#3744

All levels Writing Presentation

Students authoring online multilingual graded readers

Wed, Aug 9, 15:30-16:05 Asia/Tokyo

Location: Catur

Semi-secret societies like the Tolkien and Lewis’ literary discussion group ‘The Inklings,' where authors share their imaginative journeys, have the potential to engage learners at some of the highest levels on Bloom’s Taxonomy - and meld the strengths of a learner in their L1 with the possibility of collaborating with learners from other language backgrounds to create graded readers for multiple audiences. StudioCLA.org is a group of ‘Community Literacy Activist’ students who create, translate, and simplify readers in English and Japanese. The creation, translation and simplification follow an organic process that involves the design of the story elements, vocabulary level, word count, and target audience. The first volume of these stories - YAMS - or Young Adult Multicultural Stories, consists of six stories each in both English and Japanese and each at three levels. This presentation will describe the evolution of StudioCLA from a grant-initiated project (JSPS 20K13154), and invite your participation in an international society of human creative writers of language learner literature in multiple languages that aims to ‘change the world through the power of art’.

  • Paul Sevigny

    I am a professor at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Beppu, Japan. I studied applied linguistics at the University of Hawai'i (MA) and the University of Birmingham (PhD). My research interest has mainly been related to text-based discussion.