Browsing by Author "Narymbetova K."

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    L1 LITERACY IN KAZAKHSTAN AND ITS EFFECT ON L2 ENGLISH ACADEMIC LITERACY
    (Suleyman Demirel University, 2020) Dimitriou K.K.; Omurzakova D.; Narymbetova K.
    As foreign language universities are becoming ever-more common, the issue of second language tertiary literacy has come to the forefront. The linguistic demands of such universities on new students are very challenging. Though freshmen can pass international language exams in English, the literacy skills that are most important to tertiary success are those developed in their first language. However, it is becoming more widely known that most Central Asian post-Soviet education systems do little to develop such literacy. It would be of great interest to understand the experiences of students who were going through this difficult tertiary literacy process. Our exploratory ethnographic study investigated students’ linguistic and schooling backgrounds, their development of writing skills, and their literacy metalanguage, to try and ascertain the effect of their first-language literacy on their progress. Therefore, we investigated a Foundation level English-language writing class, the experiences of its teacher, and six of its students, in a Kazakhstan university. Our findings show that literacy practices in the high schools of Central Asia seem to be deficient both in the quality of literacy teaching and in the culture of literacy, namely critical thinking and metacognition. These have had demonstrable effects on students’ literacy acquisition.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    L1 LITERACY IN KAZAKHSTAN AND ITS EFFECT ON L2 ENGLISH ACADEMIC LITERACY
    (Global Trends and Values in Education, 2020) Dimitriou K.; Omurzakova D.; Narymbetova K.
    As foreign language universities are becoming ever-more common, the issue of secondlanguage tertiary literacy has come to the forefront. The linguistic demands of such universities on new students are very challenging. Though freshmen can pass international language exams in English, the literacy skills that are most important to tertiary success are those developed in their first language. However, it is becoming more widely known that most Central Asian post-Soviet education systems do little to develop such literacy. It would be of great interest to understand the experiences of students who were going through this difficult tertiary literacy process. Our exploratory ethnographic study investigated students’ linguistic and schooling backgrounds, their development of writing skills, and their literacy metalanguage, to try and ascertain the effect of their first-language literacy on their progress. Therefore, we investigated a Foundation level English-language writing class, the experiences of its teacher, and six of its students, in a Kazakhstan university. Our findings show that literacy practices in the high schools of Central Asia seem to be deficient both in the quality of literacy teaching and in the culture of literacy, namely critical thinking and metacognition. These have had demonstrable effects on students’ literacy acquisition.