Writing development and progression
Progression in writing and the Northern Ireland Levels for Writing
A research review undertaken for CCEA by
David Wray and Jane Medwell
University of Warwick
March, 2006
Contents
|Introduction …………………………………………………………………….. |3 |
|Methodology …………………………………………………………………… |4 |
|Language development during the school years ……………………………….. |7 |
|Writing pedagogies …………………………………………………………….. |9 |
|The process of writing …………………………………………………………. |11 |
|Approaches to analysing writing development ………………………………… |13 |
| 1. Linguistic analysis ……………………………………………………. |14 |
| 2. Social/functional analysis …………………………………………….. |21 |
| 3. Writing from a cognitive development perspective …………………... |29 |
| 4. Broader approaches …………………………………………………… |41 |
|Dimensions of writing development …………………………………………… |43 |
|Matching to the Northern Ireland Levels for Writing ………………………….. |47 |
|References ……………………………………………………………………… |51 |
Introduction
In writing about the development of written language in children aged 7 to 14, Andrew Wilkinson, a pioneer in this area, made the comment that “Development obviously takes place, but does not take place obviously” (Wilkinson et al, 1980, 2). Wilkinson here is alluding to a persistent problem in the research and pedagogic literature about writing development, that is the fact that, for all it is obvious that the writing of 14 year olds is likely to show developments from the writing of 11 year olds, which in turn will show developments from that of 7 year olds, the nature of these developments is only imprecisely known. The problem rests in a lack of common agreement about just what is meant by ‘development’ in writing, which has in turn led to disagreement about what counts as effective pedagogy in writing. If teachers and researchers disagree about what it means to improve in writing, they might be expected also to disagree about how such improvements might be fostered in schools and classrooms. Several studies have indicated that the writing experiences of many pupils in British primary classrooms in the mid 1990s were ‘fragmentary and discontinuous’ (Webster, Beveridge & Reed, 1996, 147), and that there was little evidence of progression in teaching or an awareness by teachers of appropriate developmental expectations.
One of the major purposes of the current report is to try to disentangle the multiple strands of current research and pedagogy in writing, in order to arrive at a commonly agreed framework for measuring, and enhancing, development and progression in the mastery of writing among school-aged children.
Methodology
The aim of this project is to research and review existing knowledge about the nature of progression in writing, to inform an empirically-grounded progression framework for writing in Northern Ireland. The key source of evidence for this undertaking is research worldwide on literacy (specifically writing) development. A secondary source of information is the range of progression frameworks developed in other countries, although we recognise that many of these are not derived from research and hence have to be treated circumspectly.
The phases of the project are as follows:
1. Selecting appropriate material through a desk-based review of literature.
2. Surveying and summarising the material in the resources identified and producing key point summaries in electronic format.
3. Generating and pursuing themes in literature to produce a robust, evidence-based statement of progression in writing capability.
4. Using key findings to carry out a systematic evaluation of CCEA’s proposed levels of progression for writing.
Phase 1: Selecting appropriate material through a desk-based review of literature.
Work in this phase has focused on searches in three main areas: existing writing curricula worldwide, research on writing development and research on writing assessment. These searches have encompassed books, journals, conference proceedings and websites. Search results have been exported to the Refworks bibliographic software package, to produce a complete list of references. These results have been scrutinised carefully, where possible using existing abstracts, and target sources judged to be relevant have been obtained, mostly electronically but occasionally manually.
Our criteria for including a source in our analysis have been as follows:
1. It should report or discuss empirical research rather than be simply polemical. This means that we have included sources where existing literature has been reviewed as well as those which report original findings.
2. The research described or discussed should be rigorous and substantial. Thus we have excluded research which is based upon a single case study, but not that which uses a number of case studies for analysis. This is a departure from the criteria applied in the systematic reviews of educational topics currently being produced under the EPPI-Centre umbrella of the DfES, which focus exclusively upon quantitative research studies and, preferably, studies involving randomised controlled trials (see for details.) While we approach qualitative research studies with a healthy scepticism (as we do all research), we would not wish to exclude it from all consideration. We recognise that this judgement has been the subject of prolonged debate in the educational research community.
3. The research described or discussed should not be limited to special cases. There is, for example, a substantial amount of literature in the area which focuses exclusively upon developments in language and writing among speakers of English as an additional language, or among pupils with specific learning problems. Such literature is very particular in its application and we have generally not used it in this more generic examination of the research literature on progression in writing.
The types of source material we have located, and some details about how we have located it, are given below:
Existing writing curricula
The existing writing curricula of a number of Australian states and territories and US states have been examined, using material available on national websites, and often this material has included the criteria against which writing is assessed. This does not mean that all of these curricula have a set of “writing criteria”. In Australia, for instance, some states divide writing in new ways so that writing standards are split between the subjects of communication and English.
A Google Scholar search using the terms writing, development, children, pupils, standards, assessment in various combinations produced a combined total of 28,334 references. Combinations of these search terms were used to narrow this to 2,783 references, which were checked by source and keywords. 175 of these were examined further. This search was particularly useful in turning up international curricula and standards. The research articles emerging from this search were, in fact, all duplicated in later research searches.
Research literature
The research literature is the main focus of this project. Unfortunately, the topics of children’s writing development and standards of writing are not as accessible as it might at first seem. The research we have located includes studies of adult and child mental and writing processes, handwriting and co-ordination in psychology and neuropsychology, studies of rhetoric and social cognition, studies of the pedagogy of writing and a broad literature about adult composing and writing in specialist journals. Specific studies of children’s writing and development from within the discipline of education have also been included although many of these tend towards the polemical rather than an exclusively research-based reporting. The literature about writing standards includes UK test data but this has been useful only in illustrating specific points.
Books
Books were searched through the University of Warwick, the London Institute of Education and the Bodleian (Oxford) library catalogues. The results of these primary searches have had to be entered manually into the Refworks software, an inevitably time-consuming process. The search terms used included: writing, development, children, pupils, students, schools, standards, assessment, writ*,assess*, develop*. These latter three wild-carded terms were used to pick up variants such as, in the first case, writing, writer, written. Books were also identified from the bibliographies of relevant publications. The relevance of these books was assessed from the researchers’ knowledge of authors, titles, publishers and content of each book (using keywords, descriptions and blurbs).
Key authors
The most significant authors in the fields of writing (composition), handwriting, assessment and pedagogy of writing were put through online citation indices (Web of Knowledge and Web of Science) and 248 relevant citations identified (from a first total of 343,000). Each of these citations was examined and 45 identified as important and relevant, using as criteria the choice of publication (the journal or conference identifying the subject area), any listed keywords and the abstract. The references and citations of these 45 publications were further examined for linked material and a total of 177 references exported to Refworks for later, closer examination.
Journals and conference papers
Journals and conference papers inevitably present the best research evidence, being both focused, detailed but also, crucially for our purposes, having already been through a peer reviewing evaluative process. The following searches have been undertaken.
• A British Education Index (BEI) search was conducted using various combinations of the terms writing, development, assessment and standards (including relevant wildcards). This yielded 480 references, some of which, inevitably, were repeats. These were manually examined, repeats excluded, and their relevance checked. This produced a short list of 39 articles for closer examination. Many of these were small case studies, addressed aspects of writing outside the target areas or were polemical, rather than empirically based. Consequently 12 papers were selected for entry into the Refworks database.
• An ASSIA (Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts) advanced search was conducted of the British Humanities Index, ASSIA, ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) and the Linguistics and Language Behaviour databases, using the search terms writing, development, assessment, standards and relevant wildcards. This yielded 20,202 sources and a brief evaluation of titles and, in some cases, abstracts, showed that the vast majority of these were professional, polemical or single case studies. This search was then limited to peer-refereed journals in order to select the research orientated material (all future searches were thus limited). The 1,756 results then emerging were sorted and 305 examined closely, by source, keywords and abstract. 75 of these were saved to the Refworks database. As a result of this search a number of interesting articles and authors were investigated further. The references and citations of the 75 selected articles were examined for relevance and a further 22 saved and the names of 21 selected authors were searched for references and citations.
• Citation indices were a useful source of information. The online Web of Knowledge (Web of Science) was used to search for the references and citations of the 50 authors considered most important from the searches described above. This yielded 22,675 references which were manually examined for title and abstract. 240 of these were saved for further examination.
Our Refworks database contains over 700 references, which form the basis of our review. Electronic copies of the sources have been collected where possible and physical sources consulted where the text is not available electronically.
Language development during the school years
Children have mastered many aspects of grammar and of discourse level language skills by the time that they commence formal schooling at around five years of age, but it is widely recognised that language development does not cease at that point, and there is still a great deal to be learned (e.g., Berman, 1997; Chomsky, 1969; Karmiloff-Smith, 1986; McCann, 1989; Oliver, 1995; Rubin & Piche, 1979). Language development continues to occur in both formal (syntactic) and functional (pragmatic) areas until well into teenage years (Perera, 1984), or even later (Miller & Weinert, 1998).
As children get older, their basic linguistic knowledge must not only be added to, but also coordinated and integrated for use in extended discourse, which is very cognitively demanding (Berman, 1997). Berman suggests that three main types of integrated knowledge are important:
1) linguistic - command of the full range of expressive options, the grammatical and lexical forms, available in the language;
2) cognitive - the ability to integrate different forms from different systems of the grammar, and to deploy these options to meet different discourse functions; and
3) cultural - adapting the favoured options of a given speech community to particular discourse settings at particular levels of usage. (p. 76)
Berman’s (1997) summary highlights the range of language development which occurs during the school years. Research into language development has identified some of the significant linguistic developments that occur after 5 years of age, which include the use of prepositional phrases, adverbial clauses, and subordination (Scott, 1988); the development of figurative language, the ability to recognise ambiguity in language, and the ability to take account of the needs of an audience (de Villiers & de Villiers, 1978); and discourse level language skills, such as the ability to produce a cohesive, coherent text, which become increasingly evident as children get older (Nelson, 1988).
One area of the language development of older children that has received a lot of research attention is children’s oral language skills generally, and at the discourse level, oral narrative productions (e.g., see Berman & Slobin, 1994). In this field, research has focussed particularly on developmental sequences associated with a mastery of cohesion and coherence in discourse (e.g., Bamberg, 1986, 1987; Hickmann, 1991; Karmiloff-Smith, 1981, 1985; Wigglesworth, 1997). There are, though, many other linguistic skills that children need to master, including those associated with written language, which become increasingly important with age.
As children get older, a large part of their language development is concerned with the development of literate language, that is, learning written forms of language. This involves more than just learning the mechanics of production. It also involves learning syntactic structures, vocabulary, organisation, and text types that are generally, or only, found in written forms of language (Miller & Weinert, 1998). Written, literate English is a distinct dialect from spoken English, almost a separate language that has to be acquired (Givon, 1993).
Learning written language also involves learning to communicate with an audience which is often decontextualised, and to structure texts in such a way that they will be perceived by their readers as coherent, and from which readers can gain a message similar to that intended by the author. This reflects the understanding that coherence is ultimately a property assigned to a text by its reader(s); it is not a property inherent in the words on the page. Nevertheless, there are ways of using language which are likely to be helpful to readers in achieving coherence. It is these aspects of language use that ‘apprentice writers’ have to acquire as part of learning literate language.
Writing pedagogies
According to Myhill & Jones (2006) “Learning to write is about learning to be powerful” (1). In theoretical terms, what children are taught about writing reflects socio-cultural values, and represents an initiation into the ‘social practices’ of writing (Czerniewska, 1992). In practical terms, the young adult who pens a disjointed letter of complaint is less likely to provoke an appropriate reaction than the writer who asserts authority through a well-structured argument. Children’s progress in writing, and effective pedagogies for the teaching of writing, are both issues of international concern, and have been for some time. In England, the introduction of the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) into the primary sector in 1998 (DfEE, 1998) and its subsequent extension into early secondary (DfES, 2001) are direct, government-led initiatives to raise standards in literacy. National test results in England have persistently revealed that achievement in writing is lower than achievement in reading; findings which are replicated in the US (Ballator, Farnum, and Kaplan, 1999). It was found, for example, that students in Grades 4 and 11 did not significantly improve on holistic quality scales between 1994 and 1996, and in 1998, of the fourth graders who were assessed using the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 60% scored at or below the basic level in writing and only 40% reaching the proficient or advanced level (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2002). Such findings have led to a call for a writing revolution (NCW, 2003) to address the awareness that ‘most students are producing relatively immature and unsophisticated writing’ and ‘cannot write with the skill expected of them today’ (NCW, 2003). Similarly, in Australia, following the 1996 National School English Literacy Survey, the Minister for Schools noted that ‘a disturbingly high number of Australian school children are failing to meet a minimum acceptable standard in literacy’ (Masters and Forster, 1997) prior to announcing initiatives to counter the shortcomings.
However, the pedagogic means by which young writers are inducted into powerful writing discourses continues to be contested. The recent history of writing pedagogy has variously emphasised different perspectives (Myhill, 1999), themselves underpinned by differing epistemological values. Following a rejection of approaches to writing which over-valued the product, school writing began to focus upon creative writing and personal voice (for example, Rosen, 1981), and was paralleled by an interest in the process of writing, largely pioneered by the work of Donald Graves (1983) in the USA. These approaches to writing valued the child’s ‘expressive communicative needs’ (Arnold, 1991) and foregrounded private, personal discourses over public discourses, and the affective domain over the cognitive. Children’s writing was valued for what it could ‘disclose about the student-writer as a person’ (Wyatt-Smith & Murphy, 2001). However, there have been critics of both the process approach and of creative writing. The Bullock Report (DES, 1975) noted a concern about creative writing, artificially generated by the teacher, which neither reflected the child’s desire to communicate nor taught the child anything about writing. Graves (1983) claimed to have overcome this artificiality by means of his foregrounding of student self-sponsored writing and the concept of ‘personal voice’ in writing. Critics of Graves, however, have questioned the rigour of the research base for his claims (Smagorinsky, 1987), and observe Graves’ tendency to report only ‘success stories’ (Smith & Elley, 1998), and his tendency towards ‘evangelical reportage’ (Beard 2000). Others argue that the emphasis on process and personal voice fails to evaluate the writing outcome with any rigour, producing what Czerniewska (1992) calls ‘uncritical acceptance’.
In contrast, the genre approach to writing, (Martin, 1985; Derewianka, 1996; Reid, 1987) contests the centrality of personal voice, in favour of helping writers to access public discourses. Proponents of this approach argue that personal voice writing, in particular narratives and first person recounts, are likely to have little effect on audiences outside the school classroom, whereas mastery of more publicly important writing forms (e.g. persuasion) could invest writers with more social power. Critics have suggested that process approaches leave children to ‘intuit the teacher’s implicit agenda’ (Hammond & Derewianka, 2001), privileging ‘the brightest middle-class children’ (Martin, 1985) who are socially acculturated into the types of discourse which are valued in their particular cultures. Genre theorists claim that the teacher-as-facilitator role in the process approach provides insufficient instruction about the expectations of different writing tasks. Thus they advocate explicit instruction in linguistic and generic features and greater attention to public written discourses. Nonetheless, the genre approach has itself been critiqued for simply teaching a mastery of convention, with a consequent ‘subordination of the child’s creative abilities to the demands of the norms of the genre’ (Kress, 1994).
At the heart of these debates is an apparent conflict between different paradigms for teaching writing, and what is considered to be more important, a personal or a public voice, affective or cognitive purposes, and meaning or form. This polarisation, however, is a denial of the extent to which meaning and form are intrinsically inter-related, and ignores the mutuality of the medium and the message. Some linguists have sought to explore how ‘the linguistic form contributes to and shapes the meaning intended by the speaker/writer’ (Kress, 1994) but such research has been overwhelmed in volume by studies exploring other aspects of writing skill and development.
The process of writing
Previous educational research into classroom composing processes is dominated by the work of Graves (e.g. 1983). His account of the writing process as a series of stages, with the teacher as facilitator, rather than instructor, is echoed in the work of Emig (1988) and Murray (1982). Central to their thinking is the framing of writing as a ‘creative process in which meanings are made through the active and continued involvement of the writer with the unfolding text’ (Emig, 1988); an unconscious process, in which inner thoughts are crystallised into words. The belief in the power of the unconscious in shaping writing is strongly voiced in Arnold’s (1991) psychodynamic view of writing, and is reiterated in many mainstream books for English teachers written in the eighties and nineties (for example, Creber, 1990).
However, there have also been alternative voices, principally from the field of cognitive psychology, which have explored the nature of the writing process. Hayes and Flowers’ (1980) model gives greater emphasis to the recursive, intertwined quality of the writing process. They argue that the stages compete for cognitive attention and that a ‘monitor’, a switching mechanism, moves the writer’s attention from stage to stage. The act of writing is conceptualised as ‘the act of juggling a number of simultaneous constraints’ (Hayes & Flower, 1980), constraints which can be external, such as the writing task, the intended audience, or internal, such as knowing what to say and how to say it (Sharples, 1999). Likewise, Bereiter and Scardamalia’s studies (1982, 1987) focus upon the cognitive difficulties faced by writers during the writing process, and suggest direct instructional intervention as a teaching strategy to enable writers to move from a knowledge-telling phase, where they simply link ideas together in a sequence, to knowledge-transforming, where they shape their writing to suit audience and purpose. There is also a considerable body of research on the revision phase of the writing process. Butterfield, Hacker and Albertson (1996) present a revised version of Hayes and Flower’s model of the writing process, placing more emphasis upon the role of revision. They argue that revision is improved by knowledge of the topic, by a clear sense of audience and by clear task descriptions. Chanquoy (2001) advocates time separation between composition and revision as a method of helping writers to revise more effectively. The recursive interaction of revision with planning and translating ideas into words on the page is identified by Berninger, Fuller and Whittaker (1996) as a feature of the writing process in skilled writers, but they note that ‘in beginning and developing writers, each of these processes is still developing and each process is on its own trajectory, developing at its own rate.’
The impact of Graves’ work has been highly significant, and his conceptualisation of the writing process is very much part of the mainstream culture of English teaching, at least in England. The National Curriculum for English (1999) in England requires that children are taught to plan, draft, revise, proof-read and present their work, a direct reflection of the process approach, and this is sustained in the National Literacy Strategy (DfEE, 1998). The alliance of the process approach with personal growth values remains close, and contemporary critics of teaching linguistic structures or genres continue to attack direct instruction on the grounds of its denial of the power of unconscious processes, what Pullman (2002) described as the ‘mystery, chance and silence’ of writing. On the other hand, the influence of genre theory upon classroom practice has also been significant. The National Literacy Strategy has adopted the notion of text types from the genre theorists, via the research studies of Wray and Lewis (1995; 1997). The Framework for Teaching Literacy includes detailed attention to the linguistic characteristics of different text types. Equally, the National Literacy Strategy has embraced some of the pedagogy of genre approaches, including an insistence on ‘direct instruction in a technical meta-language for talking about texts and their relationship to contexts’ (Wyatt-Smith & Murphy, 2001). Curiously, however, the substantial body of cognitive psychological research on the writing process has had little or no impact on classroom practice, despite its empirical rigour and replication, and its central concern with how children learn to write. Psychological research into children’s composing processes, however, tends to be very experimental and non-naturalist in design and this makes its direct classroom application problematic, a factor which may account partially for the significant impact of Graves’ classroom-focused work on pedagogic practice. Similarly, linguistic analysis has generally not informed a conceptualisation of progression and development in writing, perhaps because attention has tended to focus on politicised debates around the value of grammar teaching, rather than intellectual or empirical enquiry into linguistic development.
Approaches to analysing writing development
Because of the debates just described about writing pedagogies and processes, it should not be surprising that there has been equally powerful debate about how to evaluate developments and progression in writing. A number of approaches have been put forward, each inspiring programmes of research, and each stemming from quite distinct theoretical frameworks. For the purpose of this report, we have divided these approaches into four broad sections, although there is some obvious overlap between these.
• Firstly, we examine research which has explored writing development from a linguistic viewpoint, looking for key markers in terms of children’s developing use of grammar, vocabulary, punctuation, etc.
• Secondly, we explore the outcomes of research conducted from a functional linguistics perspective, which places greater emphasis upon writing as social discourse and, in particular, the development of coherence in writing.
• Thirdly, we focus on research which has linked the development of writing to the development of children’s thinking – a cognitive approach.
• Fourthly we describe research using a rather broader perspective, in particular, the work of Andrew Wilkinson, whose Crediton project remains, after 26 years, the most ambitious and wide ranging attempt to map the course of writing development in primary and secondary children.
1. Linguistic analysis
On the face of it, a way of looking at writing progression in terms of the growing command of linguistic features exhibited sounds an obvious starting point to descriptions of pupil progress. A lay person might well have linguistic expectations about writing development to the effect that better and more mature writers:
• will tend to use longer and more complex sentences;
• will use more precise vocabulary;
• will use more complex punctuation;
• will use paragraphs more effectively;
• will spell more conventionally, etc.
Such expectations undoubtedly originate in lay theories about the development of spoken language and it is often simply assumed that writing follows a similar pattern of development. As we shall see, the relationship between speech and writing is not as simple as this, and, linguistically, development in writing follows somewhat different patterns.
a) Grammatical development
The expectations we have just alluded to depend on an analysis of the linguistic structure of what is written – the structure of sentences and words, the organisation of paragraphs, the use of punctuation etc. All of these aspects are objects of consideration in what might be termed structural linguistics, and we examine what is known about their development in writing in this section.
Although there is an extensive corpus of previous research on text linguistics, there is relatively little systematic exploration of the grammatical characteristics of children’s writing. Three small-scale studies (Hunt, 1965; Loban, 1976; Harpin, 1976) analysed children’s writing for grammatical and syntactical structures, and Perera’s seminal studies (1984; 1987) demonstrate the value of linguistics in writing pedagogy. Later, Kress (1994) aimed to provide a ‘linguistic account’ of learning to write, in contrast to prevailing psychological or literary perspectives. Likewise, Collins and Gentner (1980) have argued for ‘a linguistic theory of good structures for sentences, paragraphs, and texts’ which would have ‘direct implications for the teaching of writing’. Kress’s analysis of how the sentence develops in young writers is a prime example of the potential of this kind of study. Both Perera and Kress focus on primary writers: by contrast, Dixon and Stratta (1980; 1982) examined linguistic aspects in post-16 writing, particularly in narrative. There has been little research into secondary age writers, as Perera (1987) notes: ‘knowledge about the later stages of acquisition is slight in comparison with the considerable amount of information that has been accumulated about the first three years’. A consequence of this is that precise understanding of progression and development in writing in this older age group is poorly theorised. Two studies by Massey et al (1996, 2005) have undertaken systematic linguistic analysis of examination writing at sentence level, but the research focus is upon standards of writing over time, rather than developmental patterns. Research (QCA, 1999; Myhill, 1999) has begun to explore those differences in linguistic terms and a recent important study by Myhill and Jones (2006) has added significantly to our knowledge in this area.
For primary-aged children, Kress (1982) argues that ‘perhaps the major part of learning to write consists in the mastery of the linguistic unit of sentence, with all the manifold ramifications entailed in that’ (71). The sentence is not a unit of spoken language: arguably we learn to speak in sentence-like structures only because we have transferred these features to our speech from our use of them in our writing. Young children are not in this position and, as a consequence, Kress argues, their early writing is characterized by the lack of the sentence as an organising structure. One of their tasks in learning to write is to establish for themselves what a sentence is about. Because of this early, fundamental lack of understanding, many of the corrections of and interventions in young children's writing by the teacher (such as putting in full stops and changing lower case letters to capitals) miss the point in terms of writing development. Children need a long process of experimentation before they acquire an adult concept of the sentence. They have two major things to learn: how sentences are internally structured on the one hand, and how sentences link together as part of a larger text. These two are obviously related but we cannot simply assume that the learning and teaching of one (internal sentence structure) will inevitably lead to the learning of the other.
Harpin (1976) had earlier described research to trace the development of the writing of 9-10 year old children over a period of two years. He goes to great lengths to point out the difficulties in trying to describe or analyse language development in general terms, emphasising the need to view each child as an individual. However, Harpin does suggest distinctive patterns of syntactical development in children's writing when they undertake the factual and creative tasks he studied. One of the most significant features in this development appears to be the use of subordinate clauses. Harpin describes how the use of ‘and’ as a universal co-ordinator in the speech of young children is transferred to their writing in its early stages. He notes that, by the time children come to write, this is a powerful habit and gives way only slowly and reluctantly to the very large number of different joining methods provided for in English. He indicates the value of investigating the kinds of subordinate clauses used by children and of tracing their attempts to use less familiar kinds, such as relative clauses. He shows how studying such attempts can help provide a ‘portrait of the developing child writer extending the range and assurance of his/her mastery in realising meanings through subordination (Harpin, 1976, 73).
Perera (1984) also focused on the linguistic features in young children’s writing. In examining the interrelationship between speech and writing, Perera refers to four phases: preparation, consolidation, differentiation and integration. In the preparation phase children are learning the basic mechanics of handwriting and spelling; in the consolidation phase they are able to express in writing what they can already convey in speech; they reach a differentiation phase when composing is becoming automatic and writing begins to diverge from speech, taking on its own distinctive functions, syntactic structures and patterns of organisation. By the integration phase children have such control of both oral and written language that they are able to make appropriate linguistic choices.
Assigning chronological ages to these phases is not easy, although Raban (1988) reports that, even at the age of 6 years, there are clear differences between the connectives used in children’s writing compared with those used in their speech, especially when they have the opportunity to write at length, rather than completing exercises or dictating captions for their drawings. Perera (1984) suggests that the consolidation phase begins at about 6 or 7 years and that the differentiation phase begins at about 9 or 10 years. She points out that many studies found that grammatical structures rarely found in speech begin to appear in children's writing in the 7-9 age range.
Allison et al (2002) have followed up this work by investigating the use of subordinate clauses in the writing of 7 to 9 year old children engaged in different writing tasks. They found a wide variation between individual children in terms of the subordinates they were able to use (or did use), which confirms the difficulty of assigning age expectations for this particular linguistic feature of writing. They also found a marked task influence on the use of subordinate clauses. A task which involved the writing of a set of instructions produced a far greater use of subordination than did other tasks such as recounts and narratives. This task effect suggests that even quite young children are sensitive to the demands of particular genres of writing, and that we should be wary of judging their competence in writing on the basis of their performance – it may be that the task calls forth only certain uses of language. Green et al (2003) examined inflectional and derivational morphological forms within narratives written by 247 3rd and 4th graders. Results indicate that children's control of morphological structures in their writing mirrors that in their speech: inflectional morphology is largely mastered by age 9 or 10, but skills with derivational morphology continue to develop in middle childhood.
At secondary level, the most significant recent study is that of Myhill and Jones (2006) who present the results of an extremely detailed examination of the linguistic features in over 700 pieces of writing, personal narratives and persuasive arguments, produced by boys and girls at Year 8 (12-13 years old) and Year 10 (14-15 years old). Their main findings can be summarised as follows:
• Weak writing tended to have fewer words in the longest sentence than average and good writing. The mean length of the longest sentence for the whole sample was 27.7 words, but there were several sentences of over 50 words.
• Good writing was less likely to have a confused longest sentence, that is, a sentence which was not structured in a grammatically correct way.
• Good writing had fewer finite verbs. (A finite verb takes a direct object, e.g. in the sentence: ‘The dog bit the man’ the verb is finite.)
• Good writing had fewer finite subordinate clauses. (A typical example of a finite subordinate clause is underlined in the following sentence: ‘When his friend arrived, he went home’.)
• Good writing had fewer coordinate clauses. (A typical example is either clause in the following sentence: ‘I went for a walk and lost my gloves.’)
• Average writing was more likely to have infinitive clauses than either good or weak writing. (In the two sentences following, the infinitive clauses are underlined: ‘I want to go.’, ‘All I did was touch it.’)
• Good writing was more likely to have present participle clauses. (A present participle clause is underlined in the following sentence: ‘Having eaten his dinner, the man went to bed.’)
• Good writing was less likely to open sentences with a subject. (Compare the following: ‘The man opened the door.’ ‘Before opening the door, the man looked through the window.’ The first opens with a subject, the second with a present participle clause.)
• Good writing was more likely to have non-finite subordinate clause openings than weaker writing. (The non-finite subordinate clause is underlined in the following sentence: ‘Starved of affection, Gail was a very unhappy lady.’)
• Average and good writing were more likely to have subject verb inversion than weak writing. (Look at the following sentences: ‘Not until I got home did I realize that my shoes were untied.’; ‘So quickly did she leave that we did not even realize was gone.’; ‘Had I remembered Lisa’s birthday, she wouldn’t be mad at me now.’; ‘Boy! Am I hungry.’; ‘ “I think it’s time to go,” said Susan.’ In each case the normal subject-verb order is reversed.)
• Weak writing had shorter longest noun phrases than the average or good writing. (In the following two sentences both the underlined sections are noun phrases: ‘The man was late.’; ‘The people that I saw coming in the building at nine o'clock were obviously late’.)
• Average writing was more likely than either the good or weak writing to present coherence lapses.
It should be noted, however, that there was also a large variation in grammatical usages between the types of texts produced. For example, personal narratives tended to contain fewer finite subordinate clauses than persuasive arguments. This finding confirms that of Allison et. al. (2002) that the nature of the writing task is as important as writing or other ability in determining the linguistic features of particular pieces of writing. It is difficult therefore to suggest with any confidence a particular developmental sequence in the use of grammar defined completely in linguistic terms.
b) Vocabulary development
There have been very many studies of children’s vocabulary development, focussed largely on vocabulary development in very young, pre-school children, and in children with special attributes (EAL learners, autistic, deaf children, etc.). Somewhat surprisingly, it has proved difficult to find research related to growth in writing vocabulary among school aged children. Lots of researchers and commentators have documented the importance of vocabulary development in the development of reading (e.g. Aarnoutse, C. & van Leeuwe, J., 1998) and for this reason, vocabulary development was one of the key areas of interest for the National Reading Panel in the US (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). Yet the growth of vocabulary in writing seems hardly to have been studied.
What little information we have seems to suggest that morphologically complex words (e.g. words like reusable, in which there are 3 morphemes) do not appear in children's writing with any frequency until the beginning of secondary school (Berko-Gleason. J., 1993). The use of morphological forms of words in the writing of younger children can trail behind the forms they can speak or read by as many as 5 years. They are able to understand prefixes, suffixes, and inflection long before they are able to use them in their writing. This discrepancy seems to disappear by secondary school, probably at least partially because of the increased variety of reading experience children tend to have in the later primary years.
However, Rubin et al (1991) examined morphological knowledge in spoken language and its relationship to the written representation of morphemes by normally achieving second graders (7-8 year olds), language-learning-disabled children and adults with literacy problems. The results showed both implicit and explicit levels of morphological knowledge to be highly related to morpheme use in written language. These findings suggest that morphological knowledge does not develop solely as a function of maturation but, rather, it is linked to writing experience – a product of writing rather than a pre-cursor.
c) Spelling development
Early in the twentieth century, research into the learning of spelling was carried out on the basis of a phono-centric view of the English spelling system. The assumption was that English spelling was irregular and that learning to spell was best achieved through memorization. It was thought therefore that teaching should focus on the development of visual memory for the spelling of words (Cahen, Craun, & Johnson, 1969; Horn, 1960).
The work of Chomsky (1970) and Read (1971) prompted a reconceptualisation, however, and spelling began to be seen as a developmental process. Their work revealed that young children were capable of constructing knowledge about the relationships between sounds and letters without explicit instruction. Subsequent research mapped out and extended this developmental perspective (e.g., Ehri, 1993; Henderson & Beers, 1980; Seymour, 1992. A number of researchers focused on the investigation of young children’s invented spellings (e.g., Ellis & Cataldo, 1990; Huxford, Terrell, & Bradley, 1992).
The fundamental insight that emerged from this research is that most children share a common developmental sequence of acquisition of spelling knowledge. Stage or phase models became a popular way of characterizing progression in this aspect of writing. The first such model emerged from the work of Henderson and Beers (1980) which suggested a sequence of developmental phases labelled preliterate, letter name or alphabetic, within-word pattern, syllable juncture, and derivational constancy. Ehri (1997) suggested a similar developmental progression, with only slight terminological differences.
Gentry (1982), building on Read's research, described five stages: precommunicative, semiphonetic, phonetic, transitional, and correct.
• In the precommunicative stage, the child uses symbols from the alphabet but shows no knowledge of letter-sound correspondences. The child may also lack knowledge of the entire alphabet, the distinction between upper- and lower-case letters, and the left-to-right direction of English orthography.
• In the semiphonetic stage, the child begins to understand letter-sound correspondence - that letters represent sounds. At this stage, the child will often use a logical but over-simplistic approach, using single letters, for example, to represent words, sounds, and syllables (e.g., U for you).
• Children at the phonetic stage use a letter or group of letters to represent every speech sound that they hear in a word. Although some of their choices do not conform to conventional English spelling, they are systematic and easily understood. Examples are KOM for come and EN for in.
• During the transitional stage, the speller begins to use accepted spelling conventions rather than just representing sounds, moving from a dependence on phonology (sound) to the use of visual representation and an understanding of the structure of words. Some examples are EGUL for eagle and HIGHEKED for hiked.
• In the correct stage, the speller knows the English orthographic system and its basic rules. The correct speller fundamentally understands how to deal with such things as prefixes and suffixes, silent consonants, alternative spellings, and irregular spellings. A large number of learned words are accumulated, and the speller recognizes incorrect forms. The child's generalizations about spelling and knowledge of exceptions are usually correct.
Gentry notes that the change from one spelling stage to the next is a gradual one and that examples from more than one stage may coexist in a particular sample of writing. However, children do not fluctuate radically between stages, passing from phonetic back into semiphonetic spelling or from transitional back to phonetic.
From investigations of children’s invented spellings (e.g., Ellis & Cataldo, 1990; Huxford, Terrell, & Bradley, 1992) have also come a number of other insights about spelling development. It seems, for example, that children acquire quite early (at least those brought up surrounded by Western scripts) the understanding that the spelling system represents sounds in a predominately left-to-right fashion. For example, a child in the semiphonetic phase may spell truck as HRK; in the subsequent phonetic phase, the spelling may develop to CHRIK, CHRUK, and TRUK.
Children’s invented spellings also eventually show the use of silent letters accompanying long vowels, which indicates that they are beginning to attend to the patterns of English spelling (e.g., TAEK for take and PLAYN for plane). They conceptualize the vowel and what follows within a word as an orthographic unit (Ehri, 1989). This leads to the understanding that spelling is not a strictly linear left-to-right match up of letters; some letters do not themselves correspond to sound but instead provide information about the pronunciation of other letters within the unit.
It should be noted that, with very few exceptions, research carried out within the now dominant developmental spelling paradigm has always focused on quite young children. The expectation of most researchers is that the majority of children will be working within the correct stage of spelling by the age of 8 or 9. Spelling ceases to be a mainstream research interest in children older than 9 years or so, because it largely ceases to be a problem for these children. There will always, however, be exceptions.
d) Punctuation development
Another aspect of grammatical development in which progression might reasonably be expected is that of punctuation. This is currently a popular topic, having spawned, in 2003, a best-selling book (Truss, 2003), with the rather scary subtitle ‘The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation’. Yet this popular interest in punctuation is not reflected in research or writing about teaching and learning punctuation, or its development. Hall and Robinson (1996) bemoan the lack of research and writing about learning to punctuate but this book illustrates its own dilemma, being, as far as we can tell, the only significant publication about punctuation in school in the past ten years.
Hall and Robinson (1996) illuminate the long-standing debate, dating back to the 1930’s and before, yet raging just as fiercely today, about the function of punctuation in written texts, which centres around two views. According to the first, “The different points or stops in punctuation … are conventional signs designed to show pauses and rests of various lengths in the manuscript. … if the reader is reading aloud, they should help him to pause at the right places for the right period of time, to put the emphasis where it is intended, and to adapt his breathing and the pitch and cadence of his voice to the natural flow or rhythm of the passage.” (Joad, 1939, p.59). Such a view will be familiar to those who remember being taught that, either in reading or writing, a comma indicated, ‘take a breath’. It also gave rise to what might be termed a ‘weighting’ approach to punctuation – a comma demands a small breath, semi-colons and colons slightly longer ones, while full stops demand the longest breaths of all.
In contrast to this, other writers have argued that, “Even today there are many who have (an) incorrect, ‘resting-place’ notion of punctuation; to them the far more important aspects are lost. Nowadays it is considered a misconception to think that whenever you make a pause in reading it is necessary to insert at least a comma. Punctuation has become more logical: there should be a reason for each stop used.” (Moon, 1939, p. 164). According to this second view, punctuation largely serves a grammatical function and, according to Hall and Robinson (1996), it is upon the understanding of this that progression will centre. However, they also make clear that current statements about when it should be expected that children use certain punctuation marks (e.g. demarcating accurately a piece of prose using full stops and capital letters by the age of seven, pace the National Curriculum for English currently pertaining in England) are based on no research evidence at all. A study such as that by Cordiero et al (1983), for example, claims to describe a longitudinal study, but in fact turns out to be a study of one class of 6-7 year olds.
Hall and Robinson review the slight existing (and flawed) evidence on progression in punctuation usage and conclude that there is some evidence that young children (up to 7 years old) move from a view of punctuation as a graphic feature towards seeing its linguistic and grammatical functions. Other material in their book supports this hypothesis but it is clear that we still lack evidence about progression in punctuation usage beyond the age of 7 years.
2. Social/functional analysis
In this section, we will examine approaches stemming from a rather different view of language structure, that of functional linguistics, which is a theory of language centred around the notion of language function (Halliday, 1994). While functional linguistics does try to account for the syntactic structure of language, it places the function of language as central (what language does, and how it does it), in preference to more structural approaches, which place the elements of language and their combinations as central. Functional linguistics begins by looking at social context, and examines how language both acts upon, and is constrained by, this social context. Because of this social lens, functional linguistics approaches will ask rather different questions about development in writing, for example, how do writers develop the ability to make meaning in writing, achieving coherence and cohesion in what they write, how do the demands of the task and their knowledge of a topic influence this achievement, and how do children develop sensitivity to audience and purpose in their writing?
a) Coherence
What is meant by ‘coherence’ is the key issue underlying study of the development of the ability to produce texts that are likely to be perceived by their readers as coherent. Coherence has been variously defined as:
• a global property of text (Spiegel & Fitzgerald, 1990);
• “the overall unity of a text produced when topics are identified and contexts and cues are present to bind the discourse” (Spencer & Fitzgerald, 1993, p. 213);
• “the quality that makes a text conform to a consistent world picture and is therefore summarizable and interpretable” (Enkvist, 1990, p. 14);
• “the explicit interconnectedness of the various parts of the [text]” (Durst, Laine, Schultz, & Vilter, 1990, p. 236);
Further, “meaning and coherence are not inscribed in a text, but are constructed by readers who are guided by textual cues and their own knowledge to bridge gaps and to fill in assumed information” (Bamberg, 1984, p. 307).
Coherence, therefore, involves interaction between reader and writer (Brown & Yule, 1983; Cook, 1989; Givon, 1992). Ultimately, coherence is constructed in the mind of the reader, but the writer also has a vital role to play in helping the reader perceive a text as coherent. The way that the writer structures a text can have a major influence on whether or not the reader perceives that text as coherent. An appropriately structured text can provide readers with cues to assist them in processing the text and making meaning from it. It is because of the role of the reader that writers need to take account of the knowledge and expectations that readers bring to a text, and that assist them with processing it.
In investigating patterns of language development, it is important to draw on data from different types of writing, taking account of factors such as genre, purpose and audience (Crowhurst, 1980) to give a comprehensive picture of what happens. It may also be valuable to use more demanding tasks that require participants to make maximum use of their linguistic resources, rather than relying on patterns of language use that have become almost automatised.
Coherent texts have been described as having:
• overall structure or form (e.g., Bamberg, 1983; Fitzgerald & Spiegel, 1986; Witte & Faigley, 1981; Van Dijk, 1977)
• unity, or consistency, of discourse topic, that is, consistency in what the text is about (e.g., Giora, 1985; Reinhart, 1980; Van Dijk, 1977)
• appropriate use of linguistic cues, such as cohesive devices (e.g., Halliday & Hasan, 1976), discourse connectives (e.g., Evensen, 1990; Harold, 1995; Vande Kopple, 1985), patterning or parallelism (e.g., Hasan, 1985), accuracy in grammar and ‘mechanics’ (e.g., Bamberg, 1984; Lawe Davies, 1998a), and referential, temporal, spatial and causal consistency (e.g., Gernsbacher, 1990, 1997; Givon, 1995a).
Text-based coherence is “a feature internal to the text” (Johns, 1986, p. 248), that is, these features have been put in place by the writer of the text and may help readers to make connections between different sections of text. There are several different features of language use that will be discussed, including cohesive devices, discourse structure markers, and syntax. These features serve as cues to assist readers in the task of building a coherent mental model of a text, but they do not of themselves create coherence.
Research on the development of the ability to produce coherent text has not been extensive. Galloway (2002), focusing on the production of persuasive texts by 9 to 15 year olds, did find evidence of developmental patterns. The general pattern of development was the increasing use of features to ensure coherence as pupils got older. Such features included:
• a text opening which clearly stated the writer’s position on the topic of the writing;
• the use of key words to develop reader focus on the topic of the text;
• the increasing use of synonyms to avoid over-repetition of key words in the text;
• clear organisation of the content of the text, in this case the arguments presented in support of a proposition.
b) Cohesion
Cohesion is generally understood as text connectedness at the sentence level (Bamberg, 1983), and is sometimes referred to as ‘local coherence’ (e.g., Van Dijk, 1977), although cohesion is “a concept that is not always used uniformly” (Bublitz, 1989, p. 33), for the term ‘cohesion’ is sometimes used to refer to overall or discourse level connectedness (‘global coherence’). To avoid confusion, the term ‘cohesion’ will only be used here when discussing inter-sentence (local) relations - the sense in which Johns (1986) uses the term.
Cohesive links are overt links between different parts of a text (Enkvist, 1990), provided by writers to guide readers as to the relationships between different sections of a text, with the aim of helping them to make meaning from it (Bublitz, 1989; Gumperz, Kaltman, & O’Connor, 1984). Cohesion concerns the formal means of connection (grammatical or lexical) between sentences, and does not deal with the fact that adjacent sentences will be understood as coherent without any formal connection between them (Bublitz, 1989).
Probably the best known of the studies of cohesive devices is Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) seminal work. They identified four main types of cohesive links: reference, lexical, conjunction, substitution and ellipsis. A brief description of each of these links will now be given, together with a discussion of what is known about the development of their use in young writers.
(i) Reference - semantic relations achieved through use of words, usually pronouns, to refer to objects or ideas mentioned elsewhere in a text.
John lifted his bag. It seemed very heavy.
Results from a range of studies indicate that the age of mastery of reference management varies according to text type, with mastery generally being achieved earlier in narrative than in non-narrative writing.
The findings from several comparative studies of narrative and non-narrative writing, (e.g., Allard & Ulatowska, 1991; Crowhurst, 1987; McCutchen & Perfetti, 1982; Pellegrini, Galda, & Rubin, 1984), show that in narrative writing, reference management is substantially mastered by 10-11 years of age. These studies find a significant decrease with increasing age in the proportion of reference errors. Indeed, Allard and Ulatowska, researching narrative writing in 11 year olds, report that reference errors were so infrequent that they did not apply further statistical analyses to the data in their study.
The pattern for mastery of reference management in non-narrative writing is less clear than that for narrative. On the basis of the studies cited above, especially Crowhurst (1987), it is clear that mastery does not occur until well into secondary school years, but that factors such as text type and familiarity of topic have a strong influence on performance (DeWeck & Schneuwly, 1994). Allard and Ulatowska (1991), for example, used an instructions text and found performance level on reference management similar to that for narrative, that is, that reference errors were very infrequent. This does not indicate that mastery of reference management is achieved in all types of non-narrative texts at about the same time as in narrative, as the outcomes from studies using more complex types of non-narrative texts, such as argument, show (e.g., Crowhurst, 1987; McCutchen & Perfetti, 1982).
In summary, reference management is mastered gradually over a period of some years, with mastery occurring earlier in narrative than non-narrative text types. Reference management is substantially mastered by mid-late primary school age, but development continues well into secondary years, and is linked to knowledge and mastery of specific discourse structures.
b) Lexical - relations achieved through vocabulary selection, usually by synonyms or word repetition.
I like cats. They are such lovable animals.
We live in a house. It's a really nice house.
The majority of studies involving children of middle primary and secondary school age indicate little or no significant change with age in the proportion of lexical cohesive ties used in either narrative or non-narrative texts (e.g., Cox, Shanahan, & Tinzmann, 1991; Crowhurst, 1987; McCutchen & Perfetti, 1982; Pellegrini, Galda, & Rubin, 1984; Yde & Spoelders, 1985, 1990).
While the proportion of lexical cohesive ties used in texts varies little between middle primary level and secondary level, Crowhurst (1987) reports differences in the use of the different types of lexical cohesion (repetition and synonyms) in both narrative and non-narrative writing of those age groups. The proportion of synonyms employed increased across all age groups, in both narrative and non-narrative (argumentative) texts, reflecting general vocabulary growth. However, the pattern of development for both repetition and collocation was different for each text type.
In narrative writing in Crowhurst's (1987) study, repetition decreased, probably as a consequence of general growth in vocabulary. This was attributed to older students having more linguistic resources at their disposal and being able to draw on a greater variety of vocabulary to expand and elaborate their ideas.
In non-narrative writing on the other hand, Crowhurst (1987) found that repetition initially decreased significantly from Grade 6 (12 years) to Grade 10 (16 years), but then increased significantly from Grade 10 to Grade 12 (18 years). After qualitative analysis of the data, she concluded that in Grade 6 texts repetition was a sign of immaturity in written language. By Grade 12, although students were using a similar proportion of repetition to that used at Grade 6, they were now using it strategically to develop their arguments and repeated words and phrases as they elaborated and summarised their ideas.
In summary, the majority of studies point to the proportion of different types of lexical cohesion remaining stable or increasing across the school years. Within that overall pattern there are changes in the types of lexical cohesion used in different types of texts and at different ages, with greater diversity of types of lexical cohesion at higher levels.
c) Conjunction - relations achieved through the use of connectors to show the relationships between statements.
She was smiling, but she did not seem happy.
When you have finished, we shall leave.
There are two main aspects to the development of conjunctive cohesion in children's written language, and each shows a different pattern of change with age. One aspect is changes with age in the proportion of conjunctive ties used; the other is changes in the variety of conjunctive ties used.
The proportion of conjunctive ties used in written language is fairly stable from around late primary/early secondary age, with changes thereafter being qualitative rather than quantitative, although development in conjunctive use continues into secondary years and possibly even beyond (Crowhurst, 1987; McClure & Geva, 1983; Pellegrini, Galda, & Rubin, 1984). The majority of studies of conjunctive use by primary age students are based on narrative texts, while those involving secondary students are predominantly non-narrative-based.
The variety of conjunctive ties used changes with age. In primary school level texts, the most common conjunctions are those used in speech, for example, and, but, so, then, just and after that (O'Brien, 1992; Perera, 1984; Yde & Spoelders, 1985). The decrease in conjunctive use across the primary school years is attributable to the increasing use of more complex syntax (e.g., use of non-finite clauses) and different ways of structuring discourse, which means less reliance on conjunctive cohesion (Yde & Spoelders, 1985, 1990). In addition, writers may rely less on conjunctions as they get older and as they become aware that in some contexts explicit marking of connection is not always necessary, for example, in the case of temporally or sequentially ordered discourse (e.g., narrative), readers will assume a relationship between adjacent parts of the text and overt signalling is not always necessary (Allard & Ulatowska, 1991; O'Brien, 1992).
In narrative writing, there is a steady increase in the use of conjunctions in the first two years of formal schooling (Rentel & King, 1983), but the proportion used decreases significantly with age to around the end of the primary school years, and then remains at much the same level throughout secondary school years (Crowhurst, 1987; Fitzgerald & Spiegel, 1986; Pellegrini, Galda, & Rubin, 1984; Yde & Spoelders, 1985, 1990).
In non-narrative writing, the proportion of conjunctive cohesion increases throughout primary school, especially from about 9-10 years old (McCutchen & Perfetti, 1982), and then plateaus from around the start of secondary school (Crowhurst, 1987). While little change is evident in the proportion of conjunctive ties used in secondary school texts, there is an increase in the variety of the ties used. Crowhurst reports that this is especially evident in temporals, additives and adversatives. As they matured, the students in Crowhurst's study were found to rely less on one or two of the common and early-acquired conjunctions (e.g., also, but, then, so), and used a greater variety of others. For example, there was a change within temporals from conjunctions such as then and soon, to those such as first of all and finally, which more accurately and appropriately signal the development of an argument.
In summary, the survey of studies of the development of conjunctive cohesion in children's written language indicates a similar general trend in both narrative and non-narrative of initial increase in proportion of conjunctive cohesion used, followed by ‘plateauing' as other types of syntactic and structural means of discourse connection start to become evident. The growth plateau appears to occur earlier in narrative than non-narrative texts, by perhaps two to four years. As children get older, the proportion of conjunctive ties used levels off, but there is an increasing variety of conjunctive ties used. The work of Crowhurst (1987) also suggests that conjunctive use becomes more precise with age.
d) Substitution - relations achieved by using one word or phrase in place of another.
I bought a new car today. There were several I could have had.
Ellipsis - relations established by deleting words or phrases.
Who brought the parcel? The postman (brought it).
Inter-sentence ellipsis and substitution have been found to occur infrequently in the written language of both adults and children and may not really appear at all until around the third year of schooling (see Rentel and King, 1983). Zarnowski (1983) and O'Brien (1992), whose studies cover 9 to 14 year olds, report some use of both ellipsis and substitution in narrative writing, although the proportions used were extremely small. O'Brien, though, does note growth in the ability to employ ellipsis in a wider variety of contexts. He found that whereas 9 year olds ellipted only a subject or an object, by 12 children were readily able to ellipt larger blocks of text. O'Brien also notes increased facility in substitution over the same period, so that there is less repetition of the same item. Initially students employ mainly nominal substitution, but later verbal and clausal also.
Only two studies of non-narrative writing report on the use of ellipsis and substitution (Crowhurst, 1987; Neuner, 1987), but the findings are very similar to those for narrative - an extremely small percentage of texts used either ellipsis or substitution, even, in the case of Neuner’s study, at college level.
In summary, the proportions of both ellipsis and substitution employed in both narrative and non-narrative texts are small, and there is little change with age in the proportions of these cohesive devices used.
The general pattern of development of the use of cohesive devices is thus similar for both narrative and non-narrative, though mastery tends to occur later in non-narrative texts than it does in narrative. The age at which mastery is evidenced is influenced by the type of text involved, with mastery occurring later with more complex types of texts and/or more demanding tasks. For example, referential cohesion is substantially mastered in narrative writing by around 9-10 years of age (middle primary school), but not until at least 12 years of age (late primary/early secondary school) or probably later in non-narrative. As well as changes in the proportions of different cohesive devices used in various types of texts at different ages, there are also qualitative changes taking place in the way that cohesive devices are used.
c) Writing genres
Functional linguistics has also been responsible for a new way of looking at the types of texts children are expected to produce in their writing and a broadening of this range may well be a growth point in children’s writing competence. Of course, the idea that children should be encouraged to write for particular purposes, for a range of audiences and in a range of forms is not new. However, what might constitute such a range was often described in very general terms such as the listing of different types of texts, for example, ‘notes, letters, instructions, stories and poems in order to plan, inform, explain, entertain and express attitudes or emotions’ (Department of Education and Science, 1990). Such a listing of text types implies that teachers and students knew what distinguished the form of one text type from another. At a certain level, of course, this is true - we all know what a story is like and how it differs from a recipe, etc. Most of us are aware that a narrative usually has a beginning, a series of events and an ending and many teachers discuss such ideas with their pupils. It is still relatively rare, however, for teachers to deal with other forms of texts, particularly non-fiction texts, in such a way - drawing on their knowledge of the usual structure of a particular text type to improve children’s writing of that form.
It has been argued (e.g. by Martin, 1985) that our implicit knowledge of text types and their forms is quite extensive and that one of the teacher’s roles is to make this implicit knowledge explicit. Theorists in this area are often loosely referred to as ‘genre theorists’ and they base their work on a functional approach to language arguing that we develop language to satisfy our needs in society (Halliday, 1985). They see all texts, written and spoken, as being ‘produced in a response to, and out of, particular social situations and their specific structures’ (Kress & Knapp, 1992, p.5) and as a result put stress on the social and cultural factors that form a text as well as on its linguistic features. They see a text as a social object and the making of a text as a social process. They argue that in any society there are certain types of text - both written and spoken - of a particular form because there are similar social encounters, situations and events which recur constantly within that society. As these events are repeated over and over again certain types of text are created over and over again. These texts become recognised in a society by its members, and once recognised they become conventionalised, i.e. become distinct genres. Kress defines a genre as ‘a kind of text that derives its form from the structure of a (frequently repeated) social occasion, with its characteristic participants and their purposes’ (Kress, 1988, 183)
Different theorists have categorised the types of written genres commonly used in the classroom in different ways. Collerson (1988), for example, suggests a separation into Early genres (labels, observational comment, recount, and narratives) and Factual genres (procedural, reports, explanations, and arguments or exposition), whilst Wing Jan (1991) categorises writing into Factual genres (reports, explanations, procedures, persuasive writing, interviews, surveys, descriptions, biographies, recounts and narrative information) and Fictional (traditional fiction and contemporary modern fiction). There is, however, now a large measure of agreement as to what the main non-fiction genres are. In England the National Literacy Strategy (DfEE, 1998) uses the categories of non-fiction genres originally identified by Martin and Rothery (1980) and expanded and developed by Wray and Lewis (1995; 1997).
The six main types of non-fiction genre identified were recount, report, procedure, explanation, persuasion and discussion. Each of these genres has its own distinctive text structure and language features. Martin and Rothery (1980) found that, of these six genres, recount was overwhelmingly the most widely experienced by children in school. Because this dovetails with the salience of narrative as the dominant form of writing among younger children, it may be that a mark of writing progression would be the gradually increasing command over a widening range of text genres. This is the principle which underpins the National Literacy Strategy Framework of Teaching Objectives, although it must be admitted that this principle is theoretically rather than empirically derived.
d) Audience and purpose
Both the nature of the audience for a piece of writing and the purpose for writing have an influence on writing performance. In any communicative context, audience awareness is important. Writers need to determine such matters as who the audience is, how they should be addressed, and what knowledge they may have and what they may need to know. Although initially children write as they speak, assuming that the audience is present and will ask if more information is needed (Yde & Spoelders, 1990), as children get older they become more able to recognise reader needs in writing and adjust to them (Rubin & Piche, 1979).
“Audience awareness is a critical component of transactional writing” (Frank, 1992, p. 278). Frank’s study of 10-11 year old students’ ability to adapt their writing to different audiences suggested that that ability starts to be shown at about this age. On the other hand, Crowhurst and Piche (1979), from their study of the influence of different audiences (familiar/more distant) and different types of texts on the writing performance of 12 and 16 year old students, report no significant differentiation by audience in the younger students’ writing, although in the 16 year olds there was significant audience differentiation.
In a research context, whether or not participants are communicating with a real audience, or an imagined one, may make a difference to performance. In normal day-to-day life, communication has a genuine purpose, but this is not always the case in a research (or a classroom) context. Frank (1992) comments on this problem, saying that in a research context it is difficult to create a truly authentic writing task, but that it is possible, and important, to create a realistic one. The validity and importance of these comments about authentic and purposeful tasks is borne out by several pieces of research. Both McCutchen (1987) and Golden and Vukelich (1989), for example, confirmed the value of establishing realistic purposes for the writing tasks they elicited from the children in their studies to increase motivation for the task, and to give a purpose for writing. Raban (1988) also reports that her participants wrote better pieces when the purpose for writing was genuine and the audience varied. Shared understanding of writing tasks, including audience and purpose, remains an issue, however. In a study of secondary children writing about historical topics, children and teachers were questioned about ten aspects of task requirement, including aspects of audience and purpose. The results suggest that children, even at secondary level, may have a poor understanding of the task demands of a writing task (Broekkamp, 2002). This effect may be related to the findings of Peterson and Kennedy (2006) that teachers’ comments on the writing of secondary pupils differed widely according to the genre being written and the gender of the pupils. This inconsistency is unlikely to support clear task understanding.
3. Writing from a cognitive development perspective
A third paradigm within which the development of writing has been studied and theorised is that of cognitive development. The ways children can use the written language systems to convey meaning must, it is argued, be connected in some way with the development of their ways of thinking about the world, and many researchers have explored these connections, producing in the course of this exploration some highly influential models of writing development.
a) Early writing experiences
It seems likely that children control first order symbol systems like drawing and writing before they control second order symbols like writing (Vygotsky, 1962). Young children coming to school bring a wide-ranging linguistic competence (Wells, 1981, Brown, 1968) which may be the basis of learning to write, but it is unlikely that oral skills transfer directly into writing. There are critical differences between speaking and writing. Kress (1982) observes that whereas in speech the child creates a text in interaction with another, in writing the child must create a text without the “guide, the prodding, the stimulus of the interaction” (1982: 35).
The observed early behaviour of young children seems to reflect the complex and hierarchical nature of the writing system (Clay, 1975; Hiebert, 1981), for they seem naturally to explore all aspects of the writing system. Writing may start as “undifferentiated squiggles” to which children assign meaning (Vygotsky, 1962). In addition to finding personally meaningful connections they explore the medium without obvious concern for a particular message. Clay (1975) reports young children exploring the graphic elements of the system through play, in ways which are specific to the language of their society (Ferreiro, 1978). Children also repeat particular sentences or phrases and may write whole texts (Sulzby, 1985) which may be written in scribble writing which imitates cursive handwriting. Early efforts to write for specific audiences may result in more conventional words than writing for less specific audiences (Lamme & Childers, 1983).
Once children have gained some initial understanding of the symbol system, and particularly its alphabetic nature, and the permanence of written text, then writing may become more difficult as children are less willing to put down random letters and work hard to orchestrate the complex encoding and message creation process of writing (Clay, 1975). In doing so they must use other people, other symbol systems and their understanding of the activity they are participating in.
A child’s developing knowledge and experience of reading may have a role in writing development (Rosen & Rosen, 1973). Clay suggests there are physical reasons why writing must follow the introduction of reading: having to co-ordinate hand, eye and mind forces a careful analysis which brings detail into focus in a way in which rapid reading cannot. Wells (1981) considers however that waiting for children to become fluent readers before involving them in composing texts is to miss many opportunities for them to explore and understand the power and use of text. A number of authors address the particular significance of children’s own names in their early writing (Haney, 2002).
The role of children’s early understandings about writing is also disputed. Beard says that for many young children “the abstract nature of written language is a source of doubt and uncertainty. The nature and importance of reading and writing activities are not clear to them.” (1984: 59) This uncertainty, particularly in the field of reading, has been investigated by a number of researchers (Reid, 1966; see Johns, 1986 for a review of this area) and was termed “cognitive confusion” by Downing (1970) who claimed that young children did not have the necessary functional and featural concepts to enable them effectively to learn reading and writing skills. Harste, Woodward and Burke (1984), however, write that “after many years of work in this area....we have yet to find a child who is cognitively confused” (56) and other theorists take similar positions (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1983). Hall (1987) ascribes a large part of the findings to the methods of research of those who describe cognitive confusion. He acknowledges that young children do not have the same understandings about writing as adults and suggests that a more appropriate question may be whether the concepts about literacy of young children are confused simply because they are different from those of adults. Clay (1975) suggests children are creating and changing their theories about print and that if these theories are seen through child like eyes, they are not confused, but simply immature.
Form in adult writing is closely related to purpose: we choose the form which best meets our purposes in constructing a piece of writing to communicate meaning. Initially in their explorations young children will use both drawing and writing as symbolic systems to represent their experiences (Dyson, 1982). This may be related to the high incidence of narrative writing in young children. It has been suggested that narrative writing has a particular function in the development of writing. “Narrative writing may ... have a specially important place in the learning of writing, in that it permits the child to develop textual structures and devices in writing by drawing on the child’s already established abilities in spoken language.” (Kress, 1982: 59). If this is so there must be a course of development which enables children to develop a range of forms and purposes beyond narrative.
b) Lengthening discourses
Writing is the process of making not just whole words, phrases or clauses, but whole discourses. There is evidence that very young children do compose whole discourses early in their development as writers (Harste et al, 1984; Newman, 1984). As writing ability grows, one would expect to see increasing length and complexity in the texts written, and an approach to this has been to record the amount of writing done in response to tasks at a particular age. Mykelbust (1973) found that when children of ages seven to seventeen were set a story writing task, there were consistent increases in story lengths with age for both genders up to age thirteen. However, a study by Richardson et al. (1975) of 521 eleven year old children produced some interesting results. The children were all asked to write about their lives and interests. They produced texts of varying length, and though the lengths of their pieces generally correlated with their scores on ability scales, they did not correlate with measures of syntactic maturity. Gundlach (1981) concludes that this indicates that length and complexity of a composition are related to more than the syntactic ability, age and skill of the writer; the writer’s aims, sense of what is required, and personal reactions are also crucial.
c) Broadening range
This raises the question of whether the relationship between the text and the writer’s aims, sense of what is required, and personal reactions, changes as a writer matures. Both Moffett (1968) and Britton (1970; Britton et al, 1975), using different classifications of writing types, have suggested that in developing as a writer the child becomes increasingly more able to write for a variety of increasingly elaborate purposes, more remote audiences and in more appropriate forms. Moffett expresses this as levels of abstraction: recording; reporting; generalising; theorising. Moffett applies this concept of levels of abstraction both to mental activity and to the structuring of discourse and bases it upon decentering. “Differentiation among modes of discourse, registers of speech, kinds of audiences is essentially a matter of seeing alternatives, of standing in others’ shoes, of knowing that one has audiences” (Moffett, 1968: 57). Although Moffett does not attempt to provide evidence for this hypothesis, it has been adopted as a rationale by some writers (Harris and Kay, 1981) and used by Britton to examine the writing of adolescents, with inconclusive results.
Young writers demonstrate recognition that a composition should have a coherent structure and that even pre-school children are aware of differences in text structures or genres (Newkirk, 1987), even though their initial writing may be simply labelling or statements (Dyson, 1983; 1988). A number of researchers have traced the development of complexity in texts and conclude that by the time they come to school children display understanding of some of the features of narrative (Applebee, 1978; Leondar, 1977; Wolf, 1985). Research in this area has used studies of spoken narrative (Labov, 1973; Kernan, 1977) and children’s comprehension of stories (Fredriksen, 1979) to investigate how children’s written stories develop in complexity in the early years at school (King and Rentel, 1981; 1982). Rumelhart (1975) proposed the notion of story grammars and this idea of a story script or schema was also considered by Stein and Glenn (1979). They suggested that children use their experience of hearing stories to create a schema which they apply when writing. Wilkinson (1986) points out that these theorists did not fully explain how the schema might help structure narrative logically. However, taken with the work of Labov (1977) these ideas can be used to generate a set of narrative structures which may be used in writing: beginnings, settings, episodic structure, chronology and endings. The way children are able to use and arrange these elements develops with age. The chronology becomes more complex, and the core narrative becomes more described and explained. As competence develops, so the writing is characterised by more description (Wilkinson, 1980). The characterisation in children’s stories develops (Fox, 1986) and towards the end of primary school information about the characters motivation and reactions is often included (Bartlett, 1981).
Less information exists about the development of expository prose. Young children use exposition (Bissex, 1980; Langer, 1986; Taylor, 1983). Newkirk (1987) has described the development of exposition in the early years and Langer (1986) has extended this to the writing of older children. These descriptions offer ideas about how children’s expository writing may be transformed from structures they already know. It is suggested that rather than using wholly new structures, children solve new text creation problems by adapting forms they already control. More research has been carried out into the ways in which secondary school children learn to use non-fiction writing (Bereiter, 1980; Scardamalia, 1981). Bereiter and Scardamalia suggest that students’ difficulties with these forms has to do with the constraints of cognitive development. Students need to integrate their ideas into a coherent whole. It seems likely that the development of writing forms must be related to personal and cognitive development and a number of theorists have described possible pathways of such development.
d) Organisation and orchestration
Bereiter describes five stages of writing which form an “applied cognitive developmental framework” (1980: 73): associative (relating words to symbols); performative (increased conformity to convention); communicative (increasing reader awareness); unified (increasing self evaluation); and epistemic (thinking through writing). Each stage represents a discrete form of cognitive organisation, involving readjustment of the process used, rather than adding new skills to an existing process.
This model allows for a conscious focus on differing elements of writing. Associative and epistemic writing are focused on the process of writing, whilst performative and unified focus on the product and communicative on the reader. Bereiter suggests that school writing instruction involving correction by the teacher and writing exercises is devoted to moving students from associative to performing aspects of writing and says “if writing was only what schools make it ... it is doubtful anyone would get through the first two stages”. Bereiter notes that a degree of mastery of stylistic convention frees attention for consideration of the ways in which writing can affect the reader and this in turn allows the writer to read critically their own writing. This, Bereiter suggests, activates the “feedback loop” on which unified writing is based and leads to the discovery of writing to learn as a dialogue with oneself.
Bereiter stresses the provisional nature of the model and that whilst the stages have a seemingly natural order to them, “it is quite conceivable that with a different sort of educational experience children might go through different stages with a different sort of order” (1980: 82), seeming to indicate that the stages represent a cognitive response to the demands of an educational setting. The model applies to writing in general and the developmental sequence would, in part, account for the production of different types of writing. Kress (1982) suggested that cognitive structures are represented linguistically as the development of sentence structures and offers a sequence of four sentence structures: pre-conjunction, rudimentary conjunction, subordination and embedded. Kress suggests these are the way in which children express increasingly ordered cognitive structures and the sentence structures move from simple sequence through linear sequences being replaced by hierarchical order. Kress hypothesises that “the forms of written language which children use at different stages point to cognitive models which are distinctive in their character, and have an independence and validity of their own”(1982: 2).
As the linguistic, cognitive, moral and dimensions of composing develop children face the problem of orchestrating complex writing processes. Children cannot control all aspects of the written system at once (Graves, 1983; Jacobs, 1985; Weaver, 1982). Flower and Hayes (1980) offer considerable evidence that good writers must be able to plan and the development of planning abilities has been researched by Burtis, Bereiter, Scardamalia and Tetroe (1983). They suggest that, in the course of writing development, planning becomes gradually differentiated from text production. In the early years a child’s mental activity will be so closely linked to text production that it is difficult to identify separate thinking which can be called planning. As the writer develops, the problem of finding content for a composition becomes separated from the problem of writing the composition. At this point there is evidence of planning, but it is still closely tied to the text and generally consists of listing possibilities for content. In adolescence, planning becomes more elaborated and contains elements which have only indirect bearing on the text. These aspects will be organised as content generation and conceptual planning. Burtis et al (1983) consider the emergence of plans as an object of contemplation as a major advance in development.
Burtis et al. (1983) claim junior writers tend to start to write within a minute of being given a task. However, the length of the delay depends upon the nature of the task set (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1980; Paris, 1980), which suggests that task-related thinking is going on at this time. These very short delays do not allow a great deal of goal-setting activity, or explicit planning and it may be that junior children are simply trying to find the first thing to say. However, if this is judged against some global intention it can be considered a type of planning. In Bereiter and Scardamalia’s knowledge telling model of composing (1987), attributed to novice writers, topic words are used as memory probes and items of interest judged against their fit with the writer’s understanding of the text that is being written. Appropriateness, therefore consists of topic relevance and conformity to text structure. The amount of time necessary to find out content items in this way could be less than half a minute.
Flower and Hayes (1980) used think aloud protocols to identify three kinds of planning in mature writers: generating (retrieving relevant information), organizing and goal setting. They collected think aloud protocols from five students of each age: 10, 12, 16 and 18. The results showed content generation statements predominated at all ages but by 18 other types of planning had become significant. The protocols of the 18 year olds resembled those of expert writers, but the protocols of younger children suggest they were primarily thinking of content and writing it down.
This investigation highlights some of the problems of examining the development of planning. The use of think aloud protocols has been criticised in adults, and may have greater limitations with children. It may be that children do not report all the thought they engage in because they do not see it as relevant, perhaps because goal setting is carried out at a less conscious level in children. Think aloud protocols may not therefore describe children’s competence.
Burtis et al (1983) used a variety of methods to investigate planning, and particularly to attempt to involve children in advance planning. They found that 10 year olds showed little accuracy in identifying the kinds of planning used by adults modelling writing, although by the age of twelve, accuracy in this was close to adult levels. In trying to plan in advance, 10 to 14 year olds tended to distort all kinds of planning into content generation, although this tendency was less in the older children. Between the ages of 10 and 12 the amount of planning shown in think aloud protocols doubled, and conceptual planning increased slightly, but was very infrequent. At age 10 the notes a child made in planning writing resembled the finished text very closely, but this resemblance declined with increasing age. These results support the suggested development of planning. At first most of the child’s conscious expression is focused on immediate written expression; as development proceeds attention is freed to generate text content in abbreviated form in advance of writing. In adolescence the plan takes on conceptual properties so that organisation of intentions, problems and strategies are represented in it.
Berninger and her colleagues modified an earlier model of the writing processes of adult writers developed by Hayes and Flower (1980). The resulting explanatory model of compositional processes in developing writers includes three phases: planning, translating, and reviewing (Berninger et al., 1995: 294). During the planning phase, ideas are generated and organized, and writing goals are set. The translating phase has two portions: text generation and transcription. During the text generation portion, ideas are turned into mental language. After the mental language has been generated, it is then transcribed into written language. During the review phase, ideas, mental language, and written language are evaluated and revised (Hayes & Flower, 1980). It is important to note that these phases are not linear but can interrupt each other and can take place within each other. For example, for a writer who writes down her plans, the translating phase takes place during the planning phase. Also, a writer who considers and then rejects various topics is revising during the planning phase.
e) Working memory constraints
In the past decade, significant effort has been devoted to understanding the role of working memory in writing. The idea of working memory is used to describe the temporary storage of information necessary for carrying out tasks (such as multiplying numbers without the help of pencil and paper). Unlike long-term memory, which can store virtually unlimited amounts of material for many years, working memory is limited in the amount of material it can hold (a few items) and in the length of time it can hold it (a few seconds).
Kellogg (1996) and Hayes (1996) have both given a central role to working memory in their very influential models of the writing process. Understanding the ways different writing processes draw on the same limited working-memory resources could explain why some writing processes are more difficult than others and how these processes may interfere with each other. Kellogg (1999, 2001) has carried out an extensive program of research on the cognitive resources demanded by the various cognitive processes involved in writing (Kellogg, 1988, 1990). Kellogg and Hayes both proposed that working memory be included as a central component in models of writing. Both models build on the description of working memory provided by Baddeley and colleagues (e.g., Baddeley & Hitch, 1974; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993): the two models differ in how the various writing processes use working memory. Hayes & Chenoweth’s (2006) findings suggest that working memory is involved in the formation of long-term memories, that is, in learning.
Identifying the role of working memory in the various writing processes may help us to understand interference among memory processes that contend for the same scarce memory resources. Understanding interference among writing processes may cast light on writing development. For example, young writers may have to devote large amounts of working memory to the control of lower-level processes, such as handwriting or typing, and thus have little left for higher-level processes. Indeed, the development of skill in writing may require the automatisation of lower-level skills so that they use less of the available working-memory resources. The findings of Gathercole, et al (2004) suggest working memory to be particularly associated with the literacy scores of younger children. Furthermore, the way the child chooses to assign working memory to the various writing processes may influence writing outcomes. For example, a child who devotes too much working memory to avoiding surface errors may have too little to devote to planning. Children with smaller working-memory capacities may require different writing strategies and different teaching methods than those with larger capacities.
f) Revision
Research has shown that expert writers devote considerable time and attention to revising their work (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987; Collins & Gentner, 1980; Fitzgerald, 1987; Flower & Hayes, 1980). In contrast, several studies have shown that school children generally do not revise frequently or skillfully in the classroom (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987; Englert, Hiebert, & Stewart, 1988; Fitzgerald, 1987), although the ability to revise seems to improve with age (Cameron et al, 1997). In addition, when children are encouraged or required to revise, their changes do not always improve the communicative quality of the text (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987). Although increased emphasis has recently been placed on the revision process in the primary school classroom, children generally do not receive instruction in specific strategies for assessing the comprehensibility of their work (Graves, 1983).
Research on the development of comprehension-monitoring and text-evaluation skills suggests one possible reason why children tend not to revise their work. Many studies have shown that children generally overestimate the communicative quality of prepared texts and believe that they and others understand messages that adults consider incomprehensible (cf. Olson & Hildyard, 1983). It may be that children revise infrequently because they tend to assume that the text is clear and that the reader will understand their intended meaning. Beal (1996) and Beal et al (1990) found that, when asked to review and revise prepared texts, younger children did not detect as many text problems overall as older children. However, on the occasions when the younger children did recognize that a text was not clear, they could usually revise it appropriately. This pattern of results suggested that the younger children's revision performance was limited primarily by their ability to evaluate the communicative quality of the text.
g) Perceptions of writing
As mentioned earlier, children’s early understandings about literacy have been the subject of much research in the area of reading, but surprisingly little investigation of children’s understandings about writing has taken place. One source of information was the National Writing Project (1990). Teachers explored children’s perceptions about writing and themselves as writers through interviews, journals and questionnaires. The picture of children’s perceptions of writing revealed was summarised as follows.
• Children often judge the successive their writing by its neatness, spelling and punctuation, rather than by the message it conveys.
• Children often have difficulty in talking about their development as writer except in very broad terms.
• Children see writers as people who publish books (usually stories); writing is thought about in terms of end products.
• Writing is often seen as a school activity whose primary purpose is to show teachers what has been learned.
• Writing is seen as an individual activity; ideas for writing are rarely discussed and outcomes rarely shared with others.
• Writing, talking and reading are not always clearly associated with each other. (NWP, 1990: 19)
The children appeared more concerned with writing as a product than a process. Their attention seemed to focus on the appearance of that product. However, the evidence provided by this project must be treated with caution. Much of the data is anecdotal and was gained as awareness enhancement for teachers, the conditions of collection were not controlled and it cannot be taken as fully indicative of the general picture. But this concentration on the technical features of writing also appears in a survey of 429 11 year olds (Martin, Waters and Bloom, 1989) who were asked what their teacher was looking for when they handed in work. Over 80% of the responses featured the “secretarial skills” of writing: spelling, handwriting, punctuation. The question used does focus on the end product, so that the mere 3% of responses which mentioned planning cannot be taken as an indication that these children were not aware of planning.
Tamburrini, Willig and Butler (1984) asked 10 and 11 year olds why they wrote stories, poems and project work in class and who they wrote these forms for. With regard to the purpose for writing, in the case of stories over half mentioned developing the imagination as a reason for writing whilst a similar proportion mentioned learning skills such as spelling and handwriting. For poetry, a quarter mentioned learning skills, but half could think of no purpose at all. For project work, more than three quarters gave learning facts as the reason for writing, which does suggest some understanding of writing function.
With respect to audience, the great majority of responses indicated that the children wrote for the teacher as an audience. Although the Tamburrini et al survey involved only 40 children, the findings are comparable to those of a survey by Britton et al. (1975) of 11 to 16 year olds. This survey also discussed the issue of children who expected to write for an undefined but real “double audience”, when the teacher sets up an audience, but remained, in fact, the audience himself for the children’s writing. This was also observed in primary aged children by Florio and Clark (1982), who also discussed a “double function” effect when children were asked to keep writing diaries. The children perceived the underlying academic function of the diaries and wrote according to their perceptions. Czerniewska (1992) suggests this situation arose for two reasons: the writing processes expected of children in this classroom were not adapted to meet the needs of a real audience; and a belief in the inherent egocentrism of young children. Taken together, she suggests, these factors created “double perceptions”.
Shook et al. (1989) surveyed the concepts of writing expressed by over 100 children between 6 and 8 by asking questions in three categories: their perceptions of the general purpose of writing; their personal preferences in writing; their self concept as writers. The children seemed to understand the communicative purpose of writing and perceived that it was important outside school. Most children did more writing at home than at school and felt they got more help at home. With regard to how they saw themselves as writers, most thought they needed more practice, better equipment or neater printing to become better writers, again showing a focus on mechanical aspects of writing. Over three quarters of the children, when asked why they wrote at school, mentioned mechanical skills such as learning new words or because the teacher says so. Only a fifth thought it was fun. Shook et al (1989) conclude that their survey suggests a difference in children’s writing at home and at school in terms of ownership. At school, children wrote because they were told to by teachers and so lost a sense of ownership. At home they set their own purposes and sought their own help in communicating meaning; at school they became preoccupied with form.
The surveys mentioned offer snapshots of children’s views about aspects of writing at various primary ages. Wray (1993) took a simple approach to offering a developmental account of views of writing. Using a task adapted from the International Study of Written Composition (Bauer & Purves, 1988) 475 children in the four junior years were asked to write advice to a younger child about writing in school. Across all age groups approximately 68% of responses mentioned secretarial aspects of writing whilst only about 30% mentioned composition. This supports the findings discussed earlier. However, when the results were examined in year groups an interesting pattern emerged. The mention of secretarial aspects decreased with age, although it remained high for all ages. The incidence of discussion of composition aspects of writing (ideas, structure, character, style, words) increased from 16% to 47% through the four years. Wray (1993) extends these results using figures relating to a similar task completed by 15 year olds (Gubb et al., 1987) and found that the same trend continued. Wray suggests that the obvious conclusion - that these children had learned what they had been taught about writing, and that this teaching had focused upon technical skills - may be an over simplification. He suggests that, as Graves (1983) hypothesised, children concentrate most upon what bothers them at the time, and in the early junior years this may be the technical aspects of writing. In the dimensions of structure and style there was a significant increase in responses with age, supporting Perera’s (1984) assertion that children begin to differentiate writing from speech in terms of structure and style at around 10 years old.
h) Task Demands
The effect of the mechanics of writing on language production is an important issue in research into children’s written language. When children are just starting to master writing skills the cognitive demands of coping with a new medium (e.g., forming letters, attending to spelling and punctuation etc.), as well as with text and context demands, may impede their linguistic performance. However, it has been found that once the physical processes become relatively automatised, which generally occurs by the third or fourth year of formal schooling if not earlier, the written medium is not a major hindrance to linguistic production (Donaldson, 1996; Hidi & Hildyard, 1983; Villaume, 1988), especially if children are assured that the focus is the text itself, not their technical accuracy (Cameron, et al, 1988).
However, recent work has emphasised that for many younger writers, the transcription phase places important constrictions on the writing process (Berninger, 1999; Graham, Berninger, Abbott, Abbott, & Whitaker, 1997). When handwriting and spelling are not automatic, they use up critical processing resources in the working memory of the young writer, which limits the resources remaining for idea and text generation (Berninger, 1999). Indeed, handwriting fluency continues to have an effect on text production into secondary education and in adults. (Bourdin, 1999)
Blatchford (1991) reported a relationship between good handwriting skills at school entry and later writing ability and hypothesized that this underpinned a more general familiarity with written language, which successfully supported subsequent development. Kellogg (1996) argued that for children beginning to write the physical demands of the task are so significant that other cognitive processes will be suppressed whilst it is occurring. He stressed that it is only when automaticity with handwriting is achieved that mental capacity can be freed up for dealing with other aspects of the writing process, such as compositional demands. Hence, learning to write fluently has implications for the development of wider elements of the process (Jones & Christenson, 1999; Mojet, 1991). Many children find this difficult, and Laszlo (1986) suggested that the perceptual-motor skills of approximately one third of all 5-year old children are not sufficiently developed to produce writing of the size and quality that many adults expect. The findings of a thorough study by Dunsmuir and Blatchford (1997) of factors predicting success at writing in 4-7 year old children suggested that a basic level of competence with handwriting is required before children are able to compose something that they can read back and which can be accessed by a wider audience. This contrasts sharply with the position of those researchers who argue for a reduced emphasis on presentation, advocating that children should be encouraged to focus on the compositional aspects of writing from the outset (Graves, 1983; Teale & Sulzby, 1986). The finding supports other research suggesting that the development of handwriting fluency appears to be significantly related to the development of compositional skill and fluency for children in the early stages of learning to write (Berninger et al., 1992; Graham, Harris, & Fink, 2000; Swanson & Berninger, 1994). Recent studies in the UK have also demonstrated the association between transcription fluency and writing quality in older children (Connelly & Hurst, 2001).
Graham and Weintraub (1996) explained the difficulties in composing experienced by slow writers. Their slow rate of handwriting may not be fast enough to keep up with their thoughts, causing children to forget what they intended to write. The need to switch attention from content generation to the mechanical demands of writing may also cause writers to forget already developed ideas or may interfere with the planning process leading to less complex and incoherent content. Graham and Weintraub also note that handwriting difficulties may cause struggling writers to develop negative feelings about writing because it is so laborious. Christensen, (2004) has found that handwriting continues to be an issue for struggling writers in secondary school and that a remedial handwriting programme had positive effects not only on handwriting but also on the composition processes of secondary children.
Written language production brings different cognitive demands from those of oral language production. One difference is the challenge of developing and sustaining a coherent and cohesive extended text in the absence of (immediate) feedback from an audience (Donaldson, 1996; McCutchen, 1987; Raban, 1987; Rubin & Piche, 1979). Hidi and Hildyard (1983) suggest that “the continual presence of the written word greatly reduces memory load and makes repeated scanning possible” (p. 92). But young writers do not always make use of this assistance (Perera, 1990). Also, limitations in children’s cognitive capacities may mean that beginning writers find it difficult to take the perspective of the audience, determining what information is and is not available to a non-present reader, remembering what information has been provided previously in the text, and realising what information readers need (Knudson, 1992; Yde & Spoelders, 1990).
While the mechanical demands of the writing process generally cease to be a major problem for children from about 7 or 8 years of age onwards, the type of text that they are required to write continues to have an impact on their performance (Boscolo, 1996; De Week & Schneuwly, 1994; Erftmeier & Dyson, 1986; Prater & Padia, 1983). Younger primary school children’s experience tends to be dominated by narrative forms, or by expository forms that include narrative elements (Cox, Shanahan, & Tinzmann, 1991; Wray & Lewis, 1995). Children generally do not find great difficulty in producing written narratives, possibly because their primary linguistic experiences have been with oral narratives (De Week & Schneuwly, 1994; Hidi & Hildyard, 1983; Yde & Spoelders, 1985). However, the same degree of familiarity is not necessarily present for non-narrative genres. This may mean that the cognitive demands of producing non-narrative texts may be greater than for narrative, and it is this, rather than the use of the written mode per se, which may make some types of written text production difficult (Donaldson, 1996; Hidi & Hildyard, 1983). However, while that may be an influence, we do know that children are well able to persuade orally from a very young age (e.g., Clark & Delia, 1976; Weiss & Sachs, 1991) and show good embryonic knowledge of written forms of persuasion, if given the opportunity and encouragement to engage in that type of writing (see Newkirk, 1987).
A range of studies has found that writing non-narrative genre texts is more demanding than writing narrative, and that within the non-narrative category, argument or persuasive genre is the most cognitively demanding (see, for example, Crowhurst, 1990, 1991; Crowhurst & Piche, 1979; McCann, 1989; Prater & Padia, 1983). Crowhurst and Piche analysed the syntactic complexity of narrative, descriptive and argumentative texts written by students in Grades 6, 10 and 12 (12, 16 and 18 year olds), and found that argumentative texts were the most complex. Similarly, in a study of the effects of explicit writing instruction on texts produced by Grade 6 students, Crowhurst (1991) noted that they found persuasive writing cognitively difficult. Prater and Padia examined the performance of students in grades 4 and 6 (10 and 12 years old) on three different types of writing tasks: expressive (writing about themselves); explanatory (describing their school); and persuasive (expressing an opinion about a venue for a school excursion). These researchers found that persuasive genre was the most difficult for these students. Crammond’s research investigated the structures of argumentative texts written by students in Grades 6, 8 and 10, and by expert adults. She concludes that argument writing is highly cognitively demanding, saying that “argument writing - including the persuasive type - is more complex and demanding than either narrative or transactional forms” (Crammond, 1998, p. 254). One reason for this, Erftmeier and Dyson (1986) suggest, is that children “may have few, if any mental models of written persuasion” (p. 108). Similar comments have been made by Cox, Shanahan, and Sulzby (1990), who suggest that children’s problems with expository texts stem from lack of familiarity with the genre, not from the “levels of abstract intelligence required or to the inappropriateness of the genre for children” (p. 53). This idea receives support from research by Newkirk (1987), which shows that even children as young as five or six years of age are able to write non-narrative texts, including persuasive texts, given the right context and motivation.
Another aspect of the task demand in writing is the issue of topic knowledge. The better that participants know the subject about which they are writing, the better their linguistic performance is likely to be. For example, when participants are familiar with the story to be retold (Cameron, Lee, Webster, Munro, Hunt, & Linton, 1995) or topic to be written about (McCutchen, 1986; McCutchen & Perfetti, 1982) the resulting written texts are generally rated as being of better quality, more coherent and more cohesive than texts on topics with which the writers are less familiar. When children know a topic well they can deploy cognitive resources to organising their writing, rather than having to focus on both topic content and text organisation (Knudson, 1992).
4. Broader approaches
Some researchers have taken a broader approach to the question of progression and development in writing. The findings of the Crediton Project, for example, (Wilkinson et al, 1980) have been particularly influential in thinking about the development of writing in the junior and early secondary years, and for all its seeming datedness in 2006, this project still represents the most ambitious attempt yet to map development in writing against a broadly conceived, but strongly theorised set of criteria. Wilkinson and his team attempted to move away from studies which examined linguistic and stylistic development by counting word, phrases and clauses. They examined the written compositions of children aged 7, 10 and 13 not only in terms of style, but also in terms of their “psychological content” (Wilkinson, 1986), as representing cognitive (incorporating Moffett’s levels as previously described), affective and moral development. The researchers developed models of these areas, the principal points of which are summarised below.
|Develop|Models of writing development |
|mental | |
|feature| |
|s | |
| |cognitive |affective |moral |stylistic |
| |description |awareness of self |anomy |simple literal affirmative |
| | | | |sentence |
| |interpretation |awareness of others |heteronomy |growth in syntax, verbal |
| | | | |competence |
| |generalisation |empathy with reader |socionomy |organisation, cohesion |
| |speculation |sense of environment |autonomy |reader awareness, |
| | |awareness of reality | |appropriateness, |
| | | | |effectiveness |
These models were used in the study of writing of approximately 150 children using tasks selected to be representative of pupil’s abilities. The tasks were selected on the basis of function and reader: an autobiographical narrative, an explanation, a fictional story and a persuasive argument. The findings of the project were extensive, but generally support the four models.
The basis of the cognitive model is recognition of the child as a communicating being moving from an undifferentiated world to a world organised by mind: from a world of instances, to a world organised by generalities and abstractions. In their writing the thirteen year olds could summarise, evaluate, abstract and generalise, supporting these generalisations with evidence. Some were beginning to project hypotheses, although this was not evident at ten years old.
The model of affective development involves greater awareness of self, and of other people as having their own ‘selfs’, an awareness of the non-human environment and the development of a stance on ‘the human condition’. The children’s writing suggested a movement from the literal statements with no affective elements made by seven year olds to greater psychological authenticity at 13. The engaging of emotions was evident at 10, when the writing became more expressive, although the emotion was often expressed obliquely, through a story character’s behaviour, for example.
The findings on moral development were inferred from verbal judgement (on what the children wrote), not on observed behaviour (what they did), and so must be treated cautiously. However, the model, which was based on the six stages of socio-moral development suggested by Kohlberg (Colby et al., 1983), was generally confirmed. There was a shift between 7 and 10 years old as children moved from making judgements on the basis of punishment or reward (heteronomy) and in terms of maintaining good relationships (socionomy) to a stage where principles of fairness and intention were drawn upon (autonomy).
The model of stylistic development suggested that children’s early style was characterised by simple, literal, affirmative sentences. The findings confirmed that features such as structure, cohesion, verbal competence and reader awareness changed as older children’s writing was examined. It is notable that various syntactic items which did not appear in Harpin’s (1973; 1976) samples, such as clauses of condition and modal verbs, were apparent in these children’s writing. Wilkinson suggests that this is because of the differences in the writing tasks the children undertook. The children in the Crediton Project were required to write persuasive argument, whilst those in Harpin’s study were not. This raises again the issue of the topic and form of the writing, which Wilkinson considers influenced the syntactic aspects.
The Crediton project aimed to produce an extensive description of children’s writing from 7 to 13 years old, and was particularly useful in considering the development of style as a matter of choices made in relation to norms. However, the project did have a number of limitations (Fox, 1986). The sample involved thirty children at each age phase, but was focused on only one primary school and two secondary schools. The research was cross sectional, rather than longitudinal, thus its conclusions about development must remain speculative rather than definitive. The way the project was written up, as part of a general book about assessing writing, means that few details of the data were given with no figures and few examples included. Fox suggests that the basis for the model of moral judgement is theoretically weak. Despite these limitations the project does provide a range of dimensions of development and has been a starting point for several subsequent descriptions of writing development (Nicholls et al, 1989; Kinmont; 1990).
Dimensions of writing development
In a 1993 study, Wray investigated the perceptions of writing held by children from 7 to 11 years old. This investigation involved asking 475 children to write a response to the following task:
Someone in the class below yours has asked you what the writing will be like when he/she comes into your class. Write and tell him/her, and try to give him/her some useful advice about what he/she will have to do to do good writing in your class.
The writing produced by these children was analysed to explore the aspects of writing they mentioned as important. This list of aspects, or dimensions, of writing was thus grounded in the thoughts of a fairly large sample of children and gives a fair representation of what these children thought was important in writing. The list contained the following dimensions:
• Spelling, referred to by phrases such as, ‘Make sure you get your spellings right’, or ‘Use a dictionary to spell words you don’t know’.
• Neatness, referred to by things like, ‘Do your best handwriting’ or ‘Make sure it is not messy’.
• Length. Many children stressed that the writing had to be ‘long enough’, although a significant number warned not to make it too long ‘because Miss might get bored’.
• Punctuation, including mentions of the need for full stops and capital letters, commas and speech marks.
• Tools, referring to the mention of the materials with which to write, such as ‘make sure your pencil is sharp’, or ‘Mr Ellis gets cross if you do not use a ruler to underline the title’.
• Layout, including references to the drawing of a margin or the placing of the date etc.
• Words, as, for example, in ‘Don’t use the same word over and over again’.
• Ideas as in ‘Try to have some funny bits’, or ‘Stories should be interesting and exciting’.
• Structure, as, for example, in ‘A story needs a beginning, a middle and an end’.
• Characters, as in ‘Write about interesting people’.
• Style, as in ‘In poems you can repeat words to make it sound good’, or ‘Don’t begin sentences with and’.
This list compares well to the list of dimensions of writing emerging from the review of literature just presented, in each of which development and progression might be expected to occur over the course of children’s school careers. Missing from this list are the dimensions of grammatical development (although we can subsume punctuation under this heading); audience awareness (for many children, as we have suggested earlier, this is unproblematic – your audience is your teacher); and the process of writing (one might hypothesise that these children were, like most of their peers, focused principally on writing products rather than processes). They also mentioned aspects of writing, Tools and Layout, about which we have no evidence concerning progression. Our list of the significant dimensions of writing progression thus includes the following:
• Spelling
• Handwriting (Neatness in the list above)
• Length
• Grammar and Punctuation
• Vocabulary (Words in the list above)
• Content (Ideas in the list above)
• Structure
• Characters
• Style
• Audience awareness
• Writing processes
We will now give a summary of these dimensions of writing, together with a brief description of what progression in each of these dimensions appears to look like.
Spelling
Spelling development does appear to follow a reasonably consistent path, through a number of stages. In the precommunicative stage, the child uses symbols from the alphabet but shows no knowledge of letter-sound correspondences. The child may also lack knowledge of the entire alphabet, the distinction between upper- and lower-case letters, and the left-to-right direction of English orthography. In the semiphonetic stage, the child begins to understand letter-sound correspondence - that letters represent sounds. At this stage, the child will often use a logical but over-simplistic approach, using single letters, for example, to represent words, sounds, and syllables. Children at the phonetic stage use a letter or group of letters to represent every speech sound that they hear in a word. Although some of their choices do not conform to conventional English spelling, they are systematic and easily understood. During the transitional stage, the speller begins to use accepted spelling conventions rather than just representing sounds, moving from a dependence on phonology (sound) to the use of visual representation and an understanding of the structure of words. In the correct stage, the speller knows the English orthographic system and its basic rules. The correct speller fundamentally understands how to deal with such things as prefixes and suffixes, silent consonants, alternative spellings, and irregular spellings.
Handwriting
Recent work has emphasised that for many younger writers, the transcription phase places important constrictions on the writing process. When handwriting and spelling are not automatic, they use up critical processing resources in the working memory of the young writer, which limits the resources remaining for idea and text generation. Indeed, handwriting fluency continues to have an effect on text production into secondary education and in adults. We cannot assume, therefore, that handwriting ceases to be an issue in the development of writing past the early primary years.
Length
It has been found that weaker writing tends to include shorter sentences, and shorter noun phrases, than average and good writing. It has been suggested, however, that the length and complexity of a composition may be related to more than the syntactic ability, age and skill of the writer; the writer’s aims, sense of what is required, and personal reactions are also crucial.
Grammar and Punctuation
There do seem to be some important grammatical differences in children’s writing as they mature. There tends, for example, to be less incidence of confused grammatical structure in older children’s writing, fewer finite verbs, fewer finite subordinate clauses and fewer coordinate clauses. Good writers tend to show greater use of subordination in their sentence structure and greater use of more complex structures such as present participle clauses and non-finite subordinate clauses, particularly in opening sentences. It also seems that the use of subject verb inversion is an indicator of development in writers.
In terms of punctuation, there is some (flawed) evidence that young children (up to 7 years old) move from a view of punctuation as a graphic feature towards seeing its linguistic and grammatical functions. But we lack evidence about progression in punctuation usage beyond the age of 7 years.
Vocabulary
Many studies have been undertaken to determine the nature and extent of young children's vocabulary development and these demonstrate the truly prodigious linguistic accomplishments that children attain by the time they reach school age. While estimates vary, by age six most children have active vocabularies numbering in the several thousands of words.
There is, however, an important difference between knowing words and understanding their broad range of uses and referents, for vocabulary development is first and foremost a matter of concept development. For this reason considerable attention has been turned in recent years to children's semantic development; that is, to the development of word meaning (Anglin 1970, Foss and Hakes 1978). These studies illustrate that how words are used, not their length or frequency of use, indicates children's lexical maturity and, commonly, their intellectual maturity as well (Straw 1981).
Content
Bereiter’s model of successive forms of organisation in writing is a useful index of development in terms of the shaping of content. He describes five stages of writing: associative (relating words to symbols); performative (increased conformity to convention); communicative (increasing reader awareness); unified (increasing self evaluation); and epistemic (thinking through writing). Each stage represents a discrete form of cognitive organisation, involving readjustment of the process used, rather than adding new skills to an existing process. Overall, the production of content in writing develops from knowledge-telling to knowledge transformation and the epistemic stage is reached.
Structure
Research on the development of the ability to produce coherent text has not been extensive but there is evidence that the general pattern of development includes the increasing use of features to ensure coherence as pupils got older. Such features include: clear text openings to orientate the reader, the use of key words to develop reader focus, the use of synonyms to avoid over-repetition of key words in the text and clear organisation of the content of the text.
The use of cohesive devices also develops and this development is similar for both narrative and non-narrative texts, though mastery tends to occur later in non-narrative texts, in more complex types of texts and more demanding tasks.
In terms of text types, recount seems overwhelmingly to be that most widely experienced by children in primary school. A mark of writing progression is the gradually increasing command over a widening range of text genres.
Characters
As they get older, children’s abilities to portray characterisation in stories seems to develop and towards the end of primary school information about characters’ motivation and reactions is often included.
Style
Children’s early writing style is characterised by simple, literal, affirmative sentences and this does not show many signs of development until he secondary years when such features as structure, cohesion, verbal competence and reader awareness develop.
Audience awareness
Although initially children write as they speak, assuming that the audience is present and will ask if more information is needed, as children get older they become more able to recognise reader needs in writing and adjust to them. Little significant differentiation by audience is found in the writing of younger children, although by the age of 16 significant audience differentiation seems to be apparent.
Writing processes
In the course of writing development, planning becomes gradually differentiated from text production. In the early years a child’s mental activity will be so closely linked to text production that it is difficult to identify separate thinking which can be called planning. As the writer develops, the problem of finding content for a composition becomes separated from the problem of writing the composition. At this point there is evidence of planning, but it is still closely tied to the text and generally consists of listing possibilities for content. In adolescence, planning becomes more elaborated and contains elements which have only indirect bearing on the text.
Research has also shown that expert writers devote considerable time and attention to revising their work but that school children generally do not revise frequently or skilfully in the classroom, although the ability to revise seems to improve with age. Children seem to revise infrequently because they tend to assume that the text is clear and that the reader will understand their intended meaning.
Matching to the Northern Ireland Levels for Writing
In this section we will try to comment upon the draft Levels of Writing in the light of the key issues and themes emerging from our review of the literature on writing development and progression. Our comments will be organised into two parts.
1. Firstly, we will examine critically the model of writing which seems to underpin the draft Levels, as exemplified by their listing and ordering of the ‘Aspects of Writing’ upon which the progression statements are built.
2. Secondly, we will examine critically the sequences of progression suggested for the aspects of writing in the draft levels.
It should be noted that, while we will try only to make comments on the draft Levels of Writing based upon good research evidence, there are some issues about which, as we have explained in our review of the literature, the evidence is actually slim. In these cases we have either refrained from making evaluative comments at all, or made comments based upon our views, as experienced academics, teachers and researchers ourselves, of what constitutes ‘most likely probability’.
The model of writing
The model of writing underpinning the draft levels divides writing into 5 ‘aspects’, some of which subsume a number of discrete dimensions of writing:
1. Planning for purpose and audience.
2. Communicating meaning, ideas and opinions. Using content and information. Organising and structuring.
3. Presenting.
4. Spelling, punctuation, grammar.
5. Checking, redrafting, revising.
There are a number of points to make about this division.
• The aspect Checking, redrafting, revising refers to key aspects of the writing process and, as such, belongs with the aspect Planning, rather than being isolated by itself at the bottom of the list of aspects. One of the benefits of this minor reordering would be to group aspects together into those related to composition in writing and those related to the secretarial skills, a fairly common way of sub-dividing writing.
• It may be sensible to sub-divide aspect 2. Communicating meaning etc.. In particular, it might be useful to separate the dimension of content development from that of the structuring of writing. This would have two benefits.
- It would, firstly, allow a distinct focus on the development of the use of content in writing. Increasingly sophisticated use of content in writing is a key progression point and writers move, in general terms, from simple informative writing (knowledge-telling), through a more thoughtful selection and organisation of content, towards the use of writing as a means of helping them understand content (knowledge-transformation). This implies that the use of content in writing has broader importance than simple communication: it is linked to learning in the writer him/herself. As such, taking it out of an umbrella aspect which majors on communication might help signal this (and might, as a by-product, help teachers using these levels to rethink their conceptions of the role of writing in learning).
- The second benefit of separating content from structure would be to allow some expansion in the dimension of structure represented in the levels. As we have suggested in our review, development in the ability to structure writing is a major progression point in writing. It includes the increasing ability to differentiate text type in writing and to use confidently the generic structures implicit in these text types. This involves a development of coherence in writing as the ways of achieving this coherence differ from text type to text type. It also includes an increasingly sophisticated use of cohesive ties in composing connected text and discourse. There is some representation of structure in the draft levels (although no mention at all of cohesion), but, in our opinion, separating it into an aspect of its own would be an important step towards raising awareness of crucial growth points in writing development.
• The dimension of audience awareness is, at the moment, oddly placed in the aspects of writing listed. It is subsumed under planning and is always mentioned in the level statements in connection with purpose (purpose and audience only ever occurring in the level statements as a connected pair of concepts). It also appears at least once, however, as part of the Communicating meaning aspect, which is, in fact, quite sensible as any act of communication logically requires a transmitter and a receiver. It also appears in the Presenting aspect, again quite sensibly. Audience awareness is always raised as an important issue in writing, although, as we have seen, the literature actually suggests that it does not become a terribly significant differentiating influence in children’s writing until the middle of the secondary school. In our opinion, audience does need to feature in the writing levels as rather more than an influence on the planning of writing, but it also needs to be separated in some way from purpose. After all, it is quite possible to write with the same purpose to quite distinct audiences, in which case audience demands will be the key determiner of content, style and structure in the writing.
Sequences of progression
The first point to make here is to acknowledge the extreme difficulty involved in producing a set of sequences dovetailed into an over-arching assessment/progression structure. The same difficulties are faced by any body attempting this task on a national or state level. The NAEP in the USA (Loomis & Bourque, 2001) used 5 levels of achievement in assessing the writing performance of students from 6 to 18, many American states use 10 levels (cf. Bergeson et al, 2005), the Curriculum and Standards Framework of the state of Victoria in Australia uses 6 levels. The 8 levels used in the National Curriculum in England and in CCEA’s draft levels represent arbitrary decisions made to ensure parity with curriculum progression statements in other subjects. This makes it quite difficult to guarantee that the proposed level statements actually correspond to progression as it emerges from research findings.
Another problematic issue is trying to ensure that progression in one aspect fits progression in another. In essence this is an impossible task. We cannot say with any confidence that, say, level 6 in Planning for purpose and audience will equate to level 6 in Presentation. Still less can we guarantee that a child will progress smoothly through all the dimensions of writing at the same, level-determined rate.
Because of these problems, all we feel we can do here is to comment upon the proposed progression suggested by the level statements in each discrete aspect of writing. There are a number of points to make about these.
• Progression in the planning of writing is characterised by a move from thinking about what to write to consideration of how to write it. In general this move is reflected in the draft level statements for this aspect. In terms of what we know about progression, level 4 in this scheme may be a little early for children to be able to separate the content and production aspects of planning. However, because there will be some children operating at this level at the end of primary school, it might be sensible to retain this level statement in some form, but, bearing in mind that not all 10-11 year olds (or even the majority) will be able to manage it, we would have more confidence in the target that first year secondary school children should plan independently in this way.
• Progression in the aspect termed Checking, redrafting, revising is problematic. We feel that the terms used here are not used in the same sense as they are in the research literature. The levels statements all carry the implication that revision and redrafting are processes which largely occur after a piece of writing has been produced. The literature, on the other hand, suggests that revision is a key process in the production of writing. Adult, expert writers constantly revise what they write, before, during and after they write it. Revision, therefore, is strongly linked to planning in the writing process. We admit, however, that the use of revision in this sense is rarely seen in primary-aged children – research diverges about just when one might expect it to emerge in young writers. If this aspect were retitled Checking, redrafting, editing, this would do more justice to the content of the draft level statements, since editing is clearly a process which naturally occurs after the production of a writing draft. In this case, the draft level statements would fit reasonably well with what we know about progression. But this solution does present the problem of where to place revision in the levels. Our suggestion would be to incorporate it into the planning aspect and begin to mention its emergence (in the sense we have used it above) from about level 5 onwards.
• Progression in the aspect Spelling, punctuation and grammar might well be made a little more specific in terms of developments in the use of grammar which might occur during the secondary years. At the moment the movement in the draft levels is towards the accurate use of grammar – the term used at level 7 is ‘correct’. This seems to us to underplay the role of grammar in writing for two reasons.
- Firstly, there are many forms of ‘correct’ grammar and the formulation a writer chooses will be bound up with his/her choice of writing style. Development in style is mentioned very little in the draft levels and we feel more emphasis could be given to writers’ emerging control over stylistic aspect of their writing, which will often involve grammatically based choices being made.
- Secondly, recent research has suggested that progression in writing is bound up strongly with increasingly sophisticated grammatical usages. We would suggest that this needs to be reflected in levels 6 onwards where complex language features such as present participle clauses and subject-verb inversion might be picked out as examples of grammatical development. One major effect of this would be to bring to teachers’ attention that there is rather more to improving their pupils’ use of writing than ensuring their grammar is correct.
References
AARNOUTSE, C. & VAN LEEUWE, J. (1998). Relation between reading comprehension, vocabulary, reading pleasure, and reading frequency. Educational Research and Evaluation, 4, 143-166.
ALLARD, L. & ULATOWSKA, H. K. (1991) Cohesion in the written narrative and procedural discourse of fifth grade children. Linguistics and Education, 3, pp. 63-79
ALLISON, P., BEARD, R. & WILLCOCKS, J. (2002) Subordination in children's writing, Language and Education, 16, pp. 97-111.
ANGLIN, J. (1970 The growth of word meaning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
APPLEBEE, A. N. (1978) The child’s concept of story (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.)
ARNOLD, R. (1991) Writing development: magic in the brain (Milton Keynes, Open University Press)
BADDELEY, A. D., & HITCH, G. J. (1974).Working memory. In G. BOWER (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 8, pp. 47-90). New York: Academic Press.
BALLATOR, N., FARNUM, M., & KAPLAN, B. (1999). NAEP 1996 trends in writing: Fluency and writing conventions, NCES 1999-456. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.
BAMBERG, B. (1983) What makes text coherent? College Composition and Communication, 34, pp.417-429
BAMBERG, B. (1984) Assessing coherence: A reanalysis of essays written for the national assessment of educational progress, 1969-1979. Research in the Teaching of English, 18, pp.305-319
BAMBERG, B. (1986) A functional approach to the acquisition of anaphoric relationships. Linguistics, 24, pp.227-284
BAMBERG, B. (1987) The acquisition of narrative: Learning to use language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
BARTLETT, E. (1981) Learning to write: Some cognitive and linguistic components. (Washington: Center for Applied linguistics.)
BAUER, B. AND PURVES, A. (1988) A letter about success in writing, in Gorman, T., PURVES, A. AND DEGENHART, R. (Eds.), The IEA study of written composition 1: The international writing tasks and scoring scales, pp. 22-29. Oxford: Pergamon.
BEAL, C. R. (1996) The role of comprehension monitoring in children's revision, Educational Psychology Review, 8, pp. 219-238.
BEAL, C. R., BONITATIBUS, G. J. & GARROD, A. C. (1990) Fostering Childrens Revision Skills through Training in Comprehension Monitoring, Journal of educational psychology, 82, pp. 275-280.
BEARD, R. (1984) Children’s writing in the primary school. Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton.
BEREITER, C. and SCARDAMALIA, M. (1982) From conversation to composition: the role of instruction in a developmental process, in GLASER, R. (Ed) Advances in instructional psychology, (Vol. 2), pp.1-64 London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
BEREITER, C. and SCARDAMALIA, M. (1987) The psychology of written composition. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
BEREITER, C.(1980) Development in writing, in GREGG, L.W. AND STEINBERG, E.R.(Eds.), Cognitive process in writing, pages 73-93. Hillside, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
BEREITER, C., & SCARDAMALIA, M. (1980). “Cognitive coping strategies and the problem of ‘inert knowledge.’” In CHIPMAN, S., SEGAL, J. & CHASER, R. (Eds.), Thinking and learning skills. Volume 2: Research and open questions. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
BERGESON, T., HEUSCHEL, M., HARDY, D., LAHMANN, M. & ELLIOTT-SCHUMAN, N. (2005) Writing K–10 Grade Level Expectations: A New Level of Specificity Olympia, WA: Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction
BERKO-GLEASON. J. (1993). The Development of Language. Macmillan Publishing: New York.
BERMAN, R A. (1997) Preschool knowledge of language: what five year olds know about language structure and language knowledge. In PONTECORVO, C. (Ed) Writing development: An interdisciplinary view, pp. 61-76. Amsterdam; John Benjamins
BERMAN, R. & SLOBIN, D. (1994) Relating events in narrative: a cross-linguistic developmental study Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
BERNINGER, V. W. & FULLER, F. (1992) Gender Differences in Orthographic, Verbal, and Compositional Fluency: Implications for Assessing Writing Disabilities in Primary Grade Children, Journal of School Psychology, 30, pp. 363-382.
BERNINGER, V. W. (1999) Coordinating transcription and text generation in working memory during composing: Automatic and constructive processes, Learning Disability Quarterly, 22, 99-112.
BERNINGER, V. W., ABBOTT, R. D., WHITAKER, D., SYLVESTER, L. & NOLEN, S. B. (1995) Integrating Low-Level and High-Level Skills in Instructional Protocols for Writing Disabilities, Learning Disability Quarterly, 18, pp. 293-309.
BERNINGER, V. W., FULLER, F. & WHITAKER, D. (1996) A process model of writing development across the life span, Educational Psychology Review, 8, pp. 193-218.
BISSEX, G. (1980) Gnys at wrk: a child learns to read and write. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
BLATCHFORD, P. (1991) Children's Writing at 7 Years: Associations with Handwriting on School Entry and Pre-School Factors, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 61, pp. 73-84.
BOSCOLO, P. (1996) The use of information in expository text writing. In PONTECORVO, C., ORSOLINI, M, BURGE, B. & RESNICK, L B. (Eds) Children’s early text construction (pp. 209-227) Mahwah, NJ: Laurence Earlbaum Associates
BOURDIN, B. (1999) Working memory and language production: Comparison of oral and written production in adults and children. Annee Psychologique, 99, pp. 123-148.
BRITTON, J. (1970) Language and learning. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
BRITTON, J.,BURGESS, T.,MARTIN, N.,MCLEOD, A.& ROSEN, H. (1975) The development of writing abilities (11-18). London: Macmillan.
BROEKKAMP, H., VAN HOUT-WOLTERS, B. H. A. M., RIJLAARSDAM, G. & VAN DEN BERGH, H. (2002) Importance in instructional text: Teachers' and students' perceptions of task demands, Journal of educational psychology, 94, pp. 260-271.
BROWN, G. & YULE, G. (1983) Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
BUBLITZ, W. (1989) Topical coherence in spoken discourse. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, 22, 31-51
BURTIS P., SCARDAMALIA, M., BEREITER, C. and TETROE, J. (1983) The development of planning in writing, in WELL, G. and KROLL, B. (Eds.), Explorations in the development of writing, pages 153-174. London: Wiley.
BUTTERFIELD, E. C., HACKER, D. J. & ALBERTSON, L. R. (1996) Environmental, cognitive, and metacognitive influences on text revision: Assessing the evidence, Educational Psychology Review, 8, pp. 239-297.
CAHEN, L.S., CRAUN, M.J., & JOHNSON, S.K. (1969). Spelling difficulty: A survey of the research. Review of Educational Research, 41, 281-301.
CAMERON C. A., EDMUNDS, G. WIGMORE, B, HUNT , A & LINTON, M. (1997) Children’s Revision of Textual Flaws, International Journal Of Behavioral Development, , 20 (4), 667–680
CAMERON C. A., LEE, K., WEBSTER, S., MUNRO, K., HUNT, A., & LINTON M. J., (1995) Text cohesion in children’s narrative writing. Applied Psycholinguistics, 16, pp.257-269
CAMERON, C.A., HUNT, A. K., & LINTON, A. J. (1988) Medium effect on children’s story rewriting and retelling. First Language , 8., 3-18
CHANQUOY, L. (2001) How to make it easier for children to revise their writing: a study of revision from 3rd to 5th grades, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 71,
CHOMSKY, C, (1969) The acquisition of syntax in children from five to ten. Cambridge: MIT Press
CHOMSKY, C. (1970). Invented spelling in the open classroom. Word, 27, 499-518.
CHRISTENSEN, C. A. (2004) The Role of Orthographic-Motor Integration in the Production of Creative and Well Structured Written Text for Students in Secondary School, Educational Psychology; v25 n5 p441-453
CLARK R. & DELIA J., (1976) The development of functional persuasive skills in childhood and early adolescence. Child Development, 47, pp.1008-1014
CLAY, M. (1975). What did I write? Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
COLBY, A., KOHLBERG, L., GIBBS, J. & LIEBERMAN, M. (1983), A Longitudinal Study of Moral Judgment, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Serial No. 200, Vol. 48 (1-2).
COLLERSON J. (1988) Writing for Life Newtown, NSW: PETA
COLLINS, A. M., & GENTNER, D. (1980). A framework for a cognitive theory of writing. In L. W. GREGG & E. STEINBERG (Eds.), Cognitive processes in writing (pp. 51–72). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
CONNELLY, V., & HURST, G. (2001). The influence on handwriting fluency on writing quality in later primary and early secondary education. Handwriting Today, 2, 5–57.
COOK, G. (1989) Discourse Oxford: Oxford University Press
CORDIERO, P., GIACOBBE, M. & CAZDEN, C. (1983) Apostrophes, quotation marks and periods: learning punctuation in the first grade. Language Arts, 60, 323-32
COX, B. E., SHANAHAN, T. & TINZMANN, M. B. (1991) Children’s Knowledge of Organization, Cohesion, and Voice in Written Exposition, Research in the Teaching of English, 25, pp. 179-218.
CRAMMOND J. G. (1998) The uses and complexity of argument structures in expert student persuasive writing. Written Communication, 15, 230-268
CREBER, P. (1990) Thinking through English Milton Keynes: Open University Press
CROWHURST, M. (1980) Syntatic complexity in narration and argument at three grade levels. Canadian Journal of Education, 5, 6-13
CROWHURST, M. (1987) Cohesion in Argument and Narration at 3 Grade Levels, Research in the Teaching of English, 21, pp. 185-201.
CROWHURST, M. (1990) “The development of persuasive/argumentative writing”, in Beach, R. & Hynds, S. (Eds) Developing discourse practices in adolescence and adulthood (pp. 200-223). Norwood, NJ: Ablex
CROWHURST, M. (1991) Interrelationships between Reading and Writing Persuasive Discourse, Research in the Teaching of English, 25, pp. 314-338.
CROWHURST, M. and PICHE, G. (1979) Audience and mode of discourse effects on syntactic complexity in writing at two grade levels, in Research in The Teaching of English, Vol. 13, pages 101-109.
CZERNIEWSKA, P. (1992) Learning About Writing (Oxford, Blackwell)
DE VILLIERS, J. & DE VILLIERS, P. (1978) Language Acquisition Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
DEPARTMENT FOR EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT (1998) The National Literacy Strategy: Framework for teaching. London: Department for Education and Employment.
DEPARTMENT FOR EDUCATION AND SKILLS (2001) Framework for Teaching English: Years 7, 8 and 9 London: DfES
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE (1990) English in the National Curriculum. London: H.M.S.O.
DEREWIANKA B., (1996) Exploring the writing of genres. Cambridge: UKRA
DES (1975) A Language for Life (The Bullock Report, London: HMSO
DEWECK, G. & SCHEUWLY, B. (1994) Anaphoric procedures in four text types written by children. Discourse Processes, 17, 465-475
DfEE (1998) The National Literacy Strategy: Framework of Teaching London: HMSO
DIXON, J. & STRATTA, L. (1980) Achievements in Writing at 16 plus: Paper 1: Staging points in narratives based on personal experience (London, Schools Council)
DIXON, J. & STRATTA, L. (1980) Achievements in Writing at 16 plus:Paper 2: Narratives based on imagined experience London: School Curriculum Development Committee
DONALDSON, M. (1996) Contextual influences on children’s spoken and written explanations. Applied Psycholinguistics, 17(3), 355-375
DOWNING, J. (1970) Children‘s concepts of language in learning to read Educational Research 12, 106-112
DUNSMUIR, S. & BLATCHFORD, P. (2004) Predictors of Writing Competence in 4- to 7-Year-Old Children, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 74, pp. 461-483.
DURST, R., LAINE, C., SCHULTZ, L., & VILTER W, (1990) Appealing texts: The persuasive writing of high school students. Written Communication, 7 (2), pp. 232-255
DYSON, A. H. (1982). The emergence of visible language: Interrelationships between drawing and early writing. Visible Language, 16, 360-381.
DYSON, A.H. (1983) ‘The role of oral language in early writing processes,’ in Research in the Teaching of English, 17, 1-30.
DYSON, A.H. (1988) Re-embedding ‘Disembedded’ Visions of Young Children's Writing Development, The Quarterly, 10(4),
EHRI, L.C. (1989). The development of spelling knowledge and its role in reading acquisition and reading disability. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 22, 356-365.
EHRI, L.C. (1993). How English orthography influences phonological knowledge as children learn to read and spell. In R.J. SCALES (Ed.), Literacy and language analysis (pp. 21-43). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
EHRI, L.C. (1997). Learning to read and learning to spell are one and the same, almost. In C.A. PERFETTI, L. RIEBEN, & M. FAYOL (Eds.), Learning to spell: Research, theory, and practice across languages (pp. 237-269). Mawah, NJ: Erlbaum.
ELLIS, N., & CATALDO, S. (1990). The role of spelling in learning to read. Language and Education, 4, 1-28.
EMIG, J. (1988) Writing, composition and rhetoric, in: N. MERCER (Ed) Language and Literacy in an Educational Perspective (Milton Keynes, Open University Press)
ENGLERT, C. S., HIEBERT, E. H., & STEWART, S. R. (1988). Detecting and correcting inconsistencies in the monitoring of expository prose. Journal of Educational Research, 81, 221–227.
ENKVIST, N. E., (1990) Seven problems in the study of coherence and interpretability. CONNOR, U. & JOHNS, A. (Eds) Coherence in Writing (pp. 11-28) Alexandria VA: TESOL
ERFTMEIER, T. & DYSON , A. H.(1986) Oh ppbbt! Differences between the oral and persuasive strategies of school aged children. Discourse Processes, 9, pp. 91-114
EVENSEN, L. (1990) Pointers to superstructure in student writing. CONNOR, U. & JOHNS, A. (Eds) Coherence in Writing (pp. 46-77) Alexandria VA: TESOL
FERREIRO, E. (1978). What is written in a written sentence? A developmental answer. Journal of Education, 160, 25-39.
FERREIRO, E. and TEBEROSKY, A. (1983) Literacy before schooling. London: Heinemann.
FITZGERALD, J. & SPIEGEL, D. (1986) Textual cohesion and coherence in children’s writing. Research in the Teaching of English, 20, 263-280
FITZGERALD, J. (1987) Research on Revision in Writing, Review of Educational Research, 57, pp. 481-506.
FLORIO, S., & CLARK, C. (1982). “What is writing for? Writing in the first weeks of school in a second-third grade classroom.” In L. C. WILKINSON (Ed.), Communicating in the classroom (pp. 265-282). New York: Academic Press.
FLOWER, L. and HAYES, J. R. (1980) A cognitive process theory of writing, in College Composition and Communication, 31, 365-387.
FOSS, D. & HAKES, D. (1978) Psycholinguistics: an introduction to the study of language. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
FOX, R. (1986) The development of characterisation in children’s narrative writing between the ages of six and thirteen. Unpublished PhD thesis. University of Exeter.
FRANK L. A. (1992) Writing to be read: Young writers’ ability to demonstrate audience awareness when evaluated by their readers. Research in the Teaching of English, 26, 277-298.
FREDERIKSEN, C. H. (1979) “Discourse comprehension in early reading”. In RESNICK, L. & WEAVER P. (Eds.), Theory and practice of early reading. (Vol. 1, pp. 155-186). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
GALLOWAY, A. (2002) Making connections: the development of coherence in the written language of 9-15 year olds, unpublished PhD thesis, Macquarie University, Australia
GATHERCOLE, S. E., & BADDELEY, A. D. (1993). Working memory and language. Hove, UK: Lawrence Erlbaum.
GATHERCOLE, S. E., PICKERING, S. J., KNIGHT, C. & STEGMANN, Z. (2004) Working memory skills and educational attainment: Evidence from national curriculum assessments at 7 and 14 years of age, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 18, pp. 1-16.
GENTRY, R. (1982) An analysis of developmental spelling in GNYS AT WRK. The Reading Teacher 36: 192-200.
GERNSBACHER, M. A. (1990) Language comprehension as structure building. Hillsdale, NJ: Laurence Erlbaum Associates
GERNSBACHER, M. A. (1997) “Coherence cue mapping during comprehension”. In COSTERMANS, J. & FAYOL, M., (Eds) Processing interclause relationships: Studies in the production and comprehension of text (pp.3-21) Mahwah, NJ: Laurence Earlbaum Associates.
GIORA, R. 1985 Notes towards a theory of text coherence. Poetics Today, 6, 699-715
GIVON, T (1992)The grammar of referential coherence as mental processing instructions. Linguistics, 30 (1), 5-55
GIVON, T (1993) English Grammar: A function based introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
GIVON, T (1995) Coherence in text VS coherence in mind. GRENSBACHER, M. & GIVONS, T. (Eds) Coherence in spontaneous text. (pp.59-115) Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
GLASER, R. (Ed) (1982) Advances in instructional psychology, (Vol. 2), London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
GOLDEN J. M. and VUKELICH C.(1989) Coherence in children’s written narratives. Written Communication, 6, pp. 45-65
GRAHAM, S. & WEINTRAUB, N. (1996) A review of handwriting research: Progress and prospects from 1980 to 1994, Educational Psychology Review, 8, pp. 7-87.
GRAHAM, S., BERNINGER, V. W., ABBOTT, R. D., ABBOTT, S. P., & WHITAKER, D. (1997).Role of mechanics in composing of elementary school students: A new methodological approach. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 170–182.
GRAHAM, S., HARRIS, K. R. & FINK, B. (2000) Is handwriting causally related to learning to write? Treatment of handwriting problems in beginning writers, Journal of educational psychology, 92, pp. 620-633.
GRAVES, D. H. (1983) Writing : teachers and children at work (Portsmouth, N.H. ; London, Heinemann Educational)
GREEN, L., MCCUTCHEN, D., SCHWIEBERT, C., QUINLAN, T., EVA-WOOD, A. & JUELIS, J. (2003) Morphological development in children's writing, Journal of educational psychology, 95, pp. 752-761.
GREGG, L.W. and STEINBERG, E.R.(Eds.) (1980) Cognitive process in writing, Hillside, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
GUBB, J., GROMAN, T. and PRICE, E (1987) The study of written composition in England and Wales. Windsor: NFER-Nelson Publishing.
GUMPERZ J. J., KALTMAN H. , & O’CONNOR M. C., (1984) Cohesion in spoken and written discourse: Ethnic style and the transition to literacy. TANNEN, D. (Ed.) Coherence in spoken and written discourse (pp.3-19) Norwood, NJ: Ablex
GUNDLACH, R.A. (1981) On the nature and development of children’s writing,’ in FREDRIKSEN C.& DOMINIC, J. (Eds.), Writing: the nature, development and teaching of written communication. Vol. 2, Writing: Process, development and communication. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
HALL, N. (1987) The emergence of literacy. Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton.
HALL, N. & ROBINSON, A. (1996) Learning about Punctuation, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters
HALLIDAY M. A. K. & HASAN R., (1976) Cohesion in English .London: Longman
HALLIDAY, M.A.K. (1985) An Introduction To Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1994) Introduction to Functional Grammar, London: Edward Arnold
HAMMOND, J. & DEREWIANKA, B. (2001) An introduction to genre, in: D. NUNAN & R. CARTER (Eds) The ELT Handbook (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press)
HANEY, M. R. (2002) Name Writing: A Window into the Emergent Literacy Skills of Young Children, Early Childhood Education Journal v30 n2 pp.101-05
HAROLD, B. (1995) Subject verb word order and the function of early position. DOWNING, P and NOONAN, M. (Eds) Word order in discourse (pp.137- 161) Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
HARPIN, W. S. & UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM. SCHOOL OF EDUCATION. (1973) Social and educational influences on children's acquisition of grammar : a study of writing development in the junior school (Nottingham, University of Nottingham, School of Education)
HARPIN, W. S. (1976) The second 'R' : writing development in the junior school (London, Allen and Unwin)
HARRIS, J. and KAY, S. (1981) Writing Development: Suggestions for a Policy 8-13 years. Rotherham: Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham
HARSTE, J.C., WOODWARD, V.A. & BURKE, C.L. (1984) Language stories and literacy lessons. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann.
HASAN, R. (1985) The texture of a text. HALLIDAY, M. A. K. & HASAN, R. Language, Context and Text: language in a social semiotic perspective (pp.70-96) Deakin University Victoria: Deakin University Press
HAYES, J. & CHENOWETH, N. (2006) Is Working Memory Involved in the Transcribing and Editing of Texts? Written Communication, 23, 2, pp.135-149
HAYES, J. R. (1996). “A new model of cognition and affect in writing”. In LEVY, C. & RANSDELL, S. (Eds.) The science of writing (pp. 1-30). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
HAYES, J.R. & FLOWER, L.S. (1980) Identifying the organisation of writing processes, in GREGG, L.W. and STEINBURG, E.R.(Eds.), Cognitive Processes in Writing. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
HENDERSON, E.H., & BEERS, J. (Eds.). (1980). Developmental and cognitive aspects of learning to spell: A reflection of word knowledge. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
HICKMANN, M. (1991) The development of discourse cohesion: Some functional and cross linguistic issues. PIERAULT-LE BONNIEC, G. & DOLITSKY, M. (Eds) Language Discourse Bases. (pp.157-185) Amsterdam: John Benjamins
HIDI, S. and HILYARD, A. (1984) The comparison of oral and written productions in two discourse modes,’ in Discourse Processes, Vol. 6, No.2, pages 91-105.
HIEBERT, E. (1981) Developmental patterns and interrelationships of preschool children’s print awareness. Reading Research Quarterly 16, 236–60.
HORN, E. (1960). Spelling. In C.W. HARRIS (Ed.), Encyclopedia of educational research (3rd ed., pp. 1337-1354). New York: Macmillan.
HUNT, K. (1965) Grammatical structures written at three grade levels. Research Report 3 (Urbana IL, National Council of Teachers of English)
HUXFORD, L., TERRELL, C., & BRADLEY, L. (1992). “Invented” spelling and learning to read. In C. STERLING & C. ROBSON (Eds.), Psychology, spelling, and education (pp. 159-167). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
JACOBS, S.E. (1985) The development of children’s writing: language acquisition and divided attention,’ in Written Communication, Vol. 2, pages 414-433.
JOAD, C.E.M. (1939) How to write, think and speak correctly, London: Odhams Press
JOHNS A. M. (1986) Coherence and academic writing: Some definitions and suggestions for teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 20, 247-265
JONES, D. & CHRISTENSEN, C. A. (1999) Relationship between automaticity in handwriting and students' ability to generate written text, Journal of educational psychology, 91, pp. 44-49.
KARMILOFF-SMITH, A. (1981) The grammatical marking of thematic structure in the development of language production. DEUTSCH, W. (Ed) The child’s construction of language (pp. 121-147) London: Academic Press
KARMILOFF-SMITH, A. (1985) Language and cognitive processes from a developmental perspective. Language and Cognitive Processes, 1, 61-85
KARMILOFF-SMITH, A. (1986) Some fundamental aspects of language development after age 5. FLETCHER, P., GARMAN, M. (Eds) Language Acquisition (2nd Edn) (pp.455-474) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
KELLOGG, R. T. (1988) Attentional Overload and Writing Performance - Effects of Rough Draft and Outline Strategies, Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition, 14, pp. 355-365.
KELLOGG, R. T. (1990). Effectiveness of prewriting strategies as a function of task demands.American Journal of Psychology, 103, 327-342.
KELLOGG, R. T. (1996). A model of working memory in writing. In C. M. LEVY & S. RANSDELL (Eds.), The science of writing: Theories, methods, individual differences, and applications (pp. 57-71). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
KELLOGG, R. T. (1999). Components of working memory in text production. In M. TORRANCE & G. C. JEFFERY (Eds.), The cognitive demands of writing: Processing capacity and working memory in text production (pp. 42-61). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press. 14, 355-365
KELLOGG, R. T. (2001) Competition for working memory among writing processes, American Journal of Psychology, 114, pp. 175-191.
KELLOGG, R. T. (2001) Long-term working memory in text production, Memory & cognition, 29, pp. 43-52.
KERNAN, K. (1977) Semantic and expressive elaboration in children’s narratives, in ERVIN-TRIPP, S. AND MITCHELL-KERNAN, C. (Eds.), Child Discourse, New York: Academic Press.
KING, M. & RENTEL, V. (1981) Research update: conveying meaning in written texts,’ in Language Arts, Vol. 6, pages 721-728.
KING, M. & RENTEL, V. (1982) Transition to writing. Columbus: Ohio State University.
KINMONT, S. (1990) The dimensions of writing. London: David Fulton.
KNUDSON, R.E. (1992) "Effects of task complexity on narrative writing" Journal of Research and Development in Education 26: 7-14
KRESS, G. (1982) Learning to Write. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
KRESS, G. (1988): Communication and Culture: An Introduction. Kensington, NSW: New South Wales University Press
KRESS, G. (1994) Learning to Write (London, Routledge)
KRESS, G. and KNAPP, P. (1992) Genre in a social theory of language’ in English in Education, Vol.26, No.2, pages 5-15.
LABOV, W (1973) Language in the inner city. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press
LABOV, W (1977) Language in the inner city: studies in the black English vernacular. Oxford: Blackwell.
LAMME, L. L. and CHILDERS, N. M. (1983) The composing process of three young children,’ in Research in the Teaching of English, Vol. 17, pp. 31-50.
LANGER, E.J. (1986) Reading, writing and understanding: An analysis of the construction of meaning, in Written Communication, Vol.3, pages 219-267.
LASZLO, J. (1986). Development of perceptual motor abilities in children 5 years to adults. In C. PRATT, A. GARTON, W. TUNMER, & A. NESDALE (Eds.), Research issues in child development (pp.137–144). Sydney, NSW: Allen & Unwin.
LAWE DAVIES, R. (1998) Coherence in tertiary students’writing: A new approach Upublished PhD thesis, University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia.
LEONDAR, B. (1977) Hatching plots: genesis of storymaking, in PERKINS, D., & LEONDAR, B., (eds.), The arts and cognition. (pp. 172-191) Baltimore: Hopkins University Press
LEWIS, M. & WRAY, D. (1995) Developing children's non-fiction writing : working with writing frames, Leamington Spa, Scholastic
LOBAN, W. D. (1976) Language Development: Kindergarten through Grade Twelve. NCTE Research Report No. 18, Urbana IL: NCTE
LOOMIS, S. & BOURQUE, M. (2001) National Assessment of Educational Progress Achievement Levels 1992–1998 for Writing Washington: US Department of Education
MARTIN, J. & ROTHERY, J. (1980) Writing Project Report No.l. Department of Linguistics. University of Sydney. Sydney.
MARTIN, J. (1985) Factual Writing: Exploring and Challenging Social Reality Oxford: Oxford University Press
MARTIN, T., WATERS, M. & BLOOM, W. (1989) Managing Writing London: Mary Glasgow
MASSEY, A. J. (1996) Aspects of Writing at 16 plus English Examinations between 1980 and 1984. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate
MASTERS, G. & FORSTER, M. (1997) Literacy Standards in Australia Canberra: Australian Council for Educational Research
McCANN T., (1989) Student argumentative writing knowledge and ability at three grade levels. Research in the Teaching English, 23, 62-76
MCCLURE, E. & GEVA, E. (1983) The development of the cohesive use of adversative conjunctives in discourse. Discourse Processes, 6, 411-432.
MCCUTCHEN, D. & PERFETTI, C.A. (1982) Coherence and connectedness in the development of discourse production. Text, 2, 113-139.
MCCUTCHEN, D. (1986) Domain knowledge and linguistic knowledge in the development of writing ability. Journal of Memory and Language, 25, pp.431-444
MCCUTCHEN, D. (1987) Children’s discourse skill: Form and modality requirements of schooled writers. Discourse Processes, 10, pp.267-286
MILLER, J. & WEINERT, R., (1998) Spontaneous Spoken Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Moffett, J. (1968) Teaching the universe of discourse. Boston: Houghton Miffin.
MOJET, J., (1991) “Characteristics of the developing handwriting skill in elementary education”. In WANN, J., WING, A. & SOVIK, N. (eds.), The development of graphic skills (pp. 53-75). London: Academic Press.
MOON, A.R. (1939) A concise English course, London: Longmans, Green & Co.
MURRAY, D. (1982) A writer teaches writing Boston: Houghton Mifflin
MYHILL, D. & JONES, S. (2006) Patterns and processes: the linguistic characteristics and composing processes of secondary school writers, Technical Report RES-000-23-0208 to the Economic and Social Research Council
MYHILL, D. A. (1999) Writing Matters: Linguistic characteristics of writing in GCSE English examinations, English in Education, 33, pp. 70-81.
MYKELBUST, H. (1973) Development and disorders of written language (Volume 2). New York: Grune and Stratton.
NATIONAL CENTER FOR EDUCATIONAL STATISTICS (2002) The Nation’s Report Card: Writing 2002 Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.
NATIONAL COMMISSION ON WRITING IN AMERICA’S SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES (2003) The neglected ‘R’: The need for a writing revolution New York: College Board
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF CHILD HEALTH AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
NATIONAL WRITING PROJECT. (1990) Ways of looking : issues from the National Writing Project (Walton-on-Thames, Nelson)
NELSON, N. (1988) “The nature of literacy”, in NIPPOLD, M. (Ed) Later language development: Ages 9 through 19 (pp, 11-28), Boston: College-Hill
NEUNER, J. (1987) Cohesive ties and chains in good and poor freshman essays. Research in the Teaching of English, 21, 92-105
NEWKIRK, T. (1984) Archimedes’ dream. Language Arts, 61(4), 341-350
NEWKIRK, T. (1987) The non-narrative writing of young children. Research in the Teaching of English, 21, 121-144
NICHOLLS, J., BAUERS, A., PETTIT, D., REDGWELL, V. & SEAMAM, E. (1989) Beginning Writing Milton Keynes: Open University Press
O’BRIEN, D. (1992) Writing in the Primary School Melbourne: Longman
OLIVER, E. (1995) The writing quality of seventh, ninth, and eleventh graders, and college freshmen: Does rhetorical specification in writing prompts make a difference? Research in the Teaching of English, 29, 422-450
OLSON, D. R., & HILDYARD, A. (1983). Writing and literal meaning. In M. MARTLEW (Ed.), Psychology of written language: A developmental and educational perspective (pp. 41–65). New York: Wiley.
PARIS, P. (1980) Discourse schemas as knowledge and as regulators of text production. Unpublished MA thesis. York University, Canada.
PELLEGRINI, A., GALDA, L. & RUBIN, D. (1984) Context in text: The development of oral and written language in two genres. Child Development, 55, 1549-1555
PERERA, K. (1984) Children’s Writing and Reading: Analysing Classroom Language London: Blackwell
PERERA, K. (1987) Understanding language (Warwick, National Association of Advisers in English)
PERERA, K. (1990) “Grammatical differentiation between speech and writing in children aged 8-12”, in Carter, R. (ed) Knowledge about language and the curriculum (pp. 216-233). London: Hodder & Stoughton
PETERSON, S AND KENNEDY, K. (2006) Sixth-Grade Teachers’ Written Comments on Student Writing: Genre and Gender Influences, Written Communication 23(1), 36-62
PRATER, D. & PADIA, W. (1983) Effects of modes of discourse on writing performance in grades four and six. Research in the Teaching of English, 17, 127-134
PULLMAN, P. (2002) Give them a taste of honey, Times Educational Supplement Feb. 8th.
QCA (1999) Improving Writing London: QCA
RABAN, B. (1987) Speaking and writing: Young children’s use of connectives. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 3(1), 13-25
READ, C. (1971). Preschool children’s knowledge of English phonology. Harvard Educational Review, 41, 1-34.
REID, I. (1987) The place of genre in learning: current debates Gellong, Victoria: Deakin University
REID, J. (1966) ‘Learning to think about reading’, Educational Research, 9, 56-62.
REINHART, T. (1980) Conditions for text coherence. Poetics Today, 1(4), 161-180
RENTEL, V. & KING, M. (1983) “Present at the beginning”, in MOSENTHAL, P., TAMOR, L. & WALMSLEY, S. (Eds) Research on writing: Principles and methods (pp. 139-176) London: Longman
RICHARDSON, K., CALNAN, M., ESSEN, J. AND LAMBERT, M. (1975) ‘The linguistic maturity of 11-year-olds: some analysis of the written composition of children in the National Child Development Study,’ in Journal of Child Language, 3(1), 99-116.
ROSEN, C. & ROSEN, H. (1973) The Language of Primary School Children Harmondsworth: Penguin
ROSEN, M. (1981) I see a voice London: Hutchinson
RUBIN, D. & PICHE, G. (1979) Development in syntactic and strategic aspects of audience adaptation skills in written persuasive communication. Research in the Teaching of English, 13, 293-316
RUBIN, H., PATTERSON, P. A. & KANTOR, M. (1991) Morphological Development and Writing Ability in Children and Adults, Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 22, pp. 228-235
RUMELHART, D. (1975) ‘Notes on a schema for stories,’ in Bobrow, D. And Collins, A. (Eds.), Representation and understanding: Studies in cognitive science. New York: Academic Press.
SCARDAMALIA, M. (1981) ‘How children cope with the cognitive demands of writing,’ in FREDERIKSEN, C.H. AND DOMINIC, J.F. (Eds.), Writing: the nature, development and teaching of written communication. Vol. 2, Writing: Process, development and communication, (pp 81-104). London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
SCOTT, C. (1988) “Spoken and written syntax”, in NIPPOLD, M. (Ed.) Later language development: Ages 9 through 19 (pp. 49-95). Boston: College Press
SEYMOUR, P. (1992). Cognitive theories of spelling and implications for instruction. In STERLING, C. & ROBSON, C. (Eds.), Psychology, spelling, and education (pp. 50-70). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
SHARPLES, M. (1999) How we write - Writing as creative design. Response, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 69, pp. 621-622.
SHOOK, S.E., MARRION, L.V. AND OLLILA, L.O. (1989) ‘Primary Children’s Concepts About Writing,’ in Journal of Educational Research, 82(3), 133-138.
SMAGORINSKY, P. (1987) Graves revisited: A look at the methods and conclusions of the New Hampshire study, Written communication, 14, pp. 331-342
SMITH, J. & ELLEY, W. (1998) How children learn to write (London, Longman)
SPENCER, S. & FITZGERALD, J. (1993) Validity, structure, coherence and quality measures in writing. Journal of Reading Behaviour, 25(2), 209-231
SPIEGEL, D. & FITZGERALD, J. (1990) Textual cohesion and coherence in children’s writing revisited. Research in the Teaching of English, 24, 48-66
STEIN, N. AND GLENN, C. (1979) ‘An analysis of story comprehension in elementary school children,’ in FREEDLE, R. (Ed.), New directions in discourse processing, Vol.2, (pp 53-120). Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex.
STRAW, S. (1981) “Assessment and Evaluation in Written Composition: A Commonsense Perspective”, in FROESE, V. & STRAW, S. (eds) Research In The Language Arts: Language And Schooling, Baltimore: University Park Press
SULZBY, E. (1985) “Kindergartners as writers and readers”. In FARR, M. (ed) Advances in writing research, Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
SWANSON, H., & BERNINGER, V. (1994). Working memory as a source of individual differences in children’s writing. In BUTTERFIELD, E. (Ed.), Children’s writing: Toward a process theory of development of skilled writing (pp. 31-56). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
TAMBURRINI, J., WILLIG, J. AND BUTLER, C. (1984) ‘Children’s conceptions of writing,’ in COWIE, H. (Ed.), The development of children’s imaginative writing (pp. 188-199). London: Croom Helm.
TAYLOR, D. (1983) Family literacy: Young children learning to read and write. Exeter, New Hampshire: Heinemann.
TEALE, W. H., & SULZBY, E. (Eds.) (1986). Emergent literacy: Writing and reading. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
TRUSS, L. (2003) Eats shoots and leaves: a zero tolerance approach to punctuation, London: Profile Books
VAN DIJK, T. (1977) Text and context: Explorations in the semantics and pragmatics of discourse. London: Longman
VANDE KOPPLE, W. (1985) Some exploratory discourse on metadiscourse, College Composition and Communication, 36, 82-93
VILLAUME, S. (1988) Creating context within text: an investigation of primary-grade children’s character introductions in original stories, Research in the Teaching of English, 22, 161-182
VYGOTSKY, L.S. (1962) Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
WEAVER, C. (1982) Welcoming errors as a sign of growth, Language Arts, 59, 438-444.
WEBSTER, A., BEVERIDGE, M. & REED, M. (1996) Managing the literacy curriculum: How schools can become communities of readers and writers (London, Routledge)
WEISS, D. & SACHS, J. (1991) Persuasive strategies used by preschool children, Discourse Processes, 14, 55-72
WELLS, G. (1981) Learning through interaction Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
WIGGLESWORTH, G. (1997) Children’s individual approaches to the organisation of narrative, Journal of Child Language, 24, 279-309
WILKINSON, A. (1986) The Writing of Writing (Milton Keynes, Open University Press)
WILKINSON, A., BARNSLEY, G., HANNA, P. & SWAN, M. (1980) Assessing Language Development (Oxford, Oxford University Press)
WING JAN, L. (1991) Write Ways: Modelling Writing Forms Oxford University Press: Melbourne
WITTE, S. & FAIGLEY, L. (1981) Coherence, cohesion and writing ability, College Composition and Communication, 32, 189-204
WOLF, D. (1985) Ways of telling: Text repertoires of elementary school children, Journal of Education, 167, 71-89.
WRAY, D. & LEWIS, M. (1997) Extending Literacy London: Routledge
WRAY, D. (1993) What do children think about writing? Educational Review, 45(1), 67-77.
WYATT-SMITH, C. & MURPHY, J. (2001) What English counts as writing assessment? English in Education 35(1), 12-31
YDE, P. & SPOELDERS, M. (1985) Text Cohesion - an Exploratory-Study with Beginning Writers, Applied Psycholinguistics, 6, pp. 407-415.
YDE, P. & SPOELDERS, M. (1990) “Cohesive ties in written narratives: A developmental study with beginning writers”, in HALLIDAY, M., GIBBONS, J. & NICHOLAS, H. (Eds) Learning, keeping and using language (Vol. 1, pp. 187-204), Amsterdam: John Benjamins
ZARNOWSKI, M. (1983) Cohesion in student narratives: Grades four, six and eight ERIC Document No. 247 569
................
................
In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.
To fulfill the demand for quickly locating and searching documents.
It is intelligent file search solution for home and business.
Related download
- unit 1 ministry of education
- developmental progression of the grasp
- writing development and progression
- developmental stages and tasks
- human growth and development a professional home for
- read write inc correlation chart
- katz teachers developmental stages gavilan college
- child development course objectives
- developmental writing stages baraboo
Related searches
- development and types of development
- theories of human development and lifespan
- development and learning in organizations
- concept of development and underdevelopment
- objectives for development and learning
- human development and lifespan
- product development and innovation
- product development and management pdf
- sustainable development and education
- child development and milestones
- teaching strategies objectives for development and learning
- economic development and culture change