Students Writing across Cultures: Teaching Awareness of Audience in a Co-curricular Service Learning Project

Abstract

We examine a model for outofschool literacy instruction using language and cultural available designs for teaching awareness of audience across cultures. The literacy model described here engages undergraduate and secondary students in a cross-cultural storytelling exchange and calls for anticipating the needs of young readers who do not share linguistic or cultural backgrounds. We describe the process of helping the writers to understand their Rwandan audience and highlight some of the linguistic and cultural issues that arose in the early drafts and persisted throughout the editing process despite direct feedback. We describe the workshops in which we discussed available linguistic and cultural designs and track some of the responses of the writers. And finally, we examine a story from the third volume for evidence that the writers had addressed the needs of the Rwandan readers in their stories.

Enabling Young People’s Involvement in Research: Principles for a Family Youth Alcohol and Other Drug Program Evaluation

“…Attention to skills development and confidence among young people may be required, while incorporating their perspectives on research approaches (Chen et al, 2010;Dold & Chapman, 2012;Samuelson et al, 2013) and acknowledging their specific expertise related to evaluation processes and the area under study. Challenges, such as decisions about how soon after a traumatic event to commence data collection (see Campbell et al, 2013), may be addressed by gaining young people's views on what is best and possibly engaging them as peer interviewers.…”

“…Using digital cameras, conducting interviews, and creating an electronic presentation were participants’ favorite aspects of the evaluation (Chen et al, 2010). Similarly, an evaluation of a cocurricular service-learning program showed that some participants were frustrated by evaluation activities, in terms of the questions asked and the means of data collection, providing scope for improvement (Samuelson et al, 2013). Mental health stakeholders emphasized using language that is familiar to young people and asking questions that young people felt were relevant (Dold & Chapman, 2012).…”