Northern Saskatchewan Native Students' Readings and Storytellings of Culturall Relevant and Culturally Non-relevant Stories
Date
1990-09Author
Quintal-Finell, Jerline
Type
ThesisDegree Level
MastersMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This study compared bilingual (Cree and English)
Northern Saskatchewan students' responses to two reading
selections, one considered to be Culturally Relevant, and the
other Culturally Non-Relevant. Data were collected, coded,
categorized, and analyzed by employing Goodman, Watson and
Burke's (1987) Reading MIscue Inventory in the Language Sense
section of Procedure II of each of the 21 subjects'
construction of the language sense strength patterns on two
Independent selections. The t-Test compared miscue scores on
the two inventories, and descriptive analysis investigated
instances of personal experience which helped or Interfered
with their understanding of the selections. The language
sense strength scores differed significantly Ct = 5.09),
(p < .01). Scores were higher for subjects' meaning making
of the Culturally Relevant than for the Culturally
Non-Relevant selections. Evidence from this study suggested
that the reader's construction of syntactically and
semantically acceptable sentences, interest, public and
experiential knowledge were factors related to their meaning
making of reading selections. The descriptive analysis found
that the more the readers' own life experiences were relevant
to the experiences expressed in a reading selection, the more
elaborated were their storytellings, and meaning makings, andthe more consistently they were in using syntactic and
semantic cues In constructlng syntactlcally and semantlcally
acceptable sentences to gain meaning.