This study deals with the writing of senior students in the subject
English from two ACT secondary colleges. Whilst the written work
analysed is from students enrolled in courses accredited for
tertiary entrance, the ACT'S high retention rate and students'
tendency to avoid 'non-tertiary' courses, ensures that the scripts
analysed are wide-ranging.
Broadly, this study rests on the theoretical approach to language
and learning that came out of Dartmouth: that which is associated
with James Britton. Its focus is twofold. In Volume I it presents
a heuristic, describing its development and discussing the thinking,
and learning students appear to do - and the writing they do - as a
result of using it.
The heuristic is called 'streaming' by the students who use it and
is based on Vygotsky's notion of 'Inner Speech'. A key phrase that
expresses a powerful or rich idea about the subject being studied is
used as a starting point for student thinking. Students explore the
layers of cognitive and affective meaning encapsulated in the idea,
and perhaps extend the idea, in writing. The writing is very rough,
and an act of thought whereby the meaning of the phrase is
accommodated, rather than a communication to others.
Students are asked NOT to think prior to setting pen to paper, but
to let their writing 'bring their thought out of the shadows' by
giving words to it. This avoids superficial or cliched response
because the process of 'thinking out loud in writing' allows an
interplay of cognitive and affective meaning that seems to lead
students in to abstract thinking, generally by way of poetic
abstraction. The 'streaming' that students do becomes the basis for
further discussion or writing in a variety of forms.
Volume II is given over to an explication, and use, of Graham
Little's development and refinement of an analytical model for
investigating language use. Based on the variables of situation,
function and form, it enables the empirical analysis of 237 examples
of writing from students who had used the heuristic presented in
Volume I.
The analysis indicates that students who use the heuristic write
differently from students who do not. Their writing shows a wide
range of function and form and achieves unusually high levels of
abstraction. The thinking and writing that students do when using
the heuristic is usually realised poetically and used as a basis for
further writing. The range within the student writing indicates a
high degree of language competence whereby students are able to
write in different forms.
Little's analytical model is a simple and powerful means of
quantifying elements of school language in order to make qualitative
judgements that are sensitive to the complex and holistic nature of
language development and use.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/218857 |
| Date | January 1988 |
| Creators | Cousens, Elizabeth Veronica Eve, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Elizabeth Veronica Eve Cousens |
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