“It Is More Expressive for Me”: A Translingual Approach to Meaningful Literacy Instruction Through Sijo Poetry

Abstract

Through a qualitative analysis of one-on-one poetry workshops, this article explores ways in which a Korean American adult-Author 2 (Park)-develops translingual dispositions (Lu & Horner, 2013) and linguistic awareness of Korean. Situated within the translingualism literature (e.g., Canagarajah, 2017), sijo, a type of Korean poetry, became a conduit for gaining a greater insight into how meaningful literacy (Hanauer, 2012) can be enacted. The authors conceptualize the sijo composition session as a translanguaging event in that Park wrote autobiographical poems, employing multiple linguistic resources-English as an additional language and Korean as a heritage language. The analysis demonstrates that linguistic changes were frequently driven by Park's desire to communicate her message to achieve the convergence of linguistic and meaning negotiations. The findings explicate the continual process by which this translingual practice operates as recursive negotiations between language and meaning and between the two languages within the constraints of the sijo format. Those translingual negotiations became a conscious tool for self-expression as well as a valued tool for language development. The authors argue for the incorporation of poetry writing into second language teaching to enhance learners' understanding and expressions of personal and transnational experiences.

Language Mixings in Heritage Language Education: A Systematic Review

“…Creative writing activity for poetry or books is documented in three articles (Barbour & Quinn, 2020;Kim & Park, 2020;Rowe, 2019). In the multilingual class observed by Barbour and Quinn (2020), students are encouraged to write poems using English and other languages outside school.…”

“I Have Some Sense of Loss but More Sense of Self”: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Chinese University Emerging Adults’ Personal Life Stories

“…Meaningful literacy instruction has been incorporated in classroom contexts by using the genre of poetry (e.g., Furman et al, 2007 ; Hanauer, 2012 , 2015 ; Iida, 2012 , 2016 ; Kim and Park, 2020 ). This pedagogy has extended both the breadth and depth of research from western countries (e.g., Hanauer, 2012 , 2015 ) to Asian countries, such as Japan and Korea in L2 writing contexts (e.g., Iida, 2012 , 2016 ; Kim and Kim, 2018 ; Kim and Park, 2020 ).…”

“…Meaningful literacy instruction has been incorporated in classroom contexts by using the genre of poetry (e.g., Furman et al, 2007 ; Hanauer, 2012 , 2015 ; Iida, 2012 , 2016 ; Kim and Park, 2020 ). This pedagogy has extended both the breadth and depth of research from western countries (e.g., Hanauer, 2012 , 2015 ) to Asian countries, such as Japan and Korea in L2 writing contexts (e.g., Iida, 2012 , 2016 ; Kim and Kim, 2018 ; Kim and Park, 2020 ). For example, Hanauer (2012) investigated poetry in second/foreign language classrooms in a United States university and found that learners were more willing to express themselves in the process of learning a foreign language and could have the experience of self-exploration and self-reflection and produce meaningful content.…”

“…As far as the university teachers are concerned, how to help students to go through their emerging adulthood remains an important task. Accordingly, in classroom contexts, some teachers have utilized the genre of poetry as a practice of meaningful literacy instruction ( Hanauer, 2012 , 2015 ; Iida, 2016 ; Kim and Park, 2020 ), for narratives can help student narrators to “utilize memory, imagination and personal experience to explore and understand the self” ( Hanauer, 2012 , p. 108). Another important reason is that narratives serve the purpose of ruminating self-related actions, such as self-disclosure, self-reflection, and self-critique by thematizing and displacing themselves in the past time and space ( Bamberg, 2010 ), while the individuality of experience offers opportunities of self-presentation, helps narrators capitalize on the potential for growth, and facilitates their personal growth ( Iida, 2016 ).…”

“…Recent studies have examined the functions of personal life stories or the lived experiences of different groups (e.g., Tavernier and Willoughby, 2012 ; Hass et al, 2014 ; Steenbakkers et al, 2016 ) and demonstrated the pedagogical implications of meaningful literacy instruction (e.g., Hanauer, 2012 , 2015 ; Iida, 2016 ; Kim and Park, 2020 ). However, lived experiences of emerging adults have been mostly researched in L1/L2 contexts, and personal life stories with emerging adults at university have been an under-researched area in Chinese EFL contexts, although it has been stressed that life stories play an important role for identity construction (e.g., Pasupathi et al, 2007 ; Thomsen et al, 2020 ).…”