Northern Saskatchewan Native Students' Readings and Storytellings of Culturall Relevant and Culturally Non-relevant Stories

Abstract

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.