Does the Model of Language in the National Literacy Strategy Create Failure for Pupils from Differing Language Backgrounds?

The National Literacy Strategy (NLS) was introduced by the government in the wake of the hotly debated issue of falling educational standards in the UK. All schools were required to adopt the NLS Literacy Hour unless they could show their preferred programme would result in raised levels of achievement. My experience of delivering the Literacy Hour has been a process of adaptation to the needs of my pupils, who are drawn mainly from groups whose language backgrounds differ from that which is dominant in school. I have found that the requirements of NLS, together with many of the commercial resources used to teach it, are not appropriate for pupils from these groups and a question arose: is it the pupils who are in some way deficient or is it the approach and the resources being used? This article takes a case study of the use of a commercially produced resource to explore the model of language implicit in NLS, the kinds of resources it generates and the ways in which this creates failure in pupils from different language backgrounds. It then considers the New Literacy Studies and their implications for an alteration in our approach.     

Chinese Studies Librarianship in North America

Although American libraries had begun collecting Chinese language materials in the 19th century, notably the United States Library of Congress in 1869, Yale in 1878, Harvard in 1879, and Berkeley in 1896, East Asian studies librarianship in North America, including China studies librarianship, was not fully developed until the 1960s. There was no formal organization that represented the interest of Chinese studies librarians because there were few of them and most of them were China scholars rather than trained librarians. More than 100 years later, the number of Chinese studies librarians in North America has increased considerably, primarily in response to the demand in the field of China studies and more recently to the needs of immigrant population and the general public who has an interest in China.This paper traces the history and growth of Chinese studies librarianship in North America, documents the development of the professional organization that represents Chinese studies librarians, and exami.