School Discourse: Learning to write across the years of schooling (Continuum Discourse)

278 Pages·2008·1.56 MB·English

by  Frances Christie

School Discourse
Continuum Discourse Series
Series Editor: Professor Ken Hyland, Director of the Centre for Applied
English Studies, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Discourse is one of the most signifi cant concepts of contemporary
thinking in the humanities and social sciences as it concerns the ways
language mediates and shapes our interactions with each other and
with the social, political and cultural formations of our society. The
Continuum Discourse Series aims to capture the fast-developing
interest in discourse to provide students, new and experienced teachers
and researchers in applied linguistics, ELT and English language with an
essential bookshelf. Each book deals with a core topic in discourse studies
to give an in-depth, structured and readable introduction to an aspect of
the way language is used in real life.
Titles in the Continuum Discourse Series:
Academic Discourse: English In A Global Context, Ken Hyland
Discourse Analysis: An Introduction, Brian Paltridge
Historical Discourse: The Language of Time, Cause
and Evaluation, Caroline Coffi n
Metadiscourse: Exploring Interaction in Writing, Ken Hyland
Narrative Discourse, Julio Gimenez
Professional Discourse, Britt-Louise Gunnarsson
The Discourse of Blogs and Wikis, Greg Myers
Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis, Paul Baker
Workplace Discourse, Almut Koester
School Discourse
Learning to write across the years
of schooling
Frances Christie
Beverly Derewianka
Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane
11 York Road Suite 704
London SE1 7NX New York NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
© Frances Christie and Beverly Derewianka 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or
any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
publishers.
First published 2008
This paperback edition published 2010
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-0-8264-9992-9 (Hardback)
978-1-4411-3131-7 (Paperback)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Publisher has applied for CIP data.
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
For Helen, Shoshana and Sally, in recognition of
their valued contributions to this book.
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Notations x
1. A Functional Approach to Writing Development 1
2. Writing Stories in Subject English 30
3. Writing to Respond to and Evaluate Other Texts 58
4. Reconstructing the Past: Recording
and Describing Historical Events 86
5. Reviewing the Past: Interpreting, Explaining,
Arguing and Debating Historical Events 114
6. Observing and Writing about the Natural World 149
7. Interpreting Phenomena of the Natural World 182
8. The Developmental Trajectory in Writing 212
References 245
Index 257
Acknowledgements
We owe a particular debt to our colleagues, Helen Lewis, Shoshana Dreyfus and
Sally Humphrey, who had signifi cant roles in the collection and analysis of texts
used in this book, as well as the larger corpus from which these texts are drawn.
We thank them for their considerable assistance and support. We also thank
several people who read and made helpful comments on drafts of chapters,
including Margaret Burchett, Caroline Coffi n, Kay O’Halloran, Clare Painter
and Katina Zammit. For assistance in helping us locate some texts used in the
book we thank Susan Feez and Claire Acevedo.
Special thanks must also go to the many schools, teachers and students whose
work we have scrutinized and used in writing the book. Finally, we thank the
Australian Research Council, which funded a three-year research project
2005–07, enabling us to collect many of the texts used in the book.
Frances Christie
Beverly Derewianka
Unless stated otherwise, all texts used in the book are copyright to Frances
Christie and Beverly Derewianka. Copyright has been sought and obtained in
respect of the following material used in this book:
In Chapter 2 ‘A class visit to Werribee Park’ and ‘The Minotaur’ are reprinted
with the kind permission of UNSW Press and ‘The Footy’is reprinted with the
kind permission of Macmillan Education.
In Chapter 3 a review of ‘Blue Hair Day’ © Natasha Bourne; A review of ‘Rowan
of Rin’ © Joshua Lewis and extracts from a discussion of ‘The Journey’ ©
Jenny Lee.
In Chapter 5 Text 5.2 ‘The Greek victory in the Second Persian War’
© Jing-Xuan Chan and Text 5.5 ‘The British Policy of Appeasement in World
War II’ © Carolyn Gill.
In Chapter 6 ‘Plants need air’ © Toby Horne; ‘AC Induction’ © Joshua Lewis;
‘Recycling’ (extract only is reprinted with the kind permission of UNSW
Press) and ‘Mullet Creek Catchment’ (extracts only) © Alaric Lewis.
Acknowledgements ix
In Chapter 7 ‘Venus’ © Michael Trollip; ‘Bats’ © Bahia Chawan; ‘How do plants
fertilize?’ is reprinted with the kind permission of UNSW Press; ‘Electromag-
netic radiation from mobile phones is a health risk’ © Alaric Lewis and
chromosomonal arrangements image (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_
syndrome#Genetics).