Use of Language Across the Primary Curriculum

Eve Bearne

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9781138167339
• eBook ISBN: 9781134725724
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

This book offers practical advice and guidance on how children can be helped to use language to transform knowledge and experience into understanding across the curriculum, and thus become active learners. In addition to the core subjects, opportunities in music, P.E., I.T. and design technology are examined in the context of the interrelationship between children, language and learning, i.e.: * children learning to use language * children using language to learn * children learning about language Chapters describe classroom practice as well as offering reflective sections on the interrelationships and processes of language and cognitive development. An integral part of this is the acknowledgement of differing learning styles, special educational needs, and issues of linguistic diversity and cultural difference.

Part 1
LANGUAGE AND LEARNING

Language is a system of sounds, meanings and structures with which we make sense of the world around us. It functions as a tool of thought; as a means of social organisation; as the repository and means of transmission of knowledge; as the raw material of literature, and as the creator and sustainer—or destroyer—of human relationships. It changes inevitably over time and, as change is not uniform, from place to place.

(DfE 1989: para. 6.18)

Language is a fascinating subject. Everybody has opinions about how people should express themselves and each of us is unique in the way we make meaning through language. One of the key functions of language in education is that it helps us to learn. We can work out ideas and reflect on them, record observations, capture and concentrate thoughts and so generate new ideas. When we give expression to ideas we are not simply clothing already existing thoughts with words, but actively shaping the slippery material of concepts, pinning ideas down and putting them together so that we are satisfied with the cut and style of our thinking.

The psychologist Vygotsky, writing in the 1930s, saw language as a tool for thinking and described the complex interaction of language and the development of knowledge as:

a continual movement back and forth from thought to word and from word to thought. In that process, the relation of thought to word undergoes changes…thought is not merely expressed in words; it comes into existence through them. Every thought tends to connect something with something else, to establish a relation between them. Every thought moves, grows and develops, fulfils a function, solves a problem.

(Vygotsky 1962:125)

The relationship between language and concept development is complementary and dynamic; whilst thought prompts language, listening, reading, speaking and writing, in their turn, will prompt more thought—and so the cycle of learning goes on. This takes the role of language in learning beyond the communicative. In terms of classroom practice, this means paying attention to the processes of language, not simply seeing the products.

Traditionally, writing has been taken as proof of learning; tests and examinations are written and common practice in teaching often follows the model of carrying out an activity which is then written about to assure the teacher that the children have learned what they were supposed to learn. More recently, talk has also been given a place in the assessment of learning. Quite properly. Not only has talk an important role to play in allowing children to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding; teachers need to find as many ways as possible of judging what children have learned so that they can consolidate or reinforce the learning. However, Vygotsky’s insights take the role of language further, seeing it as important not just as communicating the end points of learning but as an integral part of the whole process of putting ideas together to reach understanding.

Learning about language

People learn language first of all in social contexts—in the home, in the community—and children’s early language is used readily and fluently without them needing to be overtly taught the rules of its use. Children actively generate the rules of language as they tussle to make their meanings clear. Whilst making meaning lies at the centre of language use, reflection and analysis are equally important processes of learning. If children are to extend their knowledge of language so as to be able to make meaning in increasingly complex ways, then studying language as a system becomes an essential feature of learning and teaching. This presents a challenge to classroom teachers: how can children be helped to know more about the structures and systems of language without separating the system from its use—in other words, without taking the texts out of context? The Language in the National Curriculum (LING) Project offered guidance:

Language study should start from what children can do, from their positive achievements in language and from the remarkable resources of implicit knowledge about language which all children possess.

(Carter 1991:4)

At the same time, however, it is important to be aware of the complexities of language and the ways in which it is used. The constantly shifting nature of language means that the systems which seem to govern its use are not always fixed. In other words, it is difficult to provide hard and fast rules for language use. Both teachers and children need to understand the dynamic quality of language. Teaching rules or definitions of parts of language is not the best way to help children study language, although it is essential that they learn how to talk about language. This means developing a vocabulary of terminology—a metalanguage—which will enable them to extend their understanding of how language can be used to make more (and more complex) meaning.

Teachers, like children, have a store of valuable knowledge about language, derived from their experience as people living in social settings. The question arises of how they can best use this knowledge to help their pupils further their understanding of the structures and systems of language. Teachers create the environment in which children will succeed (or not) as learners. A large part of a teacher’s contribution to developing language knowledge and use lies in the opportunities and contexts offered for learning about language. This means recognising the value and importance of community uses of language and takes into account shifts of register according to social and linguistic contexts. Rather than referring to ‘sloppy’ or ‘incorrect’ speech, classroom opportunities are provided to study the differences between spoken and written texts, between formal and informal uses of language. The next moves are to plan for deliberate and thoughtful interventions to help move the children’s language use forward as part of the whole process of teaching and learning.

English as a subject

In the National Curriculum, the details of language study are mostly included in the English curriculum. However, language permeates the whole curriculum both as a vehicle for learning and as an object of study in its own right. The SCAA document Use of Language: a Common Approach states that ‘All lessons include, and largely depend on, oral and written communication’, as well as explaining that To be successful learners, pupils need to read in order to gain access to information and ideas from a range of texts and sources and to evaluate them’ (SCAA 1997:6). Children learn through language but they also need to learn about language:

As pupils develop their subject knowledge and understanding, they need increasingly sophisticated and exact ways of saying what they mean. Through this they can express more subtle distinctions and more complex ideas. To do so they not only employ a more developed vocabulary, but also a range of grammatical constructions and ways of conveying shades of meaning or stages of argument.

(SCAA 1997:6)

This means paying attention not only to the processes of language but also, as mentioned above, to the structures of language—the texts, or discourses, into which language is organised for specific purposes. The diagram below is not intended to suggest that there are watertight categories, but represents both the texts and processes associated with teaching English. The processes on the righthand side of the chart happen throughout the curriculum—including English lessons—whilst the categories on the left—the texts—are often seen as the content of the English curriculum itself. Different contributors to this book show, however, that study of language and study of texts can enter any subject area.

A model of the English curriculum

See Table

Since language itself is structured and systematic, teachers need to take an equally systematic and structured approach both to teaching and learning language and to teaching and learning about language. This need not, however, mean arid instruction. The accounts of classroom practice in this book demonstrate very clearly that language and understanding are best developed in contexts which make sense to the learner. The implications for structure are as much related to the planning which precedes teaching and learning as to the activities themselves. If teaching is geared towards helping children through the processes of getting and conveying information and ideas and supporting them as they gradually develop discrimination and critical sense, then teachers need to be clear about the language structures which will feed into and draw their strength from those processes.

Besides being aware of the texts and processes which comprise language, it is important to consider the different modes of language and their contribution to learning. It is equally important to look at the ways in which teachers can develop the use of listening, reading, speaking and writing. This means taking a wide-angle view of the curriculum as well as a long-term perspective on progression. It also means tackling some of the perennial classroom problems related to language and literacy. One of the most common of these is the tendency to see the surface features of accuracy as more significant than the content of what is being written about. In reality, the most successful teaching and learning happens when a balance is reached between accuracy and fluency. That is one of the long-term aims of language and literacy teaching. The growing emphasis on publishing league tables of schools based on testing has tended to shift the balance towards an overemphasis on accuracy at the expense of fluency. This can only restrict progress as it tends to reduce motivation and a willingness to be inventive and exploratory. In the opening chapter of Part 1 Sally Wilkinson takes a detailed look at the development of children’s writing, starting from questions asked by teachers about how to motivate young writers. She highlights Vygotsky’s view that teaching should be organised in such a way that reading and writing are necessary for something. He criticises writing which is taught ‘as a motor skill and not as a complex cultural activity’, stressing that ‘children should be taught written language, not just the writing of letters’ (Vygotsky 1978:117–19). Sally Wilkinson emphasises the importance of the teacher’s role in ‘providing experiences which encourage children’s knowledge of written language to develop’. This means deliberate planning for writing development as part of the general curriculum, making opportunities for working with a range of texts and paying attention to the ways they are constructed for different purposes. It also means, right from the start, an assumption that children can be discriminating language users, critical readers of writing—both their own and other people’s.

In 1837 Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that ‘One must be an inventor in order to read well’ (Manguel 1996:176). In her chapter Helen Arnold points out the need for children to be given the means to become readers, not lookers, to become inventors of meaning through involvement with the texts they read. She points out that reading is more than getting information off the page; it includes making sense of new ideas, involving the affective, cognitive and textual aspects of learning. Helen Arnold echoes Manguel’s assertion that ‘We all read ourselves and the world around us in order to glimpse what and where we are. We read to understand, or begin to understand’ (Manguel 1996:7). She explains that reading narrative operates on a horizontal plane, linking events chronologically and sequentially, whilst reading texts explicitly designed to convey information involves operating on a vertical axis, dealing with categories of concepts arranged as a hierarchy of abstractions. Offering practical strategies for ways in which children can be helped to read information material, she looks at the smaller units of text at word and sentence level and the longer stretches of text at discourse level. She carefully analyses the differences in discourse structure between different kinds of texts, pointing out that the patterns of discourse of non-fiction texts are more complex than most fiction; the implication of this is that children need to be deliberately introduced to the differences between discourse types if they are to be helped to read in order to understand themselves in relation to the world around them.

In Chapter 3 Chris Doddington looks at oral texts, picking up several strands of thinking expressed in SCAA documents and raising questions about such notions as ‘pupils’ ability to communicate effectively’ and ‘communication skills’ (SCAA 1997:3). She argues that whilst considerations of effective speech which is adapted to purpose and audience are important, they do not give the whole picture of the part language plays in being human and becoming educated. ‘It may be,’ she suggests, ‘that talking and listening are significant to humankind for more profound and more subtle reasons than just true reporting or calculating effect a...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• FIGURES
• CONTRIBUTORS
• INTRODUCTION
• PART 1: LANGUAGE AND LEARNING
• PART 2: GETTING IDEAS GOING
• PART 3: LOOKING CLOSELY AT LANGUAGE
• PART 4: NARRATIVE ACROSS THE CURRICULUM
• PART 5: THE LANGUAGE OF REFLECTION AND EVALUATION
• PART 6: A COMMON APPROACH TO LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT