Stephen L Walter
Biographic Data
| ID | 1549999 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stephen L Walter |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stephen L |
| FAMILY NAME | Walter |
| SIGNATURE | WALTER S L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 7 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 7 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The contribution of full tone marking to oral reading fluency and comprehension in Yoruba and Ife
Orthographic depth is a key concept in literacy acquisition and can be measured separately for completeness, simplicity and consistency. The first of these is pertinent to discussions about whether tone should be marked in African orthographies, because a zero tone representation is relatively incomplete and deep whereas a full tone orthography is relatively complete and shallow. We undertook a series of literacy experiments in ten Niger-Congo la…
The Legacy of Colonial Language Policies and Their Impact on Student Learning
The relative educational returns on colonial versus indigenous language instruction in sub-Saharan countries have yet to be decisively estimated. To address this unanswered question, this paper provides an impact assessment of an experiment in Cameroon in which the first 3 years of schooling were conducted in a local language instead of in English. Test results in examinations in both English and math reveal that treated students exhibit gains of…
Neither Deep nor Shallow
The experiment reported here tests the Lexical Orthography Hypothesis, that is, the notion that the output of the lexical phonology is the most promising phonological depth for an exhaustive representation of tone by means of diacritics in the orthography of a tone language. We conducted a controlled classroom experiment with 97 secondary school pupils learning written Kabiye, a Gur language of northern Togo. After testing their baseline skills i…
Writing grammar rather than tone
Some orthographies represent tone phonemically by means of diacritics; others favor zero marking. Neither solution is entirely satisfactory. The former leads to graphic overload; the latter to a profusion of homographs; both may reduce fluency. But there is a 'third way': to highlight the grammar rather than the tone system itself. To test this approach, we developed two experimental strategies for Kabiye: a grammar orthography and a tone orthogr…
Mother tongue instruction in Lubuagan
Liberated Mindsets, Literate Minds
After significant efforts to promote literacy in the 1960s and 1970s, major international donors turned their attention to formal education as the most effective strategy. But for adult literacy motivation is the most critical issue. Clinton D.W. Robinson notes that religion is one of the strongest motivations for literacy, and since the Reformation the Christian tradition has insisted that its scriptures should and must be available to everyone.…
Language Policy, Literacy, and Minority Languages
This paper surveys the development of language policy over the last 40 or more years, particularly with respect to linguistic minorities and the attendant problems of illiteracy and lack of access to basic education among these groups. While there are discernible, emerging trends in the area of language policy, we make considerable effort to point out that the evolution of such policy in the past has often been the product of an unpredictable con…
Mother tongue instruction in Lubuagan
The Legacy of Colonial Language Policies and Their Impact on Student Learning
The relative educational returns on colonial versus indigenous language instruction in sub-Saharan countries have yet to be decisively estimated. To address this unanswered question, this paper provides an impact assessment of an experiment in Cameroon in which the first 3 years of schooling were conducted in a local language instead of in English. Test results in examinations in both English and math reveal that treated students exhibit gains of…
Writing grammar rather than tone
Some orthographies represent tone phonemically by means of diacritics; others favor zero marking. Neither solution is entirely satisfactory. The former leads to graphic overload; the latter to a profusion of homographs; both may reduce fluency. But there is a 'third way': to highlight the grammar rather than the tone system itself. To test this approach, we developed two experimental strategies for Kabiye: a grammar orthography and a tone orthogr…
Neither Deep nor Shallow
The experiment reported here tests the Lexical Orthography Hypothesis, that is, the notion that the output of the lexical phonology is the most promising phonological depth for an exhaustive representation of tone by means of diacritics in the orthography of a tone language. We conducted a controlled classroom experiment with 97 secondary school pupils learning written Kabiye, a Gur language of northern Togo. After testing their baseline skills i…
Language Policy, Literacy, and Minority Languages
This paper surveys the development of language policy over the last 40 or more years, particularly with respect to linguistic minorities and the attendant problems of illiteracy and lack of access to basic education among these groups. While there are discernible, emerging trends in the area of language policy, we make considerable effort to point out that the evolution of such policy in the past has often been the product of an unpredictable con…
Liberated Mindsets, Literate Minds
After significant efforts to promote literacy in the 1960s and 1970s, major international donors turned their attention to formal education as the most effective strategy. But for adult literacy motivation is the most critical issue. Clinton D.W. Robinson notes that religion is one of the strongest motivations for literacy, and since the Reformation the Christian tradition has insisted that its scriptures should and must be available to everyone.…
Mother tongue instruction in Lubuagan
Writing grammar rather than tone
Some orthographies represent tone phonemically by means of diacritics; others favor zero marking. Neither solution is entirely satisfactory. The former leads to graphic overload; the latter to a profusion of homographs; both may reduce fluency. But there is a 'third way': to highlight the grammar rather than the tone system itself. To test this approach, we developed two experimental strategies for Kabiye: a grammar orthography and a tone orthogr…
Neither Deep nor Shallow
The experiment reported here tests the Lexical Orthography Hypothesis, that is, the notion that the output of the lexical phonology is the most promising phonological depth for an exhaustive representation of tone by means of diacritics in the orthography of a tone language. We conducted a controlled classroom experiment with 97 secondary school pupils learning written Kabiye, a Gur language of northern Togo. After testing their baseline skills i…
The Legacy of Colonial Language Policies and Their Impact on Student Learning
The relative educational returns on colonial versus indigenous language instruction in sub-Saharan countries have yet to be decisively estimated. To address this unanswered question, this paper provides an impact assessment of an experiment in Cameroon in which the first 3 years of schooling were conducted in a local language instead of in English. Test results in examinations in both English and math reveal that treated students exhibit gains of…
The contribution of full tone marking to oral reading fluency and comprehension in Yoruba and Ife
Orthographic depth is a key concept in literacy acquisition and can be measured separately for completeness, simplicity and consistency. The first of these is pertinent to discussions about whether tone should be marked in African orthographies, because a zero tone representation is relatively incomplete and deep whereas a full tone orthography is relatively complete and shallow. We undertook a series of literacy experiments in ten Niger-Congo la…
Multilingual Education and Policy (4 works) · Pedagogy (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Linguistics (3 works) · Literacy (3 works) · Mathematics education (3 works) · Orthography (3 works) · Economics (2 works)