unit, using

Shakespeare's tragedy «Romeo and Juliet». While planning practical classes, it was crucial to formulate a question to ourselves about how we will support our students to use this role more effectively. For that reason, we demonstrated with our own examples how we start reading the book and understand it, which is essential because the chosen work is a non-traditional text with a complex plot and multiple stories. During such introduction, students were suggested to make notes for themselves. After distributing abstracts to students for familiarization, we expected their recommendations for overcoming the difficulties in the form of questions: what makes the text different from others, what parts are the most complicated, and so on (for example - (Act III) «A plague a both your houses...»).

Further, students became the instructors, preparing recommendations for others as for better text reading (ideas to agree or to disagree - for example: (Act II) «Deny thy father and refuse thy name.»). Such communicating with other members of the group in the process of code-breaking proves sociological approach to critical reading, as Larson and Marsh underlined it (Larson J., Marsh, J., 2012, p. 589), which motivates the teacher to pay more attention to the social-political aspects of work with a text. As soon as students realized their code-breaking roles, we explained what new skills and knowledge they would gain after mastering this play, such as enriching their vocabulary with plenty of new words and learning the life backgrounds of the 15th century. We strongly believe that vocabulary issues are important as far as it goes about semantics. Consequently, we worked out the original vocabulary sheets, which were available for students throughout their decoding (included examples - «strife», «wolv- ish-ravening», «morrow») and which predicted the usage of the most related phrases in students' performance. Confidently, such organization of our practical classes helped our students to understand the essence of code-breaking process and functions, and their own roles in it.

Complete decoding equipped students for the next step - meaning building, the subsequent stage of the critical reading model, which is potentially able to bring students closer to the highest level of text critic. Reasonably, the same group of Bachelors of Philology and Translation was participating, engaged in the additional analysis of the same Shakespeare's play, as far as they already had the required knowledge of the text genre and topic. The core question, which directed our work planning in this section, was about possible influences on «text participants» in the process of their meaning composing.

Previously, we suggested dividing students into five groups. Each group received a definite part of the play for individual reading, according to five stages of the plot development of the drama. Group 1 accepted «The Exposition», which consisted of Prologue, Act I, Scenes 1-4; Group 2 - «The Growth»: Act I, Scene 5, Act II, Scenes 1-6; Group III - «The Climax», Act III, Scene 1; Group IV - «The Resolution», Act III, Scenes 2-5, Act IV, Scenes 1-5, Act V, Scenes 1, 2; Group V - «Conclusions», Act V, Scene 3. The first task for students was to identify the purpose of the text, which correlates with the category of genre. Here students easily underline the structure of text composing as play, and, due to the somber content, qualified it as a tragedy. This correlation is the evidence of intertextual impact on the meaning formation. It corresponds to the F.Christie and R.Misson explanation of the meaning-making phenomenon, as bringing to the content the participant's knowledge of the situation, topic, and genre of the narration (Christie F., Misson R., 1998). The next step was firm for creating the draft of the passage read before, which was followed by editing and revising the draft correspondingly to the prospective audience, and, finally, communicating the ideas to listeners. Members of the same group already have experience of relationship with one another and realize which language methods currently would be more appropriate for the most powerful meaning constructing. In such way, the situation and social- cultural factors make the influence on the process of the meaning-building.

Conclusions

This article studies reader roles of the Four Resources Model, developed by Luke and Freebody at the end of the previous century to improve the general social level of critical reading. The paper scrutinizes two initial steps of the Model, such as text code-breaking and meaning-making roles. We can define that the practical value of the essay owes to the specific examples of classroom implications of reader roles as suitable for high eduucation content.

Viewpoints of several scientists towards the first and the second resources of the Model, their functions and aims have been studied. According to them, codebreaking role contributes to the students' coding competence and releases the process of recognizing and decoding information of the text and connecting it to the associating sound and structure. Mainly helpful for the research conduct were the example of students learning activity, which initiated further possible practical approvals of code-breaking technique. As for meaning-making, it is worth underling that this role can be operated only after successful implementation of the first one. Here the dominant factor for text analyzing is the personal experience of the meaning- maker. As recent works, dedicated to the issues of critical reading, evidence, a meaning-maker, in fact, becomes the participants of the text and interprets it through his background, which leads to the development of his semantic competence.

A. Luke and P. Freebody's Model provides a lot of positive involvement thanks to applying two roles in the practical teaching activity. The environment, for realization functions and achieving goals of this approach, was chosen as the classical literature unit, using Shakespeare's tragedy «Romeo and Juliet», conducted to the Bachelors of Philology and Translation in one of the Ukrainian Institutes. The most fruitful implications of the code-breaking process include consulting each other, question building, picking up the ideas for discussion, as well as drawing attention to the specific vocabulary of the text. Benefits of meaning constructing of the text comprise students' social-cultural background for group analyzing of the separate sections of the text and communicating it to the familiar audience.

reader role literacy teaching

References

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