Discourse-bridging perspectives on feedback on students’ writing in grade 3

Abstract

In both current debates on the perceived crisis of young people’s writing and national research on writing instruction, there is a tendency to foreground one particular perspective on writing. Debaters focus on technical skills, while many researchers advocate a focus on function rather than form. Also, research on writing instruction in primary years of schooling is scarce. This article responds to the need for a more nuanced understanding of writing instruction in the primary years of schooling. Its particular focus is on the oral feedback given on letters written by students in Grade 3. The research aim is to explore and highlight movements between different perspectives on writing in the interaction.

The study is based on transcribed audio recordings of nine feedback talks (1h30m) between a school librarian and Grade 3 students writing letters based on a reading of a children’s book. In the analysis of the data, Roz Ivanić’s discourses of writing are operationalized and visualized in a way which enables the detailed analysis of how oral classroom interactions relate to correctness, disposition, and the communicative context. In particular, this analytical tool highlights discursive shifts, for example between disposition and communicative function. Feedback focusing on the communicative context is understood in light of Halliday’s contextual categories of field, tenor and mode.

The writing assignment given to the students consisted of answering letters from parents seeking aid with misbehaving children. In doing this, they were expected to assume the role of the book’s protagonist, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. The letters they responded to had been written by peers in a previous, related assignment. The result of the analysis shows that the librarian underscored the importance of adhering to a prescribed disposition of the letter, with reference to different aspects of the communicative context. In particular, she underlined the importance of explaining why the students’ proposed solutions to children’s misbehavior would work (field) to convince and reassure the parents (tenor). Also, she drew attention to the need for explicitness in written communication, which relates to the contextual category of mode. As such, the results show a considerable interplay between disposition and communicative goals, which can be understood as discursive shifts. The students were also given feedback on syntax, interpunctuation, and spelling. This feedback was rarely related to the construction or communicative goals of the text.  However, there were some exceptions, such as when the librarian commented positively on the use of exclamation marks reflecting the “energy” of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and guided the children in using a conjunction to give an explanation.

In summary, the results highlight the potential of the interplay between different discourses of writing. It is suggested that the analytical lens developed and employed in the study can be used in other activities of writing instruction, for example teacher-led deconstructions of model texts. A more nuanced view of the interplay between textual forms and functions in on-going teaching is desirable to promote students writing and counteract the one-sided perspectives which can otherwise govern discussions about writing instruction.