The Role of Grammar in Literacy Development
by John Polias
Revised version of the article printed in the Proceedings of the “Poverty, Literacy and Education Conference”, 19 and 20 August 1996.
AbstractCan having an understanding of how grammar is used to make more complex meanings in texts help teachers support students develop their literacy skills? I will use a systemic functional grammar perspective to argue that not only is it helpful but it is crucial, especially for disadvantaged groups of students whose access to the educational genres is dependent on what is available in the classroom.
There are many ways of arguing the point and there are many good publications available on literacy development, disadvantaged groups, power, and language (eg Martin 1985, Fairclough 1989, Christie and Misson 1998). This paper attempts to argue the case from data gathered during the joint construction of a text with a Year 4/5 class. My thesis is that even the simple knowledge by the teacher of what linguistic choices writers have available to them enables the teacher to support students in developing their literacy skills. The extension of this thesis would be that students should then be taught when and how to make these choices for themselves.
The joint construction of the expository text was led by myself and grateful acknowledgments go to the students, the classroom teacher Selina Stirn and the ESL teacher Jenny Tyney. The task was explained to the students as an experiment and we needed their cooperation in writing a text that was “more like what high school students wrote”. Prior to the actual joint construction, I had not met the students.
BackgroundPrevious to the joint construction, the class had worked on Arguments (where one point of view is presented). The teachers of the class were interested in developing the students’ writing skills by teaching them to write a Discussion (where two or more points of view are discussed). The main difference between the students’ Argument texts and the Discussion texts the teachers were thinking of modelling was that the latter texts were more nominalised. Increased nominalisation is typical of written texts, which, because they are decontextualised, are more abstract and technical (Halliday 1985). The issue for these students was that they hadn’t been taught nominalisation, so the joint construction was dependent on the teacher being aware of what was needed and to direct the joint construction towards the end point of a more nominalised written text. The results indeed show that the students were able to produce much more abstract, technical writing.
The Arguments that the students had written previously followed a very simple structure such as:
I believe that wood-fire burners should be banned.
Firstly, ...
Secondly, ...
Finally, ...
NominalisationNominalisation is a process involving a number of words (usually verbs and adjectives) or a process of events being turned into a noun/nominal group. Nominalisation turns the world of actions and attributes, which are typical of spoken language, into the world of things, which is typical of decontextualised written texts. For example:
Spoken: I suggested that they should reduce the number in each group and it was accepted, which made me happy.
Written: The acceptance of my suggestion for a reduction in the number in each group made me happy.
In the latter, more written version, suggested has become suggestion, reduce has become reduction, and accepted has become acceptance.
The topic for discussionPrior to the joint construction, the topic had already been discussed by the class. The topic was:
It has been suggested that the Olympic Games should be permanently held at its original site in Greece. What would be the advantages and disadvantages of this proposal?
Small groups of students had contributed their arguments as to the advantages and disadvantages. These were written up by the students on large sheets of paper which were then visible to the students during the joint construction.
Advantages
Disadvantages
• The Olympics would be back to its original birthplace.
• For tourists who live on the other side of the world to Greece, it would cost more money to get there and it won’t be fair.
• There would be more Greek supporters than any other country.
• The ancient ruins would be damaged by so many people visiting them.
• Olympia would get very polluted by litter and trash. The environment would get ruined.
• All the money over the years will buildGreece up and make it bigger, eg better roads, accommodation, hospitals.
• Greece would have better facilities because they would improve every time, eg money would be saved.
• Other countries wouldn’t get the benefits of tourism and improved facilities.
• It would stop countries competing against each other, eg to host the games, the opening ceremony.
The class had also discussed conjunctions and had charts of these displayed on the walls of the classroom.
Joint constructionThe first two paragraphs jointly constructed were:
Discussion
It has been suggested that the Olympic Games should be permanently held at its original site in Greece. There are some advantages and disadvantages of this proposal, including the issues of facilities, environmental damage, competition between countries and costs.
One advantage is that the Olympics would return to its original place. However, if so many people pass through, it would damage the ancient ruins. A solution (to this problem) could be to block off the ancient ruins.
The rest of the text was written by the students in groups—examples of these come later in this article.
Research supporting joint constructionAfter there has been preparation of the field knowledge for writing a text, the teacher and children jointly write the text, the teacher ‘scaffolding’ the writing by leading, reworking and modelling.
The term scaffolding comes from the work of Bruner (1960) and has been used here in Australia by, amongst others, the Disadvantaged Schools Program in the Metropolitan East Region of Sydney. It refers to the way adults support children by providing models of appropriate language and by structuring and regulating the children’s input so that after a period of time, the child takes over the task of text production. This is very similar to Vygotsky’s (1962) notion of the zone of proximal development, which claims that development, and hence approximation to the relevant text production, occurs with the support of an adult or knowledgeable peer. In writing, joint construction attempts to replicate the role taken on by these various experts (parents, teachers, other adults or knowledgeable peers)
Imogen Hunt (1994) states that during joint construction, the teacher, as the expert scaffolding the students into an approximation of the genre, must be confident of the language features of the genre under focus and be able to guide the children to organise and word their text.
Hunt also suggests a number of conditions for joint construction to be successful:
I explained that the first line of their Arguments began with something like ‘I believe ...’. However, since the purpose of a discussion is not to put only one side of a question but to discuss the various points, for and against, and the writer might not even have any set beliefs on the question, then a Discussion couldn’t begin the same way.
A similarity with the Arguments was that the topic was incorporated into the first paragraph; we would also incorporate the topic into the first paragraph of our Discussion.
I read out the first part of the topic and said that perhaps we could use that. I discussed the ‘it’ of the ‘It has been suggested ...’ as not identifying who was suggesting, so it satisfied our demand that a discussion shouldn’t be subjective.
The second part of the topic was a question: ‘What are the ...?’, which we couldn’t have, so we needed to change this into a statement—I suggested then a beginning: ‘There are some advantages ...’.
Knowing the purpose of an introduction, as macro-Theme, is to predict the rest of the text, I was not satisfied with finishing with a simple ‘There are some advantages and disadvantages’. Instead, I pushed the students to continue with including some identification of the issues, saying that the writer needed to signal what was coming next in the text in order to prepare the reader. So we returned to the list on the board and I led the task by talking about what the main point was about one of the advantages, eg ‘origins’, and then asked them for each of the points in turn, which they did very quickly and easily. What they were identifying were the issues as nominalised entities, eg ‘facilities’, ‘environmental damage’, ‘competition between countries’ and ‘costs’. I did not explicitly say to them that they had to suggest one abstract term that would encompass each of the arguments, but through my knowing what I wanted them to be able to achieve, I was able to direct them so they were doing that anyway. As a result, we had a macro-Theme which predicted the various arguments to be discussed in the text.
My contribution was also to ask them to elaborate, so when they just said ‘damage’, I probed further so they would suggest ‘environmental damage’. ‘Competing’ in ‘countries competing against each other’ was changed by me to ‘competition between countries’. No comment was made by me about that.
The result is that the second sentence in the first paragraph is made up of only two clauses but eight nominalisations. The important factor is that, as the guide during the joint construction, I knew where we were headed and what we needed to get there. My prompting and probing was carried out with that explicit knowledge of what choices we have in the grammar—it was from a position of strength rather than ignorance.
The second paragraphWe discussed how there were a number of ways of organising the text rhetorically and that they had a number of examples written up on their conjunctions chart in the class. We chose ‘One advantage is ...’ and the rest of the sentence was simply placing what the students had already written in their groups. The disadvantage had already been chosen. This had been done by the teachers because of time constraints, but ideally it would be the students who would do this.
When we were ready to add the disadvantage to the paragraph, I led them into the use of a contrastive conjunction—the suggestions from the students were ‘but’ (which is possible but I was trying to get them to use a conjunction which functions to join sentences only). So we had a look at the list on their wall charts and we decided on ‘however’.
After writing the disadvantage now that a conjunction had been chosen, I suggested that leaving the point made like that might not feel right and perhaps we could provide a solution to the problem. This was the cue to not only come up with a solution but allowed us to begin the next sentence with a nominalisation, ie ‘A solution (to this problem) could be ...’. In other words, my use of ‘What’s a solution to the problem?’ instead of, say, ‘How can we solve this?’ is scaffolding them into using this nominalised construction in their own language.
We then reread the whole paragraph and I asked the class what they thought of it—their judgment was positive.
Group workHaving completed the macro-Theme and the second paragraph, the students then formed groups to continue with the rest of the paragraphs; each group working on a different paragraph.
We revised the outline of the second paragraph, identifying those features that would likely occur in each paragraph, ie placing the advantage(s) at the front, contrasting the disadvantage(s) and adding any other information. It was suggested to the students that they base their paragraphs on the one we had jointly constructed.
My role as teacher now was to be available to each group for support. I was also interested during this time to see whether the students had been scaffolded into using more nominalised language. Following are observations from some groups. One year 4 group had written the following paragraph:
Another advantage would be that they can the Greek Govournment could improve stadium facilities instead of building it from scratch them every 4 years. On the other hand other different countries would not get the benefit of hosting the games therefore other countries they wouldn’t get the advantage of having improved facilities.
I commented that there was a bit of repetition, to which one child remarked: ‘That’s a big word’. I presumed the question was posed because the child did not know ‘repetition’, so I proceeded to explain what ‘repetition’ meant. But then another child, one who had contributed very little during the joint construction, said: ‘That comes from “repeat”.’ What this appears to show is that the students’ metalinguistic awareness had been raised through the joint construction, where I was prompting and probing about how we were going to construct those content meanings. This indicates to me that students are far more able to examine language than is normally expected. For those students who haven’t as yet understood the nominalisations like ‘repetition’ or know that it comes from ‘repeat’, the fact that it can be taught is crucial to their literacy development and to the role of the teacher in that development.
The rest of the paragraphs by the students are as follows:
One advantage is that it will prevent the competition between countries who are trying to host the Olympics, so that money won’t be wasted on presentation. However it would be boring to hold the Olympics in the same place, because you would see the same sites over and over. Other countries wouldn’t not have the opportunity to show present their ideas and their city.
However, Another concern is that there would be more Greek supporters than any other country. One Two solutions is are to make airfearsfares costs cheaper to other countrys Another solution is and to sell to allocate more tickets to (in) other countryies. However it would be unfair for the people on the other side of the world, because it would cost too much money to get there.
The next tasks would have been to jointly construct the links between the various paragraphs so that the text is coherent and to jointly construct the conclusion to the text; these tasks were not undertaken by me with the class.
Therefore, the final class text would be comprised of the first two paragraphs jointly constructed with the teacher, the four paragraphs constructed by the students in groups and then the jointly constructed conclusion. The text as constructed on the day (two hours in total), with corrections made by the students and minor punctuation changes made by me is:
It has been suggested that the Olympic Games should be permanently held at their original site in Greece. There are some advantages and disadvantages with this proposal, including the issues of facilities, environmental damage, competition between countries and costs.
One advantage is that the Olympics would return to their original place. However, if so many people pass through, it would damage the ancient ruins. A solution to this problem could be to block off the ancient ruins.
Another advantage would be that the Greek Government could improve facilities instead of building them every four years. On the other hand, different countries would not get the benefit of hosting the games. Therefore, they wouldn’t get the advantage of having improved facilities.
A further advantage is that it will prevent the competition between countries to host the Olympics, so that money won’t be wasted on presentation. However, it would be boring to hold the Olympics in the same place because you would see the same sites over and over. Other countries would not have the opportunity to present their ideas and their city.
Another concern is that there would be more Greek supporters than any other country. Two solutions are to make airfares cheaper and to allocate more tickets to other countries. However, it would be unfair for the people on the other side of the world, because it would cost too much money to get there.
If we compare this with the Arguments that they had written previously, it is obvious that they have been supported in their literacy development. The way this was done in this context is that the teacher leading the joint construction knows what choices are available in the language and which of these are needed to write the decontextualised texts which are considered to be the powerful texts in our society. The next step is to teach those choices explicitly to the students prior to the joint construction. The whole writing process should take them into senior secondary schooling.
Classroom implicationsWhat do students have to be able to do to write texts which are more decontextualised, that is, more nominalised? They need to:
What of those students who don’t come from such homes; for example, most students who are classified as disadvantaged? The place for this to happen then is, of course, the classroom. If it doesn’t happen there in an explicit way, it won’t happen at all.
ReferencesBruner J (1960) The Process of Education. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Christie F and R Misson (1998) Literacy and Schooling. London: Routledge.
Fairclough N (1989) Language and Power. UK: Longman.
Halliday MAK (1985) Spoken and Written Language. Geelong: Deakin University Press.
Hunt I (1994) Successful Joint Construction. Newtown, NSW: PETA.
Martin JR (1985) Factual Writing: Exploring and Challenging Social Reality. Geelong: Deakin University Press.
Vygotsky LS (1962) Thought and Language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
John Polias is the Curriculum Project Officer, Language and Literacy Course, Department of Education, Training and Employment, South Australia.
by John Polias
Revised version of the article printed in the Proceedings of the “Poverty, Literacy and Education Conference”, 19 and 20 August 1996.
AbstractCan having an understanding of how grammar is used to make more complex meanings in texts help teachers support students develop their literacy skills? I will use a systemic functional grammar perspective to argue that not only is it helpful but it is crucial, especially for disadvantaged groups of students whose access to the educational genres is dependent on what is available in the classroom.
There are many ways of arguing the point and there are many good publications available on literacy development, disadvantaged groups, power, and language (eg Martin 1985, Fairclough 1989, Christie and Misson 1998). This paper attempts to argue the case from data gathered during the joint construction of a text with a Year 4/5 class. My thesis is that even the simple knowledge by the teacher of what linguistic choices writers have available to them enables the teacher to support students in developing their literacy skills. The extension of this thesis would be that students should then be taught when and how to make these choices for themselves.
The joint construction of the expository text was led by myself and grateful acknowledgments go to the students, the classroom teacher Selina Stirn and the ESL teacher Jenny Tyney. The task was explained to the students as an experiment and we needed their cooperation in writing a text that was “more like what high school students wrote”. Prior to the actual joint construction, I had not met the students.
BackgroundPrevious to the joint construction, the class had worked on Arguments (where one point of view is presented). The teachers of the class were interested in developing the students’ writing skills by teaching them to write a Discussion (where two or more points of view are discussed). The main difference between the students’ Argument texts and the Discussion texts the teachers were thinking of modelling was that the latter texts were more nominalised. Increased nominalisation is typical of written texts, which, because they are decontextualised, are more abstract and technical (Halliday 1985). The issue for these students was that they hadn’t been taught nominalisation, so the joint construction was dependent on the teacher being aware of what was needed and to direct the joint construction towards the end point of a more nominalised written text. The results indeed show that the students were able to produce much more abstract, technical writing.
The Arguments that the students had written previously followed a very simple structure such as:
I believe that wood-fire burners should be banned.
Firstly, ...
Secondly, ...
Finally, ...
NominalisationNominalisation is a process involving a number of words (usually verbs and adjectives) or a process of events being turned into a noun/nominal group. Nominalisation turns the world of actions and attributes, which are typical of spoken language, into the world of things, which is typical of decontextualised written texts. For example:
Spoken: I suggested that they should reduce the number in each group and it was accepted, which made me happy.
Written: The acceptance of my suggestion for a reduction in the number in each group made me happy.
In the latter, more written version, suggested has become suggestion, reduce has become reduction, and accepted has become acceptance.
The topic for discussionPrior to the joint construction, the topic had already been discussed by the class. The topic was:
It has been suggested that the Olympic Games should be permanently held at its original site in Greece. What would be the advantages and disadvantages of this proposal?
Small groups of students had contributed their arguments as to the advantages and disadvantages. These were written up by the students on large sheets of paper which were then visible to the students during the joint construction.
Advantages
Disadvantages
• The Olympics would be back to its original birthplace.
• For tourists who live on the other side of the world to Greece, it would cost more money to get there and it won’t be fair.
• There would be more Greek supporters than any other country.
• The ancient ruins would be damaged by so many people visiting them.
• Olympia would get very polluted by litter and trash. The environment would get ruined.
• All the money over the years will buildGreece up and make it bigger, eg better roads, accommodation, hospitals.
• Greece would have better facilities because they would improve every time, eg money would be saved.
• Other countries wouldn’t get the benefits of tourism and improved facilities.
• It would stop countries competing against each other, eg to host the games, the opening ceremony.
The class had also discussed conjunctions and had charts of these displayed on the walls of the classroom.
Joint constructionThe first two paragraphs jointly constructed were:
Discussion
It has been suggested that the Olympic Games should be permanently held at its original site in Greece. There are some advantages and disadvantages of this proposal, including the issues of facilities, environmental damage, competition between countries and costs.
One advantage is that the Olympics would return to its original place. However, if so many people pass through, it would damage the ancient ruins. A solution (to this problem) could be to block off the ancient ruins.
The rest of the text was written by the students in groups—examples of these come later in this article.
Research supporting joint constructionAfter there has been preparation of the field knowledge for writing a text, the teacher and children jointly write the text, the teacher ‘scaffolding’ the writing by leading, reworking and modelling.
The term scaffolding comes from the work of Bruner (1960) and has been used here in Australia by, amongst others, the Disadvantaged Schools Program in the Metropolitan East Region of Sydney. It refers to the way adults support children by providing models of appropriate language and by structuring and regulating the children’s input so that after a period of time, the child takes over the task of text production. This is very similar to Vygotsky’s (1962) notion of the zone of proximal development, which claims that development, and hence approximation to the relevant text production, occurs with the support of an adult or knowledgeable peer. In writing, joint construction attempts to replicate the role taken on by these various experts (parents, teachers, other adults or knowledgeable peers)
Imogen Hunt (1994) states that during joint construction, the teacher, as the expert scaffolding the students into an approximation of the genre, must be confident of the language features of the genre under focus and be able to guide the children to organise and word their text.
Hunt also suggests a number of conditions for joint construction to be successful:
- preparation (modelling, deconstruction, building field knowledge)
- accessible materials (visual support, eg charts, lists)
- content limits (do not go outside what has been listed)
- whole class reading of the text produced (controls the time)
I explained that the first line of their Arguments began with something like ‘I believe ...’. However, since the purpose of a discussion is not to put only one side of a question but to discuss the various points, for and against, and the writer might not even have any set beliefs on the question, then a Discussion couldn’t begin the same way.
A similarity with the Arguments was that the topic was incorporated into the first paragraph; we would also incorporate the topic into the first paragraph of our Discussion.
I read out the first part of the topic and said that perhaps we could use that. I discussed the ‘it’ of the ‘It has been suggested ...’ as not identifying who was suggesting, so it satisfied our demand that a discussion shouldn’t be subjective.
The second part of the topic was a question: ‘What are the ...?’, which we couldn’t have, so we needed to change this into a statement—I suggested then a beginning: ‘There are some advantages ...’.
Knowing the purpose of an introduction, as macro-Theme, is to predict the rest of the text, I was not satisfied with finishing with a simple ‘There are some advantages and disadvantages’. Instead, I pushed the students to continue with including some identification of the issues, saying that the writer needed to signal what was coming next in the text in order to prepare the reader. So we returned to the list on the board and I led the task by talking about what the main point was about one of the advantages, eg ‘origins’, and then asked them for each of the points in turn, which they did very quickly and easily. What they were identifying were the issues as nominalised entities, eg ‘facilities’, ‘environmental damage’, ‘competition between countries’ and ‘costs’. I did not explicitly say to them that they had to suggest one abstract term that would encompass each of the arguments, but through my knowing what I wanted them to be able to achieve, I was able to direct them so they were doing that anyway. As a result, we had a macro-Theme which predicted the various arguments to be discussed in the text.
My contribution was also to ask them to elaborate, so when they just said ‘damage’, I probed further so they would suggest ‘environmental damage’. ‘Competing’ in ‘countries competing against each other’ was changed by me to ‘competition between countries’. No comment was made by me about that.
The result is that the second sentence in the first paragraph is made up of only two clauses but eight nominalisations. The important factor is that, as the guide during the joint construction, I knew where we were headed and what we needed to get there. My prompting and probing was carried out with that explicit knowledge of what choices we have in the grammar—it was from a position of strength rather than ignorance.
The second paragraphWe discussed how there were a number of ways of organising the text rhetorically and that they had a number of examples written up on their conjunctions chart in the class. We chose ‘One advantage is ...’ and the rest of the sentence was simply placing what the students had already written in their groups. The disadvantage had already been chosen. This had been done by the teachers because of time constraints, but ideally it would be the students who would do this.
When we were ready to add the disadvantage to the paragraph, I led them into the use of a contrastive conjunction—the suggestions from the students were ‘but’ (which is possible but I was trying to get them to use a conjunction which functions to join sentences only). So we had a look at the list on their wall charts and we decided on ‘however’.
After writing the disadvantage now that a conjunction had been chosen, I suggested that leaving the point made like that might not feel right and perhaps we could provide a solution to the problem. This was the cue to not only come up with a solution but allowed us to begin the next sentence with a nominalisation, ie ‘A solution (to this problem) could be ...’. In other words, my use of ‘What’s a solution to the problem?’ instead of, say, ‘How can we solve this?’ is scaffolding them into using this nominalised construction in their own language.
We then reread the whole paragraph and I asked the class what they thought of it—their judgment was positive.
Group workHaving completed the macro-Theme and the second paragraph, the students then formed groups to continue with the rest of the paragraphs; each group working on a different paragraph.
We revised the outline of the second paragraph, identifying those features that would likely occur in each paragraph, ie placing the advantage(s) at the front, contrasting the disadvantage(s) and adding any other information. It was suggested to the students that they base their paragraphs on the one we had jointly constructed.
My role as teacher now was to be available to each group for support. I was also interested during this time to see whether the students had been scaffolded into using more nominalised language. Following are observations from some groups. One year 4 group had written the following paragraph:
Another advantage would be that they can the Greek Govournment could improve stadium facilities instead of building it from scratch them every 4 years. On the other hand other different countries would not get the benefit of hosting the games therefore other countries they wouldn’t get the advantage of having improved facilities.
I commented that there was a bit of repetition, to which one child remarked: ‘That’s a big word’. I presumed the question was posed because the child did not know ‘repetition’, so I proceeded to explain what ‘repetition’ meant. But then another child, one who had contributed very little during the joint construction, said: ‘That comes from “repeat”.’ What this appears to show is that the students’ metalinguistic awareness had been raised through the joint construction, where I was prompting and probing about how we were going to construct those content meanings. This indicates to me that students are far more able to examine language than is normally expected. For those students who haven’t as yet understood the nominalisations like ‘repetition’ or know that it comes from ‘repeat’, the fact that it can be taught is crucial to their literacy development and to the role of the teacher in that development.
The rest of the paragraphs by the students are as follows:
One advantage is that it will prevent the competition between countries who are trying to host the Olympics, so that money won’t be wasted on presentation. However it would be boring to hold the Olympics in the same place, because you would see the same sites over and over. Other countries wouldn’t not have the opportunity to show present their ideas and their city.
However, Another concern is that there would be more Greek supporters than any other country. One Two solutions is are to make airfearsfares costs cheaper to other countrys Another solution is and to sell to allocate more tickets to (in) other countryies. However it would be unfair for the people on the other side of the world, because it would cost too much money to get there.
The next tasks would have been to jointly construct the links between the various paragraphs so that the text is coherent and to jointly construct the conclusion to the text; these tasks were not undertaken by me with the class.
Therefore, the final class text would be comprised of the first two paragraphs jointly constructed with the teacher, the four paragraphs constructed by the students in groups and then the jointly constructed conclusion. The text as constructed on the day (two hours in total), with corrections made by the students and minor punctuation changes made by me is:
It has been suggested that the Olympic Games should be permanently held at their original site in Greece. There are some advantages and disadvantages with this proposal, including the issues of facilities, environmental damage, competition between countries and costs.
One advantage is that the Olympics would return to their original place. However, if so many people pass through, it would damage the ancient ruins. A solution to this problem could be to block off the ancient ruins.
Another advantage would be that the Greek Government could improve facilities instead of building them every four years. On the other hand, different countries would not get the benefit of hosting the games. Therefore, they wouldn’t get the advantage of having improved facilities.
A further advantage is that it will prevent the competition between countries to host the Olympics, so that money won’t be wasted on presentation. However, it would be boring to hold the Olympics in the same place because you would see the same sites over and over. Other countries would not have the opportunity to present their ideas and their city.
Another concern is that there would be more Greek supporters than any other country. Two solutions are to make airfares cheaper and to allocate more tickets to other countries. However, it would be unfair for the people on the other side of the world, because it would cost too much money to get there.
If we compare this with the Arguments that they had written previously, it is obvious that they have been supported in their literacy development. The way this was done in this context is that the teacher leading the joint construction knows what choices are available in the language and which of these are needed to write the decontextualised texts which are considered to be the powerful texts in our society. The next step is to teach those choices explicitly to the students prior to the joint construction. The whole writing process should take them into senior secondary schooling.
Classroom implicationsWhat do students have to be able to do to write texts which are more decontextualised, that is, more nominalised? They need to:
- know the nominal forms of verbs, adjectives and conjunctions. Importantly, however, this does not mean that activities meant to develop this will be decontextualised. This step must be seen as one stage in the students’ language development and that it fits in with the rest of the points made here
- practise reorganising their more ‘spoken’ clauses/sentences to more ‘written’ ones
- understand the concept of what is foregrounded in the clause (Theme)
- practise reorganising the Theme of the clause and understand the changes in meaning that are expressed.
What of those students who don’t come from such homes; for example, most students who are classified as disadvantaged? The place for this to happen then is, of course, the classroom. If it doesn’t happen there in an explicit way, it won’t happen at all.
ReferencesBruner J (1960) The Process of Education. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Christie F and R Misson (1998) Literacy and Schooling. London: Routledge.
Fairclough N (1989) Language and Power. UK: Longman.
Halliday MAK (1985) Spoken and Written Language. Geelong: Deakin University Press.
Hunt I (1994) Successful Joint Construction. Newtown, NSW: PETA.
Martin JR (1985) Factual Writing: Exploring and Challenging Social Reality. Geelong: Deakin University Press.
Vygotsky LS (1962) Thought and Language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
John Polias is the Curriculum Project Officer, Language and Literacy Course, Department of Education, Training and Employment, South Australia.