Lingenfelter and Gray 1981

Lingenfelter, Judith, and Claire Gray. 1981. "The importance of learning styles in literacy." Notes on Literacy. (READ.) Interest level: specialist.

To understand the importance of learning styles in literacy work, one must recognize their existence apart from inborn intelligence. Both relational and analytic thinking have definite value; relational because it is more efficient and analytic because it helps generate new ways of doing things.

If a translation team senses a particular group rewards relational thinking, they might consider developing a primer series that capitalizes on memorization skills. Correspondingly, literacy consultants (who check and approve primers) might want to expand their own ideas of what constitutes an acceptable primer series.

Hand discusses how the Gudschinsky method should be altered to accommodate cultures that esteem relational thinking. Higdon gives an example of how to incorporate relational ideas as a bridge to analytic understanding and comments that family relations largely determine conceptual styles.

Evaluator agrees with authors and believes research is very valuable for cross-cultural literacy work. Believes the Gudschinsky method is a good way to teach literacy, but also needs to recognize it might not work in all situations. Is important to be flexible and be able to revise based on the learning style needs of a particular culture.

• Bibliography module: Lingenfelter and Gray 1981
• In overview module: Bibliography (Literacy): L
• In modular book: Bibliography (Literacy), by Doris Gallemore, Trudi C. Hunt, Jeanne Swanson, and Stephen L. Walter
• In document collection: Reference materials
• In bookshelf: Literacy

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 4.0, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 28 June 1999

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