Cook-Gumperz 1986

Cook-Gumperz, Jenny (editor). 1986.The social construction of literacy.Studies in international sociolinguistics. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 248 pages. 052103480; 521316332 (paperback). Location: Dallas SIL Library 301.21 S675s. Interest level: specialist.

Book grew out of a two-year investigation of classroom interaction in an ethnically mixed northern California school system. Focuses on "one of the most urgent problems of recent educational policy: the need to achieve a higher level of literacy through public education." Includes discussion of the following topics:

• The social construction of literacy
• Literacy in terms of cognitive changes and reasoning power
• Socioeconomic background and educational and economic success
• Importance of having teachers spend time with individual children, to listen to them, and to extend their ideas (Instead of always developing personal ideas, develop an exploratory and problem-solving attitude.)
• Adapting home-based oral discourse to the demands of classroom expository prose
• Comparative analysis of teaching practices in high and low reading groups
• Organizational constraints on reading group mobility
• Developing mathematical literacy in a bilingual classroom
• Spoken language strategies and reading acquisition
• Difficulties children face in transforming oral discourse into written text

• Bibliography module: Cook-Gumperz 1986
• In overview module: Bibliography (Literacy): C
• In modular book: Bibliography (Literacy), by Doris Gallemore, Trudi C. Hunt, Jeanne Swanson, and Stephen L. Walter
• In document collection: Reference materials
• In bookshelf: Literacy

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 4.0, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 18 May 1999

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