Literacy and Language in the Primary Years

Jane Medwell, David Wray

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138166349
• eBook ISBN: 9781136107566
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Linking the development of reading, writing, speaking and listening, this book offers a distinctive holistic approach to literacy and language acquisition. It emphasizes the value of active, collaborative learning, and includes sections on literacy accross the primary curriculum, new technology and assessment. Each chapter is linked to a component of the National Curriculum Programme and contains points of interest, sources of further information and suggestions for follow-up actvities in the classroom.

Chapter 1

Classroom talk

Introduction

The National Curriculum for English makes it clear that reading and writing are no longer to be the sole focus of concern for primary teachers. Speaking and listening, for a long time neglected aspects in the teaching of language development, are given equal importance with the traditional first two Rs.¹ In assessing children’s achievements in English at ages 7 and 11 all three profile components – Reading, Writing, and Speaking and Listening – are given equal weighting. In many respects this represents a considerable challenge to primary school teachers who, while generally running more talk-orientated classrooms than their secondary colleagues, have, in the main, given little real concentration to the role and development of oracy in these classrooms. Yet by the age of 11 (level 5 in National Curriculum terms) children will be expected to be achieve a series of attainment targets including:

1. Give a well-organised and sustained account of an event, a personal experience or an activity.
2. Contribute to and respond constructively in discussion or debate, advocating and justifying a particular point of view.
3. Use transactional language effectively in a straightforward situation.
4. Plan and participate in a presentation.
5. Talk about variations in vocabulary between different regional or social groups.

For teachers to achieve these things will demand two things of them. First, it will demand that they have some understanding of how oracy develops, its role in learning, and possible strategies for assisting this development. Second, it demands that teachers provide opportunities for children to develop their speaking and listening. This chapter is intended to give some guidance on both these issues. We cannot pretend, however, that the development of classrooms which foster oracy is unproblematic.

The major problem with a curriculum in which children achieve much of their learning through talking is that it produces classrooms which do not conform to many people’s (teachers included) stereotypes of what a good classroom should be like. The picture of a ‘good’ classroom which most non-teachers and many teachers have is one where children get on with their work in as quiet an atmosphere as possible (they concentrate better that way), and if discussion takes place it is closely controlled by the teacher (who after all does know more than the children) and follows fairly tight rules (one person speaks at a time, no interruptions, wait to be asked to speak by the teacher; these rules help develop ‘civilised’ behaviour). Most teachers, if they are honest, will admit to having had at some time a sneaking feeling that this is what their classroom should really be like. This feeling may have been endorsed by the reactions of their fellow-teachers who may have commented adversely on lively classroom discussions: ‘Your lot were noisy this morning, Miss Smith. I nearly came in to give them a talking to, only I saw you were with them.’

The problem with this picture of classrooms is that the underlying view of talking that it embodies is negative. Talk is unavoidable, but really the less there is of it, the more real learning will take place. The National Curriculum (and an almost overwhelming weight of evidence and theoretical argument) makes it essential that teachers give talk a much more prominent role in their classrooms than this.²

The chapter begins by examining the role of talking in the learning process, before going on to examine some of the salient features of talk in classrooms. The central part of the chapter concentrates upon group talk and its organisation, and we conclude by examining the corollary of talk, the even more neglected listening.

Talk in the Learning Process

What does talk actually do for us? Or, more exactly, what do we do with talk? The common-sense answer to this question is that we use talk to communicate with other people. In this view of talk it is the message which is important, and the talk itself is simply a vehicle. While talk obviously does have this function, it is unlikely to be quite as ‘transparent’ as the description would suggest. Talk is more than a vehicle. To see this more clearly we can examine some instances in which talk is used.

Example 1:

Two women are walking along a street and pass each other. The following exchange takes place: ‘Good morning. How are you?’ ‘I’m fine, thank you. How are you?’ ‘Oh, fine, thank you.’

Example 2:

A man gets into his car on a frosty morning. He tries to start the car, but it refuses, making laboured sounds. He begins to talk: ‘Oh start, damn you! Come on! Oh goodness, what a useless heap of metal!’

Example 3:

One man is explaining to another how an event happened. He says: ‘Well, we were walking along the path. I saw this lad in the field. Goodness knows how he got there. I suppose he could have climbed the gate, but... no. The gate was covered in barbed wire. He must have got through the fence somehow. Perhaps there’s a gap.’

On the face of it, Example 1 looks like an instance of communication, but what actually has been communicated? The exchange is so ritual it is unlikely that either of the participants really thinks about what she says. Either of them might have been suffering from minor illnesses, but still have said the same things. The function of their talk was not to communicate anything in particular, but simply to interact socially. This interactive function operates a great deal more often than we might think. Sometimes, as in this example, it replaces the communicative function. More often, it accompanies it. We regularly use phrases in conversation such as, ‘Well, you know...’, ‘Really? Well I never!’ and so on, which carry little message but do act to maintain the social relationship between speakers.

It would be difficult to argue that Example 2 showed communication (unless we assume some malicious intelligence in the car). The talk here is serving the function of emotional expression, and it is interesting that talk is used universally to ‘let off steam’ in this way. This expressive function is seen equally in conversation. Given the many ways speakers could choose to phrase their messages, the exact phrasing they do choose reflects elements of their feelings towards what they are talking about.

In Example 3 there clearly is some communication, with a message being passed between the speakers. But something else is happening here as well. The speaker has come to a conclusion about something as he is speaking. At the end of his speech he knows something he did not know at the beginning. This is characteristic of a great deal of talk, and is a feature which can completely change our view of learning. It suggests that talking about something is a way of learning about it. If learning is seen as the expansion and modification of existing ways of conceiving the world in the light of alternative ways,³ then talking can be seen as one way of working this out. In the view of the learner as an active constructor of knowledge (rather than a passive receiver), talk has the place of a medium, probably the most powerful medium, for pushing forward new interpretations, debating their implications, trying out possibilities and linking new ideas with those previously held.

This process can be seen at work in many situations. It occurs when we discuss issues with other people. We rarely come to these discussions with our ideas fully formed and rehearsed. Instead, we take note of what others say and reshape our ideas in the light of others’ contributions. To discuss is to think, and through the effort of ‘thinking on our feet’ we develop our ideas. In other words, we learn. The process also occurs when we teach. Many teachers will testify that the first time they really understood some things was when they tried to explain them to children. The act of trying to express ideas clarifies them.

Of the four functions of talk we have discussed, the communicative, the social, the expressive and the learning, it is the latter whose importance has tended to be the most underestimated in the past. Yet its potential is enormous.

To examine these functions of talk in action, let us look at the following extract from a classroom conversation in which a class of 6 year olds discuss with their teacher a bird’s nest they have outside their classroom.⁴ The teacher opens the conversation.

1 Teacher: I’ve got something to tell you. Mr Jackson found the shell of one broken egg on the ground the other day. [Cries of Ah! Oh!] And he thought, ‘There’s one baby bird, because here’s the shell that’s broken now.’ Mr Jackson thought there was only one baby bird, but really there are ...?

2 Pupil: Three.

3 Teacher: Three babies. How do you know there are three?

4 Pupil: Because I saw all their heads pop up.

5 Teacher: What did we see yesterday?

6 Pupil: All their heads popped up. And they all made a noise. And they all went... and two went down. No. One went down and... they both they stayed up... And for a little while they both popped down again.

7 Teacher: And when they popped their heads up, what did they do? Can you tell us about it, Gary?

8 Gary: When I was at home, I saw this egg. And it was broken. And there was a little baby bird laying there dead.

9 Teacher: Yes. They sometimes fall out of the nest don’t they?

10 Pupil: What?

11 Gary: The egg was broken.

12 Pupil: What happened?

13 Gary: The egg was broken. It must have been the bird was out. And he fell on the ground and was dead.

14 Pupil: It must have been cracking open. It must have rolled over and he must have fell.

15 Pupil: I know. A cat must have had it.

16 Teacher: Who else has got something to tell us about our bird? Lise?

17 Lise: When I was going out in my garden, I went on this slide and... and this... I was going down the slope. And I heard birds whistling. And I looked on the seat where you sit to slide down... and I saw a bird’s nest. It had six eggs in it’cos it was a great big one... and I saw a bird sitting on’em.

18 Pupil: Was it a pigeon?

Talk is clearly being used here for communication. The class are talking about something they share, and passing on their individual insights into the event. They respond to each other’s contributions and ideas, as when two children react to Gary’s story about the broken egg (14, 15). They ask each other questions and give each other answers. The teacher has created an environment in which individual contributions are valued and children listen to each other’s ideas. The talk is thus also serving the social function of encouraging co-operation and sharing. It is also expressive of the children’s attitudes towards its subject, from the overt Ahs and Ohs when they learn of the broken egg, to the underlying message of regret in the tone of Gary’s There was a little baby bird laying there dead’ (8).

In terms of learning, the extract illustrates several interesting processes. First, there are a couple of examples of children thinking aloud in their talk; creating their own knowledge as they express ideas. In (6) the child is not only recalling experience, but shaping and clarifying it through talk. Lise, in her long speech (17), seems to sharpen up her story as she tells it, producing some very precise descriptions - ‘I looked on the seat where you sit to slide down’. None of this is planned in detail before the children speak; they do their planning on the run.

A further process which suggests learning is the questioning of other people’s ideas (10, 12, 18). In order to be able to ask questions about what others say, you need to be following their train of thought to a sufficient degree. Questioning indicates an attempt to engage further with others’ ideas. Linked to this is the self-questioning which is not overt but conveyed by the tone of what is said. In (14) and (15), for example, the statements are not as definitive as might be implied by the use of ‘must’, but seem more like suggestions of possibilities. The children offer up potential solutions to the problem posed by Gary of how the egg was broken, which again indicates that they are engaging with the ideas and attempting to contribute to them.

A final feature of this extract, which is a powerful indicator of learning, is the role of anecdotes. Both Gary (8) and Lise (17), when asked by the teacher to comment on the school bird, prefer instead to tell a story about their experiences out of school. This ‘talking at a tangent’ is typical of children of this age (and indeed of most children if left to talk unsupervised) and is often thought by their teachers to be undesirable because it takes them off the point. It can, however, be itself seen as a learning process. If the definition of learning given earlier (the expansion and modification of existing ways of conceiving the world in the light of alternative ways) is accepted, it suggests that a crucial element is the linking of new experience with previously held ideas. Anecdotes which are sparked off by new ideas represent precisely the places where this linking is taking place. The teller, by telling an anecdote, is showing where his ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Introduction
• 1. Classroom talk
• 2. Language diversity and language awareness
• 3. Children’s literature and the power of stories
• 4. The emergence of literacy
• 5. Literacy in the early years of schooling
• 6. The teaching of reading
• 7. Writing: purpose and process
• 8. Developing literacy across the curriculum
• 9. Literacy for learning
• 10. The use of the computer to develop language and literacy
• 11. Assessing language and literacy development
• Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index