A MICROETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY OF INTERTEXTUALITY AND POETICS IN WRITING PRACTICES IN A KINDERGARTEN CLASSROOM DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Huili Hong, M.A. ***** Graduate Program in Education The Ohio State University 2012 Dissertation Committee: Professor David Bloome, Advisor Professor Alan Hirvela Professor Laurie Katz Professor David Yaden Copyright by Huili Hong 2012 ABSTRACT This dissertation reports on a yearlong microethnographic study that investigated the social construction of intertextuality and poetics in young children’s classroom writing practices over time. The participants were nineteen five- to six-year-old kindergarteners from six different cultural and linguistic backgrounds (Indian, Venezuelan, Finnish, Russian, Iraqi, and Mexican), as well as their teacher, who attended an elementary school in the Midwestern United States. The study adopted a microethnographic approach to discourse analysis of the naturally occurring classroom activities and also analyzed interviews with the teacher, teacher-student interactions, the students’ artifacts, and the researchers’ fields notes and research journals. Examination of the young children’s social construction of intertextuality as a learning heuristic and of poetics in their writing practices yielded two main sets of findings. First, the young children’s writing was found to involve a set of complex intertextual practices. The jointly constructed intertextualities were found to be more complex than the processes of proposing, recognizing, acknowledging, and constituting social significance or consequences found in previous research on the social construction of intertextuality. Rather, the present research found that the social construction of intertextuality involved highly fluid processes with some reoccurring, suspended, and ii omitted phases. Students’ intertextuality construction was found to be multi-layered and intertwined with each other. The children’s continuous construction of organizational, thematic, and orientational intertextualities became powerful heuristics of their various kinds of learning. Second, a shared poetics was found to be constructed through the ELLs’ learning, experimenting, and experiences with poetic language uses and devices. The results showed that the shared poetics constituted part of their classroom culture and the poetics construction processes successfully engaged the children’s imagination and creativity in their writing practices. The findings underscore the potentials of engaging young children in intertextuality and poetics construction as well as the importance of play, pleasure, poetics, and aesthetics as part of children’s classroom literacy learning practices. iii Dedicated to HIM Also dedicated to Victoria (Ruiya) iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For the years in my life so far, my heart has always been full of gratitude. I could never have made it on my own. First and foremost, this dissertation would never be possible without the amazing support from the teacher and all the lovely children in the English language learner kindergarten classroom. Their participation in, contribution to, and inspiration for this dissertation research is deeply appreciated. I am deeply grateful to all my committee members: Dr. David Bloome, Dr. Alan Hirvela, Dr. Laurie Katz, and Dr. David Yaden. It is such a great honor to have you on my committee. I want to express my sincere thanks to each one of you for being part of my graduate school experience and dissertation research process. My utmost gratitude goes to my advisor, Dr. David Bloome. Words fail me to express my appreciation to you for your inspiring teaching and advising. I gratefully thank Dr. Alan Hirvela with whom I had the privilege to work in the first two years of my graduate study at The Ohio State University. Your work ethic definitely set up an excellent model for me to pursue in my graduate study and in the future. My warm and sincere thanks go to Dr. Laurie Katz for your advice on and crucial contribution to my dissertation research. I gratefully acknowledge Dr. David Yaden for kindly agreeing to be on my committee and guiding me through this study. v My special thanks go to Dr. Adelaide Parsons and Dr. Fred Janzow who helped me realize my dream of studying in the States. Many thanks also go to my friends: Melissa Wilson, Marlene Beierle, and Dr. Icy Lee. Melissa and Marlene, thank you for sharing so many research sources and your precious teaching experiences. Icy, thank you for your prayers for me and warm notes. I would like to thank everyone that I ever worked with in the Language, Education, and Society program and Foreign and Second Language Education program. I want to thank Dr. Shirley Brice Heath for your feedback on my dissertation and my future research. I want to thank Dr. Judith Green for your generous sharing of discourse analysis and ethnographic study resources. My biggest thanks go to my other two life-long teachers: my parents. Thank you, Dad, for the freedom you gave me to make my choices in my life. Thanks to you and Mom for your unfailing support and love for me and passing your passion for teaching on to me. To my brother, Weiwei, I thank you for being my best friend and supporting me unconditionally all the time. My deep appreciation also goes to Miao. Thank you for being with me through the ups and downs all these years. Last but most important, I thank HIM for HIS love for me, mercy on me, sharing of wisdom, knowledge, and courage with me and sending Victoria (Ruiya), my best friend and the most precious gift in my life. vi VITA 2002 ............................................................B.A. English Education, Hunan Normal University 2006 .............................................................M.A. English Language and Literature, Beijing Language and Culture University 2008..............................................................M.A. TESOL, Southeast Missouri State University 2008-present.................................................Ph. D. Candidate College of Education and Human Ecology The Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS Bloome, D., Katz, L., Hong, H., May-Woods, P., & Wilson, M. (in press). Methodologies in research on young children and literacy. To be published in J. Larson, N. Hall, & J. Marsh (Eds.), Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy (2nd Edition). SAGE. Hong, H. (in press). Reading goes hybrid: Case study of a second language reader. In Y. Ning & S. Liu (Eds.), Foreign Language Learning in Cross-cultural Contexts. Beijing: Higher Education Press. Hong, H. (in press). Time to speak out: Looking for the keys to successful Non-native English speaking professionals’ conference presentation. In Y. Ning & S. Liu (Eds.), In Foreign Language Learning in Cross-cultural Contexts. Beijing, Higher Education Press. Bloome, D., & Hong, H. (2012). Reading and intertextuality. In C. A. Chapelle (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. vii FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Education and Human Ecology Areas of Emphases: Literacy studies Foreign, Second, and Multilingual Language Education Cognate Areas: Discourse Analysis, Ethnographic Study, Qualitative Research viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ...............................................................................................................................ii Dedication ..........................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. v Vita and Publications.........................................................................................................vii Fields of Study..................................................................................................................viii Table of Contents................................................................................................................ix List of Tables ....................................................................................................................xii CHAPTERS: 1. Introduction .....................................................................................................................1 Statement of the problem ........................................................................................4 Research questions ..................................................................................................5 Purposes and significance of the study....................................................................7 Theoretical framework and assumptions.................................................................7 Limitations of the study...........................................................................................9 Definition of key terms .........................................................................................10 Outline of the dissertation .....................................................................................17 2. Literature Review...........................................................................................................18 Interrelatedness of children’s writing, talking, drawing and play..........................21 Use of Intertextuality in teaching, learning and research ELL students’ reading and writing.............................................................................................................45