Talk and Writing
Judy Parr, Rebecca Jesson & Stuart
McNaughton
Presentation to ‘Writing development: Multiple
perspectives’, Institute of Education, London, July
2009
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Presentation in four parts
1.
2.
3.
4.
Theoretical approaches
Talk and agency
Talk as platform
Deliberately creating connections:
inter-textual talk
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Theoretical approaches
 General position
– Learning and development through
participation in literacy activities
 Functions of child talk
1. Planning and self regulation
2. Appropriation of language
3. Performance and feedback
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Approaches continued
 Functions of classroom / teacher talk
1. Guidance in shared communication
2. Instructional dialogue (bridging
worlds)
 Two ideas behind instructional
emphases
1. Child as agent
2. Creating textual platforms
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
1
Children’s agency
1. Active in learning
2. Purposeful writing and speaking
3. Developing authorial voice
4. Audience integral to process
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Implications for instruction
1. Self selection and control of process and
product
2. Seeking response and feedback
3. Writing shapes and reflects authorial
identity
4. Presentation and publication
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Example: Language
experience
1. Ubiquitous in NZ classrooms
2. Based on learners’ language
3. Sylvia Ashton Warner (1963) ‘reach
into the mind of the child’
4. Planned, common format:
doing, talking, recording, writing
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Conditions for language
experience
1. Participation in a collective experience
2. Joint negotiation of meaning - students
and teacher
3. Authentic contexts (planned immersion)
4. Participation in creation of reification – the
wall story
5. Drawings, captions, description and
interpretation, the negotiated meaning
becomes part of the class’ shared history
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
2
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Textual platforms:
Specific tutorial events
Ideally provide graduated assistance to learners
Teacher fine-tunes the problem presented and
the help
1-1 interactions around child’s text
Teachers help promotes emerging skill, allows
the child to work with familiar, introduces the
unfamiliar in a measured way, deals
constructively with errors (Clay and Cazden,
1990)
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Implications for instruction
1. Writing conferences established
routine and structure
2. Personalisation of dialogue
3. Flexible in-flight decisions
4. Teacher knowledge (and awareness
of) writers, writing, and instructional
talk
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Conditions for writing
conferences
 Goal directed
 Match between goals and instructional
properties
 Opportunities for productive interaction
with reader/ audience
 Meta-cognitive awareness and self
regulatory strategies (reflecting on texts)
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Example one: Charlie
(turns 1-16)
 Notice in the example (see handout)
– Teacher supports child’s self evaluation
– Teacher’s goal of self regulation; child
given responsibility for those things he
can do independently
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Example two: Charlie
(turns 16-25)
 Notice in the example (see handout):
– Teacher goal of promoting self
monitoring for meaning
– Shifting gears (responsive)
– Re-voicing
– Re-presenting the problem
– Rehearsal of solution
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Talk Extending the Platform
 We argue that educators need to create
inter-contextuality for prior knowledge to
transfer into current learning
 Prior knowledge about, and experience of,
“texts”, are resources garnered in the
service of writing through talk
 Talk to deliberately create connections
between and among texts- inter-textual
talk
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Talk as Extending the
Platform
 Notion of explicit guidance through talk
enabling control and awareness of writing
 Build meta-linguistic knowledge
 Knowledge of how to achieve
communicative purpose
 Build understanding of notion of
“linguistically contextualised”
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Inter-textual Talk in Practice
 We analysed transcripts of teachers
to identify how, through talk, they
“connect” with what developing
writers know
 Connections of four types
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Content/ Context
Connection
 Connection focuses on comparing or
contrasting content - e.g. themes,
ideas, concepts, arguments,
moral/message, setting, characters
or commonalities in terms of author.
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Classroom Example: Content/
Context
 Transcript example text to text: Is Rags
the dog or the snake?
– Here child has skipped ahead and looked at
pictures and asks this question. The teacher
takes opportunity to make point that books
have some of the same characters (as early
readers do) but in different stories, different
characters are fore-grounded and tell it from
their perspective.
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Structural Connection
 Connections concern identifying
how texts work structurally to
achieve their purpose- the
features of text
–e.g. elements of structure at
text or local level (main point,
complication or topic
sentence)
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Classroom Example:
Structural Connection
 Transcript example text to visual text:
‘No Safe Harbour’ and ‘Titanic’
– Here teacher makes link in terms of the
structure of narrative and the notion of
build up to a climax
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Process/ Strategy Connection
 Similar cognitive processes and
strategies (plan around a purpose
and activate prior knowledge;
readers reread and change meaning
they have made & as one writes
develop ideas)
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Classroom Example: Process/
Strategy Connection
 Transcript example of knowledge of
a strategy (text- Greedy Cat- to
writing)
– asking questions of text to aid
comprehension and also to generate
appropriate content for writing
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Cultural or Linguistic Resources
Connection
 This involves the activation of prior
knowledge to aid retrieval of relevant
content in writing
– Knowledge may be prior social- cultural
experience, (including another
language) or prior knowledge
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Classroom Example: Cultural or
Linguistic Knowledge
Connection
 Transcript example of flower and dye
related to mangroves and their absorbing
of pollution.
– Here teacher aims to assist understanding of
a text on mangroves (they are reading prior to
writing a report on a field trip) and how they
work through an analogy to something the
children have already experienced.
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland
Conclusion
 We describe theoretical rationales for the
role of talk and these have been applied to
and elaborated with descriptions of
instructional practices
 These assumed functions seen in terms of
agency and platform (underutilised in latter
is making inter-textual links)
 Conclude need to investigate effects of
various approaches & properties that
enable them to be maximally effective
Woolf Fisher Research Centre
The University of Auckland