Oral Connections to Literacy: The Narrative (original) (raw)

1994, Journal of Basic Writing

Today's English language teachers f ace broad cultural and racial di ff erences between themselves and their students which negate old assump tions about teaching and learning. Teaching is about choices, making them and giving them. This essay discusses the narrative as a means f or establishing an environment where students ultimately will have choices. Narrative in the con text o f learning language in general and writing in particular opens the students to shared contexts and culture. A pedagogy based on storytelling encourages the students to understand and appreciate their classmates' cultural and racial diversity while helping them become active participants in the broader conver sation of the literate community. In this way students develop practical skills in utilizing a variety of rhetorical styles and acquire intercultural understanding and appreciation. The three-to four-week exercise discussed here enables the teacher to achieve educational goals o f interaction with the oral and written text, while achieving a sense of community in the classroom. Today, more than ever, America's mainstream college class rooms are multicultural, multilingual, and multiracial, com prised of students from widely divergent cultural and ethnic backgrounds. One of the primary challenges to educators is to understand both the breadth of this diversity and how the new Akua Duku Ano ky e, assistant professor o f English at Q ueensborough Commu nity College, CUNY, teaches fr eshman composition to ESL and Native students, and A f rican American Literature. As a sociolinguist she is a consultant and workshop leader on orality and literacy, narrative discourse, multiculturalism, writing across the curriculum, and multimedia instruction. Currently she is serving on the Executive Committee f or the Con f erence on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) and its ESL Committee, as well as on the NCTE Storytelling Committee. Dr. Anokye has recently authored a chapter, "Zora Neale Hurston: Our Folk Voice on Stage" fo r a text edited by Carol Marshe-Lockett, forthcoming f rom Louisiana State UP in Spring 1995.