DEVELOPMENT OF WRITTEN TEXT PRODUCTION OF NATIVE ISRAELI AND ETHIOPIAN ...

189 Pages·2006·0.62 MB·English

Tel-Aviv University
The Lester & Sally Entin Faculty of Humanities
The Shirley & Leslie Porter School of Cultural Studies

DEVELOPMENT OF WRITTEN TEXT
PRODUCTION OF NATIVE ISRAELI AND
ETHIOPIAN IMMIGRANT SCHOOLCHILDREN
AND ADOLESCENTS: LINGUISTIC AND SOCIO-
CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE
"DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY"

by

MICHAL SCHLEIFER

SUBMITTED TO THE SENATE OF TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY

AUGUST 2003

This work was carried out under the supervision of
Prof. Ruth Berman and Dr. Gadi Ben-Ezer
Acknowledgments

I could not have completed this work without the intellectual, emotional and
financial support of so many people. I am grateful for the opportunity to acknowledge
them.
I would like to thank first and foremost the supervisors of my dissertation. Prof.
Ruth Berman, who challenged me to do my best work, and taught me all I know
about conducting high-quality research and how to examine one of the most
remarkable human achievements - the written text. Dr. Gadi Ben-Ezer, a gifted
teacher, a skillful advisor and a good friend, whose expertise in the field,
encouragement, and multicultural sensitivity in building "mutual creative spaces"
allowed me to construct new insights.

I thank my Ethiopian colleagues and friends Yirga Erate, Embeat Melesa, Elimelech
Yitzhak and Dr. Anbessa Teferra, who opened the door for me into their ancient and
magnificent culture. Their help in the data collection and its interpretation was
invaluable. I am grateful for their special way of showing me the humbleness of those
who really know.
I am also grateful to my interviewers for their hard work and commitment: Tali Elbaz,
Orit Gaon-Dekkers, Vered Gavish, Irit Mero, Ruth Abramov, Tahel Hason and Ilan
Bloom.
I appreciate the goodwill of the school inspectors, principals, counselors and teachers
in the process of data collection. I am indebted to my dear subjects who willingly
participated in this study.
I wish to express my deep gratitude to my colleagues in the crosslinguistic study for
their help in analyzing the data: Bracha Nir, Nurit Assaiag, Dr. Irit Katzenberger, Dr.
Dalia Cahana-Amitay, Dr. Tsila Shalom, Elisheva Baruch and Sheva Salmon.
Special thanks to my friends Ofra Barak, Tehila Grunwald and Tsafrit Grinberg for
their participation in the interpretation of the data and for their confidence in me.
I wish to acknowledge the support and trust of my friends and superiors at the Centre
for Educational Technology in giving me the opportunity of working with the
Ethiopian children.
I wish to express my sincere appreciation to Dr. Dorit Ravid who taught me about late
acquisition and how to examine it.
I thank Gila Batori for sharing with me her expertise in statistics and also her
friendship and generosity.
I thank Jayne Robinson for typing this study and for her patience and professional
work.
I thank Lisa Amdur and Yael Heffer for their proof-reading and encouragement.
I thank Lea Godelman from the School of Cultural Science for her moral support and
sincere caring.
Finally, my greatest indebtedness is reserved for my family.
I thank my older brother Ram Asher, who has constantly supported and stood by me.
My love and boundless appreciation to my best friend and life companion, Rick, for
being who he is, and for his unfailing love and encouragement not only in my
academic venture.
Many hugs and cheers for my special winning team: my children, Ido, Elad and Yael

for their wisdom, patience and love. Without them I could not have done it at all.
Table of Contents
Abstract
Chapter 1: Theoretical Background
Introduction 1
1.1 Development of Written Language 2
1.2 Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Language Use 8
Chapter 2: Research Design and Methodology
2.1 General background 20
2.1.1 The original project and pilot research study 20
2.1.2 Overall conceptual framework 22
2.2 Research Population 23
2.2.1 The Ethiopian group 25
2.2.2 The non-Ethiopian group 26
2.2.3 The external control group for the literacy questionnaire 27
2.3 Language teaching in the research populations schools 27
2.4 Data collection procedures 29
2.4.1 Introduction to the task 29
2.4.2 Personal data sheet 30
2.4.3 Text production 31
2.4.4 Literacy questionnaire 31
2.4.5 Interviewer Questionnaire 33
2.4.6 Teacher's evaluation sheet 33
2.4.7 Teachers' reports on the teaching of writing 33
2.5 Transcription 34
2.6 Categories of Analysis and Associated Predictions 35
2.6.1 Text length 36
2.6.1.1 Text length as measured by number of words per text 37
2.6.1.2 Text length as measured by number of clauses 38
2.6.2 Syntactic complexity 39
2.6.2.1 Connectivity or clause-combining as measured by
clause packages 40
2.6.2.2 Linking devices in clause packaging 41
2.6.3 Lexical richness 43
2.6.4 Thematic content 45
2.6.4.1 Thematic content with regard to content words
expressing physical aggression 46
2.6.4.2 Thematic content with regard to family members 47
2.6.4.3 Thematic content with regard to reliance on the video
clip 48
2.6.4.4 Thematic content with regard to affronts to honor 49
2.6.5 Violations of linguistic norms 50
2.6.5.1 Grammatical errors 50
2.6.5.2 Lexical infelicities 52
2.6.5.3 Register mixing 58
2.6.6 Global text construction 58
Chapter 3: Results
Part 1: Results of the written texts
Introduction 63
3.1 Text length 63
3.1.1 Text length in words 63
3.1.2 Text length in clauses 65
3.2 Syntactic Complexity 67
3.2.1 Syntactic complexity in terms of number of words per clause 67
3.2.2 Syntactic complexity in terms of interclausal packaging 69
3.2.2.1 Number of clauses per clause package 70
3.2.2.2 Types of linking devices in clause packages 70
3.3 Lexical Richness in terms of Lexical Density 72
3.4 Analysis of Thematic Content 78
3.4.1 Reference to the video 79
3.4.2 Reference to physical aggression 79
3.4.3 Reference to the location of conflicts 79
3.4.4 Reference to affronts to honor 80
3.5 Violation of Linguistic Norms 80
3.5.1 Grammatical errors 80
3.5.2 Lexical infelicities 82
3.5.3 Register mixing 84
3.6 Global Text Construction 86
3.6.1 Text Components 86
3.6.2 Text component length 88
3.6.3 Levels of organization of information 89
3.7 Summary of Results of the Written Texts 91

Part 2: Results of Literacy Questionnaire
3.8 Introduction 93
3.9 Success in Hebrew Language Studies 95
3.9.1 Teacher evaluations of language achievements 95
3.10 Writing Proficiency 96
3.10.1 Teacher evaluations of narrative writing 96
3.10.2 Teacher evaluations of expository text writing 96

3.10.3 Teacher evaluations of questionnaire writing 96
3.10.4 Student evaluation of narrative writing 97
3.10.5 Student evaluation of expository writing 97
3.10.6 Student evaluation of questionnaire writing 97
3.11 Writing Abilities and Attitudes 98
3.11.1 Attitudes to and command of writing activities 99
3.12 Level of Difficulty of the Various Writing Activities 99
3.13 Proficiency in Amharic of the Ethiopian Students 100
3.14 Attitudes to Writing 100
3.14.1 Why writing is important 100
3.14.2 What makes a good writer? 101
3.15 Language Attitudes 103
3.16 Interviewer Information on the Questionnaire as a Task 104
3.16.1 Time required to fill out the questionnaire 104
3.16.2 Need for help 105
3.16.3 Task difficulty 106
3.17 Parental Background 106
3.17.1 Parents’ country of birth 106
3.17.2 Parents’ level of formal education 107
3.18 Home Literacy 108
3.18.1 Languages of reading and writing 108
3.18.2 Home-based reading and writing activities 108
3.18.3 Sources of assistance 110
3.19 Summary of the Results 110

Chapter 4: Discussion
4.1 Overview of the Research Findings 114
4.1.1 Patterns shared by the Ethiopian and non-Ethiopian subjects 114
4.1.2 Patterns shared by low and middle-class populations 115
4.1.3 Patterns shared by low SES subjects from poor educational
systems and low SES native-speaking subjects in
well-establishedschools (comparison to Salmon, 2003) 117
4.1.4 Effect of schooling in immigrant low SES subjects from
poor educational systems and immigrant subjects attending
well-established schools (compared to Rabukhin, 2003) 118
4.1.5 Different language skills of the Ethiopian and
non-Ethiopian subjects 118
4.1.6 Different patterns in the three populations 120
4.1.6.1 Thematic themes 120
4.1.6.2 Avoidance of talk 121
4.1.6.3 Cultural conventions of structures 123
4.1.7 Home literacy 124
4.1.8 Attitudes towards writing 125
4.2 The Four Themes 127
4.2.1 More is not necessarily better 127
4.2.2 Early distinctness late command of genres 132
4.2.3 Research involvement of community representatives 133
4.2.4 What makes writing communicative? 135
References
137
Appendix 165
Appendix 167
List of Tables
Table 1: Breakdown of research population by origin,
sex and grade level 24
Table 2: Means and standard deviations number of words per text,
by age, genre and origin 64
Table 3: Means and standard deviations of clauses per text,
by age, genre and origin 66
Table 4: Means and standard deviations of words per clause,
by age, genre and origin 68
Table5: Means and standard deviations of clauses per CPs,
by age, genre and origin 70
Table 6: Means and standard deviations of the three types
of inter-clausal links, by age, genre and origin 72
Table 7: Mean number of content words and standard deviations
by age, genre and origin 73
Table 8: Mean number of content words per clauses
and standard deviations by age, genre and origin 75
Table 9: Means and standard deviations of lexical density by age,
genre and origin 77
Table 10: Total amount of grammatical errors by age and origin 81
Table 11: Percentages of the three common grammatical errors
by age and origin 81
Table 12: Number of lexical infelicities by age,
genre and origin 83
Table 13: Number of lexical infelicities in the original study
by age and genre 84
Table 14: Number of the sub-categorizations of the lexical
deviations by population 84
Table 15: Number of cases of register mixing by age,
genre and origin 85
Table 16: Number of cases of register mixing in the original study
by age and genre 85