Emerging Partnerships: Current Research in Language and Literacy

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BERA Dialogues. Vol. 4, Emerging Partnerships : Current Research in Language and Literacy Wray, David Multilingual Matters 1853591106 9781853591105 9780585147017 English Children--Language. 1990 LB1139.L3E43 1990eb 401.9 Children--Language.

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Emerging Partnerships Current Research in Language and Literacy

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Other Books in the Series The Management of Change PAMELA LOMAX (ed.) Performance Indicators CAROL T. FITZ-GIBBON (ed.) Managing Staff Development in Schools PAMELA LOMAX (ed.) Other Books of Interest Child Language Disability: Implications in an Educational Setting KAY MOGFORD and JANE SADLER (eds) Citizens of This Country: The Asian-British MARY STOPES-ROE and RAYMOND COCHRANE Community Languages: A Handbook BARBARA M. HORVATH and PAUL VAUGHAN ESL: A Handbook for Teachers and Administrators in International Schools EDNA MURPHY (ed.) Every Child's Language (Open Univ Pack) Gender in Education EILEEN M. BYRNE (ed.) Language Policy Across the Curriculum DAVID CORSON The Open Door FINBARRE FITZPATRICK Oral Language Across the Curriculum DAVID CORSON Parents on Dyslexia S. van der STOEL (ed.) Story as Vehicle EDIE GARVIE Teaching and Learning English Worldwide J. BRITTON, R.E. SHAFER and K. WATSON (eds) TVEI COLIN McCABE (ed.) TVEI at the Change of Life D. HOPKINS (ed.) Please contact us for the latest book information: Multilingual Matters, Bank House, 8a Hill Road, Clevedon, Avon BS21 7HH, England

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BERA Dialogues 4 Series Editor: Pamela Lomax

Emerging Partnerships: Current Research in Language and Literacy Edited by David Wray MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD Clevedon • Philadelphia

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Emerging Partnerships: Current Research in Language and Literacy (BERA Dialogues: 4) 1. Children. Language Skills. Development. I. Wray, David 1950-. II. Series. 401.9 ISBN 1-85359-110-6 ISBN 1-85359-109-2 (pbk) Multilingual Matters Ltd Bank House, 8a Hill Road, & Clevedon, Avon BS21 7HH, England

1900 Frost Road, Suite 101 Bristol, PA 19007 USA

Copyright © 1990 David Wray and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Typeset by Proteus Micro-Applications, Worle. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Dotesios Printers Ltd.

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Contents Notes on Contributors

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Introduction David Wray

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1 Literacy Beyond School Roz Ivanic * And Mary Hamilton

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2 Junior Pupils' Achievement in Writing Science Bridie Raban

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3 Teachers' Perceptions of Children's Language Martin Hughes and Jacqui Cousins

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4 Parental Involvement in Preschool Literacy Development Peter Hannon

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5 Young Children as Letter Writers: A First Report Anne Robinson, Nigel Hall and Leslie Crawford

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6 Children's Oral Language: A Comparison of Two Classroom Organisational Systems George Fourlas and David Wray

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7 How Characters Become Persons: The Development of Characterisation in Children's Writing Richard Fox

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8 Reading Like a Writer: Children's Composing and Comprehending of Text 100 Roger Beard 9 Word Processors and Children's Writing: Evaluating the Research Evidence Frank Potter

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Notes on Contributors Roger Beard lectures in the School of Education at the University of Leeds. Jacqui Cousins works in the School of Education at Oxford Polytechnic. Leslie Crawford is a faculty member at Moorhead State University, Minnesota, USA. George Fourlas is a teacher and researcher currently involved in educational research in Greece. Richard Fox lectures in primary education at the University of Exeter. Nigel Hall is a lecturer in education at Manchester Polytechnic. Mary Hamilton works in the Department of Educational Research at the University of Lancaster. Peter Hannon lectures and researches in education at the University of Sheffield. Martin Hughes is a lecturer in education at the University of Exeter. Roz Ivanic * works in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Lancaster. Frank Potter lectures in education at Edge Hill College of Higher Education, Ormskirk. Bridie Raban is Reader in education at the University of Reading. Anne Robinson lectures in education at Manchester Polytechnic. David Wray is a lecturer in primary education at the University of Exeter.

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Introduction David Wray The development of language and literacy has been one of the most widely researched fields in education. This research has, however, not been consistently spread over the range of areas encompassed by the title 'language and literacy'. Because of the recognition that its role in the education process is crucial, the teaching of reading has traditionally received a great deal of attention from researchers, who have studied the nature of the reading process and the efficacy of particular teaching decisions. Reading has always had a very high profile with current debates (Wray, 1989), centred around approaches to teaching, gaining national press coverage. More recently other aspects of language and literacy have begun to be more intensively researched and discussed. The nature of the writing process and its teaching have come under a great deal of scrutiny, with influence from the seminal work of Graves (1983) in the USA and the National Writing Project in the United Kingdom. Research interest in the 'second R' has mushroomed over the past five years, a situation evidenced by the fact that in this collection, with contributors given a free choice of topic, four out of the nine papers are focused upon aspects of writing. There are also signs that research interest in spoken language, or 'oracy', has begun to increase anew. This area received some attention in the early 1970s, and was given a high profile in the Bullock report (DES, 1975), yet has retained the feeling of 'more work to be done'. The inclusion of speaking and listening as an attainment target in the National Curriculum (DES, 1989) seems to have sparked off further, welcome, interest (see Maclure et al.,1988 and Corson, 1988). Two of the papers in this collection have oral language as their focus. Other areas of burgeoning interest have been the use of new technology as a tool for developing language and literacy (Ewing, 1985; Wray, 1986), and the effectiveness of in-service education for teachers. This latter interest area has become associated with the growing popularity of the

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action research model of development (Lomax, 1989). It is significant that three of the research projects reported in this volume took action research as their paradigm. The majority of the papers included in this collection were presented at a BERA regional seminar held at Exeter University in May, 1989. The brief to contributors was, as mentioned above, wide. They were simply asked to report on on-going or recently completed research in the field. The task of an editor and introduction writer of a volume such as this is to pick out communalities in what are, at first sight, very diverse contributions. This task has been achieved, fortuitously, with the assistance of insights gained from the first paper in the volume. Roz Ivanic and Mary Hamilton discuss their research on literacy beyond school in terms of the development of new partnerships. The idea of partnership can be seen as an underlying theme to all the papers in this book, and, indeed, to a great deal of current educational research both in the language and literacy field and others. Perhaps the most important new partnership which can be discerned in several of these papers is that referred to by Ivanic & Hamilton as a partnership 'between researchers and researched'. Among other things in their paper they demonstrate how the traditional arrogance of researchers, studying their subjects from the outside as a scientist studies insects through a microscope, can be overcome, with great benefit, by involving researchees in the research. This involvement is also demonstrated in Bridie Raban's paper as she discusses the way she was able to get teachers to participate in action research concerning their own practice. Martin Hughes and Jacqui Cousins, likewise, having identified a difficulty, suggest that the approach to this should be through the involvement of teachers in research into their own practice. This researcher/researched partnership implies a new relationship between theory, practice and research, with significant implications for the development of educational research in the future. Another new partnership, which has received considerable research attention, particularly in the literacy field, is that between schools and communities. Peter Hannon, a prominent figure in this area, here discusses the possibilities in the greater involvement of parents in the literacy development of their pre-school children. This collaboration, in a different sense, also forms the rationale underlying the paper by Anne Robinson, Nigel Hall & Leslie Crawford. They describe how children were enabled to engage in written dialogue with collaborators outside the school. Here again, partnership between teachers and researchers is exemplified. Collaboration is also the focus of the work of George Fourlas and David

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Wray, who discuss the language benefits derived from encouraging children to collaborate with each other. A developing partnership which has had a great deal of influence has been between the various processes which make up 'language'. It is now common to read of research into 'literacy' rather than into reading and writing as separate processes. It has become apparent that the processes have much more in common than was previously thought, and that a two-way influence operates. The nature of this influence is partially explained by Richard Fox as he discusses the way children develop in their portrayal of characters in their writing and the influence upon that development of reading experience. Roger Beard also discusses links between composing and comprehending and it is clear that this is an area with rich research potential. The final partnership discussed is between new technology and the process of literacy. Frank Potter reviews research into the impact of word-processors upon writing development, and makes several suggestions which have practical implications. The partnerships mentioned here are, of course, in no sense fully worked out. There is a great deal to be done in nurturing and developing these partnerships, particularly in bringing practitioners into the research community. As a major task for educational research in the 1990s this seems a worthwhile target, and it is hoped that the papers in this volume may move us just a little way further towards it. References CORSON, D. 1988, Oral Language across the Curriculum.Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE 1975, A Language for Life.London: HMSO. 1989, English for Ages 5 to 16.London: HMSO. EWING, J. 1985, Reading and the New Technologies.London: Heinemann Educational. GRAVES. D. 1983, Writing: Teachers and Children at Work.Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann. LOMAX, P. (ed.) 1989, The Management of Change.Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. MACLURE, M., PHILLIPS, T. and WILKINSON, A. 1988, Oracy Matters.Milton Keynes: Open University Press. WRAY, D. 1986, Too much software? An update on computer-assisted learning in language and reading. Reading 20 (2), 12128. 1989, Reading: The new debate. Reading 23 (1), 2-8.

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1 Literacy beyond school Roz Ivanic * and Mary Hamilton We advocate an approach to literacy that moves beyond generalities to a consideration of the organisation and use of literacy in different social contexts.(Scribner & Cole, 1981) . . . we would probably more appropriately refer to 'literacies' than to any single 'literacy'.(Street, 1984) Introduction In this paper we want to make links with the recent work being carried out in literacy learning among children in the classroom. Our own work is mainly with adults and we contribute to a book such as this feeling that others will see us as outsiders to school-based literacy research. However, we ourselves feel strongly that we are not outsiders, that we share an important framework and have common concerns with those who focus on children's learning. We see this paper as part of a dialogue in which those working with children and those of us working with adult literacy learners and users can identify common themesa dialogue started at the conference on Literacy Research in the UK: Adult and School Perspectives in Brighton in June, 1987 (see McCaffery & Street, 1988). This paper puts adult learners and users of literacy at the centre of the picture. This contrasts with school-based literacy research where they are on the edgeacknowledged but only dimly seen figures, as parents, grandparents, friends, teachers, shop-keepers, TV celebrities and all the other members of the adult world that surround and impinge upon children as they grow up. What these adults do with literacy and their attitudes to it are powerful parts of children's environment and will shape the ways that children approach learning to read and write. For this reason alone it would be worth exploring the adult world of literacy in some detail.

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Looking at literacy beyond school leads us to a view of literacy which links strongly to current views of literacy in schools: that literacy is not a single straight line of developing skills, but is shaped by context and purpose; that the child's experiences at home affect their learning at school. Working with adults gives us new angles on these issues, which we will map out in this paper. We we start by describing briefly the way in which research on literacy beyond school is being conducted in Lancaster and elsewhere. Then we will outline in more detail the view of literacy which guides our work, and present a framework for thinking about literacy across different age groups and in different social contexts. To illustrate this we will refer to a range of researchpast, present and projectedwhich is aimed at mapping literacy beyond school. We will end by suggesting ways in which this might be relevant to learning literacy in schools. Doing Research Beyond School We have said that one of our interests is to develop a dialogue and partnership between those researching literacy with adults and those working with children's emerging literacy. We are also interested in two other partnerships in building our understandings of literacy: the partnership between the 'researcher' and the 'researched'; and that between different academic disciplines or theoretical approaches. We will explain here briefly how our concern with these partnerships shapes our research into literacy. Firstly, the partnership between 'researcher' and 'researched'. Our interest in literacy beyond school stems from our work in adult basic education. Working with adults has given us the chance to explore with them their uses for literacy, their perceptions of reading and writing, how they learn, what sorts of reading and writing they value and why. We began to realise that the types of exploration which take place every day in adult basic education classes are a form of research and should be recognised as such. This led a group of us from Bradford, Lancaster and London in 1985 to found RaPAL; the Research and Practice in Adult Literacy group. RaPAL shares the same underlying principles as 'teacher led research' (see Rudduck & Hopkins, 1985): the people who are going to be affected by research should be in control of it. However, RaPAL takes the additional step of suggesting 'learner-led research' where learners take a central role in as many aspects of research as possible; setting research

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goals, deciding on research methods, participating as researchers, disseminating and getting credit for the outcomes of research. This research model is particularly appropriate for our work since adults are often aware of and able to articulate their experience of literacy and can give us new insights into their learning. We believe that the learners' experience must be at the centre not only of learning but also of research. This means that learners' perceptions, feelings, motives, values are not overridden by tests, statistics and experts' theories about what reading and writing are about. Research is likely to be richer, rather than 'contaminated' by such first-hand perspectives. RaPAL challenges the traditional, linear relationship between theory, research and practice, in which experts have theories, researchers test them, and the findings are implemented by practitioners. The alternative we are promoting is represented by the inner triangle in Figure 1.1. In this representation, practice (that is, learning and teaching) is as much the source of theory and research as it is the beneficiary. All participants in the process have equal rights and responsibilities for learning, teaching, researching and theorising. RaPAL treats research not as an activity reserved for highly trained specialists, but as a form of learning which should be available to everyone. This is the same idea as is represented in the Talk Workshop book title: 'Becoming Our Own Experts' (Talk Workshop Group, 1982). These themes are discussed in more detail in Barton & Murphy 1989; Barton, Hamilton & Ivanic * (forthcoming).

Figure 1.1 Partnerships in the study of literacy (source: Ivanic & Barton, 1988).

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While we are committed to blurring the distinction between research and practice in RaPAL, we are also trying to dissolve the boundaries between academic disciplines. Our commitment to this third partnership, between complementary theoretical approaches, is the central idea behind the Literacy Research Group at Lancaster. We draw on approaches that emphasise the relationship of literacy to other means of communication and access to information in our society. Of particular importance are enthnographic approaches, which examine in detail the many different contexts in which literacy occurs. Some of the key disciplines from which we draw are shown round the circle in Figure 1.1. Work within education and language includes that of Wells (1985), Heath (1983), Taylor & Dorsey-Gaines (1988), which explores the effects of home and community environment on children's orientation to school and points out the inter-connection between the uses of spoken and written communication. Contributions from anthropologists such as Street (1984) and historians (such as Graff, 1979) have a special importance. Examining the practices of literacy in settings far removed from our own in space and time points up differences that make us question and stop taking for granted the culture we know. Looking at contexts where literacy exists without compulsory schooling helps to disentangle the two. Many people did learn to read and write before the advent of compulsory schooling (Howard, 1988; Cook-Gumperz, 1986) and evidence about how they learned and for what purposes is illuminating. Scribner & Cole (1981) have spent some years trying to 'unpack' literacy in this way using the discipline of psychology as a starting point, but also using comparisons between different cultures to clarify the issues. They carried out an important study with the Vai people of Liberia. The Vai use three different writing systems for different purposes in their society: Arabic literacy 'rote' learned in the context of religious practices; English learned in formal schooling; and Vai script learned informally in the home and community and used for writing personal letters. Scribner & Cole found that each of these 'literacies' was learned and used in a different way and shaped people's thinking and skills differently. Finally, sociologists such as Levine (1986) in Britain and Fingeret (1983) in the USA have begun to look at the patterning of literacy in adult life: how literacy is valued and used in the context of employment; how people use networks of support to carry out necessary activities within households and neighbourhoods.

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All these strands have fed into our own thinking and work and helped us develop the view of literacy which underpins our research into the various aspects of literacy beyond school. A View of Literacy We see literacy in terms of practices that vary according to context and purpose: these practices are local to the activities and communities with which people are involved. There are many overlapping literaciespeople read and write different things in different ways according to their roles in different social contexts. This view of literacy moves us away from a traditional model of literacy as a single hierarchy of skills. Here are some of the elements of this view of literacy. Firstly, reading and writing in everyday life are always part of some broader activity: they always have a purpose. Reading, writing, talk, thought and action are inextricably interrelated in everyday 'literacy events'. Literacy events frequently involve more than one person at a time and they are often collaborative, allowing children to learn through apprenticeship to adults (Heath, 1983; Waterland, 1985; Young & Tyre, 1983). Secondly, literacy (using the written word) is often one choice available to people among a range of alternatives for communicating, expressing ideas and finding out information. People may have strong preferences for particular and different ways of achieving the same end. For example, one parent may prefer to meet a teacher face-to-face, whereas another will choose to write a note to communicate the same information concerning their child. Thirdly, development cannot be simply matched to age: a person does not have to finish learning one aspect of literacy before beginning another. Everything develops together; some apparently very difficult things very early (e.g. recognising subtle differences between styles of writing and talk), some apparently simple things later (e.g. how to spell the word 'before'). Fourthly, since we view learning and using literacy as being local to a person's current activities and community involvements it follows that these will change substantially with age across the whole lifespan. The role that literacy plays in the life of a tenyear-old may bear little relationship to

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its role for that person 40 years later. We develop new purposes for reading and writing at different stages in our lives. From this perspective we see that school is just one context for learning and using literacya very specialised and powerful onebut still only one small part of many peoples' purposes and priorities in their everyday life. What is taught in school is not the only sort of reading and writing that matters to people. It is a crucial context for literacy, of course, because it is one place where children concentrate consciously on acquiring literacy, and school uses of literacy are the ones which lead to qualifications and access to higher education and good jobs. But it is important to recognise how restricted it is in relation to a person's whole life. Figure 1.2 is an attempt to map a lifespan view of literacy and to indicate broadly the domains in which we live our lives. Down the left hand side of the diagram is an average lifespan from birth to the age of 80. (Many people live well beyond 80, of course.) Along the top of the diagram are five broad divisions of our lives into domains which often contain quite different sorts of relationships and activities. For example, at home relationships are intimate; status is usually determined by age and gender; our time is spent on eating, relaxing, cleaning and household maintenance. By contrast, at work relationships might be quite formal and public; status is usually determined by the job we do; our time is spent on providing goods and services to others. We have found the distinction between 'community' and 'officialdom' a particularly useful one. Both these domains are outside people's homes, but 'community' activities are generated by people locally, whereas 'official' aspects of people's lives are imposed on them from elsewhere. Of course, the domains are not separate entities; they leak into each other. For example, our contact with officialdom is often through letters which we read at home; many people take their work home; medical care may be contained at home, or may involve contact with 'officialdom' in the form of the National Health Service; as consumers we interact with the commercial elements in our community. Recent educational policies have emphasised the importance of building bridges and maintaining links with home, community and employment. These overlaps and connections are represented in the diagram by dotted lines between the domains. We are not claiming that the five 'domains' on the diagram are comprehensive or even the most usefulthey will evolve as we carry out our research programme and discover what sorts of distinctions, if any, people themselves see between areas of their own lives. However, we do find that identifying domains as we have in Figure 1.2 provides a useful

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Figure 1.2 Literacy beyond school: Ages and domains framework or heuristic for starting to think about people's lives and the place of literacy in them. The diagram could act as a framework for the study of any aspect of social life. This in itself makes it important to the study of literacy: we believe that literacy should be thought of, not just as one aspect of social life, but as bound up in most other aspects of social life. The diagram also illustrates graphically how small a place compulsory schooling occupies in a person's whole life. The view of literacy we have described here, then, leads us to look at all the arenas in which people carry out their lives. In the next section we will refer briefly to other work which is exploring literacy outside of the school context and give an overview of the research we are involved in as part of the Literacy Research Group at Lancaster. Literacy before School By the time they arrive at school, most children know a lot about reading and writing. They almost certainly know what writing looks like:

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they see it at home, on the television and all around them. They may know something about the sound of written language from hearing it read aloud at home or on television. They have a fair idea of some of the purposes it serves. They probably know some strategies and activities associated with reading and writing, even though they are still bystanders to them. They know the value of literacy to the people around them and other social groups. Sometimes there's a conflict there: the people around them may treat the printed word differently from others. For example, they may see graffiti on the streets, but not at home, or vice versa; they may see some adults with status reading stories on television, but not in their home. If they want to do the things that can be done by reading and writing, they may try to work out for themselves how it's done. For example, a two-year-old wants to get stories out of books, so s/he 'reads' the pictures. If they want to be like the sorts of people they see reading and writing, they may try to copy them. For example, a two-year-old might see her brother writing; she wants to be like him, so she puts pencil to paper and makes marks which look like his. These pre-school experiences of literacy are beginning to be well documented. Some studies have focused on the child, documenting the emergence of literacy before s/he goes to school (see, for example, Wells, 1985; Tizard & Hughes, 1984; Hall, 1987; Teale & Sulzby, 1986). Others have taken a broader perspective, describing the whole social context in which the child participates, whether or not there are signs that s/he is actively acquiring literacy (see, for example, Heath, 1983). In our work we are not focusing directly on this period of time in a person's lifespan. Indirectly, however, we are hoping that we will contribute to the growing understanding of children's experience of literacy before school by finding out more about the role of literacy in the lives of the adults who surround them. Literacy Outside of School In this research we put peoples' own local view of literacy at the centre instead of the school's view, in order eventually to understand both better. A recent study, based on data from the National Child Development Study (Hamilton, 1987), showed that 10% of those questioned (a representative sample of 23-year-olds) reported having some difficulties with reading or writing since leaving school. This was a self-assessment and

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proved to give a different picture from what school records reveal. The study was illuminating about the past experience of this group as compared with the rest of the cohort, and other aspects of adult life that relate to having basic skills difficulties. It was valuable in giving a window onto the literacy needs of people who are normally 'invisible' in that they do not participate in adult education or become identified by social or employment agencies. However, in other ways the very fact that this information came from a large scale survey left us with important questions unanswered: when asked what their practical difficulties with reading and writing were, people gave a huge variety of replies but little detail which could help us understand how such difficulties fit into the everyday life of individuals and how significant they are for different spheres of activity. Our current project, Literacy In the Community (LIC) is therefore building a picture of contemporary literacy using very different methods which will enable us to explore in detail the everyday practices of individuals in one locality. LIC builds on historical data collected in the Lancaster area (Barton, 1988) and will look at changes and continuities in experience and attitudes toward literacy across generations. We are using interviews with individuals, detailed case studies of households going about their everyday lives using observation and diary keeping, and collecting contextual information about the visual environment and access points to literacy. We are looking at the values people place on written communication, networks of support available, the different literacy roles people play in households and community and how they gain access to needed information. Related to this, we are just beginning a project which looks more narrowly at peoples' uses of literacy in searching and applying for jobs and at the particular barriers experienced in these areas by those who are long term unemployed. We expect this work will build on Levine's (1986) work in Nottingham which looked at the 'gatekeeping' role of literacy in the process of getting employment. In Levine's study, application procedures frequently bore no relation to the literacy demands of the jobs themselves but acted as hurdles which eliminated those with literacy problems. There were differences between the formal procedures of large employers and the more informal set-up common among small-scale employers where those with literacy difficulties were concentrated. Our project will be a chance to focus on the ways in which people go about finding information about employment opportunities, how literacy is embedded in this and how people view the government information services which typify the formal, literacy-defined route to job seeking.

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Literacy in Adult Education Since 1982 there has been growing interest in research in adult basic education. Ten projects are summarised in Barton & Murphy (1989). Others have been reported in Hamilton & Barton (1985), Baynham & Ivanic * (1985) and McCaffery & Street (1988). All these are producing insights about literacy and learning which are enriched by including adults' own perspectives on their learning. Here we will mention four recent and current projects to provide a glimpse of the range of work in the field and illustrate some of the key issues arising from it. In one study (Ivanic, 1988), 10 adult learners explained their rationale for punctuating their writing as they did. The study showed that the learners were following teachers' advice assiduously, trying to put full stops in long pauses, commas in short pauses, and begin a new sentence at the beginning of a new idea. Unfortunately this time-honoured advice did not always pay off. 'Listening for the pauses' is reasonably reliable for judging where to put a comma, but only 50% reliable for judging where to put a full stop. 'Putting a full stop at the end of a complete idea' is reliable 80% of the time, but this criterion is misleading in 20% of cases. When these cases were examined, it was clear that the two 'sentences' involved were in fact on the same topic. Two factors seemed to lead to successful punctuation: being able to articulate how the choice of sentence structure dictated choice of punctuation, and/or reading a lot. Other implications of this research are that learners do have good reasons for what they do, even when it doesn't follow the conventions; teachers' rules-of-thumb can sometimes be misleading; and the sorts of discussion which produce information of this sort are themselves valuable opportunities for learning. In another project the Leicestershire Student Centred Dyslexia Study Group is collecting evidence from adults who have been identified as dyslexic. They are documenting the range of difficulties people have experienced, what effect the label 'dyslexic' has, what helps and hinders their progress. The special feature of this project is that it is largely directed by adult students rather than researchers. They believe that people can describe and define their difficulties better when approached by others with similar difficulties. The conclusions that are emerging cannot be quantified like the results of psychological tests, but testify to the variety and complexity of individual experience. The major implications for schools are that teachers should know as much as possible about how it feels to have difficulties with reading and writing, they should never jump to conclusions about children who can't read and write, and they should recognise that each case will be unique (Herrington, 1989).

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The ILEA Afro-Caribbean Language and Literacy project has conducted a large number of studies of adults acquiring literacy. One of these is about the experience of community publishing (see Schwab & Stone, 1987). This study documents the decisions Afro-Caribbean first-time writers made about the way in which they wanted their language written down. It raises key issues about the nature of spoken and written language, the notion of standardisation, and the conflict of identity which arises when people's voices are represented in writing. Children who are initiated into literacy from an early age may not be able to identify this conflict, although it may interfere with their learning. When people who have grown up unfamiliar with written language encounter it as adults, they are acutely aware of the way in which it depersonalises them. Another current project at Lancaster is investigating what is involved in acquiring 'school literacy' later in life. More and more adults are returning to study via adult basic education, or courses with titles such as 'Access', 'Fresh Horizon' or 'Open College'. They have to find out the conventions of academic writing in a much shorter time and much more consciously than children do. We are recording this process through case studies and interviews, documenting what exactly they identify as important about academic writing in a variety of disciplines, how they find it out, how these demands compare with their previous and concurrent literacy practices, and how they are affected by the experience. Again, many adults characterise this experience as a conflict of identity, in which they are being foced to clothe their ideas in what they see as other people's language. Children are often socialised into these 'ways with words' without recognising the costs along with the benefits. Adults are able, and indeed often need, to examine this conflict critically, and thereby provide insights which are of value to all educators. Implications for Learning Literacy in School As adult educators and researchers we are trying to start from the learner's experience, elicit it, understand it, and use it in the curriculum. We believe much of this information and the approach we use could be of use to primary and secondary school educators too. Current theory exhorts teachers to 'start where the child is', but in fact teachers know very little about their pupils' lives beyond the school gates. Our impression is that our work complements current theories about what constitutes good practice in mainstream education. We will list here

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some of the links we see between the issues emerging from our studies of literacy beyond school and the development of literacy within school. In the curriculum 1. We are finding that beyond school literacy is only one of many forms of communication (alongside physical communication, spoken language, number, music, film, graphics, drama). In fact adults often report that in many practical ways they can conduct their lives satisfactorily without literacy. It is often only the stigma attached to illiteracy in this society which leads them to want to learn to read and write. We need to examine why literacy has traditionally monopolised the education process. 2. We are finding that literacy practices beyond school are extremely varied and many of them are quite different from those in school. We need to recognise that the school domain is very 'far from home' for many children, and participating in school literacy may well constitute a conflict of identity for them. We need to ensure continuity between what the children see their parents do and literacy in school. In addition, if teachers know what children might need literacy for in their out-of-school activities and in their lives after leaving school, they can prepare them for these, for example by working critically on consumer literacy. 3. We are finding that people learn about literacy and develop their reading and writing informally in their everyday lives. They draw on their knowledge of how to relate to and communicate with people in other ways, as they acquire literacy in context. This sort of learning does not follow any step-by step pattern: people learn about uses, strategies and values simultaneously and haphazardly. We need to see school as just one context for learning among others, and look for dissonances and reinforcements between ways of learning in these different contexts. 4. Research on literacy beyond school shows over and over again that in everyday life people never read or write without a purpose. This means that reading and writing are always located in a social context. This supports the current emphasis on reading and writing for real purposes in school. It suggests that we need to be very wary of curriculum materials and activities which involve reading and writing for their own sake. We need to question the assumption that you need to do decontextualised exercises in order to learn skills you will later use.

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5. We are finding that literacy beyond school involves a lot of collaboration. There are often several people involved in the sorts of everyday activities which require reading and writing; different people often play different roles. People use networks of support for more unusual literacy demands. This finding encourages those who are attempting to develop collaborative reading and writing in the classroom. 6. Adult literacy students, with their heightened awareness and articulateness, are providing rich insights into what's involved in learning to read and write. Teachers might find it useful to take on board these messages from people who have been through the school system and failed in order to help them understand how children learn. 7. Finding out about literacy beyond school is fascinating, and crucial if children are to see the point of learning to read and write. Children can be their own ethnographers of literacydocumenting why, when, where and how their parents, grandparents, neighbours or role-models read and write. In diagnosis and assessment 8. Adults' assessment of their own literacy is defined by their current needs and aspirations in varying roles and contexts, not by independent, objective measures. This suggests that we should be wary of standardised tests of literacy in school, and rely more on people's self-assessment. 9. Everyday literacy always has a purpose (see 4 above). We should therefore be aware that tests which isolate literacy from context, and even those which merely simulate a context, are probably misrepresenting learners' abilities or needs. 10. By discussing reading and writing with adults we have been convinced that people always have a rationale for what they do. Even misleading strategies have reasons. People are a good source of information about their own learningand this is likely to include children as well as adults. 11. If teachers value literacy practices outside the educational domain, they will better understand children who reject school literacy, and be less likely to treat them as failures. In home-school liaison 12. Relations with parents should be a two-way exchange, not just

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initiating parents into school practices and expectations. Home-school liaison work can include collecting information about community practices to inform what happens in the classroom. If teachers know what the children are familiar with at home, they can build bridges from these practices to the school and change the school practices if necessary (see Peter Hannon's contribution, this volume, Chapter 4). 13. People tend to feel inferior and excluded when their own literacy practices are very different from the school's. Schools should value and legitimate the literacy practices of their communities by integrating them into their classrooms. Conclusion Literacy development is lifelong. We scan, shun, love, copy, list, ponder the written word from the cradle to the grave and in many corners of our lives. School is only one of those corners and occupies only a very short span of time. From the age of two onwards we extend the intricate and inseparable web of uses, processes, values, strategies, resources, feelings for literacy, fuelled by each new life purpose we embark on. We need to learn more for each new move in our lives. Sometimes we need teachers for it, sometimes we can work it out for ourselves. The terms 'continuing education', 'lifelong education' contain the essence of this view. We have tried to indicate here the scope of research on literacy beyond school and the relevance of it to mainstream educators. We have drawn attention to the fact that school is a very restricted and specialised domain which has a disproportionate prestige. We would like to end with Heath's warning about the importance and urgency of moving beyond a school-bound view of literacy: Unless the boundaries between classrooms and communities can be broken and the flow of cultural patterns between them encouraged the schools will continue to legitimate and reproduce communities who control and limit the potential progress of other communities and who themselves remain untouched by other values and ways of life. (Heath, 1983)

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References to Chapter 1 BARTON, D. 1988, Exploring the historical basis of contemporary literacy. Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition 10(3), 70-76. BARTON, D., HAMILTON, M. and IVANIC, R. forthcoming, Linking Research and Practice in ALPHA90.Quebec: Ministry of Education. BARTON, D. and MURPHY, S. 1989, Linking research and practice: Ten examples of adult literacy research in Britain. Paper given at European Community conference, Writing in Adult Basic Education, Angers, France, April 23-27, 1989. BAYNHAM, M. and IVANIC, R. (eds) 1985, Research and Practice in Adult Literacy.Occasional Paper 1, ILEA Language and Literacy Unit. COOK-GUMPERZ. J. 1986, The Social Construction of Literacy.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. FINGERET, A. 1983, Social networks: Independence and adult illiterates. Adult Education Quarterly 33(3), 133-46. GRAFF, H. 1979, The Literacy Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth Century City.New York: Academic Press. HALL, N. 1987, The Emergence of Literacy.London: Hodder & Stoughton. HAMILTON, M. 1987, Literacy, Numeracy and Adults.London: Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Unit. HAMILTON, M. and BARTON, D. (eds) 1985, Research and Practice in Adult Literacy.Association for Recurrent Education, University of Nottingham. HEATH, S. 1983, Ways with Words.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. HERRINGTON, M. 1989, The Leicestershire dyslexic study group: A student-centred research group. RaPAL Bulletin 8. HOWARD, U. 1988, I am writing to tell my family and the world. In G. LOBLEY (ed.) Work in Progress.Occasional Paper No. 4, ILEA Language and Literacy Unit. IVANIC *, R. 1988, Linguistics and the Logic of Non-Standard Punctuation.Lancaster Papers in Linguistics No. 51, University of Lancaster. IVANIC, R. and BARTON, D. 1988, The role of language study in adult literacy research and practice. In J. McCAFFERY and B. STREET (eds) Literacy Research in the UK: Adult and School Perspectives.Lancaster: RaPAL Publications. LEVINE, K. 1986, The Social Context of Literacy.London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. McCAFFERY, J. and STREET, B. (eds) 1988, Literacy Research in the UK: Adult and School Perspectives.Lancaster: RaPAL Publications. RUDDUCK, J. and HOPKINS, D. (eds) 1985, Research as a Basis for Teaching: Readings from the Work of Lawrence Stenhouse.London and Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. SCHWAB, I. and STONE, J. 1987, Language, Writing and Publishing: Work with Afro-Caribbean Students.London: ILEA Learning Materials Service. SCRIBNER, S. and COLE, M. 1981, The Psychology of Literacy.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. STREET, B. 1984, Literacy in Theory and Practice.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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TALK WORKSHOP GROUP 1982, Becoming Our Own Experts.London: ILEA English Centre. TAYLOR, D. 1983, Family Literacy.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. TAYLOR, D. and DORSEY-GAINES, C. 1988, Growing Up Literate.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. TEALE, W. and SULZBY, E. 1986, Emergent Literacy: Writing and Reading.Norwood, NJ: Ablex. TIZARD, B. and HUGHES, M. 1984, Young Children Learning.London: Fontana. WATERLAND, L. 1985, Read With Me.Stroud: Thimble Press. WELLS, G. 1985, Pre-School literacy related activities and success in school. In D. OLSON, N. TORRANCE, & A. HILDYARD (eds) Literacy, Language and Learning.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. YOUNG, P. and TYRE, C. 1983, Dyslexia or Illiteracy? Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

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2 Junior pupils' achievement in writing science Bridie Raban Up until recently, education in England and Wales has been characterised by decentralisation of authority, teacher autonomy and a lack of any national curriculum (Watson, 1979). In particular, teacher autonomy has complicated, and sometimes acted against, the necessary process of dissemination of ideas and the take-up of initiatives into busy classrooms. Schools and teachers have been free to make their own curriculum decisions and could legitimately ignore the findings of research and curriculum development, thereby easily resisting the suggestions and implications of in-service courses. Indeed, up until recently teachers were under no obligation to attend such courses after initial training had been completed. Nearly two decades ago Whitfield (1970/71) identified that by neglecting curriculum reform in this way difficulties would be inevitable with respect to establishing priorities in education. These difficulties have included frustrations and misunderstandings between agents of change, leading to piecemeal and incoherent innovation. Those in Universities and other institutions of higher education know this experience only too well. For instance, while a more holistic approach to language and literacy development has long pervaded most initial training courses, new teachers in their first jobs have been more highly influenced by alternative views they find in schools in terms of resources, attitudes and assessment procedures. This has systematically decelerated the pace of change and created uneven curriculum reform across the country as a whole. Watson (1979) has argued, therefore, that perhaps it matters less whether an educational system is centralised or decentralised as whether there are generally accepted goals and guidelines. More recently, in its efforts to establish such general acceptance,

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government has published goals and guidelines for consideration (DES, 1985). This white paper included in its aims for education; to help pupils acquire understanding, knowledge and skills relevant to adult life and employment in a fast changing world, to help pupils use language and number effectively. General statements like these, and there are many more, are hardly likely to be challenged. However, what counts as 'relevant' and 'effective' can be individually interpreted in a decentralised curriculum. When words like these become translated into mandatory statutes and become binding on all teachers, those of us concerned with pupils' education naturally become more anxious with respect to the detail of the legal obligations and educational implications. However, the arrival of a National Curriculum during 1988/89 brings England and Wales into line with most other countries of the world. In favour of a national curriculum, Halls (1985), Watson (1988) and others have argued that such centralisation and standardisation of the curriculum ultimately leads to greater equality of opportunity for all pupils and for this reason alone it is to be welcomed. Nevertheless, the indecent haste of this major reform in England and Wales (GB, 1988) may act against the advantages which have been noted in other countries (Watson, 1985). Government has been keen to get professional consensus concerning the aims of each subject in the curriculum. Reports have been published for English (DES, 1984; DES, 1986), although the first of these reports was referred to in the subsequent document as a most controversial publication. More recently, the Kingman Report (DES, 1988) established a model for English language teaching and provided the reference points for the Cox committee which reported on English 5-11 (DES/WO, 1988) and English 5-16 (DES/WO, 1989). Consultation with the profession took place throughout these stages and the outcome of the first stage of this process is reported in a preliminary consultation document (NCC, 1989) which, after a further period of consultation is the basis for statutory orders with respect to the English curriculum for Key Stage 1. These documents have been prepared in a climate of government pronouncements that pupils in schools should be taught grammar, taught to speak correctly, along with requirements to have pupils learn spelling and handwriting, as well as experiencing frequent assessment. Such pressure in some English curriculum documents to see concepts of language and literacy learning reduced in these ways and such displays of ignorance concerning the complexity of the relationships between language and

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identity and the proper focus of literacy was met with vociferous and voluminous presentation of evidence. Indeed, the Kingman committee rejected the explicit teaching of grammar and stressed the salience of audience, context and purposeboth in language learning and procedures for assessment. Time has shown that the weight of evidence has been successful in modifying many of the extreme positions taken up by ill-informed administrators. The Statutory Orders, now in place for Key Stage 1, legislate for five to seven-year-olds who will follow the National Curriculum from September 1989 and give us a first taste of curriculum definition which nevertheless is in danger of being misconstrued in linear terms. Language learning needs to be seen as recursive and this is stressed in the working party's report on English 5-11 (DES/WO, 1988, para 7.5). This implies that through active use language is extended, enriched, restructured and enhanced. This progression is based on what we call development. As pupils experience language through social and intellectual interactions they become more able to marshal their linguistic resources towards increasing levels of sophistication. Assessment of pupils' progress will be based on keeping track of these kinds of achievements and last of all checking these against prescribed Levels of Attainment. There are strong cross curricular implications in the National Curriculum documents concerned with English which give emphasis to the notion that both spoken and written language are developed through appropriate uses. The implications of the Kingman committee have not been ignored and the notion of purpose for language activities has been absorbed by both the Programmes of Study for English and for Science and in other curriculum documents. Indeed one of the two Profile Components in the Science curriculum, Exploration of Science carrying 45% weighting at Key Stage 2, addresses specific aspects of communicating science both orally and in writing. This directive needs to be seen in conjunction with others. For instance, Programmes of Study for Writing at Key Stage 2 (DES/WO, 1989) state the need for 'children to begin to develop the idea of shaping and structuring their written work as they write on a range of subjects . . . ', 'By this stage, pupils will be using writing to learn and to record their experiences in a wide range of classroom activities. They should undertake chronological writing: e.g. reports of work carried out in science . . . ' (para 17.41 ii). From these messages, threaded throughout the available National Curriculum documents, it is possible to see that primary teachers are being supported in their own way of working. Best practice can be reinforced and

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made available for all pupils. Teachers are being directed to take a more determined and explicit approach towards their pupils' language development throughout their classroom activities. This will have implications for how they set up such activities in classrooms and how they respond to pupils' work. Exploring this more deliberate approach to classroom life will be rewarding and ultimately more supportive of pupils' endeavours. Examples of pupils' writing in science in a 4th year junior classroom provide a focus here for illustrating how teachers can begin to reconceptualise their changing role. Such reconceptualisations will be necessary as teachers come to embrace the implications of the National Curriculum. We must all ensure that the assessment aspects in particular serve the purpose of identifying the needs of pupils where they need further support. Assessment as information to guide further teaching should take a priority in the active review of pupils' work. Also, teachers need to be efficient in using pieces of work to fulfil a number of different requirements. For example, in the science writing reviewed here they can also make an assessment of pupils' use of English for a specific purpose and identify aspects of their knowledge of written language. These pieces of writing emerge from a lesson in which the teacher has put 10-11-year-old pupils into groups of six. They have worked together adding different substances to water. They have discussed 'dissolving' and they have predicted what might happen and why. They have hypothesised reasons, and discussed how to carry out the experiment and how to record their thoughts and observations both in writing and using a chart. In reviewing this work, the teacher needs to think about a number of questions. The answers to these questions should reflect what each pupil knows with respect not only to science, but also communicating science and written language in this context. From this analysis the teacher can then decide how to respond to each pupils' work. These questions were put to a group of teachers and their responses are reported below with respect to three of the pupils' written work. From the work of Timothy, Caroline and Edwin, it seems clear that their teacher had shown all the pupils in the class how to set up a chart to record their findings and discussed with them how to write down what they had done. It appears that they were also required to give some reasons for their observations. Unfortunately, all the pupils did the same experiment in each group which gave little purpose to the activity of writing up their findings. They may well have found more incentive for their writing if they had been provided with a real audience. Each group could have used different substances from each other group and then reported back or collated their findings in some way.

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However, given the apparent lack of purpose and audience for their writing, it is still interesting to see how much teachers can learn about these pupils' competencies by reviewing the outcomes of this kind of activity. The teachers who looked closely at these pieces of writing were clearly handicapped in not knowing the pupils and not having set up the activity. Nevertheless, they were able to discover valuable information. The three pupils' written reports of their science experiment are shown in Figures 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3. What do These Pupils Know about Science? Timothy While one teacher identified Timothy as having 'good scientific ideas, showing initiative and looking ahead' others were more precise in their comments. They noted his knowledge of solvents, his reference to the effect of heat on the reaction and his ability to predict, hypothesise, suggest and draw conclusions. They noted that Timothy showed himself aware of the importance of experimentation, that he was able to apply previous knowledge and appeared to have some understanding of the concepts involved. He was able to time accurately and knew about solids being particles. However, one teacher identified that the adult phraseology suggested that he may know more than he really did in actual fact. Caroline These teachers saw that Caroline was able to apply her knowledge of the real world and demonstrated an emerging understanding of the importance of variables. However, they remarked on her confused notion of dissolving which seemed to be equivalent to disappearing. Edwin The only comment made concerning Edwin's knowledge about science was his ability to observe. In reviewing all these pieces of work from the point of view of science, none of these pupils had any clear understanding of the notion of dissolving. Even with Timothy's account he identifies dissolving as equivalent to a change of state and he uses the term 'particle' as a generic term for 'lump'. While Caroline is able to draw on everyday experience, her experiment is not very carefully observed. In Edwin's account his notion of variables like

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Figure 2.1. Timothy's writing in science

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Figure 2.2. Caroline's writing in science

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Figure 2.3. Edwin's writing in science

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stirring are not equally applied and therefore his approach to the experiment is not systematic. More importantly, Edwin would not find out anything scientific because of his own preconceived notions which appear to over-ride his thinking. What do These Pupils Know about Communicating Science? Timothy These teachers were positive about Timothy's use of scientific vocabulary and his ability to objectify his observations clearly. They noted his awareness of the need to attempt explanations and his attempts to communicate three areas of knowledge concerned with timing, heat and solvents. However, other teachers in the group felt that Timothy was not good at communicating what he had done or finding results for his tests. They felt that he didn't know how to write up an experiment, to explain the method and that his conclusions didn't really comment on the results. Others noted that Timothy used scientific jargon and appropriate phrases but they queried whether or not his understanding was complete. Caroline Caroline was judged to be able to understand the notions of prediction, variables and summary and that she could pick out the main points rather than discuss everything. She makes inferences in her last paragraph and her work is organised. They also comment that Caroline's sophisticated language may be misleading. Edwin Edwin's report was considered to show precision and a knowledge of procedure. These teachers also remarked on the evidence of a sequence of observations and that his writing communicated an engagement with the task. Timothy lets his chart do all the reporting about method and procedures. What he communicates directly is his own thinking about what has happened. He fails to communicate any sense of a systematically observed phenomenon and therefore fails to take his reader to the conclusions he wants to draw. Caroline has also failed to say what she did or saw. Neither of these two pupils show a scientific methodology of action, observation and inference which would communicate the science of the

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activity more clearly. Edwin, on the other hand, gives an ordered presentation. This indicates a rudimentary knowledge of methodological recording of observations although he fails to draw any conclusions. His remarks about flour are his only attempt to reach for an explanation. What do These Pupils Know about Written Language? Timothy While one teacher noted 'spelling' another commented on Timothy's invented spelling which was consistent. Others pointed out that Timothy has knowledge of conventions like full stops, commas and the apostrophe, 'knows that ideas begin with capital letters'. They also said that he showed good organisation of text which indicated progression, that he was succinct and could use scientific language. They also remarked that he had used a non-narrative style successfully. Caroline Note was made of Caroline's knowledge that written language is different from spoken language. Also that she can write complex sentences, uses ellipsis and paragraphs. Also that she knows technical words like 'emulsion'. Edwin These teachers remarked that Edwin had knowledge of the mechanics of writing and some spelling knowledge. Also that he is practised in writing reports because of his orderly presentation. A defining characteristic for all judgements about pupils' writing will be the audience they think they are writing for. In this case these pupils were not writing for an explicit audience and this is clear from their range of written responses. Timothy appears to be thinking out loud and uses the opportunity of writing to capture some ideas he has which relate to the topic under investigation. Caroline also uses her writing to record her thoughts, however she loses the force of the science by not taking the opportunity in her writing to record systematically her final observations. If she had spelled these out, then another group would have been able to replicate her findings. She does not appear to know that writing in science can act as a touch stone for further scientific work in activities like comparison and contrast. Edwin, however, attempts to use writing to record exactly what he did and does make the way possible for replication.

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How Should the Teacher Respond? In all cases, the teachers who looked at these pupils' writing suggested discussion with each pupil as the next step. They wanted clarification of the points the pupils had made. They wanted, through talking and listening, to find out exactly what they had understood and to decide with them what further experiments they could do to check out further hypotheses. Above all, these teachers wanted their response to be positive and accepting of what the pupils had done. Here we see the most important aspect of assessment coming forward, that is to adjust and guide further work with pupils on the basis of their understanding. Teachers frequently work in this way, but now, through the force of a national curriculum, they will need to be far more explicit about this process. These pieces of writing collected in a folder of other work may not be the best record of these pupils' achievements unless supplemented with additional information. Any piece of writing needs to be seen in the context of a constellation of activities which will include discussion, reading and firsthand experience. This contextualisation will be necessary for all subjects during the primary years. With respect to assessment in English, notice will need to be taken of pupils' achievements across all subjects. This is underlined by the two different but complimentary purposes behind the aim of the English curriculum (DES/WO, 1989: para 2.14): First, English contributes to the personal development of the individual child because of the cognitive functions of both spoken and written language in exploratory learning and in organising and making sense of experiences . . . Secondly, English contributes to preparation for the adult world. The first of these purposes makes way for accepting the value of tentative writing, writing which is in process, writing which is on the edge of competence. The second purpose, unfortunately, can force teachers to count only finished products as valid, and there is a danger then that tentative writing of the kinds illustrated by Timothy and Caroline above, will be misjudged and misunderstood. While the programmes of study for Key Stage 2 do make way for the first purpose of English in the curriculum, the statements of attainment focus on the second. How, then, can we be certain that what is positive about a national curriculum can be translated into classroom practice and processes? Clearly, all members of the profession have a role in providing evidence

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and responses to all curriculum documents emanating from DES and National Curriculum Council. The evidence they need to provide will include actual examples of pupils' work which illustrates progress. Not only progress in the form of final, finished, polished pieces of work, but also examples of developmental steps in understanding. This will include examples of new ideas being tried out and examples of pupils using language, both spoken and written, to explore and gain control over knowledge and experiences. If we consider 'making meanings for oneself' as a central educational aim, then pieces of work which illustrate this process in action will have an over-riding validity in any assessment procedure which is designed to inform our work with individual pupils. There is a danger that this focus of our work with pupils may get overwhelmed by legislation which is designed primarily to meet political ambitions rather than educational obligations. In this respect, in-service education in the future provides a rewarding opportunity to keep an appropriate emphasis in the forefront of our minds. To this end, the kind of action research pioneered by the National Writing Project can have a profound impact. Involving teachers in this way, to accumulate evidence and document pupil progress in real classroom contexts, will provide a powerful counterweight to legislative curriculum decisions. Primary teachers, in particular, will need to find time to reflect on the academic performance of the pupils they teach and to gain confidence in articulating what they already know concerning pupils' achievements. This activity should be systematic. In this way it will offer teachers opportunities to discuss their observations together and through this focusing, staff development in an atmosphere of informed inquiry will provide the context for the accumulation of evidence. Such evidence will be essential in providing the future framework for discussions concerning assessment. More importantly, schemes of work which are designed without this grounding in classroom data will not support pupils in their entitlement to progress while at school. References to Chapter 2 DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE 1984, English from 5 to 16.London: HMSO. 1985, Better Schools.London: HMSO. 1986, English from 5 to 16: The Responses.London: HMSO. 1988, Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Teaching of English Language.London: HMSO.

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DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 'AND SCIENCE/WELSH OFFICE 1988, English 5 to 11.London: HMSO. 1989, English 5 to 16. London: HMSO. GREAT BRITAIN 1988, The Education Reform Act.London: HMSO. HALLS, W.D. 1985, Democratisation in secondary and higher education: Some comparative viewpoints. In J.K.P. WATSON (ed.) Key Issues in Education: Comparative Perspectives.Beckenham: Croom Helm. NATIONAL CURRICULUM COUNCIL. 1989, English 5 to 11 in the National Curriculum Consultation Report.London: NCC. WATSON, J.K.P. 1979, Curriculum development: some comparative perspectives. Compare.9,(1) 17-31. (ed.) 1985, Key Issues in Education: Comparative Perspectives.Beckenham: Croom Helm. 1988, Curriculum continuity: lessons to be learnt from other societies. Westminster Studies in Education 11, 81-98. WHITFIELD, R.C. 1970/71, Curriculum development in Britain. Paedagogica Europea 6, 112.

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3 Teachers' perceptions of children's language Martin Hughes and Jacqui Cousins Introduction This chapter is concerned with the perceptions which teachers hold about the language of children starting school. In particular, it is concerned with the gap between these perceptions and those arising from recent research, and on possible methods by which this gap might be reduced. Thus, while the focus is specifically on the language of young children, the underlying issue being addressed is much wider, and concerns the crucial relationship between educational research and classroom practice. The chapter will draw heavily on material from the Early Years Language Project, a project undertaken jointly by the University of Exeter and a local LEA. The first section will describe briefly how and why the project was set up. This will be followed by a summary of the findings from extensive interviews carried out with headteachers and reception teachers in 69 primary schools. The picture emerging from these interviews will then be contrasted with that emerging from recent research into the language of young children at home and at school. Finally, an account will be given of a small-scale action research project in which a group of 10 reception teachers from the overall sample were involved more directly in the observation and analysis of children's classroom language, and the effect this had on the teachers' perceptions will be considered. The Project's Origins and Purpose The Early Years Language Project grew out of concerns expressed to

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members of their LEA by a group of headteachers from infant and primary schools in a large urban environment. Essentially, these headteachers were claiming that children were increasingly entering their schools with spoken language insufficiently developed to benefit from what the school was providing. In particular, they claimed that the children were inarticulate, that they were unable to listen, and that they were lacking in both vocabulary and grammar. These problems, it was further claimed, stemmed primarily from inadequacies in the children's home backgrounds. In particular, it was believed that many children were being offered inappropriate language models by their parents, and in some cases were scarcely being spoken to at all. The LEA took these concerns seriously, in view of the obvious sincerity and certainty with which they were being put forward. It was clear that action of some kind was needed. What form this action should take was, however, seen to depend on a closer examination of the nature of the problem. As a result, two local teachers and one advisory teacher were seconded for one year to join a team of two LEA advisers and two University representatives. The main aims of the project were: (1) to find out more precisely what headteachers and reception teachers in the city were saying about the language of children starting school; (2) to look more closely at the reality of children's language, both at home and at school, to see how it compared with the teachers' perceptions; (3) to explore ways of disseminating the findings emerging from (1) and (2) with the teachers themselves. Some initial accounts of the work of the project have already emerged (Hughes & Cousins, 1988; Hughes, 1989) and other accounts are forthcoming (e.g. Goldsbrough, 1990; Hubbard, 1990; Hughes, Gulliver, Goldsbrough, Hubbard and Cousins, 1990). The focus of the present chapter is on work which has been carried out to meet the first and last of these aims. The Teachers' Perceptions The first step taken by the project team was to carry out in-depth interviews with the headteachers and reception teachers of all the schools in the city which admitted children at the age of five. Altogether, 69 headteachers and 88 reception teachers were interviewed. The interviews

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were concerned with the difficulties currently being experienced by reception teachers, with the link between these and children's language problems, with the nature and presumed cause of these language problems, and with what was currently being doneor might be doneto improve things. A full account of these interviews can be found in Goldsbrough (1990). The interviews took place at a time when the morale of teachers was particularly low. The schools were approached during the final stages of a long and sometimes bitter industrial dispute, in which many teachers felt they had received unjustified criticism from members of the government, from elements of the media, and from parents. Nevertheless, the interviewers were extremely well received, and a considerable amount of time was made available for them. It was clearly felt that the project was addressing an important area of concern, that the difficulties facing reception teachers were at last being recognised, and that something might be done as a result. The most striking feature of the interviews was the amount of agreement amongst the teachers on the main issues discussed. Naturally, there was some variation from one individual to another, and the extent of the perceived problem varied from school to school. Nevertheless, what emerged was a clear consensus of opinion, put forward by the reception teachers, and supported by their heads. The reception teachers felt they were labouring in conditions of some difficulty. They thought that their classes were too large, that they had insufficient adult helpers, that they were under-resourced, and that they were under pressure from the curriculum. In addition, the children themselves were seen as presenting considerable problems. Amongst other things, they were said to be egocentric, immature, lacking in confidence, over-dependent, and lacking in basic skills and knowledge. A large number of children were said to be unable to socialise, and had poor concentration. There was said to be little evidence of any social training in the home, and the children were frequently bad-mannered, disruptive and did not do what they were told. The children's spoken language was commonly singled out for criticism, and language problems were often seen as being the cause of other problems, such as aggression. It was claimed that large numbers of children had little or no language, that many were monosyllabic or could only express themselves non-verbally, or through the medium of their peers, that many were unable to give explanations, or take their language above the level of mundane requests, and that there was a reluctance to ask

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questions, discuss stories, or relate experiences. It was frequently said that the children were unable to listen, and could not follow simple instructions. Many appeared not to know the names of colours, and were ignorant of nursery rhymes and traditional stories. The teachers frequently remarked on the immaturity of the children's speech, and their apparent lack of vocabulary: they were said to have poor speech habits and poor grammar. These problems were thought to be widespread, to be increasing in number, and to continue to some degree or other throughout the school. The cause of these problems was clearly felt to lie in the children's home backgrounds. It was claimed that many parents did not talk to their children, or read to them, or even spend much time with them. 'There is no language in the home' and 'they provide little stimulation and do not take them out' were typical comments. The parents' own language was considered to be poor, and the children therefore had an inadequate model: 'the poor parental model at home negates time in school'. Other teachers referred to parents using mostly 'foul language', or communicating predominantly by non-verbal means, such as grunts. There were said to be innumerable social problems in many of the children's lives: broken homes, mothers who had a succession of male partners, unemployment, or both parents out at work. It was claimed that many parents over-indulged their children materially to compensate for the lack of time they spent together, and television was singled out as having a particularly damaging effect on children's language. While some teachers clearly dissented from the views expressed above, they were very much in the minority. The teachers and headteachers were also asked what was currently being doneas well as what might be done in the futureto remedy these problems. Their answers to this question showed much more variation than their answers to the other questions. Increased resources, the reduction or removal of 'rising fives', smaller classes, a better organisation of the intake within the school, and more adults in the classroom all received a number of mentions. This question also seemed to elicit more uncertainty than the others: while some teachers talked enthusiastically about what they were doing, many seemed to be dispirited and frustrated. One teacher ended with a shrug, saying 'the usual, I suppose', whilst another said 'I don't know if we could do more than we're doing already'. The uncertainty also came across in the large number of demands made for more inservice training. Recent Research into Children's Language Our interviews indicated that the great majority of reception teachers

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and headteachers subscribed to what is often termed the language-deficit model. They appeared to believe that large numbers of children were starting school severely deficient in their spoken language, and that these deficiencies had their roots in the limited spoken language being used in the children's homes. These problems were particularly likely to be present in children from working class homes, or from families suffering some kind of deprivation. The language-deficit model was particularly prominent in the 1970s. At that time its proponents drew inspiration from the influential work of Bernstein (e.g. 1971), Tough (e.g. 1976), and the Bullock Report (DES, 1975), although none of these authors would necessarily agree to being labelled in this way. Even in the 1970s, however, the model was being questioned. Linguists such as Labov (1972) argued that the language of lower-class black children in America was not so much deficient as different from that of their middle-class counterparts. In the 1980s further support for Labov's views came from several British research studies which looked more closely at the language used in the homes of young children (e.g. Wells, 1978, 1984; Davie et al.,1984; Tizard & Hughes, 1984). These studies paint a very different picture from that espoused by language-deficit theorists. Thus Wells (1978) concluded from his extensive recordings of children's language at home that . . . all but a very small minority of children reach the age of schooling with a vocabulary of several thousand words, control of the basic grammar of the language of their community, and an ability to deploy these resources in conversations arising from the many and varied situations that occur in their everyday lives. Similarly, Tizard & Hughes report from their study of four-year-olds at home and at nursery school that . . . the conversations in the working-class homes were just as prolific as those in the middle class homes. There was no question of these children 'not being talked to at home', and few signs of the language deprivation that has so often been described . . . the working class children were clearly growing up in a rich linguistic environment. The teachers whom we interviewed were thus subscribing to a theory of language which is not supported by the findings of recent research. Why should this be? There would seem to be a number of possible explanations. The first possible explanation is that our teachers were in fact accurate in their perceptions of their children's language and home circumstancesthat their children were indeed suffering from a local and possibly unique

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form of linguistic deprivation. While it is impossible to discount this explanation altogether, it seems unlikely. As part of the Early Years Language Project interviews and tape recordings were carried out in the homes of a number of children starting school in one of the most deprived areas of the city. These recordings confirmed the work of other researchers and indicated that the children were taking part at home in rich and lively conversations on a variety of topics, in the course of which they were displaying a range of linguistic skills appropriate for their age. The analysis of the recordings indeed revealed major discrepancies between the claims made by the teachers and the realities of the children's linguistic experience. A full account of these recordings can be found in Hubbard (1990). A second possible explanation is that the perceptions elicited by the interviews were not representative either of the teachers' real beliefs or of the beliefs of other teachers elsewhere in the country. In other words, it is possible that the timing and nature of our interviewsin which we explicitly asked a somewhat dispirited group of teachers to talk about their problemsgenerated a particularly negative set of responses. This possibility was brought home to us by one teacher who commented 'I find this questioning very negative: are you not assuming or implying that what the headteachers have said is true, and that our reception children are experiencing difficulties with their language?' Accordingly, one member of the project team (JC) devised a more positively worded self-completion questionnaire which was used with a further sample of 80 early years teachers from other parts of the county. The results of this questionnaire for the most part supported those of our initial interviews, and indicated that the views expressed in our particular sample were indeed representative of those held by similarly placed teachers elsewhere. A third possible explanation is that the teachers in our samplelike those elsewhere in the countryhad simply not been exposed to the findings of recent research. There is indeed some evidence to support this view. Our interviews revealed that a surprisingly high proportion of the reception teachers had not in fact trained for working with children of that age group. Many had set out to teach older children in junior or secondary classrooms, but had gravitated to working in the reception class as much by chance as by design. Moreover, many of the teachers had received their training at least 10 years previously, when theories of language-deficit were much more widely held. It seems likely, then, that many of the teachers had simply not been exposed to more recent work. This, however, is not the whole story. We cannot totally dismiss the teachers' views as simply being due to a lack of exposure to alternative

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research evidence. Several teachers in the sample had in fact attended recent in-service courses at which alternative theories of language had been put forwardin some cases by members of the project team themselves. And yet, this exposure to more recent work had not led to a change in the teachers' views: rather, it had been met by a reluctance to accept alternative evidence, and a more tenacious attachment to the language-deficit theories. Some teachers attempted to dismiss the newer evidence on various methodological grounds, such as the size and selection of the sample, the technique used to make the recordings, and the geographical location of the studies. The following comment was typical of many:' . . . Tizard & Hughes' research was carried out in London . . . Wells worked in Bristol . . . how relevant is that for us?' Even our own recordings in the homes of local children were subsequently dismissed by some teachers from neighbouring schools, with comments such as ' . . . well, if you'd done the research in my school your findings would have been different'. It is of course highly desirable that teachers should view the findings of educational research with a certain scepticism, and that they should be able to apply informed criticism to research methodology. Nevertheless, the attachment which these teachers show to the language-deficit model, and their reluctance to consider alternative accounts, suggests that the deficit model provides a better fit with their day-to-day reality than the alternative theories being presented. Such teachers are indeed faced every day with young working-class children who appear, in the classroom context at least, to have extremely limited language; when they do encounter the parents of such children in and around the school they may well appear to use language in an extremely limited way. But such observations do not negate the findings of recent researchrather they are in full accord with its findings. The work of Tizard & Hughes, for example, makes clear that young working-class children are particularly affected by the school context, and are much less likely than middle-class children to demonstrate their true linguistic capabilities in the classroom. The same study also makes clear that the conversations which take place in public between young working-class children and their parentssuch as those reported in school waiting-rooms and launderettes by Tough (1976)do not give an accurate portrayal of the conversations which actually take place in their homes. Thus one of the main findings of recent research, that language is extremely context-dependent, is ironically one of the main reasons why the research is so fiercely resisted by teachers. There is one final aspect of the situation which needs to be considered. As we indicated earlier, our interviews revealed that the teachers' morale was low: they found their jobs difficult, and were not experiencing a great

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deal of satisfaction or success. In such a situation, it is only natural to look for external reasons for this state of affairs. The temptation to blame the children and their families must have been hard for the teachers to resist. As one teacher said to us in our pilot interviews ' . . . the parents don't talk to them . . . it's all home really isn't it? . . . sounds awful . . . we get them straight from home so that's all you can blame it on'. In view of comments like this, we should not exclude the possibility that the children and their families were being made scapegoats for the teachers' own feelings of frustration and failure. Changing Teachers' Perceptions The above account indicates that the perceptions of reception teachers are unlikely to be changed simply by informing them of the findings of more recent research. Instead, an alternative approach is needed, which starts from the reality of their own classrooms. In the rest of this chapter, we will describe a small-scale piece of action research which provides some pointers as to how this might be achieved. The work to be described involved a group of 10 reception teachers who had already been interviewed as part of the project. These teachers were selected by the project team to be representative of the sample as a whole. They were experienced reception teachers, totalling between them 77 years experience with reception classes. At the same time, only two of the 10 had specifically trained for working with this age-range, and the remainder had trained for working with children in the upper primary school. This initial training had for the most part taken place during the 1960s and early 1970s, and several members of the group specifically mentioned Bernstein, Tough and the Bullock Report among their major influences in the area of language. Some members of the group had attended more recent in-service courses on language, but while these had been enjoyable, they had left feeling unclear about current theory and how it might be implemented in their classrooms. At the start of the work their morale was low and their levels of frustration were high: one teacher described the demands of her job as 'impossible to achieve . . . I'm left with an overwhelming sense of failure'. Nevertheless, they all expressed an interest in learning more about young children's language and improving home/school links. These 10 teachers formed a study group who met regularly with one of the project members (JC) over a period of about a year. The project member, a local advisory teacher, was well-known to the group and there

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was an atmosphere of mutual respect. The aim of these meetings was to consider the issues raised by the project, and to develop appropriate methods of in-service. Early discussions within the group revealed their doubts about the validity of current research into the language of young children. Specifically, they doubted whether it could be assumed that most children were already competent talkers when they started school, and they wanted the opportunity to observe, record and analyse classroom language for themselvessomething which they had never done before. Accordingly, a method of working was evolved in which the project member spent a day in each of their classrooms in turn. During this day there were periods when the project member took charge of the whole class, leaving the teacher free to make observations and recordings of a particular child. At other times the project member made her own observations and recordings, and discussed the teacher's observations with her. The teachers brought transcriptions from their recordings to group meetings, and discussed them within the group. The work of the group was evaluated through subsequent interviews with the teachers and their headteachers, and through further observations in their classrooms. One of the clearest benefits from this method of working lay in the changes which came about in the teachers' perceptions of the individual child whom they had chosen to observe. In nine cases out of ten these children had been selected because the teacher considered their spoken language to be poor (the other child was thought to have exceptionally good language). Nine out of the ten children were boys, and in seven cases out of ten the teachers explicity mentioned that there was a degree of deprivation in the home. The teachers produced case studies in which they brought together all their perceptions and information about these children. Their initial comments were sometimes brutally honest. One teacher wrote: I am finding it extremely difficult to say anything positive about this little boy. He is incredibly spiteful to the other children and they are quite afraid of him. He is four years and eight months. How can I support him? He talks quite a bit but uses a lot of bad language. I haven't yet met his mother. She is alone with three young children. In the subsequent interviews it was clear that changes in the teachers' perceptions of their target child had taken place in at least six cases out of ten. Typical comments were: My relationship with this child improved from that short time that I concentrated on him. I think my attitude changed. I can't explain

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exactly what I mean, but I think I've been too convinced that he couldn't do things, and I haven't expected a lot. The whole of this exercise on observation was of very great value because even though I felt I had a very good idea about his language and his intelligence I had never been able to spare enough time to listen. I constantly felt that I could take him further in his reasoning but somehow I had the idea in my head that I couldn't expect more. Yes, I'd say it was social factors that were influencing me. I was assuming that there was little language at home but I don't know, do I? This is where I've got to listen more to the children's family. This child gave me a big surprise when I really listened to him. The recordings enabled the teachers to reconsider the value of certain activities for eliciting children's spoken language, and allowed them to reflect on their own use of language in the classroom. Thus one teacher, having recorded her target child playing a 'language game', concluded that ' . . . those language games are a total waste of time in encouraging oral language. Out they go!' Another teacher reflected thus on her own use of language: ' . . . questions, questions, questions . . . all I do is ask questions of the poor child. I'm going to record myself regularly and concentrate on not asking questions . . . particularly 'what colour is it?' One teacher explicitly compared two conversations involving the same child. The first took place when she was trying to elicit from the child a suitable context in which to record her: Teacher: Where's your favourite place to play? You'd like to play with that? What are you going to do with it? Can you find that for me? Which one would you like? Child: (points to a puzzle) That one. Teacher: Go on, you get on with it then. What are you going to do next? Can you tell me what it is? Child: A house. Teacher: What have you got to find? Does that belong to there? I'm going to sit down and let you play. Can I sit in your house? All right, can I just sit and watch you? Child: Goes there. Teacher: Do you know what it's for? The teacher was particularly critical of this recording, and commented: 'I can see how I stopped her talking and how lopsided it is.' She contrasted

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her conversation with the next one, in which the same child is curious about the necklace worn by the project member. Child: What's that? JC: A necklace. Child: What from? Funny that . . . look (looks closely and touches it) JC: What do you think it's made from? Child: Look like wood bits . . . wood . . . that a pip . . . a pip . . . not in an apple? JC: No, I think it's an orange pip but I'm not sure. Child: Looks like orange . . . What that black? . . . not a pip . . . look like wood. JC: Mmm . . . that's clever of you. Yes, it is a sort of wood . . . its a walnut shell sawn in slices. Child: That wood? (laughs) JC: Yes, I suppose it is. I haven't thought about it before. Wood comes from. . . Child: . . . trees. I got a little nut tree like they . . . like they (fingers necklace) JC: That's interesting. They're both hazelnuts so I expect your tree's a hazelnut. The teacher commented: This is an example of what I would call a natural conversation. The child is really interested in the subject. She started it off spontaneously and you picked up on it. You paused while she looked at and felt the necklace. You answered her questions and she was puzzling things out .. using what she knew already about the tree from home and recognising the hazelnut. You just confirmed her knowledge and added to it. I've never heard her talk like that before. She still sounds babyish and with a strong dialect but it's a much fairer way to assess her spoken language. Much closer to her conversations with family and friends. The teachers recognised that conversations such as this one, which were led by the child's interests rather than by the teacher, did in fact occur at school, often at the beginning or end of the day or when the children were changing for P.E. What they found difficult was knowing how much importance to attach to them. One teacher commented that she felt guilty about having such a conversation because it took time away from the 'real work' of school. Another teacher was more forthright: This is just chat . . . filling in a few moments before lunch. It isn't the

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substance of their learning. We're too rushed to chat like that with all the children who need support with their oral language. Nevertheless, most of the teachers recognised the value of such conversations in giving them a different picture of the child's spoken language to that normally presented in the classroom. They also went on to consider how existing activities could be adapted to encourage more investigative and exploratory uses of language by the children. The teachers' analysis of children's language in the classroom also led them to reconsider their assumptions about the language of the home. Four teachers wanted to initiate visits to the children's homes, and three wanted to establish more links with the families before the children started school. In most cases their headteachers were supportive and it was possible to implement these changes; indeed one headteacher commented that the 'changes in attitude towards the children's families have been remarkable and we are going to make closer links, a thing that I as a head have tried to get her to do in the past . . . there has been such a resistance'. Not all headteachers were so supportive, however, and one teacher was unable to implement ideas she had developed while being a member of the group. Those teachers who were able to initiate home visiting hoped that eventually they would be in a position to ask for a recording of a conversation in the children's homes. At the same time, the teachers were very hesitant about asking for a home recording, and felt that it would be seen by the parents as an invasion of their privacy. One teacher commented as follows: There is the gap in really being able to listen to the child having a conversation at home because I haven't got a tape-recording of any. I haven't got the right to ask for one, and because I'm still not very confident at home visits I don't know how to ask the mum to do it. Another said: If gathering data from home was part of the normal procedure and everyone involved understood that it wasn't because Big Brother was listening in to private conversations then I would do it. I think it does fill in gaps but I'm prepared to say that children of all classes and cultures do use oral language and do talk to each other so do I need to add to my work load in listening to 30 tapes? Within the group, attempts were made to link up the teachers' observations and new perspectives on children's language with the findings

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of recent research. Dissatisfactions were expressed about theories which they had held for some time, and there was a renewed interest in finding out about more recent theory. Four members of the group applied for courses to carry out further study, and three of them were successful. Finally, all the teachers made positive comments about the value of the work for them personally, and eight referred to their own increase in confidence as a result of the support provided within the group. Conclusions The work carried out with the ten teachers was inevitably limited in its scope and duration. Ideally, it would have been desirable to have extended the work to include recordings in children's homes, or to have followed up the initiatives undertaken in some of the schools to build closer links with parents. There are also questions which must be raised about how far this small sample was representative of other teachers, and from a practical point of view there must be questions about the amount of additional resources required to enable such work to take place. All the same, it is clear that even this limited piece of work led to some fundamental changes in the teachers' perspectives, changes which would have been unlikely with more conventional forms of inservice training. The idea of teachers as researchers has been advocated by several writers in recent years (e.g. Rowland, 1984; Carr & Kemmis, 1986) and there is clearly much to be said in its favour. Whether the ten teachers who took part in this study group could be considered as 'researchers' is arguable, and depends crucially on how the term 'research' is defined. What is less arguable is that the ten teachers were not simply passive recipients of established knowledge, but were encouraged to become active learners in their own classrooms. They responded positively to the opportunity to learn with others in a supportive group, and felt an increased sense of value and self-respect from their involvement. If educational researchers are really concerned about the dissemination of research findings to practising teachers, then there is much that can be learnt from the kind of experience described above. Acknowledgements We are very grateful to the other members of the Early Years Language ProjectMary Chessum, Marilyn Goldsbrough, John Gulliver,

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Graham Hammond and Lorraine Hubbardfor allowing us to use material from the project in this chapter, and to the 10 teachers who formed the study group described in the second part of the chapter. The views expressed here are not necessarily shared by the other members of the team. References to Chapter 3 BERNSTEIN, B. 1971, Class, Codes and Control.London: Routledge. CARR, W. and KEMMIS, S. 1986, Becoming Critical: Education, Knowledge, and Action Research.Lewes: Falmer Press. DAVIE, C.E., HUTT, S.J., VINCENT, E. and MASON, M. 1984, The Young Child at Home.Windsor: NFER-Nelson. DES 1985, A Language for Life.Report of the Committee of Enquiry chaired by Sir Alan Bullock. London: HMSO. GOLDSBROUGH, M. 1990, Teachers' perceptions of language in the reception classroom. Unpublished M. Phil. thesis, University of Exeter. HUBBARD, L. 1990, An investigation into teachers' perceptions of young children's language and the language of young children in the home. Unpublished M. Phil. thesis, University of Exeter. HUGHES, M. 1989, The child as a learner: The contrasting views of developmental psychology and early education. In C. DESFORGES (ed.) Early Childhood Education.Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press. HUGHES, M. and COUSINS, J. 1988, The roots of oracy. In M. MACLURE. T. PHILLIPS & A. WILKINSON (eds) Oracy Matters.Milton Keynes: Open University Press. HUGHES, M., GULLIVER, J., GOLDSBROUGH, M., HUBBARD, L. and COUSINS, J. 1990, The Early Years Language Project. Perspectives.University of Exeter. LABOV, W. 1972, The logic of non-standard English. In P.P. GIGLIOLI (ed.) Language and Social Context.London: Penguin. ROWLAND, S. 1984, The Enquiring Classroom: An Approach to Understanding Children's Learning.Lewes: Falmer Press. TIZARD, B. and HUGHES, M. 1984, Young Children Learning.London: Fontana. TOUGH, J. 1976, Listening to Children Talking.London: Ward Lock. WELLS, C.G. 1978, Talking with children: The complimentary roles of parents and teachers. English in Education 12, 15-38. 1984, Language Development in the Preschool Years.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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4 Parental involvement in preschool literacy development Peter Hannon Literacy is a central goal of educationpossibly the central goal, a key to other areas of learning, and one of the main justifications for the establishment, just over a century ago, of mass compulsory schooling. Yet preschool teachers, at least in Britain, have traditionally been rather uneasy about the idea of teaching literacy. They have tended to resist pressures from parents and teachers of older children to 'start children off early' in reading and writing. In the past, some eradicated print from the nursery environment and emphasised alternatives to literacypictures not words, paint brushes not pens, pictures of animals, flowers or toys in place of children's names in the cloakroom. Why has this happened? I suggest two reasons. First, there has been a desire to protect the child from adult pressures, from having to perform activities which they might find meaningless because they are not ready for them, and a desire to respect children's preschool life as valuable in itself, not just as a preparation for school life. These are deep-rooted feelings in the British nursery-infant tradition which do distinguish it from the approach of many other countries. They can probably be traced back to that crucial period, at the turn of the century, when under-fives were excluded from schools after many years in which they had had free access to full time schooling. A number of factors combined to exclude the under-fives (Whitbread, 1972; Tizard. Moss & Perry, 1976) but one was that educators of the time were disturbed at the ways in which these very young children were being taughtin very large groups, seated for long periods, sometimes in galleries, subjected to techniques of mass instruction with a heavy reliance on rote learning, drill and practice and with minimal opportunities for practical learning experiences. Nursery schooling was seen as a better way and although, in the

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years which followed, it never became widespread it did help sustain a child-centred view of early childhood education which survived through to the Plowden Report and the present day. Second, methods of teaching reading and writing in schools may not have excited nursery teachers very much. The idea that there were distinct pre-reading and pre-writing skills to be acquired before children could do the real thing, the use of reading schemes and flash cards, and the emphasis on writing as a manual skill all tended to deter preschool teachers from teaching literacy. The dominant approach simply did not allow them much of a role. Emergent Literacy Another perspective is now providing a clearer view of literacy development, including its roots in the preschool period (Goodman, 1980). Some have termed the new perspective 'emergent literacy' (Teale & Sulzby, 1986; Hall, 1987). The view of preschool development now being revealed by emergent literacy research challenges assumptions underlying traditional nursery practice. It is showing just how much most under-fives know about reading and writing; how they recognise and make sense of print in the environment (and children in countries like Britain, grow up in an environment saturated with print and logos); how even before they can talk children can enjoy sharing books with adults; how they can participate as 'apprentices' in adults' literacy activities in the home (writing shopping lists, checking TV listings in the newspaper, sending or receiving letters and birthday cards); how their scribbling, drawing and pretend writing merges into true writing; and how they integrate literacy into their sociodramatic play. From a developmental viewpoint it appears to be important that all these experiences are as meaningful as possible even if, to a casual observer, they seem to embody very few characteristics of the mature adult forms. Function, it has been argued, matters more than form (Goodman, 1986). Literacy in Preschool Education Emergent literacy provides a much more helpful perspective for preschool teachers and some are now re-organising their classrooms so that literacy can emerge more easily, and be valued when it does. It is difficult to know on what scale this is happening since there have been no survey

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studies of nursery practice to provide the appropriate research base. A few well-publicised cases, in a small number of local education authorities, can suggest a bigger change than may yet have occurred. Nevertheless a recent review of under-fives' education by Her Majesty's Inspectorate, based on inspections of nursery and primary schools in England and some 300 visits in the period 1985-88, (HMI, 1989) indicates something of a shift in what is regarded as good practice. The HMI review acknowledges that preschool children are well used to seeing print in the environment, that many have an interest in reading, that some are readers already (although others need to learn the basics of using and enjoying books), and that they often record their ideas, experiences and feelings through writing as well as drawing and painting. Therefore, in relation to reading, the inspectors not only point out how teachers can foster preschool children's enjoyment of reading, but also how they can help them accurately relate meaning to the printed word and how they can begin to teach children about the relationship between letters and the initial sounds of words in stories. In relation to writing, the inspectors point out how teachers can encourage children to write as part of their play activities by providing writing materials for them to record, initially in their own invented symbols, such things as shopping lists and telephone messages; how areas of the classroom can be set up as 'offices' or writing centres; how as children become eager to write, and their symbols closer to accepted letter forms, they can be taught to form letters; and how teachers can write down for children what they say about their paintings, models or experiences. All of this, in the context of a well-balanced curriculum which also includes opportunities for personal, human, social, aesthetic, creative, physical, mathematical, scientific and technological learning, indicates the importance of literacy in preschool education. A further reason for taking literacy development more seriously is the need for continuity between preschool and school education. Although it would be wrong to allow the need to prepare children for school wholly to shape preschool education, it is not unreasonable to expect it to make a clear contribution to the task of schools. In Britain this issue has been highlighted by the introduction, from 1989, of a National Curriculum which specifies attainment targets and programmes of study for children from five years to sixteen. In relation to literacy (seen officially as part of the core subject of 'English') an examination of the first level attainment targets listed in Table 4.1 shows that the contribution of preschool education can be very clear and direct. These attainment targets are intended to be appropriate for children, aged five, in their first year of compulsory schooling.

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Table 4.1 National curriculum attainment targets for level 1 Statements of attainment Example Pupils should be able to: Readingrecognise that print is Point to and used to recognise own carry meaning. in books name: tell the teacher and that other forms in the a label on a container everyday savs world. what is inside or that the words in a book tell a story. begin to recognise In role-play, read individual simple words of letters in signs such as shop familiar connames or texts. brand names: recognise 'bus-stop'. 'exit'. 'danger'. show signs of a Pick up books and developing look at interest in reading. the pictures: choose books to hear or read. talk in simple terms Talk about characters about the and content of stories. or pictures. including inforlikes mation in non-fiction and dislikes. books. Writing use pictures. symbols or Show work to others. isosavlated letters. words or ing what writing and phrases drawto communicate ings mean. meaning. Spellingbegin to show an understanding of the difference between drawing and writing. and between numbers and letters. write some letter shapes Initial letter of own in resname. ponse to speech sounds and letter names. use at least single letters or groups of letters to represent whole words or parts of words. Hand- begin to form letters with some writing control over the size. shape and orientation of letters or lines of writing. Source: DES. 1989.

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Three points should be made about the Level I attainment targets in reading, writing and spelling. First, they assume a considerable amount of learning in the preschool years either at home or in preschool education. Second, many preschool children will have reached those levels of development well before reading school. Third, aiming for these attainment levels would be entirely consistent with an emergent literacy approach and what is rapidly being regarded as good practice in preschool educators. Parents Although parents' importance in children's early reading and writing development has long been acknowledged in rather general terms, the emergent literacy perspective gives a more detailed picture of their role, mainly in the home. Parents act as powerful models if and when children see them using literacy, for example, in reading newspapers for information or enjoyment; writing notes or shopping lists; using print to find things out, to follow instructions; or to earn a living, for example, by bringing work home. They can also promote literacy development by providing vital learning opportunities for children's drawing or scribbling activities; their sociodramatic play; by exposing them to, and interpreting, environmental print; by teaching nursery rhymes which aid speech segmentation and phonic awareness; by sharing story books and other written materials; and by enabling children to participate in visits, trips or holidays which provide further literacy demands and opportunities. Parents can provide unique recognition for children when they notice and value children's early achievements in, for example, using books, 'pretend' reading and early reading, logo recognition, or 'pretend' and early writing. The clear implication of all this is that, if we wish to foster preschool literacy development, we have to work through, and with, parents. Given our present state of knowledge in this field it also means that we have to listen carefully to what parents can tell us about children's development as well as have them listen to us. There are other arguments too, deriving from a wide range of research studies, which all point, in one way or another, to the importance of parental involvement in preschool literacy development. Many studies have shown the importance of social class in reading attainment and reading difficulties (e.g. Douglas, 1964; Davie, Butler & Goldstein, 1972; Wedge & Prosser, 1973; Newson & Newson, 1977). In so far as social class can be considered an indicator of home background, these findings imply the need for work with parents rather than just school-focused efforts to reduce

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differences in attainment. Research into parental involvement in the teaching of reading for school age children has shown that parents welcome involvement, but such measures after school entry, although helpful, may have rather limited effects (Hannon, 1987). One conclusion could be that this kind of involvement should begin in the preschool years and, given the rather narrow focus so far on certain kinds of reading activities, that it should employ the broader conception of reading and its relationship to writing reflected in the emergent literacy perspective. The lesson from preschool intervention research is that there can be benefits, both short term and long term, from intervening in preschool development and that the greater the degree of parental involvement, the greater the benefits (Bronfenbrenner, 1974; Lazar et al.,1982). One method of preschool parental involvement which appears to be effective is home visitingan approach which has interested British preschool educators over the years (Smith, 1975; Aplin & Pugh, 1983; Hirst & Hannon, 1990). Home visiting has also been used to involve parents of school-age children in the teaching of reading (Hannon & Jackson, 1987). Research into the nature of preschool children's learning at home has shown how powerful is parent-child interaction in the home environment compared to teacher-child interaction in the more artificial and crowded environment of the nursery classroom (Tizard & Hughes, 1984). Finally, there is evidence of many parents involving themselves in their children's preschool literacy development (Hall et al.,1989; Hannon & James, in press) so that the practical question facing preschool educators may not be whether to involve parents but whether to recognise, support and extend, existing levels of involvement. Involvement Possibilities Supposing that involvement is desired, how can it be achieved? In order to clarify the possibilities it may be helpful to draw some distinctions. First, parental involvement does not always mean 'bringing parents into school'even if 'school' refers to a nursery school or class. Such involvement usually means parents interacting with their children in a school setting in some way initiated or supported by a teacher. (There can, of course, be many other forms of in-school parental involvement which do not affect children directly, such as parents working as classroom aides, attending adult education classes, or acting as school governors). But parent-child interaction can be at home as well as in school. Indeed, arguably, it is at home that parents have the most advantages in promoting

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their children's literacy development. So there is a basic, practical distinction to be made between at-home and in-school forms of involvement. Second, parental involvement requires some kind of teacher-parent interaction to initiate and sustain it and this too can either be in-school or at-home. In-school teacher-parent interaction is perhaps the more obvious and can take such forms as meetings for parents in school, parent-teacher consultations, or informal chats in the classroom. At-home teacher-parent interaction means teachers visiting parents' homes. It is possible to combine either location for parent-child interaction with either location for teacher-parent interaction. Each of the four cells in Table 4.2 represents a different possibility. Let us consider the involvement of parents in children's literacy experiences in school, i.e. the two bottom cells of Table 4.2. What can be done in school depends on how teachers organise the environmentwhether to foster the emergence of literacy or to smother it. Assuming the Table 4.2 Different types of involvement Location of Teacher-Parent Interaction In-school At-home Athome Location of Parent/Child Interaction In school

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former, there will be a number of activities which parents could undertake with children including those listed in Table 4.3. Note that parents could be engaged with their own children or other parents' children, or both. The teacher-parent interaction to make this form of involvement happe would probably be in-school, in the classroom'on the job' as it wereor elsewhere within the school, i.e. the bottom left cell of Table 4.2. It could take place at home but it is doubtful whether it would be an efficient or justifiable use of teacher time to make home visits to sustain in-school involvement. However, there has to be some teacher-parent interaction, somewhere, if parents are to understand the point of what they do in school, especially in relation to literacy where there is scope for misunderstandings between parents and teachers about the rationale for literacy in the nursery and the most helpful role for adults to take in promoting it. Some disadvantages with in-school parent involvement should be noted. Not all parents can come into schoolfor perfectly understandable reasons related to work or domestic commitments to other children or dependent family members. Some parents, therefore, through no lack of interest in their children, are bound to be excluded from in-school forms of involvement. Also, there can sometimes be practical difficulties with parents working with other people's children. Should all parents be encouraged to take such a role in school, even under the supervision of a teacher? Other parents may object, and some teachers will be uneasy about too open an invitation to parents to help in school. Finally, having parents in school is not really playing to their strengths which are in the Table 4.3 Involvement focused on in-school parent-child interaction Some possibilities Sharing books Cutting/sticking using captions Making books Helping at drawing/writing table Providing a model of writing or reading Writing or reading with a computer Supporting literacy-related sociodramatic play Teaching nursery rhymes Identifying/collecting logos and signs

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home with their own children. For some, the school may even be alien territory. Involvement should aim to build on parents' strengths rather than their weaknesses and to that extent in-school involvement has its limitations. Parental involvement at home does not suffer from the same disadvantages. It means playing to parents' strengths and in principle, all parents can be involved. But it does present a challenge. How can teachers hope to influence the subtleties of parent-child interaction in the home in an aspect of development such as literacy? Home visiting could be one way. We know it can be a powerful form of teacher-parent interaction, on the parent's home groundbut it is also expensive in terms of staff time. Perhaps the teacher-parent interaction could take place in school (through meetings, consultations, workshops) even though the objective would be to influence parent-child interaction at home? Perhaps there could be a mix of methods, i.e. forms of involvement in both of the upper cells in Table 4.2? Other questions arise too. Would parents welcome attempts to change how they interact with children at home? What exactly could teachers or others do or say to change that interaction? What difference would it make to the children's literacy development? What is the value of such intervention? None of these are easy questions to answer. They are in fact questions which require research but there have so far been very few studies of preschool parental involvement programmes aimed specifically at literacy development. In Britain, in the Calderdale Pre-School Parent Book Project, parents of nursery children were encouraged systematically to borrow books from project schools. The focus of the involvement was at-home parent-child interaction, but this was promoted through in-school teacher-parent interaction (mainly meetings). Take-up over an eight-month period was high, parents and teachers viewed the project positively, and there was some evidence that children's literacy development (as indicated by items in the Concepts of Print Test) had benefited (Griffiths & Edmonds, 1986). In the United States, McCormick & Mason (1986) reported a programme in which children had 'little books' mailed to them in the months before they started kindergarten. Despite minimal teacherparent interaction there was evidence that this modest intervention had some impact on literacy attainment at the end of the kindergarten year. Lujan et al.(1986) have described a programme of school-based workshops for parents of preschool children. None of these reported interventions has employed home visiting but each has had an emergent literacy orientation.

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However, with so few studies there is clearly a need to extend the research base. A Current Research Project In Sheffield, the University and the Local Education Authority are collaborating on a study to explore ways of working with parents to promote preschool literacy development. The Sheffield Early Literacy Development Project, with funding from the European Commission and the Department of Education and Science, is working with a small number of families, mostly working-class, in the neighbourhood of a nursery/infant school in the north of the city. Members of the Project team, Peter Hannon, Jo Weinberger and Cathy Nutbrown, have developed a programme of home visiting and parents' meetings in school for children aged around three and some younger siblings. Much of the implementation of the programme (most of the home visiting and co-ordination of parents meetings) is in the hands of one of the project team, Jo Weinberger, who is also a nursery teacher at the school. There will eventually be 20 children in the project. The only criteria for inviting families to participate were that they lived close to the school (within pram-pushing distance) and had children in the target age range. At the time of writing a first wave of 11 children (7 three-year-olds and 4 one-year-olds) has completed a period of home visiting and is midway through a series of meetings in school. For parents of children in the second wave there will be meetings in school but little or no home visiting. Therefore, although the focus of the project is at-home parent-child interaction, the teacher-parent interaction being explored is both at-home and in-school (Weinberger, Hannon & Nutbrown, 1990). The core of the home visiting programme has been a series of five fortnightly visits. (There were also preliminary visits to invite parents to participate and a final visit leading into meetings in school.) In planning the content of visits we tried to strike a balance between our desire to cover certain topics in a coherent sequence and our desire for a flexible approach which was responsive to the interests and needs of different parents and children. Visits followed a rough structure of 'review-introduceplan' so that, following a review of children's literacy activities since the previous visit, the visitor would introduce a new idea or activity and afterwards some kind of plan of what might be done next with the child would be agreed between parent and visitor. Books have been introduced in all visits, parents being given the opportunity to borrow from a range of attractive

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good quality children's literature. Basic drawing/writing materials (a plastic wallet containing sheets of plain paper, a thick pencil, pencil sharpener, and an exercise book) were introduced in the first visit and replenished as necessary. Parents were asked to save children's work for the visitor. Other ideas and activities introduced during visits have included making books, using photographs, cutting, sticking and labelling, finding print in the home and neighbourhood, and trying different kinds of drawing/writing materials. The parents' meetings in school are intended to provide an opportunity in a small group for sharing information and experiences relating to children's literacy development. A crèche is available for the children. Topics being covered include sharing books and stories with children, using public libraries, writing development, print in the environment, and how literacy develops. In order to evaluate this work with parents different kinds of data are being collected. At the start a preliminary interview aims to establish the base level of children's literacy activity and development and the literacy climate of the home. Detailed field notes on visits and school meetings are being kept. Observations of children and samples of their 'work' are also being collected. At the conclusion of the involvement programme an independent researcher, who has had no part in the design or implementation of the programme, will be carrying out an interview survey of parents. From all this, it is hoped that the outcome will be an evaluation report and some practical guidelines concerning this kind of work with parents. Some Emerging Findings It must be emphasised that the present research goals of the Sheffield Early Literacy Development Project are extremely modest. All that is being investigated at this stage is the feasibility of certain methods of working with parents of preschool children. The effect of those methods cannot be properly investigated within a research design which has no controls (an experimental investigation is something which will be considered at a later stage). With this important limitation in mind, it is nevertheless possible to identify some findings emerging from work with the first wave of children and parents. First, the take-up of the programme has been excellentall parents invited to participate did so. Obviously, a high level of take-up is a precondition for a programme to be of value. Second, there has been no drop-out over the five months of the programme. None of the planned

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home visits was missed (although, inevitably, dates and times sometimes had to be re-arranged). More than that, all of us in the project team have experienced parents as positively welcoming us into their homes. Not all parents have attended every meeting (although the most recent meeting, which included a library visit, did attract 100% attendance). It seems safe to conclude that the implementation of the programme has been satisfactory so far. From our preliminary interviews, and from our growing knowledge of the families, it is clear that all the parents value literacy and are anxious to help their children acquire it. This despite the fact that amongst families in the project are some experiencing considerable domestic hardships of one kind or another. Although there are no 'non-literate' families we found a wide variation in the 'literacy climate' of homes at the start of the project in terms of book ownership, amount of print in the home, and parents' readiness to engage children in early literacy activities. Against this background, our impression so far is that the programme is having a major impact on certain families, and some impact on all of them. Parents' comments, taken from the project team's field notes, give an indication of this. One parent said, Before you came I never thought about her reading things like mugs and boxes and signs and things. We read all sorts now from the top of the bus. and Barry likes this [book] and points and says what's in the picture, like 'doggy'. I say 'Good boy' when he does that and he thinks he's reading. One mother asked during the first visit, 'Is this really meant to bring them on with their reading and writing and that?' but a few weeks later said, 'He listens better to stories. He enjoyed stories before, but he enjoys them even more now.' Another said, 'I'm reading with them more . . . now we read and sit and colour . . . I'm doing more because of the books being here.' A general view of the project was offered by this parent. I'm very happy with it. It's helped him with his reading. I can't afford to buy three or four books a week and somehow I never think to go to the library. You bringing different books in has really made him interested in them. His concentration has got better. He calls you the 'book lady'. The things you bring in give me ideas. You think you are doing everything right, but then you get new ideas, like I'd never have

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thought of pointing things out to him when we go to the shops, but I will now. Where to Next? To summarise, I have tried to argue that there is a strong case for promoting parental involvement in preschool literacy development (although, of course, it is important not to over-emphasise this aspect of development at the expense of others of equal or greater importance in the preschool years). There is a need to develop at-home involvement as well as in-school involvement and, although research can aid the development of both, there are perhaps more questions to be asked about at-home involvement. The research project described above may go some way towards answering certain of those questions. However, teachers working in their own context will always have particular questions which have not been tackled by other people's research. It is to be hoped that they will be prepared to carry out some studies of their own and share findings to enlarge our view of what can be done. Educational research is a form of communication within the educational community which enables lessons learned in one place to be applied in another. The dialogue concerning research into parental involvement in early literacy development is only just beginning. References to Chapter 4 APLIN, G. and PUGH, G. (eds) 1983, Perspectives on Pre-school Home Visiting.London/Coventry: National Children's Bureau/Community Education Development Centre. BRONFENBRENNER, U. 1974, A Report on Longitudinal Evaluations of Preschool Programs. Vol. 2. Is Early Intervention Effective? Washington, DC: DHEW Publication No. (OHD) 74-25. DAVIE, R., BUTLER, N. and GOLDSTEIN, H. 1972, From Birth to Seven: A Report of the National Child Development Study.London: Longman/National Children's Bureau. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE 1989, English in the National Curriculum.London: HMSO. DOUGLAS, J.W.B. 1964, The Home and School: A Study of Ability and Attainment in the Primary School.London: MacGibbon and Kee. GOODMAN, K. 1986, What's Whole in Whole Language? Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books.

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GOODMAN, Y. 1980, The roots of literacy. In M.P. DOUGLAS (ed.) Claremont Reading Conference Forty Fourth Yearbook.Claremont, CA: Claremont Reading Conference. GRIFFITHS, A. and EDMONDS, M. 1986, Report on the Calderdale Pre-school Parent Book Project.Halifax: School's Psychological Service, Calderdale Education Department. HALL, N. 1987, The Emergence of Literacy.London: Hodder and Stoughton. HALL, N., HERRING, G., HENN, H. and CRAWFORD, L. 1989, Parental Views on Writing and the Teaching of Writing.Manchester: Manchester Polytechnic School of Education. HANNON, P. 1987, A study of the effects of parental involvement in the teaching of reading on children's reading test performance. British Journal of Educational Psychology,57, 56-72. HANNON, P. and JACKSON, A. 1987, Educational home visiting and the teaching of reading. Educational Research,29, (3), 182-91. HANNON, P. and JAMES, S. in press, Parents' and teachers' perspectives on preschool literacy development. British Educational Research Journal. HER MAJESTY'S INSPECTORATE 1989, Aspects of Primary Education: The Education of Children under Five.London: HMSO. HIRST, K. and HANNON, P. 1990, An evaluation of a preschool home teaching project. Educational Research 32(1), 33-9. LAZAR, I., DARLINGTON, R., MURRAY, H., ROYCE, J. and SNIPPER, A. 1982, Lasting effects of early education. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development,47, 2-3, Serial No. 195. LUJAN, M.E., STOLWORTHY, D.L. and WOODEN, S.L. 1986, A Parent Training Early Intervention Programme in Preschool Literacy.ERIC (Educational Resources Information Centre) Descriptive Report, ED 270 988. McCORMICK, C.E. and MASON, J.M. 1986, Intervention procedures for increasing preschool children's interest in and knowledge about reading. In W. TEALE & E. SULZBY (eds) Emergent Literacy: Writing and Reading.Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation. NEWSON, J. and NEWSON, E. 1977, Perspectives on School at Seven Years Old.London: George Allen and Unwin. SMITH, G. (ed.) 1975, Educational Priority. Vol. 4 The West Riding Project.London: HMSO. TEALE, W. and SULZBY, E. (eds) 1986, Emergent Literacy: Writing and Reading.Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation. TIZARD, B. and HUGHES, M. 1984, Young Children Learning: Talking and Thinking at Home and in School.London: Fontana. TIZARD, J., Moss, P. and PERRY, J. 1976, All our Children.London: Temple Smith. WEDGE, P. and PROSSER, H. 1973, Born to Fail? London: Arrow Books/National Children's Bureau. WEINBERGER, J., HANNON, P. and NUTBROWN, C. 1990, Ways of working with parents to promote early literacy development. USDE Papers in Education, No. 14.Sheffield: University of Sheffield Division of Education. WHITBREAD, N. 1972, The Evolution of the Nursery-Infant School: A History of Infant and Nursery Education in Britain, 1800-1970.London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

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5 Young children as letter writers: A first report Anne Robinson, Nigel Hall and Leslie Crawford Introduction Young children's ability to engage in what is now being called 'interactive writing' (Peyton, 1989) appears to be one of the least studied aspects of children's writing development. Handling a relationship in written text is believed to pose particular problems for young children (Collerson, 1983; Shuy, 1987) and it is probably this which has led people in the past to assume that such competence is beyond very young children. A recent search of the world's educational databases has revealed a singular lack of investigation into the area of young children's ability to handle written dialogue. Although this is beginning to change with respect to dialogue journal writing, there are very few studies indeed of letter-writing involving children between the ages of five and eight. A major component of interactive writing is some acknowledgement of the existence of another person, the audience, with whom one corresponds. The extent to which young children are aware of audience when they write is a topic that has been more extensively studied. If audience awareness means anything it must be the ability to understand, to some degree, the perspective of the other person. From a strictly Piagetian perspective young children may be seen to have a somewhat egocentric stance towards others. However, it has become apparent (Donaldson, 1978) that as the context shifts to one which is more familiar then young children's ability to decentrate increases. Put another way, as the authenticity of the experience grows so does the child's ability to take more of the circumstances into account. The issue of 'authenticity' is an important one. Assumptions made by some researchers about children's writing seem to

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be based, not on what children can do, but on what they will do in certain contexts. When Hunt (1965) studied grammatical structures in young children's writing he started with fourth-graders, explaining: The fourth grade seemed a good place to begin. Before the fourth grade, children may jabber away with ease, fluency, and exuberance, but most third graders write only under considerable duress. (cited in Nigrosh, 1985: 150) This contrasts sharply with Graves' (1983:3) experience Children want to write. They want to write the first day they attend school. Most researchers studying young children's audience awareness have, like Hunt, chosen to investigate children from age nine upwards. They have done so, presumably because they shared Hunt's views on the inability of young children to write at all, or on the basis that young children cannot handle 'audience' in their written work. They also seem to have chosen to explore audience awareness through supposedly persuasive writing using highly inauthentic contexts. They are usually of the sort 'imagine you are writing to the Mayor to complain about . . . ' which are then contrasted with a similar task related to a different audience (for an example, see Nigrosh, 1985). Recent research into the writing abilities of young children has, however, revealed that they have competencies beyond those previously acknowledged (Graves, 1983; Newman, 1984; Hall, 1989). Such competencies are not necessarily conventional ones but, nevertheless, are ways of handling text that use many of the strategies and skills of more accomplished writers (Harste, Woodward & Burke, 1984). As a consequence a small number of researchers have begun to look at how children develop an understanding of handling written dialogue. This research has been mainly in the more authentic area of dialogue journal writing (Staton, Shuy, Kreeft Peyton & Reed, 1988). In such writing, exchanges are usually frequent, between people who know each other well, and, because all the entries are made into one journal, both writers always have access to all the previous exchanges when they are composing their text (Hall & Duffy, 1987). There are now many studies of dialogue journal communication (including some carried out with very young children (see Hippie, 1985; Hall & Duffy, 1987; Duffy, 1989) but letter-writing poses problems that dialogue journals manage to avoid. Those problems are mostly to do with the time that elapses between communications, and the possibility that previous exchanges may not be available for inspection when writing

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subsequent letters. Thus the burden of communicating across space and time becomes greater. Background to the Present Report This is a report on part of a letter-writing project which started in February 1986 with a class of children aged between five and six years of age. Two and a half years later the dialogue is still continuing. Every child in the class corresponded with one of the two male authors of this article. Thus every child in the class engaged in a personal set of exchanges with an adult. The child, therefore, not only had to cope with the distance across space and time but also with the personal distance that inevitably exists between children and adults, especially unknown adults. The context of the classroom is important to understanding the constraints and freedoms under which the children wrote their first letters. Anne Robinson, who was at that time the class teacher operated what Goodman (1986) would call a 'whole language' classroom. Within a rich and stimulating literacy environment the children were encouraged to read and to share with their friends, teacher, and parents, a wide range of good children's books. While in their first year in school the children had been directed through a combination of reading schemes (1, 2, 3, and Away and Ginn 360), in Anne's class the children chose with increasing freedom from books in the infant library and the class book corner. These books were read to the children, with the children, and by the children. Writing took place within all the activities in class and particularly during writing time when groups of children took turns at the writing table. The children were encouraged to choose their own topics and draw on their own knowledge and understanding of the writing process. Spellings were not provided, erasers were not used, and mistakes were regarded as an essential part of the learning process. Learning about all aspects of writing took place within the writing activities chosen by the children; there was no direct instruction using exercises or workbooks. Anne's role was to support, discuss, help, evaluate, question, and encourage the children whatever their level of development. It was into this context that Les and Nigel appeared one day. An energetic day was spent with the children, during which each child was given an envelope containing a letter which invited the child to write back, and it contained a promise that if they did, they would receive a reply. The intention at that point in time was not to undertake a 'project' to

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study young children's letter writing. It was simply a way for Anne to provide a different authoring experience for the children, and for Les and Nigel to keep in touch with children. Even from the beginning we had identified what were for us three important properties of written dialogue. (1) It was only significant if it extended over time. We were not interested in 'one-off' letters. Such letters are, of course, important but we felt that real exploration with written language between correspondents had to develop across real time. Participants had to have the chance to get to know each other, to develop a style of exchange, and understand the different obligations of sustained communication. (2) The dialogue had to be an authentic one between two friendly people. It had to be a dialogue where each participant had equal rights. Although as mature writers Les and Nigel clearly had competencies much greater than those of the children, this did not entitle them to use that competence in a didactic way. It was not the function of Les and Nigel to control the dialogue. (3) As the dialogue was between two people acting in friendship, it was the meanings which were to be significant rather than the form of those meanings. Friends would not normally correct, mark, or grade each others letters. They write because they have important or interesting things to say to each other; they want to know about each other's lives. Each accepts the other's letters as they are. Friends do not seek to embarrass or humiliate each other. The three of us had decided that there should be very few concessions to the children's age or experience. Les and Nigel would try to write neatly but would use, as far as possible, the kinds of expressions and language that they would use with other adult correspondents. We decided that the letters should be kept relatively short in the first instance but that the length would subsequently be a function of each individual exchange. We decided that Les and Nigel should be free to write about all aspects of their lives but agreed that it was legitimate to spend more time on those areas which the children could more easily understand. The children wrote all their letters unaided and without any pressure whatsoever. Anne would remind them that a batch were going to be sent off but there was no compulsion to write their letters. Only once the exchange of letters was well under way was it appreciated what an extensive resource now existed. What had started as merely a rewarding activity for both children and adults was revealing a wealth of

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written dialogue which in many respects was unique. It was decided to examine the data in a more systematic way and the potential of written dialogue as a means of exploring the children's development of the writing process. This change of perspective raised one potential problem. It was imperative that Nigel and Les continued to exchange letters with the children because they were interested in what the children had to say. The essential quality of the exchanges must not alter and must not be allowed to develop into something manipulative. The First Letters In this report we concentrate on the first letters written by the children (For a more complete account of the correspondence see Robinson, Crawford & Hall, 1990). During the visit of Les and Nigel to the class each child received the following letter:

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All the letters were identical except that each was addressed to an individual child; half of them were signed by Les and half by Nigel. The content of the initial letter had been carefully considered. It was designed to maintain a friendly relationship through reference to the visit, and to invite a response from the children. However, it was important that the letter did not contain anything which would determine the content of the children's response as we wanted the responsibility for selection of topics to rest with them. Although the original letter was set out in conventional style on headed note paper with the date, salutation and closure, the children were given no instructions about the structure of their own replies. Various cultures have generated certain conventions about the genre we call letter-writing and these conventions usually influence decisions about how a letter should be written and what it should contain. The children had limited experience of this genre, in fact most of them had written only one letter previously, to a fairy tale character, after reading The Jolly Postman (Ahlberg J. & Ahlberg A., 1986). One or two of the children had written 'thank-you' letters at home which had been copied from parents script. The form of the letters and the conventions they reflected were based solely on what the children themselves considered to be important. When starting a correspondence with someone the choice of topics is very wide. At the start of a written relationship with someone the writer is free to chose from almost anything that they consider appropriate. The judgment of what is 'appropriate' must be based on the writer's experience of letter writing, their understanding of the relationship between the correspondents, and their view of who the responder is. Given the age of the writers in this case (5.6-6.6), and the assumptions of previous researchers about the egocentric stance of young children as writers, these decisions can be regarded as quite demanding for young correspondents. We had no preconceived notions about the children's ability to handle the task which responding to the initial letter imposed. Only when the replies were collected and examined in detail could the children's interpretation of the task, and their success in behaving like letter writers, be explored. First letters are also important in that they set a tone for the subsequent correspondence. They offer to the respondent clues about the relationship to be developed, and generate an agenda which begins to mark acceptable topics and ways of dealing with them. An examination of the first letters of the children revealed that the children adopted a wide variety of strategies in selecting content. The

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many adult, and experienced writers, with whom we have discussed these letters, have indicated to us that the children's strategies are not simply those of young, beginning, letter writers. All the adults we have consulted have agreed that they were exactly the kinds of strategies that they would use when starting a relationship in writing with an unknown audience. We were able to identify four main strategies from which the children appear to have selected. (1) The 'I'll tell you all about me' strategy (2) The 'Reference to shared experience' strategy (3) The 'I'll be your friend' strategy (4) The 'I want to know more about you' strategy. Of course many of the letters combined elements of these strategies. The 'I'll tell you all about me' strategy The kind of information contained in letters of this type is perhaps what one might expect in the first letter to a penfriend. It reflects an understanding of the need of the audience to know more about the writer. The children's way of doing this was to list information about themselves. In one sense this appears a typical egocentric response, i.e. writing about one's self. However, considered in the context of letter writing to a strange audience it becomes a very reasonable strategy to select. The indication that it is a 'selected' strategy is that only a very few of the children chose solely to list information about themself.

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Most children who listed personal details linked the listing of information about themselves in with other strategies (see examples 10 and 11). As a selected strategy it seems to show awareness of the fact that although Les and Nigel had visited the class and talked to many children, they really did not know very much about the children as individuals. Recognising that the reader needs, or would like, information about a new correspondent requires a mature level of social understanding. The means chosen to represent this knowledge, the 'list', is often viewed as an unreflective response by children. However, as Barrs (1987:12) points out 'It is understandable that children, as they begin to map the world around them, should make use of lists to order what they know'. These children are in part 'mapping their own world' but are doing so in the context of making their world comprehensible to other people. The children offer a number of what were to them significant personal facts. Through providing these 'facts' they anticipate the reader obtaining a better picture of the writer; what Barrs might have called a 'sharing of maps'. Apart from being a contextually appropriate strategy lists offer an entry into the world of coherent texts and, maybe, ultimately into the world of cohesive texts. Lists are coherent by virtue of being a collection of items. They do not have to be in any order. A list does not have to be sequentially coherent. The lists in the letters above are collections of facts to do with each child's immediate family. As such they make perfect sense as maps of the most significant part of their world. By being expressed it contributes to the dialogic nature of the exchange in that it provides a basis for what we called above 'shared experience'. It better enables the reader to respond as a correspondent.

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The 'reference to shared experience' strategy Letters written between friends often make great use of shared experience. Shared experience links people and gives them a common reference point. It is often a way of re-establishing the nature of a relationship. A lack of shared experience makes generating a meaningful dialogue between two people very difficult. Only time and the existence of many texts gives a kind of shared experience which can then be drawn upon in future letters. The children, in writing their first replies, were faced with this problem. What kind of shared experience could give them a basis for the content of a letter? The strategy of many of them was to use the only bit of shared experience that did existthe half day visit. A large number of the children opened their letters by referring back to the visit.

Dear Nigel did you like being in my class and have you got any children and would you like to come to the strawberry fair.

Dear Les I have enjoyed your coming to our school I hope you would like to come back from . . .

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Some children used the letter from Nigel and Les as a shared experience and in doing so began to approach one of the most natural conventions of letter writing, that of thanking the writer for their letter.

Dear Nigel I like your letter I read all the way through it Did you have a good time Love from . . . And one child made specific reference to the actual text of the letter from Nigel and Les which said 'I have enjoyed being in your class'. She wrote back:

'I have enjoyed you being in my class too' The word 'too' is the important one here. It clearly signifies the picking-up of a previous point, and in being there is a recognition of the dialogic nature of letter writing.

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The 'I'll be your friend' strategy Many of the letters expressed pleasure in the new found relationship. Some were merely in the form of a wish for a return visit.

Dear Les I hope you can come to school again I like you so much that you come to school Love from . . . Twenty-two out of the thirty children expressed, in some form or other, the desire to extend the relationship or expressed pleasure in the relationship. For the most part this is done in a child-like way, that is from the child's perspective 'making friends'. The invitations are tokens of friendship 'you are my friend and you can come to tea'. All these responses clearly suggest an assumption about the nature of the relationships perceived by the children. On one level such responses may seem to be typically child-like; children like extending invitations to other children to come to their house. However, the fact that they have chosen to make

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these invitations to two strange adults reflects not an inability to discriminate between the social implications but precisely an ability to make such discriminations. The children chose to make those kinds of responses because the relationship established with them in the classroom made such responses appropriate.

Dear Les I Have got a new reading book would you like to visit my class again if my teacher says that you can come to my school Love from . . . The 'I want to know more about you' strategy Having information about an individual is like having shared experience. It allows the writer to refer back to it or to draw on it in making hypotheses about a person. When a dialogue has not yet been established the sensible way to gain such information is to ask questions. Quite a few of the children used questions in their letters. Some questions, already referred to, were the 'will you come back again?' type. Other letters used questions to clarify something about the visit.

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Some children asked questions to elicit personal information about either Les or Nigel.

Dear Les where do you work with people and is it fun. do you have some friends. my dad works at Manchester my auntie lives in Manchester too she is called auntie . . . . . . do you have a brother love from . . . The existence of questions in these letters is important in terms of the child's conception of the exercise as dialogue. Why ask a question unless you anticipate that the reader is going to reply? It is clear that these children understood very well that they were involved in a series of exchanges. Conclusion The replies made by the children to the original letter were, although varied, anything but random. Every child seemed to be able to draw upon

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previous experience, other people's experience, or formulate a hypothesis about what was appropriate for a letter. The children also appeared able to utilise a variety of strategies within one letter to give more power to the dialogic strength of the text. We are convinced that children wrote with care, with thought, and with considerable sense. Certainly Les and Nigel felt they had received letters that gave them considerable scope for reply. In essence the children had made their job easier by instituting agendas for future dialogue. It was also clear that the children understood that they had entered into some kind of sustained dialogue and that they wanted to be in that state. The first replies from the children helped us understand some important points: (1) That even inexperienced letter writers, nevertheless, made appropriate letter writing-like responses given a genuine letter writing context. (2) That all the children responded with a form and content that was appropriate to letter writing (even though many did not contain all the conventional forms associated with letter writing). (3) Every child demonstrated to us through their letters that they understood that a genuine audience was going to read what they wrote. (4) Every child employed strategies which recognised the dialogic nature of the communication, even though individuals used different strategies; they all anticipated a response to their letter. (5) Every child wanted to engage in the letter writing dialogue. It did not seem to us that these children were devoid of any capacity to make use of the notion of 'audience'. They started by recognising that an audience existed. They did make quick assumptions about the nature of the relationship embedded in the correspondence but that is a reasonable stance given children's limited experience of the outside world. We believe that these first letters show clearly that the ability to handle a dialogic relationship in text is part of the authorial repertoire of young children. It has nothing to do with their ability to use the grammar of written language. It has everything to do with their understanding that there is a person out there with whom they are going to correspond. References to Chapter 5 AHLBERG, J. and AHLBERG, A. 1986, The Jolly Postman.London: Heinemann. BARRS, M. 1987, Mapping the world. English in Education Vol 21 (1), 10-15. COLLERSON, J. 1983, One child, one genre; developments in letter-writing. In B. KROLL & G. WELLS (eds), Explorations in the Development of Writing.Chichester: Wiley.

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DONALDSON, M. 1978, Children's Minds.London: Fontana. DUFFY, R. 1989, Dear Mrs Duffy. In N. HALL (ed), Writing with Reason: The Emergence of Authorship in Young Children.London: Hodder and Stoughton. GOODMAN, K. 1976, What's Whole about Whole Language.London: Heinemann Educational Books. GRAVES, D. 1983, Writing: Teachers and Children at Work.London: Heinemann Educational Books. HALL, N. (ed.) (1989), Writing with Reason: The Emergence of Authorship in Young Children.London: Hodder and Stoughton. HALL, N. and DUFFY, R. 1987, Every child has a story to tell. Language Arts Vol 64 (5), 523-29. HARSTE, J., WOODWARD, V. and BURKE, C. 1984, Language Stories and Literacy Lessons.London: Heinemann Educational Books. HIPPLE, M. 1985, Journal writing in kindergarten. Language Arts 62 (3), 255-261. NEWMAN, J. 1984, The Craft of Children's Writing.New York: Scholastic. NIGROSH, G.H. 1985, Audience in children's letter writing: a study of sociolinguistic development. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Brown University, Rhode Island. PEYTON, J. 1989, Interactive writing in elementary education. Dialogue 6(1), 1. ROBINSON, A., CRAWFORD, L. and HALL, N. 1990, 'Some day you will no all about me.'London: Mary Glasgow Publications. SHUY, R. 1987, Dialogue as the heart of learning. Language Arts 64(8), 890-97. STATON, J., SHUY, R., KREEFT PEYTON, J. and REED, L. 1988, Dialogue Journal Communication: Classroom, Linguistic, Social and Cognitive Views.New York: Ablex.

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6 Children's oral language: A comparison of two classroom organisational systems George Fourlas and David Wray Introduction Oracy has attracted a great deal of recent attention from researchers. This is not surprising and, indeed, somewhat overdue, in so far as oral language, that is the ability of children to draw upon the system of language in order to express meanings by means of speech (Tough, 1979) is essential for communication in and out of school. Children participating in classroom oral communication exchange meanings so that teaching and/or learning can take place (Cazden, 1986; Edwards & Westgate, 1987). Children and teachers use oral language for a range of purposes or functions (Halliday, 1975). These purposes reflect both the intentions of the communication and the social and cognitive processes underlying the formation and exchange of meanings in the communicative context. In putting into operation their curriculum teachers choose from a variety of teaching methods, each of which is founded upon particular sets of rules according to which classroom communication and interaction take place. In teacher-centred classes, that is classes in which the children work as a single unit under the direct instruction of the teacher, the teacher tends to act like a transmitter, who transmits knowledge 'from those who know to those who do not' (Edwards & Furlong, 1978:28). Wellstructured question-answer class discussion is regarded as the most appropriate route

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along which this transmission can take place. A 'three-fold structure' develops in classroom discourse where a teacher asks a question, the pupil answers and then the teacher evaluates the answer (Downey & Kelly, 1979:181; Wells & French, 1980; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975; French, 1987). A number of studies focusing on teachers' questioning behaviours have demonstrated that this structure limits children's participation to one third of classroom discourse time, and show the unequal communicative rights with which children participate in teacher-led classroom discussion (cf. Flanders, 1970; Dunkin & Biddle, 1974). Discourse asymmetry does not exist merely in quantity but in quality as well. The teachers' preponderance of closed and factual rather than open questions at best channels children's answers to those expected (cf. Galton et al.,1980; Tisher, 1987). Yet in evaluating children's answers teachers have the verdict on them and shepherd children's responses within defined limits (DES, 1975:142). Phillips (1985) argues that the question-answer sequence obliges children to focus their attention on what has just been said instead of scanning across larger stretches of discourse. In that way children probably fail to make use of contextual information in their attempt to form, interpret, understand and exchange meanings by means of oral language. In addition it is teachers who decide what children mean or imply with what they say, which children accept, even when conscious of a misinterpretation, because they are unable to prevail long enough to make sure that their intended meaning is successfully communicated (Phillips, 1985). Therefore teacher-centred classrooms provide a pattern of communication where 'negotiation of meaning' is constrained (Phillips, 1985:64) and children are obliged to step into the teacher's meaning system and its frames of reference (Edwards & Furlong, 1978; Edwards & Westgate, 1987). A 'new communication system' (Barnes & Todd, 1977: 79) takes over when teachers' authority is withdrawn by the organisation of the classroom into small groups. Group organisation frees children from the role of answerer (French, 1987), allowing them to manifest skills and competencies not common at all in teacher-dominated communication systems. Children, having the responsibility for the management of talk, must cope with conflicts and silences; they must negotiate how, when and who talks; they must assess the relevance and quality of communication and decide when talk should stop (cf. Barnes & Todd, 1977; Haas Dyson, 1987; Edwards & Furlong, 1978). By working in groups children are more likely to challenge and question one another, to ask for and provide elaboration, to explore and clarify ideas, concepts and meanings, to stretch their language to accommodate their own second thoughts and the opinions of

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others, to offer suggestions of a hypothetical nature and reflect upon verbalised experiences (cf. Phillips, 1985; Forman & Cazden, 1985; Haas Dyson, 1987). Acting as senders and receivers of meanings and getting familiar with each of the participants' frames of reference, children in small groups establish intersubjectivity about the situation (context) to which their communication refers (Wells, 1981). The Present Study The aims of the present study were to investigate the influence of two styles of classroom organisation, the teacher-centred and the peer-group centred, on the ways in which children used oral language. The study also aimed to investigate factors other than classroom organisation which affected the quality and range of children's oral language. This study was carried out in three Greek primary schools, using children aged from 7.5 to 9.5 years. Methods of Collecting and Processing Data Data for the study was collected and processed by means of observation, tape recordings, written transcripts and an analysis system which classified children's oral language into categories according to functions. No preconstructed instrument was used during observations. While participating in the work of the class, the observer kept notes to provide a record of the methodology that teachers followed to develop the curriculum as well as the kind of materials and information resources children and/or teachers were using at the time of recording. Pupil-pupil and pupil-teacher interaction as well as the turn-taking sequence in the teacher-centred classes were recorded by means of observation. Tape recording of the group/class talk took place to provide a permanent and full record of what was communicated within the classroom by means of oral language. The intonation and volume of the speaker's voice on the tapes were taken into account in understanding the meanings, intentions and feelings carried by the children's oral language. Listening to the tapes we also had the advantage of studying the class group discourse as many times as necessary to construct and analyse the transcripts. Constructing written transcripts was a quite painstaking procedure, though it was proved invaluable in the analysis of children's talk. In reading the transcripts the context of each child utterance was studied in

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order to classify the utterance according to its functional category. From the transcripts we tried to pick out words, units of meaning or syntactical cues with which children organised the exchange of meanings in their talk, in order to use these as consistent markers for the functions identified. To study the quality and quantity of children's oral language it was necessary to devise a system of classifying this language into categories according to function. None of the systems already devised was employed (e.g. Bellack et al.,1966; Flanders, 1970; Halliday, 1975; Tough, 1979), nor was a new one constructed at the outset. After data had been collected a new, research specific, classification system was devised. This new system emerged from the collected data and, in that sense, is itself one of the findings of the present study. It was essential to devise such a system because: (a) currently available systems of functional analysis were found limited in range, (b) a predetermined system limits the categories found to those expected to be found, (c) no system has been devised so far to categorise functions of children's oral language identifiable both in teacher-centred and peer-group-centred real classroom situations. To devise and use a new classification system is not an easy task, as anyone who has worked in this area will know. This is because the meaning of one utterance depends upon lengthy sections of interaction-discourse, and upon the context that each utterance refers to. Therefore it is difficult to devise sharp-cut categories. Some utterances belong in several categories, so it is impossible to classify utterances into categories on a one to one basis (cf. Barnes & Todd, 1977). Problems such as these are alleviated by devising a system in which the categories are approximations. Yet analysis of children's talk into the categories of the devised system was assisted greatly by the study of the contextual meaning, the participant observation method employed, the natural data that tape recording provides, and the identification of markers that introduce specific features in the transcripts. The research sample was eight lessons, four organised on a teacher-centred basis and four organised on a peer-group basis. For each method two teachers were observed in each of two subjects: language and environmental studies. Results The following functions were identified in class/group discourse:

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Intentional (IN), Responsive (R), Reproductional (RRE/REC), Interrogative (Q), Experiential (E), Informative (ID, IE), Judgement (J), Hypothetical (HY), Argumentational (ARG), Affectional (AF), Organisational (OR), Compositional (REV, RED), Heuristic (HE), Imaginative (IM), Expositional (EXPO) and External Thinking (ET). A brief description of each function is given in Appendix 6.1. (For a more detailed analysis refer to Fourlas, 1988:53-72). Some of the labels used in the present analysis system have been used by others in the past (e.g. Halliday, 1975; Phillips, 1985). Although the terms may be the same, the meaning of the label is perhaps different. This is because the system emerged from the collected data itself, hence each function corresponds to specific research findings. The frequency of occurrence of these functions in the teacher-centred and the peer-group-centred lessons is given in Table 6.1 and Figure 6.1. Functions such as the Intentional, the Responsive, the Reproductional, the Interrogative, and the Experiential were observed to occur in higher frequencies in the teacher-centred lessons. All the other Table 6.1 Frequency in per cent of the functions of children's spoken language in P.G.(Peer-group) and T.C.(Teacher-centred) methods of teaching. A comparative table T.C. P.G. Code Functions f% f% IN Intentional 25.1 1.5 R Responsive 28.6 2.3 RRE/REC Reproductional 7.6 2.8 Q Interrogative 7.6 3.6 E Experiential 3.0 1.5 ID/IE Informative 10.5 19.3 J Judgement 9.4 18.2 HY Hypothetical 1.1 3.1 ARG Argumentational 2.4 7.0 AF Affectional 1.3 4.5 OR Organisational 2.5 16.2 REV/RED Compositional 0.6 6.1 HE Heuristic 0.3 4.2 IM Imaginative 0.2 4.0 EXPO Expositional 0.0 1.1 ET External thinking 0.0 4.5

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Figure 6.1: Frequency of the functions of children's oral language in the Teacher-centred and the Peer-group classroom organisational systems functions were found in higher frequencies in the lessons which were peer-group centred. Of further interest was the fact that children in the peer-group lessons used oral language over the entire range of functions in respectable proportions. In contrast, in the teacher-centred lessons, children did not use the External Thinking or Expositional functions at all, and they used the Imaginative, Heuristic and Compositional functions quite rarely. Discussion What these children were doing with oral language in small groups and in teacher-centred lessons is clear from the results. In the teacher-centred classes the highest frequency of occurrence was found to be the Responsive function. Although, in this study, data about the teachers' talk has not been analysed, the huge difference observed between the frequency of Responsive and Interrogative functions of children's talk indicates that when children answered questions they mostly answered their teacher's questions. This concurs with the findings of other

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researchers, for example, Flanders (1970), Bellack et al.(1966) and many others, and demonstrates again the role of 'answerer' which children typically play in classroom communication. From a study of the transcripts, it is clear that the children answering the teacher's recall or factual questions used the Responsive function to feed the teaching process with specific pieces of information. In this way the teachers seemed to oblige the children to provide the classroom discourse with an expected piece of information that fitted the flow of their argument or led to conclusions they aimed to reach using their talk. Thus the teachers supervised the construction of the context to which classroom communication referred and at the same time 'helped' children to become familiar with the meaning system that referred to this context. It was not the case that children in the teacher-centred classes made no initiations at all. Children using the Informative function (frequency: 10.5%) provide the learning process with pieces of information which are either a personal opinion or the product of the manipulation/description of any provided educational material. However, utterances characterised as Informative were very often followed by teacher evaluation follow-up moves (cf. Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). From the transcripts it is also clear that many of these Informative utterances might also have been considered as Responsive, in that they were, sometimes oblique, answers to teacher questions. Thus the children's initiations in the teacher-controlled communication system existing in these teacher-centred classes can be regarded rather as 'pseudo-initiations'. In the teacherless small groups, on the contrary, children were found to make real initiations. Utterances classified as Informative were usually starting points for new episodes in the children's group discourse. In these new episodes children often used oral language to make comments on pieces of provided information (Judgement function: 18.2%), argued for or against it (Argumentational: 7%) by using previous conclusions and/or making new hypotheses (Hypothetical: 3.1%). It is also quite important that children in these small groups providing information (Informative function), making judgements by using old and new pieces of information (Judgement), arguing in a logical way with reference to facts and/or conclusions (Argumentational), thinking aloud (External thinking), making hypotheses (Hypothetical) and organising the learning task by themselves (Organisational) were constructing in common a context to which the meaning of their talk referred. One of the functions found in reasonable proportions in both classroom methods was the Judgement function. In small groups the children

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tended to judge the meanings communicated by their peers against the criterion of appropriateness to the particular task. Additionally, in group discourse an utterance belonging to the Judgement function was usually considered as Argumentational, Informative or even Hypothetical at the same time. This means that children judging some one else's viewpoints, ideas or actions would justify their judgements by providing arguments and alternative ideas, or even making new hypotheses to be tested. Hence it can be argued that the children in these groups were not afraid of expressing their ideas and opinions. The Judgement function did not operate in the same way in the teacher-centred lessons. Here children made judgements mostly after having received permission for doing so, and these judgements usually consisted of only a few words. This may indicate that these children were wary of the teacher's criticism of their judgements. Such judgements were not likely to be powerful enough to influence the development of the subsequent discourse. Some important points emerge from an examination of the frequency of occurrence of the Hypothetical, Compositional, Heuristic, Expositional and External Thinking functions. These functions further indicate the existence of 'exploratory talk' in the small group discourse (cf. Barnes, 1976). The Heuristic function indicates the result of children's exploratory activity and/or thinking; the Expositional children' occupations with experiments; the External Thinking children's thinking aloud in search of solutions or interpretations; the Hypothetical the establishment of a hypothesis of which the correctness should be actively explored. Children's identity as explorers is also suggested by the presence of Compositional function talk. This kind of talk indicates the activity of drawing conclusions, revising and presenting in oral or written form the results of children's own investigations. This function hardly occurred in the teacher-centred lessons. In these drawing conclusions was an activity carried out by the teacher. The teacher provided the bodies of knowledge to be learnt and the teacher revised those bodies she regarded as important. Ranked third in terms of frequency in the peer-group classes was the Organisation function. This stemmed from the children's roles as decision-makers. Children in the groups were responsible for deciding who should talk when, what was appropriate material to be used, what was to be done and in what ways, what the result of their work was, whether this result was good or bad, etc. (Barnes & Todd, 1977; Edwards & Furlong, 1978). The organisation of the learning process, the content, the pace of learning, the information resources and the strategies to be followed were the teacher's responsibility in the teacher-centred classes. The Organisational function therefore occupied a limited proportion of children's talk in these lessons.

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Data presented and discussed so far demonstrates that the teaching method had a strong influence on the range of functions with which children participated in oral communication. It seemed, however, that within the same classroom organisational system variations in the proportions of language functions observed in different lessons might also be partly due to other factors. These factors seemed to include the sources of information available to the children and their nature, the nature of the task in hand, the nature of the provided material, and the form in which children had to present their work to the class. Analysis of the influence of these alternative factors seems a promising ground for future research in this area. Conclusions The functions of children's spoken language were found to be restricted in quality and quantity in the teacher-centred lessons observed. The character of this teaching method, reflected in the teacher's dominance of classroom discourse, seemed to be a major factor in children's restricted use of spoken language. The peer-group method seems to be a promising alternative which may increase the quantity and quality of children's talk. Small group discussion would seem to have a great deal of potential in terms of children's oral language development. Its use has been explored in a variety of educational contexts but, perhaps, focus now needs to be given specifically to other influencing factors, such as the nature of the group task. From this attention teachers may be able to derive insights into the most appropriate ways of organising peer-group teaching methods. Appendix 6.1 Brief description of the functions of children's oral language. (For a detailed analysis refer to Fourlas (1988:53-72)). Intentional (IN): This is the function of children using language to ask permission to talk. Responsive (R): Responsive function talk is an answer to the questions of the teacher or a peer. Reproductional (RRE/REC): Children's language is considered as reproductional when children read (RRE)something, a piece of a text for

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instance, or repeat (REC)something that has just been said by someone else. Interrogative (Q): Children's use of oral language to ask the teacher or a peer a question or a definition. Experiential (E): This is the function of children using language to express personal experiences. Informative (ID/IE): Children's talk was considered as informative when used to provide information. This function has been subdivided into two sub-functions the informative descriptive (ID),where information derives from the manipulation of the information resources, and the Informative Expressional (IE)which is the expression, by means of language, of children's previous knowledge, interpretations, explanations, personal opinions, ideas, imagination, etc. Judgement (J): Meanings that express agreement or disagreement belong to this function. Hypothetical (HY): The use of language to establish hypotheses. Argumentational (ARG): This is children's use of language for reasoning. Affectional (AF): This function has been devised to represent children's expression of personal feelings and emotions by means of oral language. Organisational (OR): Children's functional use of language in organising their task, the learning process or even in controlling behaviours. Compositional (REV/RED): The use of language for creating a written or spoken text. It is divided into two sub-functions: Compositional Revising (REV)where children put together into a final form pieces of information previously discussed and Compositional Dictating (RED)where children dictate their ideas to a peer who creates/writes the text. Heuristic (HE): Children's use of language to express that they have discovered something or that they were experiencing a phenomenon. Imaginative (IM): This is children's use of language to introduce or express imaginative situations. Expositional (EXPO): This function corresponds to children's language used to accompany the demonstration of a phenomenon or an experiment. External Thinking (ET): Working at a task children may think aloud. Such pieces of talk belong to this category. References to Chapter 6 BARNES, D. 1976, From Communication to Curriculum.Harmondsworth: Penguin. BARNES, D. and TODD, F. 1977, Communication and Learning in Small Groups.London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. BELLACK, A. et al.1966, The Language of the Classroom.New York: Teachers College Press.

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CAZDEN, C. 1986, Classroom discourse. In M. WITTROCK (ed.) Handbook of Research on Teaching (3rd edn). New York: Macmillan. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE 1975, A Language for Life.London: HMSO. DOWNEY, M. and KELLY, A. 1979, Theory and Practice of Education: An Introduction.London: Harper and Row. DUNKIN, M. and BIDDLE, B. 1974, The Study of Teaching.New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. EDWARDS, A. and FURLONG, V. 1978, The Language of Teaching.London: Heinemann Educational. EDWARDS, A. and WESTGATE, D. 1987, Investigating Classroom Talk.London: Falmer Press. FLANDERS, N. 1970, Analysing Teacher Behaviour.New York: Addison Wesley. FORMAN, E. and CAZDEN, C. 1985, The cognitive value of peer interaction. In V. WERTSCH (ed.) Culture, Communication and Cognition: Vygotskian Perspectives.New York: Cambridge University Press. FOURLAS, G. 1988, A comparative study of the functions of children's oral language in teacher-centred and peer-group centred methods of teaching in Greek primary schools. Unpublished MEd thesis, University College, Cardiff. FRENCH, P. 1987, Language in the primary classroom. In S. DELAMONT (ed.) The Primary School Teacher.London: Falmer Press. GALTON, M., SIMON, B. and CROLL, P. 1980, Inside the Primary Classroom.London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. HAAS DYSON, A. 1987, The value of 'time off task': Young children's spontaneous talk and deliberate text. Harvard Educational Review,57 (4), 396-420. HALLIDAY, M. 1975, Learning How to Mean.London: Edward Arnold. PHILLIPS, T. 1985, Beyond lip-service: Discourse development after the age of nine. In G. WELLS & J. NICHOLLS (eds) Language and Learning: An Interactional Perspective.London: Falmer Press. SINCLAIR, J. and COULTHARD, M. 1975, Towards an Analysis of Discourse.London: Oxford University Press. TISHER, R. 1987, Student Roles. In M. DUNKIN (ed.) The International Encyclopaedia of Teaching and Teacher Education.Oxford: Pergamon Press. TOUGH, J. 1979, Talk for Teaching and Learning.London: Ward Lock Educational. WELLS, G. 1981, Learning through Interaction.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. WELLS, G. and FRENCH, P. 1980, Language in the Transition from Home to School.Final report to the Nuffield Foundation, University of Bristol.

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7 How characters become persons: The development of characterisation in children's writing Richard Fox The research described in this chapter attempts to trace a part of children's development as writers, specifically the way in which they gradually learn to represent people, and other intentional agents, in their narrative writing. It is based on analysing both cross-sectional and longitudinal samples of children's writing, between the ages of 6 and 13. Some of the writing was taken from regular classroom work but the major part was commissioned specifically for the project, though still carried out under the normal conditions for writing in each class. The research involved devising a content analysis of character in narrative writing which was refined during a series of trials and tested for inter-judge reliability of coding. The full version of the content analysis (named 'CACH'Content Analysis of Characters) provides rules for coding stories at five successive levels of development, or attainment, across 10 dimensions of the representation of character (Fox, 1986). In many ways the research attempts to build on the pioneering efforts of Wilkinson et al.(1980) in the Crediton Project. It has a narrower focus but one which links closely with psychological research on the development of social cognition (Selman, 1980). The 'levels' which are described are not to be thought of as existing in children's heads; rather, they are convenient summaries of a succession of levels of attainment which children reach in their struggle to represent their understanding of the social world in the specific domain of narrative writing. They thus represent an attempt to map out a common pathway followed by children in which their developing understanding is to be seen in interaction with a particular cultural tradition (cf. Feldman, 1980).

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Stories are about characters. Whether they be animals, humans, trees, cars or Martians, characters exist in all stories for they are a basic ingredient of the narrative mode of language. Things happen to characters, sometimes quite extraordinary things, and they also make things happen. Children don't have to be taught this, it comes as part and parcel of their early knowledge about the world, presumably learned by listening to people telling and reading stories in the pre-school years. But as children learn to write, and as their knowledge of stories increases, the characters in their own stories change. Thus one 6-year-old wrote the following story: One day there was a bear and it was hungry and it found a hollow tree with bees in it. And it got the honey and went away with it and went to sleep for the rest of the day. There is already in this simple and splendid narrative a sure grasp of the essential elements of narrative structure. A purposeful agent, or character, is faced with a predicament and solves it. There is a conventional story opening and a most satisfactory conclusion. The character already has a mind, at least in terms of the attribution of a simple motive of hunger, and the ability to act purposefully to fulfil its wishes. But inevitably at this stage we do not learn very much about the character of the bear. It exists; it acts; and that is all. Contrast this with the following extract from a story written by a 13-year-old about a space flight: . . . Worry, regret, excitement, tenseness surged in the minds of the crew. The Russian Captain, Kandinsky, was worrying, he realized how sore the Americans were about the Captain being Russian, there were a thousand and one people who could have a field day with every fault he made. He was only human, but many saw him as a threat to the 'American honest hero' image. He was not good-looking, with blond hair, blue eyes and rippling muscleshe was small, with mousy brown hair and a tobaccostained beard. What amazing qualities he did have were intelligence, resourcefulness and clear-headedness, he had the experience of two flights behind him both going perfectly. The International Board had realized this, there was no other man who came up to half his standard. . . This extract provides, I suggest, a dramatic contrast to the 'bear' story, in terms of its sophistication. To compare the two pieces, each a satisfying example of narrative writing in its own terms, is to obtain some fascinating glimpses of the kinds of development which take place in children's writing as they gain in knowledge and experience. Some of the contrasts have to do primarily with language. Thus vocabulary, syntax and cohesive 'ties' all clearly make huge advances between the ages of 6 and 13. There is, in the second example, an awareness of a literary style and genre and an ability to

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organise narrative events and structure in writing on a far larger scale. But there are also crucial developments in the kinds of meaning that can be handled. These changes can be seen in the way that the 'Russian Captain' is represented, in the developing understanding of the inner psychological world of thoughts and feelings and in the outer social world of relationships, conflicts and values. A 6-year-old simply could not produce a character with the sophistication of 'Kandinsky' because a 6-year-old simply hasn't yet attained that level of understanding of the inner world of mental events and the outer world of social interaction. The content analysis developed in this research attempts to chart the course of this dimension of children's writing roughly between these two points. It concentrates, not on language development per se,but on psychological developments in the child's understanding of the social world. These developments make available to an older child a richer world of possible meanings and, in children who learn to enjoy narrative writing, they emerge in the social worlds that they invent in their stories. In recent years there has been a great upsurge of interest in the development of children's writing. The work of Donald Graves (Graves, 1983) and of the National Writing Project, for example, have helped to produce both new ideas and a renewed enthusiasm amongst teachers about the teaching of writing. A view of writing has been articulated which emphasises a process model of composition and transcription and is centred on a developmental view of children's progress. This then leads on to consideration of the difficult question of how we can intervene to help children develop as writers, particularly in the area of composition. The 'Writing Conference' is the new arena for this work and its success, as Graves makes clear, depends upon teachers knowing enough about the development of children's writing to be able to diagnose where a child has got to in a sequence of development and to be able to predict the likely course of future progress. Only then can we, as teachers, try to focus our intervention so as to match the individual needs of each child. But although it is obvious that children's writing develops dramatically and enormously between the early days of the Infants' class and the final years of Primary or Middle School, it is not easy to say just what it is that develops. In fact, of course, many different things develop. Handwriting (and keyboard skills), accuracy of spelling and punctuation, the range of vocabulary, the complexity of sentence structure, even the child's grasp of a range of literary genres and conventions, all these develop in the directions of greater control and greater variety. Some of this has been described in great detail by researchers (for example by Perera, 1984) and

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a part of it has been enshrined in the first attempt to prescribe a National Curriculum for English (DES, 1989). Teachers are not necessarily very conversant with this material as yet, however, and the assessment of children's writing currently poses many problems for them. If assessment is genuinely to contribute to teaching then it must be able to inform the dialogue between teacher and child in a way that the child finds helpful. This may be more likely to happen if the teacher follows Graves' advice concerning conferences; to do more listening than talking; but it also depends on a sound understanding by the teacher of the overall shape of writing development. In this respect the picture of writing development provided by the attainment targets of the National Curriculum is a curious patchwork, highlighting some developments but largely ignoring others. Only the development of characters, and their interaction, is described by CACH and, in the light of what has been said above, the decision to describe just this one area of development in such detail may seem perverse. The fact is that once one begins to examine the development of children's writing it turns out to be both rich and very complex. In terms of research the priority is to capture that richness and that complexity. In terms of the application of research to classroom practice, however, some simplification is in order. How, then, can one do justice to the complexity of the research findings and yet present those findings in a simple enough fashion to be of use to others, particularly to busy primary school teachers? CACH is designed to catch in its net 10 separate, though over-lapping, aspects of characterisation at each of its five levels. Here a drastic step is taken by simplifying these 50 categories into a more manageable summary of each of the five main levels of development, in order to try to provide a coherent overview. Teachers will, I hope, recognise many familiar characteristics of children's story writing at given ages and perhaps will be led to see if they, too, can detect some of the related features which CACH describes. As with all such descriptions of a sequence of developmental milestones, there are enormous differences in the speed and consistency with which children progress through them. The order of progression, however, was shown in the research to be a common one. In the beginning, then, children write simple narratives in which there is usually only one significant character. Other characters sometimes appear, it is true, but they tend only to be 'ciphers' who exist rather than playing a full part in the action. Purpose and intention are generally restricted to one character, or at most to a pair of characters who share a single set of intentions. Occasionally an adult lays a part in the plot by allowing or forbidding some action to take place, or an activity may be

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shared between two characters, but there is characteristically only a single psychological point of view from which the events are portrayed. Many of these early attempts at a story are captions to go with a picture. Thus a 6-year-old wrote: Here is a Treasure Island and me and Stephen are on it. and we have a landrover. Another 6-year-old wrote: Here is a house and a little girl lives there. She has got a canary. It sings sweet songs. She likes them a lot. She has got a pretty house. the end. Apart from 'little' and 'big' almost no attributes are used to describe these Level 1 characters. They are described as existing but they do not in general interact with one another. Perhaps the most important limitation of Level 1 is that the outer world of physical action is not clearly differentiated from the inner world of mental events. Such characters mostly pursue simple goals but almost nothing of their mental world is represented. Even at this stage, however, one can discern the seeds of what is to come. Thus the bear felt hungry and the little girl likes her canary's songs. (Almost always it seems that at any given Level of development one can just spot the embryonic form of features of characterisation which will appear in full-blown form at the next Level.) The beginnings of such stories rarely get beyond conventional phrases such as: 'One day . . . ' or 'Once upon a time . . . '. The single characters mostly pursue their goals to a satisfactory conclusion, in which a wish is fulfilled or actions are simply completed. The stories are simple but often have a charm all of their own: Once upon a go there was a monster he lost his way in the forest he saw a which he said can I have that bottle of milk then he went back to the forest. (Age 5:9) I summarise Level 1 as follows: Level 1:A single character pursues simple goals. Thought and action are not clearly differentiated. The limitations of writing at this level are partly caused by the very great difficulties of managing the newly acquired skills of letter formation and spelling, as well as by the many differences of communicating in writing as opposed to speech. But the representation of characters is also limited by the young child's difficulty in thinking about persons (or characters) at an explicit level. Self and other have been differentiated as physical entities but not yet as psychological entities. Feelings and thoughts

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are only tenuously recognised and are often confounded with actions. Different perceptual points of view of a situation are realised but not separate subjective, or psychological, points of view. The inner world of the character, in so far as it exists, takes on the writer's own psychological perspective. At Level 2 interaction between characters really gets under way. Whereas at Level 1 social interaction was confined to the occasional request or shared activity, at Level 2 there is typically plenty of interaction at a physical level. It must be stressed that the 'Levels' are levels of attainment in this particular area of knowledge. There is no intention to claim that they exist as complete mental structures within children's heads or even that they are self-contained. In fact, this research showed quite clearly that development in this domain is a gradual and ragged advance, with many temporary steps back as well as a slow general movement forwards. Children do not develop all aspects of their stories at once, but innovate in restricted, limited ways. Some stories clearly show greater commitment and involvement than others, and some are simply written in order to satisfy the minimum demands of a teacher. Most stories contain aspects at more than one level of CACH, though about 70% can be described in terms of just 2 levels. Children for the most part abandon some aspects of Level 1 by the age of 7 and most aspects by the age of 8. Level 2 then tends to be dominant until about the age of 10. Here is part of a Level 2 story: . . . One day my father had been hired to explore a wreck and he took me with him. We went under there it was a beautiful spanish armada its mast was broken and worn but it was still beautiful then I saw bubbles rising. I swam down there was a man wrapped in an octupus' tentacle. I shot up to my father and told him what had happened to him my father took a harpoon gun out of his belt. Then he radioed the life guard on his portable diver's radio and in ten minutes there was a gentle hum on a motor boat's powerful engine as it sped through the water all of a sudden a dolphin tore through the water at great speed and caught the front of a small fishing boat and tore it in half so he had to rescue all the people in the boat in the meantime the diver caught in the octopus tentacle was DEAD and so was the octopus because the man had a revolver and had fired six shots at the octopus before he had been killed. (Age 10:7) This is a relatively mature version of the kind of action-packed narrative typical of Level 2. Now there are several characters who can act

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and make decisions independently of one another and who are often in conflict. It is the great age for stereotyped 'goodies' and 'baddies' who behave in entirely predictable ways and who look like what they are.(Thus evil people look evil, good characters are good-looking and so forth.) There is still only a very limited depiction of the inner world of characters and in fact typically the inner world perspective is limited to that of one character. Even here the mental events that are depicted are almost all to do with thinking rather than with feeling. They are subservient to action and mostly concern the planning of actions and simple reactions to events. What emotion is expressed tends to be stereotyped and physically observable. Thus characters may shake with fear or go red with anger. Level 2 is summarised as follows: Level 2:Characters interact physically. A single inner world. Thinking about action. It seems that children can now clearly envisage the fact that people are psychologically, as well as physically, distinct but are as yet unable to coordinate two psychological perspectives with one another. They realise that action follows from thought and intention but lack ability to be genuinely self-reflective. The subjective states of others are also thought to be 'legible' from simple physical observation. Thus, if a person is sad they should look sad and this will probably be shown by having them cry. Thought is still uncomplicated on the whole and characters do not experience much, if anything, in the way of mental conflict. The action-dominated character of stories at this age seems to have much to do with the child's limited capacity for thinking about thoughts and feelings. Even the predicaments that face characters are mostly threats to physical safety, for the whole realm of psychological welfare has yet to surface in conscious awareness. In a similar limited fashion relationships of cooperation or conflict are simply dealt with in these stories. Friendship may be announced as existing but the writer is unable to express how friendship is made, maintained or broken. Another typical feature of Level 2 is that the power and authority of adults, typically parents, teachers or policemen, is an utterly taken for granted background feature of the world. Their authority goes unchallenged and children are clearly seen as dependent on adult power and knowledge. There is, however, one interesting way in which child characters are frequently enabled by their child authors to escape temporarily from this position of relative powerlessness. This is via the intervention of a supernatural 'ally', often a character borrowed from television or from a story, who shares his or her power with the child protagonist, takes the child to other worlds or otherwise intervenes

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magically. As with the various accidents, traps, dangers, crimes, adventures and disasters which constantly assail protagonists at Level 2, these allies appear quite arbitrarily and usually disappear at the end to leave the child back in the child's reality of powerlessness. Two further features of Level 2 concern the use of dialogue and the kinds of endings, or resolutions, typically employed. Dialogue at this level is actually more like monologue, for although information may be given by one character to another it is generally a matter of 'asking' or 'telling' rather than of conversation or an exchange of views. This follows from the fact that psyschologically the writer is still limited almost completely to a single point of view. Resolutions at Level 2 overwhelmingly involve physical force or power, or alternatively physical reward. In many 'crime and punishment' stories the two are combined with the villains destroyed or imprisoned and the heroes given large rewards of money or medals. The high level and frequency of violence, and especially the violent resolutions of predicaments at this Level, are often very worrying to adults, but it is worth considering how far they may stem from the child's limited understanding of social interaction as existing on a physical plane. For the Level 2 writer 'might is right' for there is as yet no alternative means of expressing social conflict and its resolution. Only when the view of social interaction as physical interaction is replaced by a view of the social world as focused upon intentions and attitudes is this simple 'power-play' replaced by a more complex mixture of physical and psychological power, of persuasion, influence and compromise, alongside brute force. A corollary of this Rambo-like Level 2 'world view' is that if one has physical power one might as well use it. This frequently leads to multiple deaths, including sometimes the death of the protagonist. Level 3 comes, one suspects, as a welcome relief to teachers for it ushers in a world in which characters begin to try to understand one another, to have relationships and to express feelings. It may appear somewhat earlier in girls' writing, perhaps because of a stronger interest in the world of social relationships, whilst boys typically show more concern for details of the physical world of technology (though such generalisations may not stand up to more detailed examination and there are plenty of individual exceptions). Here is an example of writing about characters at Level 3: . . . Suddenly Craig came out of his front door. When we met he said that I was early but I didn't understand what he meant. After much discussion we decided to go up to Bingham Hill where, in the afternoon I remembered that I was suposed to be going to play with

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Craig for the whole day and that no one knew anything different. After tea my Mum arrived to take me home, being none the wiser for my mistake. Here we have for the first time the beginnings of an ability to project into the psychological world of others, and to represent oneself as a self-reflective thinker. For some reason this new level of writing is mostly about thought and information, rather than about feeling and attitude, to begin with. The knowledge that different characters have about a situation is often at the forefront of the author's mind, as in the extract above. The greater realisation of others as centres of consciousness has a wide range of implications. These include the development of a new attitude towards the potential reader, or audience. The context of the story is now given fairly fully, probably because the writer is more aware of the reader's need for contextual information, and sometimes the author will address the reader directly. The predicaments faced by characters still often involve material welfare and safety but they are now portrayed more frequently as problems, whose solution involves thought, co-ordination of planning and exchanges of information between characters. This affects the use of dialogue, of course, and social interaction becomes centred on exchanges of information. Though stereotypes still abound there is also at Level 3 a greater tendency to provide a detailed portrait of the appearance and clothing of individual characters, who are often judged via global labels such as 'nice', 'horrible', 'friendly', 'unkind' and so forth. These changes mark the first real efforts to represent characters, other than the self, as individuals. With the co-ordination of intentions and plans, there comes a more explicit view of relationships and their problems. In particular there is a strong ethic of 'teamwork' or mutual help expressed in many children's writing at this age and some effort to relate conflicts to the motives of characters. Child characters become somewhat more independent, although adults are often introduced as benign helpers, when they are needed. Child characters begin to comment on adult power and to protest against it, but only in a rather half-hearted and temporary manner. There is still a background feeling of dependence on adults. Physical power and violence is still a common ingredient in stories but now it is more likely to be qualified or legitimated by references to values and to law and order. Endings are now more likely to include evaluative comments, both on characters and on outcomes. Not only are reciprocal relations between two characters possible at Level 3 but alternatively the writer may choose to represent the self, as protagonist, engaged in some simple forms of self-reflective thought.

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Level 3 may thus be summarised as follows: Thinking characters exchange information and/or a self-reflective protagonist appears. Thinking about thinking is represented. Level 4 develops many of the tendencies of Level 3 towards individuality of characters and the expression of mental states. This is the great stage for feelings and attitudes to come to the surface and for the emotional state of mind of the characters to become a preoccupation. Here is an example, which deals with the introduction of a creature from outer space to the protagonist's family: How was I going to introduce Blob to my family? I thought for a while. Then I spoke. 'Stay here for a moment Blob' I said. 'I'll go in and try to calm them and then you come on in.' I went straight in and started to tell them about Blob. They seemed to take it very well. Blob came in, they looked in amazement at him. Mum looked at me then at Blob and rubbed her eyes. She probably thought I was joking up to now. 'Hello' said Blob. 'Hello' replied everyone in a shaky voice. At Level 4, children for the first time write about characters as complete individual persons, with general psychological attributes. At the same time there is often a growing detachment in the author's attitude towards the characters and a new conscious awareness of narrative techniques, such as flashbacks in time or revelations of concealed motives, which are introduced deliberately to affect the reader. At this Level writers realise that they can attempt to manipulate the reader's interest and involvement by the use of such techniques and conventions. Intentions and predicaments become for the first time centred on the psychological welfare of the characters, as well as, or instead of, their purely physical welfare. The attitudes, moods and emotional states of the characters are often at the centre of the narrative stage. Social interaction itself becomes a topic of discussion and the characters start to argue, evaluate, criticise and justify the behaviour and actions that occur. The attributes of a character are now more likely to be expressed in terms of long-term habits and psychological traits or dispositions. A selfreflective protagonist is also able to take a rather more detached view of self, which includes some critical self-appraisal. In addition, characters are now not only able to put themselves into someone else's (psychological) shoes but can use fully 'reciprocal projection' in which they are aware of the other character's view of themselves. All these psychological developments represent the child's growing ability to think of self and of others as complete individuals with their own values, experiences and points of view. They have developed, in fact, a

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first psychological model of the individual person. Their stories, as a consequence of this, pay far more attention to such things as non-verbal communication and the cues which reveal, or conceal, the inner states of mind and intentions of the characters involved. Appearances could already deceive, at Level 3, but now there is a realisation that people often present themselves in a particular light in order to influence others. The conscious presentation of self becomes another preoccupation. In terms of relationships of friendship and of authority there is an awareness of the difficulties involved in maintaining good relations and of the many ways in which they may break down. Level 4 also represents the point at which fully independent characters take control of their own destinies and resolve their predicaments without adult or supernatural help. The endings of stories become more varied and more complex, though one commonly used device is the 'dénouement' in which the motivation of a key character is revealed to be the result of some hitherto concealed events, hidden in their past history. Some endings, too, leave issues unresolved as if the writer now knows that neat endings are not necessarily realistic. In general there is a considerable increase in a striving after realism, in Level 4 stories. Level 4 may thus be summarised as follows: Level 4:Characters are realised as individuals, with feelings and attitudes. The writer can think about the thinker as a person. Lastly, in CACH, there is Level 5, which deals with the most mature features of characterisation which were found in the writing of 13-year-olds. Such Level 5 examples were relatively rare, though no doubt they will appear more commonly in the narratives of older children. Besides the depiction of individual characters, in social relationships, there is at Level 5 an increase in the power to generalise about the social world in a number of ways. Thus, for example, the introduction to a story may deal in generalisations, or with a general evaluative framework, which the particular characters and events are taken to exemplify. Thus one 13-year-old started as follows: Have you ever thought that someone was completely on your side, then found that they were not? I'm sure you have. Well this particular person was my Mum . . . Similarly, in terms of predicaments, the Level 5 writer is concerned with the impact of events upon the characters and their relationships, or their values, in the long-term. There is a new emphasis on the dynamic nature of social life and on the personal adaptation that this requires. Characters have to come to terms, not only with one another, but with events and with change. Thus one story about an old lady included the following:

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Daisy was a kind lady but since her husband had passed away in the summer she became very lonely and began to miss him more and more . . . although her neighbours were good to her, as time passed they visited her less and less often and Daisy knew that as time passed she would have to face a lifetime of loneliness. Characters are now sometimes described 'in the round' with a summary of their personality, or their situation and past history. In the process of self-reflective thought there is a more critical vein of evaluation, with some awareness of the gaps between 'ideal self' and 'actual self'. General ideals or principles may be made explicit and many of the writers are preoccupied with selfevaluation and self-improvement. Dialogue becomes broadened beyond the confines of the current situation to include the same sorts of general issues of character, of value and of change. Relationships are very much a preoccupation of writers at Level 5 and now they can be viewed from a more detached, thirdperson point of view. Both authority and friendship may be discussed in an explicit fashion and the writer is no longer confined within the special point of view of a child, dependent upon adult power and yet resisting it. Relations of co-operation and conflict are seen in the light of their effects on role relationships, goals and values. Finally, in the resolution of predicaments, there is again an attempt to evaluate the outcome in a generalised way. It may be done by relating the particular events of the story to a general framework of values or via some summation of the meaning and significance of the events for the future of the characters. Level 5 may be summarised as follows: Level 5:Characters are portrayed in roles and relationships at a generalised level. The writer can think about general social issues and about the social world. Although the present research cannot throw light directly on the question, it seems at least plausible to suppose that the experience of reading and writing narratives has an impact on the child's developing social cognition. It is clearly not a necessary condition for such social development to occur but it may aid and abet it. In particular, narrative writing happens to be very full of examples of the explicit representation of the inner psychological world of people (and indeed other characters) and of their relationships. It thus offers many opportunities for children to read about, and to construct, such accounts. If children use their reading, or an adult's reading, of an existing narrative as a basis for their own writing they may very well assimilate some of its structural features into their own writing. Such 're-tellings' may thus show levels of characterisation above what is currently usual for a given child. How far this actually helps

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children to write more complex stories remains unclear. It does not immediately transform the child's understanding, or writing, however. This appears to be a longer-term affair and one which does not need accelerating, at least in most cases. The aim of 'CACH' is not to push children faster through a process of developing understanding but rather to tune the teacher's dialogue into the level of narrative, and character, that the child might be expected to represent. This is likely to be, firstly, a matter of encouraging a fuller or richer representation of character at the child's existing level and, secondly, the suggestion of ideas at the next level, up, which would constitute Vygotsky's 'zone of proximal development' (Vygotsky, 1978). References to Chapter 7 DES. 1989, English for Ages 5 to 16,Proposals of the National Working Group on English in the National Curriculum. London: HMSO/NCC. FELDMAN, D.H. 1980, Beyond Universals in Cognitive Development.New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Co. Fox, R.M.H. 1986, The development of characterisation in children's narrative writing between the ages of six and thirteen. Unpublished thesis for PhD, University of Exeter. GRAVES, D. 1983, Writing: Teachers and Children at Work.London: Heinemann Educational. PERERA, K. 1984, Children's Writing and Reading.Oxford: Blackwell. SELMAN, R. 1980, The Growth of Interpersonal Understanding.New York: Academic Press. WILKINSON, A., BARNSLEY, G., HANNA, P. and SWAN, M. 1980, Assessing Language Development.Oxford: Oxford University Press. VYGOTSKY, L. S. 1978, Mind in Society.Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

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8 Reading like a writer: Children's composing and comprehending of text Roger Beard This chapter will outline some preliminary investigations into the ways in which primary school children can draw upon their experiences as readers in improving the quality and effectiveness of their own writing. In recent years there has been a good deal of research and publication on various aspects of children's writing, including dimensions of personal development (Wilkinson et al.,1980; Wilkinson, 1986), the writing process (Smith, 1982; Graves, 1983) and its early development (Hall, 1989) as well as publications which have drawn different aspects of the field together in one volume (e.g. Beard, 1984; Wray, 1988). As yet these different perspectives have not embraced the ways in which children learn about the various possibilities of written language from whatand howthey read. At the same time, certain parameters have been established within which further exploratory investigations can be pursued. Points of Reference on Writing For instance, there are now more common points of reference on the nature of the writing process than there were a decade ago. Following the influential work of Flower & Hayes (1980), there is now more agreement on the distinction between composing, transcribing and reviewing in the process of writing, with a major book being published on the former (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987). The national curriculum proposals for

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English have generally seemed to adopt the model, although they have used the term 'secretarial skills', rather than 'transcription' when referring to the creation of the written tapestry when pen is put to paper or finger to keyboard. The publication of the Kingman Report (DES, 1988) has provided a framework for understanding how these secretarial skills draw upon the different structures of language forms, phonological, syntactic and semantic, as well as warning of the difficulty of devising satisfactory models of teaching and learning for 'language awareness' and grammatical reference. There has also been a growing agreement about the influential parameters which shape the context for writing and the way in which attention and organisation are sharpened. Put crudely, writing is likely to have a 'why', a 'what', a 'how' and a 'who for'. The why of writing is perhaps the most critical factor in rationalising the reason for communicating through written language rather than spoken. But with young children a clear sense of purpose may be difficult to articulate and we may be compelled to impute the aim of the young writer when other parameters may have provided a more compelling influence, as with Amy (5) in Figure 8.1. This remarkably detailed piece seems to derive much of its vitality from the 'what' of the writing, in this case the appealing presence of a kitten in the classroom. It is an apt reminder that the subject matter in itself can be a major motivating force in a child's desire to leave an indelible trace of where they have been, to say, in Laurie Lee's words, 'I was here; I saw it too' (in I Can't Stay Long,Penguin Books p. 49). There has been a growing concern about the content of the primary curriculum, especially its inconsistency between schools, for over ten years now, since the HMI primary survey (DES, 1978). If writing development is to be maximised across the curriculum, then major questions can be asked about the nature and range of that curriculum and the forms of knowledge which it encompasses. The HMI, primary survey also raised questions about the 'how' of writing in schools, reporting that much of the writing observed in a representative sample of 542 schools was 'narrative or descriptive'. Many writers would agree that these notions refer to the modes of text organisation, which are used to create the shape and structure of texts. Frameworks of modes vary: the traditional model of nineteenth century rhetoric tends to be description, narrative, exposition and argument; newer models like that of Kinneavy et al.(1976) have focused on the different ways of

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Figure 8.1 representing reality in text: 'static reality' can be either described or more specifically classified; 'dynamic reality' can be either dealt with by a 'forward time-scale' text (narrative) or by a 'backward time-scale' (evaluative) text in which 'what happened' is compared 'with what might have been'. The national curriculum proposals for English have drawn upon this kind of distinction in their references to chronological and non-chronological writing, although in a broader interpretation. Chronological writing can involve reporting a past event as well as using all the established features of narrative such as setting, main character, plot and 'dénouement'. Similarly, nonchronological writing is exemplified by description and argument. The effective adoption of this simple distinction on a wide scale is likely to rest on a firmly-based understanding of these terms of reference and how their characteristics relate to each other. There are also other considerations in writing, concerning matters such as style, with its subtle variation of vocabulary and syntax; register, with the kinds of relationship assumed between writer and audience; and

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also the form chosen for the writing, such as notes, a letter, a notice, a list, a poetic structure or connected prose. But as was suggested earlier, these conceptual frameworks, do not really take account of how children use and can be helped to use the legacy of what others have written before them, so that they can 'learn to write by reading'. Three underlying questions are worth bearing in mind. In what kinds of ways can reading and writing development interact in primary school children? In what kinds of ways can children be helped to 'read with a writer's alertness to technique'? What kind of role can 'language awareness' play and in what ways can this be usefully made explicit? There is also the continuing context to consider, whose different aspects could all be analysed in considerable detail: the interpersonal relationships between teacher and taught, as well as among the children themselves; the influence of promotions of voluntary reading such as by book clubs; the whole ethos of the use of the written word, what Smith calls the 'literacy club' (Smith, 1985); and the experience of specific facilities such as wordprocessing. Finally there is the influence of teaching style. Despite the continuing research evidence on this from sources such as Bennett, 1976; Galton et al.,1980; Galton & Simon, 1980 and Mortimore et al.,1988, publications on children's literacy are curiously neglectful of reference to them. The most recent of these, for instance, offers specific recommendations for work with the 7-11 age-range. On the basis of longitudinal studies in over 50 schools, it warns teachers against the dangers of over-stretching themselves in over ambitious integrated day arrangements. The authors argue for a more 'limited focus' on no more than 2 or 3 different curriculum areas at any one time and report the positive influences of teaching style which include 'structured overviews' and various kinds of 'audit' to pull together different strands of children's work, helping children to recapitulate and to reflect on what has been undertaken and completed and on what now needs to be done (Mortimore et al.,1988). The Case Studies The following impressions are taken from regular work with a relatively able class of 36 7-8-year-old children over the past year. They have

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worked in three groups, each writing for the other two groups (and indirectly for other children in the school) as part of the production of a large-format class book. Each of the three groups has undertaken a specific task: one group worked on extended narratives, one produced a magazine section of favourite poems and jokes, with brief commentaries, together with a selection of their own poetry; the third group produced instructions for the new, MCC/Milk Marketing Board version of Kwik Cricket which they were the first of the three groups to play. The children were encouraged to draft their work in notebooks which had lined and unlined pages facing, had regular access to a microcomputer with a Concept Keyboard and Folio facilities and were able to integrate art work in paint and pastel crayons. There is only space in this chapter to deal with the work of the first two of the groups. The discussion of the writing of instructions will be dealt with in a subsequent publication. Obviously impressions can only be very general and tentative, but certain issues do arise and the case studies also share the advantage of being drawn from a context which has been regularly observed over the whole of a school year. Impressions from Children's Involvement with Extended Narrative All the children in this group were, for their age, accomplished writers of stories, both real and imaginative, and had been working on a broader class topic on stories which had lasted half a term and had culminated in a christmas production of the story of The Pied Piper of Hamelin.However, like many children of this age, their narrative writing was relatively traditional in structure and style, with a preponderance of 'Once upon a time' or 'One day' openings and finales which drew heavily on going to bed, waking up, having tea or watching television. They had also had little experience in school of writing narratives of much more than a side of an exercise book. The children were asked to plan the writing of a true story which others in the class and in the school would enjoy hearing or reading. To help them to give the story style and effect, they were asked to listen to the beginnings and endings of a number of well known stories from their classroom library and to jot down what kind of beginnings and endings these stories had used. The findings can be summarised as follows:

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Story

Examples of types of beginning The B. F. G. 'interesting' by Roald Dahl 'early morning' 'creepy' The Village 'It's quick' Dinosaur 'Its sudden' by Phyllis 'exciting' Arkle Fantastic Mr. 'It tells you about the Fox by Roald Dahl characters, but not the main one' 'Nothing to do with the title' The Owl Who 'It tells us about Plop' Was Afraid of the 'All about the main Dark character' by Jill Tomlinson The children were then asked to suggest a general heading to cover all the suggested types for each story and the following were eventually agreed upon: Story Type of beginning The B.F. G. 'describes the scene' The Village 'gets your interest' Dinosaur Fantastic Mr 'introduces different Fox characters but not the main one' The Owl Who 'tells us about the main Was Afraid of The character' ('why the book Dark is called what it is') Four more stories were then selected from the class library which would roughly fit one of the four general headings above. Story Type of beginning Milly-Molly- 'describes the scene' Mandy by J.L. Brisely Alice's 'gets your interest' Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll The Magic 'different characters, but Finger by Roald Dahl not the main one' A Bear Called 'the main character and the book Paddington title' by Michael Bond The beginnings of these stories were read aloud twice to the children and they were asked to complete a 'quiz sheet' by joining title to type of

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beginning. Ten of the twelve children were able to join the name of the story to the type of beginning it had been selected to represent; the other two allocated Alice to the first category and Milly-Molly-Mandy to the second. The same procedure was followed to help the children consider how stories can be ended. By a similar procedure as before the following general types of ending were agreed. Story Type of ending Milly-Molly'everything back to Mandy normal' The B.F.G. 'a twist in the story' Fantastic Mr. 'still going on' Fox The Owl Who 'a complete change from Was the Afraid of the 'beginning' Dark Again the endings Alice Magic Finger Village Dinosaur Paddington

of four stories were presented for matching with these types of ending, as before 'back to normal' 'a twist in the story' 'still going on' 'complete change'

On this occasion nine out of the twelve children were able to join up story name to type of story, with The Magic Finger and The Village Dinosaur being reversed in allocation by the other three. Obviously this crude labelling of story endings and beginnings is open to considerable debate and the kinds of discussions it raises can become a very interesting part of the teaching associated with the kind of 'structured overviews' and 'audits' to which Mortimore et al.(1988) draw attention. It is, nevertheless, interesting to note how quickly this group of children were able to focus on the distinctive features of a particular author's organisation of the narrative at these key points in its structure. The children then embarked on their own story writing, although it was felt that it would not be appropriate to ask them consciously to imitate or emulate any of these devices. Nevertheless, they would have gained a distinct impression that stereotyped beginnings and endings could be easily avoided and the 'allocation' activities could have provided some insights into how this might be done. The story by James (see Figure 8.2) was one of the shortest, but was fairly typical of the style of the stories as a whole. The beginnings of the children's stories showed relatively little conscious manipulation of syntax, perhaps because of their personal,

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Figure 8.2 anecdotal nature. They were nearly all begun in a matter of fact way with 'One day . . . ', 'Last Friday . . . ', 'In February . . . ', immediately establishing the time-frame which is an integral feature of narrative writing. However, for the endings a teaching technique suggested by Bereiter & Scardamalia (1987) was adopted: asking the children to decide on an ending sentence while they were part way through their writing, to help give their stories more shape and direction. The effect, especially compared with the unremarkable beginnings, was quite noticeable and there were greater signs of stylish consideration in several endings: . . . 'I said I would love to see him.' . . . 'Her knee was still stinging, but she was brave.' . . . 'They pulled it out of the water and it was a CATFISH.' . . . 'When I woke up, suddenly we were in Canada.' . . . 'and James was the last to go.' At the same time, it is very likely that several, if not all, these lines are influenced by the experience of story telling in everyday life and the cultural legacy of knowing about the need to round off a narrative. Furthermore, the appreciation of the way narrative structure is handled

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can only be realistically considered in relation to the stories as a whole, whose analysis and discussion is part of a wider, as yet unpublished study. Despite these reservations, this small-scale exploratory study has indicated how relatively able children as young as 7-8 can be prompted to make sophisticated judgements about the different forms of narrative structure and to embellish their own writing in deliberate ways. Although these judgements were not apparently carried substantially through into the beginnings of their writing, this may have been done due to the nature of the task itself, a personal rather than a literary story. Greater engagement in and application of these different possibilities may also come from a more explicit 'coaching' style in teaching, of the kind outlined by Bereiter & Scardamalia (1987). They have suggested that children's writing may be enhanced by various kinds of composing strategies which they call 'facilitative procedures'. These include various contentless prompts such as brainstorming, word listing, deciding on ending and beginning sentences, noting down the main points of a report and other devices to help the young writer organise the text around the main features of 'discourse knowledge' which appear to be needed for a particular task. Overall, though, the study has shown that young primary school children can be helped to read and re-read sources which hold many lessons for them about the range of ways which exist into narrative writing. Impressions from Children's Involvement with Non-narrative As was reported above, the second group of children were involved in the selection of poems and jokes and the writing of commentaries, together with some of their own poems, as part of a magazine section of the class book. Each of the 12 was asked to look through a selection of collections and anthologies and to select a favourite poem. Illustrated copies were made of each poem and this fresh presentation of the poems was accompanied by a clear reason for its choice, after the style of the anthology I like this poem (ed. Kaye Webb, published by Puffin/Penguin books). Several interesting findings emerged from this work. The most striking one was how individual the children's choices were and how personal the reasons for their choices. Only two girls chose, independently, the same poem, 'Upside down' by Aileen Fisher. Other selections included the following:

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'A Cough' by Robert Graves: 'because of the way it says ''cough'' four times' 'Tell Me Little Woodworm' by Spike Milligan: 'because of the nonsense in it' 'Indian Children' by Annette Wynne: 'because it has the line "Only woods and Indian people"' 'When daddy fell into the pond' by Alfred Noyes: 'because it is funny and it does happen every day' 'Midnight Tea-party' by Enid Blyton: 'because of what it is called'. While these choices and reasons could be thought to be related to the serendipity of book availability and whim, in fact it was found that all 11 children who were still attending the school two terms later could not only name the poem which they had chosen but also give a reasonable synopsis of their reason for choosing it. Given this enduring resource of personal 'language awareness' how can it be further exploited? Three developments were pursued further in this case study, all concerned with non-chronological writing. The first development was to recognise that this activity elicits a particular kind of description in which reasons are given. The ability to express specifically why something is done can be an important part of the young writer's repertoire when observations have to be verified in writing for informative/scientific purposes or when evidence is needed in the 'persuasive' writing of debate and argument. A second development was to build upon the children's heightened awareness of the particularly distilled language of poetry. The children were each asked to prepare caption headings for the different parts of the magazine which they were preparing. Several opted for alliterative headings; others for different kinds of wordplay, for instance for the favourite poems section: 'Why that one?' for a collection of jokes: 'The Ha, Ha, Ha Page' for acrostics on 'snow': 'Winter words' for a collection of amusing anecdotes: 'Laugh a Lot' for their own creative writing: 'Pages of Poems' This growing ingenuity was then turned towards the third development, the writing of their own poetry. In nearly all cases blank verse or 'purple prose' was preferred, of the kind often described in the past as ' creative writing' (see Beard, 1984, chapter 5), although some later attempted acrostics too. There was an obvious general attempt to create texts in which 'the best words were placed in the best order' and here there did

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Figure 8.3

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seem to be some benefit from Bereiter & Scardamalia's (1987) recommendation on word listing. In Katy's case (see Figure 8.3), for instance, there is an obvious reliance on the security of the vocabulary list she herself has provided. All the pieces were then recorded on audio tape and the whole programme played to the group. The children were asked to mark down their favourite piece. It is chastening to note that despite general exhortations to the contrary, all but one of this group were most impressed by the fact that Rachel had produced rhymes (see Figure 8.4). Throughout this time, work was continuing on the selection and organisation of a joke section of the class book. Anyone who has encouraged an authentic collection of children's jokes will confirm the problems this raises in relation to acceptance, publication and editorial control. Given the nature of the intended audience, one joke was allowed through after a short consideration (the one about standing under a cow and the pat on the head); one was rejected as unsuitable (the one related to the Muppet show, which begins 'what is green and smelly?') and one did not reach formal discussion and remained to be tittered between groups (concerning balls of string). Jokes certainly provide a major resource for vocabulary development and text organisation. They draw upon the homonymy and other semantic links in our language and may deserve special visual layout (the answers to 'knock knock' and other jokes were written upside down by their writers in the class book). However, jokes also provide a link with the underlife which children lead, a life which only a relatively few children's authors are prepared to confront. Roald Dahl is an exception, admitting that in his work he views children as only half-civilised, laughing at things which make adults squirm (see Beard, 1987, chapter 9). It is with relief perhaps that teachers can concede that, for the real world vibrancy of jokes, literacy can only provide a transitory and partial anchorage and that only the oral traditions of our culture will maintain the continuing creation of this linguistic heritage. However, the more profound impressions came from the interim publication of the sections of the book prepared by this group in the form of a large wall display of work in the school library for which an audio commentary was also prepared. It was the overall publication which now seemed to dominate thinking: not so much the different aspects of the writing undertaken as much as what it would mean to others, the wider unknown and possibly unpredictable audience. Allowing children to prepare explanations of the layout of the display and to give some details of

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Figure 8.4 the why and the what of the writing seemed to engender a much greater sense of appropriateness and organisation. Drafting was essential, of course, but redrafting tended to be restricted to highly selective and very precise omissions and additions (e.g. definitions or details of when things were done). The major influence in this work, though, appeared to be the sense of 'communicative responsibility' which influenced much of what was done and the motivation to be 'part of the action'. It was from this motivation that evaluations began to be made and informal talk developed about the order in which things might be displayed from the door to the library along the wall where the display was to be mounted. Talk also centred on whether the audio tape should refer to the different parts of the work, the placing of introductory passages and captions and the provision of a transcript of the audio tape in case of technical difficulties. Eventually the whole 'package' (wall display and audio tape) was tried out on the rest of the class and the headteacher before being left in place for children from other classes and visitors to the school. Further Thoughts There has not been time to analyse the part of the study which involved the writing of instructions but already several important points

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have emerged from the study of narrative and non-narrative writing. Three in particular deserve a final comment. Firstly the non-chronological/chronological distinction clearly deserves greater elaboration. Care must obviously be given to the problems associated with the 'hardening of the categories' in discussions about discourse, because no system can completely embrace all the interpersonal parameters and stylistic variations discussed earlier. Nevertheless, the outline of the modes of discourse outlined by Kinneavy et al.(1976) did seem to provide a useful explanatory and comparative framework (see Figure 8.5). Thus in looking at non-chronological writing, the notion of description proved to be a very helpful background consideration in dealing with the reasons behind the choices of poems. Similarly the use of simple classifications helped structure the order and arrangement of different jokes, various poems (including acrostics), the planning of a wall display and eventually the class book as a whole. The less widely used notion of evaluative discourse (in this case more spoken than written) emerged clearly as a major organisational influence in the drawing together of the different strands of work and conclusions about how the display (and book) might have been done differently. Secondly the creation of an audio tape was in itself both an influence on the focusing of the work and how it was presented and also a resource for listening to and reflecting upon what each child had written. This 'distancing' of texts by audio production may possibly provide more favourable ways of reconsidering and learning about their structure and effectiveness, bridging the writing-reading divide.

Figure 8.5

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Indeed, the use of audio tape, both purpose-made and commercial, deserves greater attention. Its distilled concentration on text could provide for some children incentive and support in beginning to read with a 'writer's alertness to technique'. Finally, the study raises the need for more detailed and wide-ranging investigations into the young writer's world, at home as well as in school. With the national curriculum firmly committed to the promotion and assessment of progression (DES, 1987), it is more important than ever before to examine the full range of the dynamic influences on attainment and the continuing growth of competence. What, for instance, had led to Amy being able to write so engagingly about the black kitten after only a few weeks in school? Her apparently wide-experience of listening to commercial and school-made tapes may have had some influence, as may have the school's policy of helping children establish a swift and effective style of handwriting from the start of their school lives and the appeal of the curriculum context in which she found herself. The influence of several other aspects of recent cults in discussions about children's writing was less evident in this study. There was little sign of substantial redrafting; the regular integration of a microcomputer and the Folio software seemed to have a negligible effect on the structure or content of the writing done. The more substantial influences seemed to come from a challenging and changing context for the use of written communication, in which the teacher's roles were clearly very influential. These roles included encouraging reflection, suggesting tasks, setting up comparisons between texts and prompting the planning of ending sentences. In recent years, much derogatory comment has been made about how children's language development can be inhibited by teacher talk. Here, however, it is difficult to see how children's language and literacy could have grown as it did without it. Returning again to the main theme of this chapter, although specific attention to reading seemed to have relatively little direct influence on the children's writing in the short term, there were, nevertheless, many signs that their writing competence had been significantly shaped by their awareness of the possibilities of written language. For they had in many ways begun to draw significantly on what they had read and had read to them when engaging in writing themselves, in growing as the creators as well as the comprehenders of texts. References to Chapter 8 BEARD, R. 1984, Children's Writing in the Primary School.Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton Educational.

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1987, Developing Reading 3-13.Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton Educational. BENNETT, N. 1976, Teaching Styles and Pupil Progress.London: Open Books. BEREITER, C. and SCARDAMALIA, M. 1987, The Psychology of Written Composition.Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. DES 1978, Primary Education in England.London: HMSO. 1987, National Curriculum: Task Group on Assessment and TestingA Report.London: HMSO. 1988, Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Teaching of English Language (The Kingman Report).London: HMSO. FLOWER, L.S. and HAYES, J.R. 1980, The dynamics of composing: making plans and juggling constraints. In L.W. GREGG & E.R. STEINBERG (eds) Cognitive Processes in Writing.Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. GALTON, M. et al.1980, Inside the Primary Classroom.London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. GALTON, M. and SIMON, B. (eds) 1980, Progress and Performance in the Primary Classroom.London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. GRAVES, D.H. 1983, Writing: Teachers and Children at Work.Exeter, New Hampshire: Heinemann Educational. HALL, N. 1989, Writing With Reason.Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton Educational. KINNEAVY, J.L. et al.1976, Writing: Basic Modes of Organisation.Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company. MORTIMORE, P. et al.1988, School Matters: The Junior Years.London: Open Books. SMITH, F. 1982, Writing and the Writer.London: Heinemann Educational. 1985, Reading (2nd edn).Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. WILKINSON, A. 1986, The Quality of Writing.Milton Keynes: Open University Press. WILKINSON, A. et al.1980, Assessing Language Development.Oxford: Oxford University Press. WRAY, D. (ed.) 1988, Developing Children's Writing.Leamington Spa: Scholastic Publications.

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9 Word processors and children's writing: Evaluating the research evidence Frank Potter In 1882, ads proclaimed that the typewriter could be used as an aid in learning to read, write, spell, and punctuate. Now, eighty years later, the typewriter is used only in experimental classrooms (McLuhan, 1966). Despite the enthusiasm with which children, teachers, and parents greet word processors, straight comparisons tend to favour texts written with pens over those written with word processors. The sceptic might therefore be forgiven for thinking that the word processor will suffer much the same fate as the typewriter. However, this chapter will argue that such a comparison is not appropriate, firstly because of children's present unfamiliarity with word processors, and secondly because such straight comparisons fail to recognise that word processors are best suited for certain kinds of writingin particular for short, public, nonnarrative texts produced collaboratively. There is no doubt that consumers (including the author) are convinced of the value of word processors. Daiute & Taylor (1981) report that Writers who use text editors report that they do more prewriting, revising, and reformulating . . . because making changes is easy and because the text editor helps them become involved in the text and thus stimulates interactive revising. In addition . . . [they] can compose more freely and quickly . . . Moreover, writers and teachers . . . found that the editor had a profound effect on their writing behaviour.

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There are also numerous educationalists who suggest that word processors can substantially improve children's writing. Kleiman & Humphrey (1982) claim that Overall, using word processors has been very beneficial in the classes we have seen. The children enjoy writing more, they are more willing to revise their work, and they produce better essays. They take pride in the quality of their writing. Some go on even further, and suggest that the use of the word processor 'subtly changes the processes of writing so that the children become more in control of these processes' (Ross, 1984). However, while many teachers, children (and indeed parents) seemed convinced, the research evidence appears to question the value of the word processor. Gould (1981) found that research professionals who regularly used computer-based text editors required 50% more time to compose with a text editor than with a pen, and that this extra time did not result in any improvement in the quality of writing. Haas & Hayes (1986) found that Masters students reported the following reading problems when writing on a computer: difficulty in locating information, detecting errors, and reading their texts critically. Haas & Hayes also found that it was significantly easier to revise on hard copy than on screen. At first sight the research concerning children is more favourable. Haas & Hayes report that Daiute and Taylor (1981) show that using a computer may improve children's revising skills. Eight elementary school students used a word processor program called 'Catch' for five weeks. Post-tests (written with pen and paper) showed that after using 'Catch', students made more revisions per word and more types of revision. Post-tests also contained fewer errors and received higher holistic ratings. However, when the Daiute & Taylor (1981) reference is consulted, no such information can be found. The article simply reports that There is preliminary evidence that children's writing improves at least in quantity (Watt, 1978, Daiute, 1981a, 1981b). Moreover, the three articles in question are not referenced at the end of the paper! What at first appeared to be good solid evidence in favour of word processing gradually fades away.

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Furthermore, the findings of Daiute's (1986) later research with children has remarkable similarities to the evidence reported above with adults (Gould, 1981; Haas & Hayes, 1986). Her research shows that children write about a quarter as much again in a given time with a pen as compared with a word processor (Daiute, 1986), and that the quality of the first drafts written with a pen was significantly better (although there was no significant difference in the quality of the final drafts). Peacock (1988) also found that children tended to write about a third as much again in a given time with a word processor, though he states that the word processed pieces were slightly superior (but no data are given). Furthermore Daiute presents data which shows that when using word processors children make fewer revisions (that is, those changes which include 'global' changes to the structure of the text), although they edit more (that is, they make more 'local' changes, including corrections to their spelling, punctuation and grammer). It seems that when using word processors the children tend to skim over and interact less with the text. The tendency for children to make 'local' rather than 'global' changes is supported by data gathered by Trushell (1986) and Somekh (1986). Trushell (1986) found that children were more successful editing on screen than on paper. However this was limited to the insertion and deletion of punctuation marks and the insertion of simple conjunctions. Somekh (1986) found that when using a word processor over 80% of the children's changes were concerned with spelling, punctuation or single words (see Table 9.1). She found no major changes at the text level, and nearly all the 'paragraph' changes were 'in order to set out dialogue in paragraphs and so did not indicate any real structural changes'in other words they are perhaps best described as changes to the format of the text. One of the advantages of the word processor is that it can be linked to other facilities and peripheralsconcept keyboards, speech synthesisers, spelling checkers, on-line dictionaries and thesauruses, prompting programs etc. Daiute's (1986) research also included a comparison of the effect of using a prompting program in conjunction with the word processor. She found that 'Students who used the prompting program revised their drafts more closely and extensively than the students who used only the word processing program.' The data in Daiute's (1986) research is presented in such a way that it can be seen that children using a word processor made fewer revisions than either children using a pen, or children using a word processor with a prompting program.

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Table 9.1 The total numbers of different types of changes made by three groups of children writing on the word processor Category Frequency (Percentage) Spelling changes 29 (19%) Punctuation changes 40 (26%) Single word changes 54 (36%) Changes of phrases 17 (11%) Reordering of words 2 (1%) Paragraph changes 10 (7%) Major changes of order 0 (0%) or of text Total 152 (100%) Rather surprisingly Daiute does not directly compare the revising behaviour of children using a pen and the children using the word processor with a prompting program. The data can, however, be found within her paper, and is re-presented in Table 9.2 below. Table 9.2 Number of revisions made by children using a pen and a word processor with and without a prompting program Word Word processor and Pen processorprompting program Number of 22.1 9.3 13.6 revisions It can be seen that whilst it is true to say that the prompting program increased the number of revisions made, it is still far short of the number made when using a pen. Green (1984) reports that Graves was suspicious at first about using the word processor for composing because he was afraid that the finished-looking quality of the word processed copy might make children even more reluctant to revise their work than they already are. Given Daiute's (1986) research it would seem that there is cause to be worried. Daiute concluded (1986:15354) that:

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When the burdens of recopying were lifted, student writers tended to interact less with what they had written in a draft than when they revised with pen and had to recopy. It appears that these students skimmed over their texts enough to catch mechanical errors but not enough to rework the text at any higher level . . . certain physical burdens such as recopying require that the writer interact more closely with the text than he or she does when there is no reason or guidance to read the text. Jacobi (1986) also found that there was no evidence of any improvement in children's writing after two months of working with the word processor. Despite this lack of tangible evidence the teachers involved all felt that the students showed marked improvements in many ways. Indeed they were so convinced of the value of the word processor that they unanimously decided to purchase a computer for full time use in the special needs department for the following year. There is therefore a disparity between teachers' judgements and research evidence. This disparity is not unique to this particular innovation. A similar disparity is found with the evidence concerning the effectiveness of DARTs (Lunzer & Gardner, 1978; Fawcett, 1985). One possible explanation for the disparity concerning the effectiveness of word processors is the following. Teachers are correct in noticing an improvement in the children's writing, but incorrect in their causal attribution of this improvement. The word processor lends itself naturally to a multiple drafting approach to writingalso known as the redrafting approach (Binns, 1978) and the process approach (Graves, 1982). This has led teachers to adopt this new approach to writing at the same time as introducing word processing in the classroom. Any observable improvement could therefore easily be due to the redrafting approach rather than the word processor. Research by Broderick & Trushell (1984) and Baskerville (1986) lends some credence to this interpretation. Broderick & Trushell (1984: 123) report that While the children involved in the N.E.L.P. research increased the length of their compositions at each draft, analysis of the relevant printouts revealed a tendency to progress from extension of the text by the addition of material toward expansion of the text by insertion . . . This phenomenon relates closely to the procedures which Graves has observed when studying children's customary (i.e. non-micro) drafting. Baskerville (1986) decided that

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. . . there was a great need for two things, one, the adoption of a true process approach to developing children as writers and two, the inclusion of the word processor in the classroom . . . She later comments that she has 'taken progressive steps towards a multiple drafting approach to writing'. One possibility is that it is the redrafting approach to writing that is the crucial factor, rather than the word processor. It is perhaps significant that the teacher involved in Daiute's (1986) research had been trained in the process approach, so he already encouraged peer conferencing about texts and revising. The writing class was run as a workshop in which students wrote extensively, and most of the class time was devoted to writing and discussing texts. Another possibility is that the research so far has not taken into account that the word processor is a new literacy tool, with which users have to be familiar before they can use it effectively, and that they have to learn for which tasks it is most appropriate. In other words we have to find the appropriate niche for the word processor (it would not be a fair test of a hacksaw to use it to cut a log of wood), and children have to be proficient in its use, before we can make fair and valid comparisons. Furthermore, some of the early word processors are rather cumbersome tools to use. Factors Which Affect Effective Use of Word Processors Whilst Gould found that composing on a text editor took 50% longer than with a pen, it should be pointed out that the participants were using a simple line-oriented editor. Gould describes line-oriented editors as being developed from typewriter terminal editors: With them, the user can work on only one line at a time, and this line must be positioned in a particular place before it can be entered or modified. With the more recently developed full-screen editors, a user can modify lines displayed anywhere on the screen. Furthermore, the text editor was not WYSIWYG: As participants composed a letter, they did not see a formatted version on the screen. Rather, they saw exactly what they had typed, intermixed with the Script commands they typed. To see a formatted version, the letter had to pass through another process. Participants had to file, quit editing, and type another command to 'script out' this unformatted 'edit' file into a formatted version . . . Composition using

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line oriented editors is slower than writing . . . in part because of . . . difficulties in formatting, text positioning, reviewing and modifying the formatted version. Gould considers the implications of his research for text-editor design. From his observations it is clear that this particular text editor slowed the participants down. This fundamental point should not be forgotten when evaluating the effects of word processors. Word processors are in the early stages of development, and it is only to be expected that they will become progressively more efficient. Daiute found that students made fewer revisions when writing with a word processor, and that these tended to be additions at the end of the text rather than within the text. However, this may have been a result of the students' choice to refer to the screen version of the text rather than to the printouts. Whilst Haas & Hayes found that writers werre better able to revise on hard copy than on screen, they also found that revision on screen was just as easy when an advanced computer was used. This had a large screen which more closely approximated hard copy (see the summary of display variables in Table 9.3). As they themselves conclude: If students are using word processing systems without advanced displays, then the teacher may be well advised to insist that they revise on hardcopy rather than online. Another reason why Daiute's students edited more but revised less could be their lack of familiarity with word processors. Kleiman & Humphrey (1982:98) report that children's revising behaviour changes as they become familiar with the editing capabilities of the word processor. Table 9.3 Summary of display variables Hard Standard Advanced copy Screen or page size: inches: 8.5 ´ 11 9.5 ´ 6.5 9.5 ´ 10.5 lines ´ characters 58 ´ 72 24 ´ 80 50 ´ 90 Screen and type black-on- CRT display high resolution white white-onbit mapped black or green-on- display: blackwhite on-white

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First they start being more careful to correct typing, spelling and punctuation errors. Then they begin to change words and sentences. Finally they learn to reorganise the material, moving, adding and deleting large sections of text. They no longer just edit for details but also pay more attention to the meaning of ideas and the order of presentation. Daiute found that children wrote about a quarter as much again in a given time with a pen as compared with a word processor. This was after using a touch typing program during the month of September, and using a word processor for an hour a week for six months. The lack of familiarity with the keyboard (and the word processing commands, see above) may well have limited the value of the word processor for these children. Others have also commented upon these problems. Lowd (1982:27) suggests that because of children's inadequate keyboard skills, So much time is taken by each student for composing/typing that little or none is left over for revision or even for editing. Another time killer is the slowness of beginners using the editing functions of the word processor itself. According to Robson (1986) 'The benefits do not manifest themselves until the children become more familiar with the keyboard' (p.66) and 'It is only when they become competent at manipulating the text that they will get maximum benefit from using the processor' (p.78). Womble (1984:35) introduced word processing to 107 students and commented that Three of these students, in particular, felt strongly that the word processor was valuable. Interestingly enough, all of these students spent the majority of their computer time on equipment at home (p.35). Finding a Niche for the Word Processor We should not assume that the word processor is equally suitable for all writing tasks. Every writing tool has its own niche, be it the pencil, pen, chalk, or hammer and chisel. Greenfield (1984) has pointed out 'every medium, without exception, can provide opportunities for human learning and development', and our task is now 'to find a niche for each medium so

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that each can contribute to a creative system of multimedia education'. The same applies to different literacy tools. Our task, therefore, is to find the appropriate niche for the word processor, and in so doing we will discover its value. The author (Potter, 1988) has previously suggested that (for the foreseeable future in schools) the standard word processing setup seems best suited to short, public, non-narrative texts produced collaboratively. This is partly because computers are such a scarce facility. Short texts are best because they require less time to compose (other things being equal), and therefore leave more time for the writer to concentrate on revising and editingwhich is particularly important as children at present tend to be slow at using the keyboard (evidence for which has been presented earlier in this paper). Many teachers have emphasised the value of the word processor for public writing (e.g. Earl, 1987; Malone, 1987; Baskerville, 1987). The printout seems to lead naturally to the publication of children's writing, especially now that word processors for children in the early stages of literacy are appearing with a wide variety of fonts. Even children who have just started school tend to have a good idea of the structure of a story, and this is of course because they have been exposed to the narrative form from a very early age, through bed-time stories, fairy tales, the television, etc. Even those children with poorly developed story schemata will experience frequent exposure to stories from the very first day they arrive at school. If the structure of a text is well known the children are less likely to need to re-organise the text. Other kinds of writing, however, are much less familiar (such as persuasive writing, instructions, reports. . . ) and children have more difficulty with the organisation of such texts (e.g. Gorman et al.,1982; Wilkinson, 1986; Perera, 1984; Newkirk, 1988). The word processor should therefore be much more useful for non-narrative texts. The large vertical screen is an important feature of the normal computer, which makes it very easy for all the children in a group to read a text as it is being composed. Hence the computer quite naturally becomes a focus for collaborative writing, and its value in this respect has been emphasised many times (e.g. Baskerville, 1986; Somekh, 1986; Trushell, 1986). Indirect evidence to support the position (outlined above) comes from the fact that one of the most popular uses of the word processor is for the production of school and class newspapers. A newspaper is one of the most

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public writing products, it contains non-narrative writing (reports, editorials, persuasive writing . .) which tend to be quite short (as space is at a premium), and these reports are often done by children working collaboratively. A partial direct test of this hypothesis has been carried out by Traves (1989), who asked 36 fourth year juniors to write four texts, two chronological and two non-chronological texts (chronological texts are roughly equivalent to narrative texts: see Perera, 1984:217). Traves instructed the children as follows: (1) Write a fairy-tale suitable for children in the infant department (a chronological story). (2) Write a description of someone who you know well, for example your mum or a friend (non-chronological descriptive writing). (3) Write an account of your first day at school (chronological autobiographical writing). (4) Choose a topic about which you have strong feelings, e.g. school dinners. Write about the topic in order to persuade other people that action should be taken to change that situation (non-chronological persuasive writing). Traves divided the children according to Calkins' (1980) four types of revisers. Type 4 revisers are interactive revisers, whereas the other three are at various stages in learning how to revise. There were only four type 4 revisers, and Traves examined their redrafting in some detail, her description being summarised and re-presented in Table 9.4 below. It is unfortunate that the table is incomplete. Traves choosing not to present any data for the autobiographical texts, and only one child's descriptive writing. Nevertheless, the data that is presented on the whole supports the hypothesis that the word processor is best used for non-narrative writing. The exception to the rule is Claire who uses the word processor in a very interesting and appropriate way for writing her fairy tale. This and other qualifications to the hypothesis will be discussed below. When numerically analysed, however, there is no statistically significant difference between the number of structural revisions made to the different kinds of texts (see Table 9.5 below). This may be simply because of the small number in the sample (only four children), but on the other hand it may be a consequence of the difficulty of defining clear criteria as to what constitutes a structural revision. This difficulty was the subject of an extended discussion at the NFER symposium on word processing in 1986. For example it has already

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Table 9.4 Summary of Traves' description of the type 4 revisers Fairy tale Persuasive writing Descriptive writing Rachel Rachel makes only 2 makes more text based, changes, and or structural they changes to are both spelling her persuasive writing corrections. than to any other category considerably improving the original. Most changes between drafts are made to reorder information already given. Sentences are redistributed and regrouped in an attempt to make the text more coherent. Additions within the text are usually made to clarify existing information rather than to introduce new information. Donna Donna changes do not revises quite affect the content or extensively, both the by structure, but adding information simply to reformat strengthen her sections perhaps for arguments and aesthetic deleting reasons or for information which ease of reading. perhaps does not match her original intention or is thought to weaken the argument in some way. (table continued on next page)

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(table continued from previous page) Table 9.4 Summary of Traves' description of the type 4 revisers Laura Laura Laura makes few makes few changes restructures changes. (this is possibly because it extensively, in much becomes rather the same way as anecdotal part way Rachel restructures through and this adds her persuasive a chronological writing. She changes dimension). her paragraphs, regrouping and redistributing information already given in order to make the text more coherent. Her last paragraph remains largely unchanged. Claire Claire follows a different revises her persuasive patternshe uses the writing a similar way to first paragraph and Rachel. She adds the overall idea of information the story as a basis,convincingly in order to but reworks the strengthen her original quite argument and reextensively . . . the organises and regroups first draft is really ideas into paragraphs. only 'skeleton' of the story, which she fleshes out as she revises. Table 9.5 Mean number of structural revisions for type 4 revisers Fairy tale Autobiographical Persuasive Descriptive Mean 3.75 3.25 5.75 4.25 Sd 2.48 0.82 4.7 3.63

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been mentioned that whilst the children in Somekh's (1986) class made ten paragraph changes, nearly all of these were in order to set out dialogue and so did not indicate any real structural changes. Conversely, one of Somekh's groups changed a single word earlier in their story which had the effect of creating surprise later on, and Somekh judged this to be a structural change. The problem of how to classify a structural revision led Hardman (1987) to make use of the story grammar of Mandler & Johnson (1977). Whilst this provided a clear and theoretically sound criterion for what constituted a structural revision Hardman found it very time consuming, and it can in any case only be used to measure the structural revisions made to stories. More work is therefore needed in order to discover a valid measure of structural revisions. The position taken here is that, given the relative scarcity and nature of the word processors in current use, and children's unfamiliarity with them, word processors at present are more profitably used for short, public, non-narrative texts written collaboratively. However, this should not be taken to mean that they should be exclusively used in this manner, and it is a position which will need qualifying and refining, especially as conditions change, and which may even have its dangers. If there is a greater tendency for boys to choose non-narrative writing then teachers will have to be careful about introducing a possible gender bias towards using word processors. As long as the teacher is aware of a possible bias it should be easily avoidedby, for example, ensuring equal access has priority over the general rule recommended above, rather than vice versa. The most important factor which will probably alter the niche of the word processor will be the introduction of the laptop computer into the school. In the reasonably near future classrooms will be equipped with a number of laptop computers, each child having their own in some privileged classes, and indeed in many homes. Not only will this improve children's keyboard skills and their general familiarity with the word processor, but it will also affect the value of the computer for collaborative writing. A laptop is a much more private and personal tool than the standard computer found in schools. Moreover the need for children to share will diminish as the computer becomes less of a scarce commodity. Both these factors will tend to mean that computers will be used less for collaborative writing. The four children who were described in detail by Traves were interactive revisers (Calkins' type 4). The other 32 children had not reached this stage, and it needs to be determined what kind of writing

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children should use the computer for when they are in the process of learning how to revise. It may or may not be that nonnarrative writing is the most appropriate kind. Certainly that is one of the interesting questions for teachers to research in the near future. Bibliography to Chapter 9 BASKERVILLE, J. 1986, The language curriculum and the role of the word processor in developing written language in the primary school. Paper presented at the NFER Symposium on Word Processing, October 1986. 1987, Paper presented at the European symposium on word processing held at Edge Hill College of Higher Education, September 1987. BINNS, R. 1978, From Speech to Writing.CITE, Moray House College of Education. BRODERICK, C. and TRUSHELL, J. 1984, Word Processing in the Primary Classroom. In J. EWING (ed.) Reading and the New Technologies.London: Heinemann. CALKINS, L.M. 1980, Children's rewriting strategies. Research in the Teaching of English.14, 331-41. DAIUTE, C. and TAYLOR, R. 1981, Computers and the Improvement of Writing. Proceedings of the Association of Computing Machinery.83-88. DAIUTE, C. 1986, Physical and cognitive factors in revising: insights from studies with computers. Research in the Teaching of English 20, (2) 141-59. EARL, S. 1987, Let's make a book with 'Writer'. Microscope 21, 3-7. FAWCETT, R. 1985, Reading for Learning in the Secondary School: An Evaluation of the Project.London: SCDC. GORMAN, T.P., WHITE, J., ORCHARD, L. and TATE, A. 1982, APU Language Performance in Schools, Primary Survey Report No. 2.London: HMSO. GOULD, J.D. 1981, Composing letters with computer-based text editors. Human Factors 23 (5) 593-606. GRAVES, D. 1982, Writing: Teachers and Children at Work.London: Heinemann. GREEN, J.O. 1984, Computers, kids and writing: An interview with Donald Graves. Classroom Computer Learning 4 (8) 2022. GREENFIELD, P.M. 1984, Mind and Media: The Effects of Television, Computers and Video Games.London: Fontana. HAAS, C. and HAYES, J.R. 1986, What did I just say? Reading problems in writing with the machine. Research in the Teaching of English 20 (1) 22-35. HARDMAN, F.C. 1987, A descriptive study of a class of first year pupils as they collaborated together on group stories using word processors. Unpublished MA dissertation, Edge Hill College of Higher Education. JACOBI, C. 1986, Word processing for special needs students: Is there really a gain? Educational Technology 26 (4) 36-9. KLEIMAN, G. and HUMPHREY, M. 1982, Word processing in the classroom. Compute.22, 96-99. LOWD, B. 1982, In CCN FORUM (1982), Word processing: How will it shape the student as a writer? Classroom Computer News November/December, p.27. LUNZER, E. and GARDNER, K. 1978, The Effective Use of Reading.London: Heinemann Educational.

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McLUHAN, M. 1964, Understanding Media.London: Routledge Kegan Paul. MALONE, B. 1987, Using a word processor to teach children to read. Paper presented at the MAPE conference, April 1987. MANDLER, J.M. and JOHNSON, N.S. 1977, Remembrance of things parsed: story structure and recall. Cognitive Psychology 9, 111-51. NEWKIRK, T. 1988, The non-narrative writing of young children. Research in the Teaching of English 21, 2. PEACOCK, G. 1988, Telling tales together on the word processor. Micro-scope 24, 8-10. PERERA, K. 1984, Children's Writing and Reading: Analysing Classroom Language.Oxford: Basil Blackwell. POTTER, F. N. 1988, The word processor: A new literacy tool. Paper presented at the European Community Summer University on 'Writing and First Contacts with Written Language' held at the University of Toulouse le Mirail, July 1988. ROBSON, S. 1986, No-one can see the mistakes you've made. Primary Teaching Studies 1,62-79. Ross, A. 1984, Composing and transcribing in children's writing: The effects of using a word processor, Language Matters 1 and 2. SOMEKH, B. 1986, Exploring word processing with children. Paper presented at the NFER Symposium on Word Processing, October 1986. TRAVES, L.J. 1989, An examination of the revisions made by ten and eleven year olds to chronological and non-chronological texts using the word processor. Unpublished MA dissertation, Edge Hill College of Higher Education. TRUSHELL, J. 1986, Llanfairpwyllgwyngyllgogerchwyrndrobwllllantsiliogogogoch Re-drafted: a study of the effects of word processors upon the editing skills of primary pupils. Paper presented at the NFER Symposium on Word Processing, October 1986. WILKINSON, A. 1986, The Quality of Writing.Milton Keynes: Open University Press. WOMBLE, G. 1984, Process and processor: Is there room for a machine in the English classroom? English Journal January.

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