Gail Gillon

Motivating Literacy Learners in Today's World Gail Gillon

Motivating Literacy Learners in Today's World provides insights into a broad spectrum of children's literacy learning. Motivation is the key theme and the authors show how this can be achieved through reading for pleasure; in writing activities at a number of levels; and through oral language development. They demonstrate how the active promotion of culturally appropriate pedagogical approaches support motivation and engagement in literacy learning. There is a valuable discussion of the issues surrounding motivation for students who struggle with decoding text as well as strategies for practice that can overcome barriers and improve learning. How creative and interactive processes of drama can be used to contextualise and animate text provide a fresh insight into innovative ways to motivate literacy learning. There are also challenges to the commonly held conceptualisation of being literate created by the use and potential of digital technologies. This concept of multiliteracies opens the way for thinking about contexts, modalities and ways of knowing in today's world.