atw: Re: FW: Re: ASTC(NSW) conference 2007
- From: "Michael Lewis" <mlewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 09:49:58 +1000
Irene Wong:
> I am interested in hearing about our readers and their literacy levels and
what this means to them when they come across our documents.
This is a vast field. "Literacy" itself includes a huge number of factors, so
"illiteracy" takes a multitude of forms.
> Does anyone have tips for us in what is particularly difficult to
understand, what can we do to reduce the risk of being misunderstood, are
their any laws that we might be breaking, is one format better than another?
What's the difference if any btwn NESB and illiterate english speakers. So
many questions
Perhaps the biggest question is "what's the target audience llike?" If you
know that your audience has low literacy, you can adopt a variety of measures
-- most of which have already been tried by the US military, because many GIs
are educationally disadvantaged. If you merely suspect that a proportion of
your audience is likely to have limited literacy (documentation for domestic
appliances comes to mind), you probably need to produce your message in
multiple forms.
> Rosie Wicket (spelling?), who ever she is wrote a lot of stuff during the
year of the illiterate a few years ago. There's also an adult English teachers
group. I forget their name but they have a website, have conferences etc. They
may have a speaker.
Most "adult English teachers" -- teachers of English to adults -- work in the
ESL field. But you're focusing on native speakers with low literacy, so you
want remedial teachers.
> I think this is one of those topics where we don't know what we don't know.
Most of us have never been exposed to this issue. I just have a feeling that
some group out there may be itching to speak to people like us to spread their
message and ideas.
In linguistics and in education, there's a lot of knowledge; people specialise
in this kind of stuff. If anyone's interested, I can make enquiries at NCELTR
(National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research, specialists in
applied linguistics) here at Macquarie Uni.
Michael Lewis
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Brandle Pty Limited, Sydney, Australia
www.brandle.com.au
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