“Diabetes Are a Very Bad Disease”: Exploring How Immigrant Youth Write for School

• In Event: Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: Urban, Immigrant Elementary Students’ Writing Practices

Abstract

Although immigrant youth make up more than 20 percent of school-age children in the U.S., we know little about how they manage school assignments and texts (Fu & Graff, 2009). We know even less about the schooling experiences and academic literacy practices of West African youth. In this paper I present Nasim—a 14-year-old from Guinea—as a case of an immigrant youth grappling with academic literacy, specifically with the particular registers and genres of school writing. In constructing the case, I drew on ethnographic observation data of Nasim as he participated in an after-school tutoring program; samples of his school writing; and interview transcripts—all collected from a two-year study of urban immigrant youth in an after-school learning environment.

Author

• Jie Yie Park, Clark University