This presentation introduces Community Literacy Activism as an approach for developing graded readers. The approach was inspired by the Citizen Science movement. While Citizen Scientists (amateur scientists) assist in collecting and analyzing data for researcher-led projects (Gura, 2013: p. 259), Community Literacy Activists (CLAs) are highly motivated bilinguals writing and supporting the development of graded readers. From a qualitative research perspective, CLAs are insider experts, who have deep knowledge of a particular discourse community. Theoretically, CLAs could come from a wide variety of discourse communities, for example, taking the tourist industry, authors might be flight attendants, hotel managers, or adventure tour guides. The specific purpose for extensive reading in this presentation is to provide a touch stone to L2 discussions about the cultures present on a multicultural and multilingual campus in Japan.
For the case introduced in this presentation, the insiders (CLAs) are student leaders who have experienced one of two different university language programs: Japanese or English. Such bilingual students and programs can be found at every level of education. There are bilingual primary, secondary and tertiary institutions offering content learning in either of two major languages in a region. All of these schools share the challenge of developing biliterate, inclusive student leadership to deal with inequalities within classrooms and learners with respect to one or the other of the two languages of instruction. Such leadership is essential for promoting bilingualism and inclusive learning environments. For this reason, identical versions of the same graded reader in English and Japanese are being created for mixed, multilingual student discussions, and particularly for developing graded reading materials for activating bilingual interaction. Extensive Reading forms an important basis for literature circle discussions in the same way that the Oxford Bookworms anthology were designed for literature circles (Furr, 2007).
The research site is an English Medium of Instruction, dual language university in Japan. The university comprises about 3,000 students from Japan and almost 3,000 international students who are near-native English speakers. The CLAs participating in the program during the first year were five international students who are completing or have completed the Japanese language program. The five domestic Japanese learners of English have completed a mandatory course of English study. All CLAs in this study are paid research assistants. Those who appear in the video presentation have all consented to their real names being used. They are research collaborators. The CLAs' insider experience is not only limited to the course of language study, but also entails on-campus leadership activities such as being teaching assistants, student organization leaders, and of special note is serving as leaders of specific countries' communities on campus. For example, the largest communities of international students on campus are from South Korea, China, Indonesia, and Vietnam. The largest of these groups host multicultural-week celebrations each semester that culminate in a theatrical performance that is authored by student leaders. These theatrical screenplays were seen as potential sources for graded short stories that could also be translated to create bilingual graded readers relevant to the school's distinctive, multicultural demographic.
The team of 10 CLAs is tasked with creating two graded readers per year over three years, and is currently in the second year. The project goal is to develop two anthologies of six graded short stories (an English version and a Japanese version). The final anthology will feature stories from the following countries: Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and one country yet to be determined.
In the first year (2020), while the main purpose was materials development--namely two bilingual short stories, the research goal was to identify the roles and skills the CLAs would need to successfully develop these first two bilingual stories. Both organizational and linguistic goals were essential to develop. Organizational goals included outreach to international communities on campus and the securing of permission to re-interpret their play scripts as short stories, ensuring that there would be no copyright or intellectual property issues, and creating a workflow process for both writing and translation. With regard to linguistic issues, the first short story versions of three screenplays were all 9,000 words. The student authors wrote much longer first versions than anticipated. Upon reckoning these stories with editing tools such as the Online Graded Text Editor and Lextutor, the authors learned that they would need to simplify the stories greatly. Upon comparing their writing to other graded short stories, the authors realized they needed to simplify and edit down their stories to about 3,500 words and about 600 headwords. The Japanese versions are still in the process of being levelized appropriately.
The above case of creating culturally focused, graded short stories for bilingual leadership is just one specific example of the way a Community Literacy Activism approach could lead to graded short story development. Another example could be for applied linguists to work with insiders from other specific fields, such as those with careers in tourism. Tourism specialists are often multi-talented bilinguals with an interest in writing. Such amateur authors represent the more general way that Community Literacy Activism parallels Citizen Science (see Gura, 2013).
This presentation is supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Grant 2 0 K 1 3 1 5 4: "Developing Bilingual Short Stories and Community Literacy Activists"
