Jordanians Families Home Literacy Practices and Their Associated Functions in Malaysia

Abstract

Jordanian postgraduate students and their families came to Malaysia to pursue their postgraduate studies. These families came with their own literacy practices based on their home country social and cultural aspects and they have to adjust and balance their home literacy practices to cope with the new cultural and social aspects in the host country while guarding their own cultural and social aspects. This study aims to explore Jordanian family home literacy practices types and the literacy functions associated with these practices. Twelve open-ended structured questions Interviews, 16 observations and field notes (12 during the interviews and four while sharing social events with the family) and photographs were used to collect the data from the family members over fourteen weeks. The interview questions were adopted from Alshaboul(2004) and adapted to fulfill the study objectives. The findings indicate that reading literacy practices are superior to the writing literacy practices as each main literacy practice has sub literacy practices that served sub literacy functions that eventually led to the main literacy function while the main literacy practice led directly to the main literacy function. The family most frequent and prevalent home literacy practices are social, religious, academic, educational, digital, daily living, geographical and numerical while the less frequent and prevalent home literacy functions are medical and financial. Moreover, the findings indicate that the home literacy practices are dynamic that occurred in multiple, integrated and simultaneous way that led to multiple, integrated and simultaneous literacy functions.