Direct instruction fit for purpose: applying a metalinguistic toolkit to enhance creative writing in the early secondary years.
Humphrey, Sally ; Feez, Susan
Introduction
In the teaching of English, direct instruction, characterised by
explicit and systematic teaching about language, has been found to
provide optimal support for student writers, particularly those for whom
English is an additional language and those from low socio-economic
backgrounds (Gibbons, 2009; Schleppegrell, 2013; Hammond, 2012; Ellis
& Larsen-Freeman, 2006).
With its origins in the 1970s, direct instruction has regained
prominence in the research literature with evidence of the positive
impact it can have on student learning (Adams & Engelman, 1996;
Carnine, Silbert, Kame'enui & Tarver, 2009; Engelmann &
Bruner, 2003; Hattie, 2009, 2012; Rosenshine, 2008; Slocum, 2004).
Direct instruction has been associated with didactic and teacher-centred
approaches; however, in the Australian context the term is also used to
refer to writing instruction that stresses 'the value of
"explicit" knowledge of grammar and all textual codes'
(Luke, 2014, p. 1). Such approaches, often termed text-based, or genre,
pedagogy (Derewianka & Jones, 2012; de Silva Joyce & Feez, 2012;
Rose & Martin, 2012), are aligned with Vygotsky's (1986/1934)
account of learning as a socially mediated activity, involving
collaboration and interaction between the teacher and the student. They
are informed by a metalanguage derived from systemic functional
linguistics (hereafter, SFL), the metalanguage which also informs the
Language Strand of the Australian Curriculum: English (Derewianka,
2012). A functional metalanguage makes it possible for teachers and
students to talk systematically about the way grammar and rhetoric are
used creatively in the composition of literary texts (Berry, 2009;
Schleppegrell, 2013).
This article describes teachers' use of a text-based pedagogy
in which content related to the Language strand of the Australian
Curriculum: English (Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority
(hereafter ACARA), 2015) is integrated with content related to the
Literature and Literacy strands. To illustrate the pedagogy, and its
enabling metalanguage, we draw on data from four related projects
undertaken with Australian middle years English teachers (Humphrey &
Macnaught, 2015) to assist teachers to program for creative writing
instruction. Findings indicating positive effects of the metalanguage of
systemic functional linguistics (SFL) in informing classroom
interactions are reported elsewhere (Humphrey & Macnaught, 2015;
Humphrey, Sharpe & Cullen, 2015). In this article we exemplify
teachers' use of metalanguage in resources produced to teach
specialised discourse patterns of narrative in three Year 8 classes.
Foundational understandings
In order to integrate teaching about specific language features and
creative writing, an instructional sequence was designed that combined
features of two durable pedagogies, direct instruction and text-based,
or genre, literacy pedagogy.
Direct instruction
Direct instruction first emerged as a means of teaching early years
students at risk of school failure using techniques drawn from the work
of behavioural psychologists. The term 'direct instruction'
now tends to be used more generally to refer to instructional patterns
that can be interpreted as 'visible pedagogy', following
Bernstein (2000). The effectiveness of this type of instruction is
supported by findings such as Hattie's (2009) meta-analytic
synthesis of the impact on student achievement of a range of teaching
strategies and approaches. Hattie (2009) is careful not to confuse
direct instruction with 'didactic teacher-led talking from the
front' (p. 204), but instead describes it in terms of the
'pattern' of critical planning, delivery and assessment which
underpins its success (Rosenshine & Stevens, 1986). This pattern is
promoted by Hattie (2009) as an example of 'visible teaching',
a pattern he elaborates in seven steps (pp. 204-205).
Hattie (2009) includes two essential preparatory steps, where
teachers clarify learning intentions and success criteria, that is, what
students should be able to do or understand as a result of the teaching.
In the context of language and literacy pedagogy, de Silva Joyce and
Feez (2012) incorporate into these steps an analysis of student language
learning needs. In a third step, the teacher engages students so that
they come to share the same commitment to the learning intentions and
success criteria.
The fourth step, an instructional step, includes a planned,
explicit presentation of the knowledge students need for success, the
monitoring of student progress and checking for student understanding.
The fifth step provides students with multiple opportunities to
practise, supported by teacher guidance and feedback as needed. The
sixth step provides students with a 'coherent picture' of what
has been learned through review, consolidation and reinforcement. In the
final step students display 'mastery' of what they have
learned through independent work, perhaps in different contexts.
The deployment of these instructional steps as a means of teaching
knowledge of literature, language and creative writing is a design
feature of the intervention reported in this article.
Text-based, or genre literacy pedagogy
The principles of direct instruction apply equally well to
text-based literacy pedagogies (de Silva Joyce & Feez, 2012) which
first emerged in Australia in the 1980s, and which were designed to
'enable any student to succeed with the writing demands of the
school' (Rose & Martin, 2012, p. 1). The explicit teaching
principles, strategies and approaches that characterise the pedagogy
have been consistently supported in the teacher effectiveness literature
(Clark, Kirschner & Sweller, 2012; Fisher & Frey, 2010;
Marchand-Martella & Martella, 2009; Rosenshine, 1997, 2012).
In the intervention reported here a simple four-stage teaching and
learning cycle was used for teachers first learning to implement the
text-based pedagogy. The thread weaving the stages of this cycle
together was a shared metalanguage through which language patterns
highly valued in creative writing were made visible to students, who
were then supported in appropriating these patterns for their own
creative literary purposes. The four stages of the cycle, adapted from
Callaghan and Rothery (1988), as presented in Figure 1, are building the
context, modelling, guided writing and independent composition.
During the first stage of the cycle, building the context, the
teacher establishes for students a context in which texts of the target
type can be used in a purposeful and socio-culturally meaningful way.
Students engage in exploratory activities to build knowledge of the
relevant topic or social activity (field) and 'the role of the
genre under focus in school learning and in the life of the
community' (Rothery, 1996, p. 104). During the modelling stage,
students engage in carefully planned learning activities that focus
attention on how language patterns function within exemplary model
texts.
In the guided writing stage students, assisted as needed, apply
research skills gained in the first stage of the cycle to build
knowledge and write a further text of the targeted genre in
collaboration with the teacher. The teacher asks questions to prompt
student contributions and acts as scribe. All student contributions are
accepted, although the teacher may re-word them while 'thinking out
aloud' to model for the students how to write in a required
register, and how to refine, edit and proofread the draft. The guided
writing stage is often integrated with modelling in smaller iterative
cycles as the teaching sequence unfolds. At any point in the cycle, the
pedagogy may be adapted and differentiated in response to student
progress to ensure success in the final stage.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
Independent composition echoes the final step of the direct
instruction pattern, where students research, draft, edit and proofread
their texts independently, consulting with the teacher and classmates as
needed to refine their writing. Students are provided with feedback on
their writing and are also given opportunities to reflect on how some
writers creatively exploit the stages, phases and language features of
the genre they now control, and to think about and experiment with how
they might transfer what they have learnt to other contexts.
Underpinning genre pedagogy is a metalanguage shared by the teacher
and students. The key affordances of this metalanguage are explored in
more detail in the next section.
Metalanguage as a resource for writing
Central to the design of the projects reported here was the
development with teachers of a metalanguage framework as a resource for
teachers' planning and instruction of creative writing. The
framework is derived from systemic functional linguistics (SFL), a
social semiotic theory that describes language in terms of meaning and
its variation in different contexts (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004).
Modelling context
At the most abstract level, context is modelled in terms of the
overall purposes and goals for which language is used in a culture and
how these purposes shape the overall structure of texts (Martin &
Rose, 2008). Knowledge of this level of context, known as genre, has
been internationally recognised as enabling educationally valued generic
text patterns to be made visible to students (Brisk 2015, Christie,
2012; Coffin, 2006; Derewianka & Jones, 2012; Rose & Martin,
2012; Tardy, 2013). However, critics argue that classroom practices
which present texts to students in terms of social purpose and generic
structure alone allow little room for individual variation or creativity
(Kamler, 2001; Hasan, 1996). Presenting abstract labels for text stages
(for example, narrative stage labels, orientation, complication and
resolution), without making clear the systematic relationship with the
linguistic resources used to construct the stages, limits possibilities
for students to innovate, redesign and subvert prototypical generic text
patterns (Kress, 2003; Martin, 2002).
Also problematic are applications of genre pedagogy which omit the
significant influence of the more immediate level of context, known in
the SFL model as register. Register includes: the social activity, topic
or subject matter (field); the relationship between author and audience
(tenor); and the medium through which the text is communicated (mode). A
description of the register of a text helps predict the language
resources used to express the meanings in a text and to organise these
meanings in terms of four systems, or metafunctions (Halliday, 1978).
Metafunctions and language levels
The four systems of meanings, or metafunctions, described by SFL
theory include the experiential and the logical, which combine to
realise the register variable of field; the interpersonal metafunction,
which realises tenor, and the textual metafunction, which realises mode
(Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). Each of these systems of meaning
find their expression at different levels of language, including the
level of lexico-grammar and the level of discourse semantics (Martin
& Rose, 2007).
While language choices from all metafunctions interact across texts
to make meaning, most relevant to the teaching and learning activities
described in this paper are language resources of the experiential
metafunction, representing our experience of the world.
Lexico-grammatical resources include 'happenings', or
processes, expressed as verb groups; the participants, expressed
typically as noun groups and adjectivals; and the circumstances
surrounding the processes, expressed as adverbials. Discourse semantic
resources are organised into patterns across larger units of text,
including meaning units called phases, which are composed of patterns of
entities and activity sequences that build particular fields. In the
metalanguage framework, which we prepared for teachers in the projects
as a 'toolkit' for talking about texts, four types of phases
were identified as important for building story world fields: action,
reaction, interaction and description. Applying an experiential lens to
the level of context, the stages of a narrative text can be understood
as the unfolding of a particular story 'world' involving
events (plot), characters and settings.
In creative writing, experiential meanings are also used to build
the field in which a story is set and the plot unfolds. Many successful
creative writers compose stories with plots that traverse one or more
fields, a technique that demands quite sophisticated deployment of
experiential meanings (Rothery, 1996).
Designing a pedagogical intervention
The instructional sequence for teaching creative writing described
below was designed, implemented and refined in partnership with 21
English teachers and their academic mentors at four secondary schools in
metropolitan Sydney. Teachers participated in professional learning
workshops during 2013 to further their knowledge of how to support the
literacies of their students, most of whom are from low socio-economic
backgrounds, and in the case of three of the four schools, are also
learners of English as an additional language (EAL/D). A significant
proportion of Year 7 students at each school did not achieve the minimum
national standard in writing, as revealed by an analysis of national
writing assessment results (ACARA, 2011) conducted prior to the
innovation.
This intervention was one of a series of longitudinal
multidisciplinary projects which examined the impact of the use of
metalanguage in classroom instruction on early secondary student
achievement in writing. While previous reports on this series of
projects have focused on findings related to the impact on
teachers' sustained use of metalanguage and on students'
writing outcomes across curriculum areas (Humphrey & Macnaught,
2015; Humphrey, Sharpe & Cullen, 2015), this article describes the
metalanguage customised specifically for teaching creative writing in
Years 7 and 8 and how this metalanguage was deployed throughout the
stages of the instructional sequence. The findings reported here draw on
two datasets: one tracking the design and development of instructional
sequences for teaching creative writing across all four schools and the
other used to evaluate the impact of these instructional sequences on
students' writing in one school.
The baseline for tracking the design and development of
instructional sequences for teaching creating writing was established by
selecting, prior to the investigation, a sample set of narrative texts
composed by students in the four schools, as well as model texts, both
narrative and response texts, composed by the participating teachers,
and excerpts from exemplary literary texts used as the focus of study in
Years 7 and 8. Analysis of texts and teachers' feedback made it
possible to incorporate into the design of the instructional sequences
patterns of language valued by teachers from across the different
learning contexts.
Data collected to evaluate the intervention in three classrooms at
one school included:
* three teacher assessments of students' writing development,
as measured by their average grades on creative writing assessment tasks
conducted prior to and following the intervention
* three teachers' comments in post-intervention interviews
* a sample of student self-evaluations on a web-based
self-assessment task completed following the teaching.
The student self-evaluations were selected by the lead/senior
literacy teacher who identified this sample as representative of changes
in the way students in the study talked about their textual practices.
To prepare for the professional learning workshops, the set of
baseline narrative texts written by students before the intervention,
the model texts and selected excerpts from literary texts were analysed
by the academic mentor, using the metafunctions and levels of the SFL
model of language. The findings from these analyses were presented to
the participating teachers at the professional learning workshops and
became the basis for customising the SFL metalanguage so it would
support the subsequent programming, instruction and assessment of
creative writing. Language resources which, it was agreed based on the
analyses, were critical to realising experiential meanings in the
analysed exemplary literary texts, all of which were narratives, are
presented in Table 1. The way the metalanguage in this table is used to
support student investigation of the construction of field in exemplary
narrative texts is discussed in the following section.
Designing a cycle of teaching and learning for creative writing
To design a cycle of teaching and learning for creative writing,
the teachers in the study, and their academic partners, drew on the
framework of metalinguistic knowledge, gained in the professional
learning workshops, to analyse student learning needs against both the
content descriptions of the three strands of the Australian Curriculum:
English (AC:E) and the language resources realising experiential meaning
in the literary language of the exemplary narrative texts.
Selecting and integrating curriculum content
The teaching and learning cycle was implemented to support students
as they worked towards composing a written narrative. Their task was to
compose a narrative which explored an issue relevant to young people in
the context of a unit of work entitled Youth Issues. This unit of work
was based on study of the novel, Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo, by Tim
Winton (1990). This novel was chosen for study because of its relevance
to the unit theme and to the interests of students in the early years of
the secondary school. More importantly, however, the language of the
text could 'bear scrutiny' Freebody (2011), not only in terms
of its literary quality but also as a mentor text for composing literary
texts, addressing the following AC: E Year 7 Literature strand content:
Recognise and analyse the ways that characterisation, events and
settings are combined in narratives ... (ACELT1622).
This becomes the foundation for the following Year 8 Literature
strand content:
Experiment with particular language features drawn from different
types of texts, including combinations of language and visual choices to
create new texts (ACELT1768)
At the same time, the choice of narrative as the language and
literacy focus of the intervention addressed the following Year 8
Literacy strand content:
Create imaginative, informative and persuasive texts that raise
issues ... (ACELY1736).
Addressing students' language and literacy learning needs
As well as accounting for AC: E content, the intervention aimed to
address the learning needs identified during the analysis of the sample
student narrative texts. This analysis revealed that, while most
students were able to structure the events in a narrative to compose a
simple plot comprising a complication followed by a resolution of some
kind, many had difficulty composing engaging descriptions of character
and setting. The excerpt from Text 1 in Figure 2, from a story written
by a Year 7 student prior to the intervention, is typical of the writing
that demonstrated to the project teachers that students would benefit
from being taught explicitly how to compose phases of descriptions in
narrative texts. As one teacher noted, 'The students are so plot
driven, they don't stop to let us smell the roses or get to know
the characters'.
To provide students with a model for expanding their creative
writing repertoire, the teachers and academic partners analysed the
language used by Tim Winton (1990) to describe setting and build
character in his novel. Teachers noted how Winton built character and
setting through phases of description that focus either on entities and
their qualities, or on the behaviours of entities. To draw
students' attention to the different patterns of language used in
the two different types of descriptive phases, the academic partners
added the terms 'static' description and 'dynamic'
description to the teachers' metalanguage toolkit. Both static and
dynamic descriptions are exemplified in Winton's contrasting
portrayals of two young characters (Table 2).
[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]
The terms static and dynamic provided teachers with an accessible
starting point for drawing students' attention to clause level
grammar features that distinguish the two types of description. The
framework shown in Table 1 was used to identify and organise a
'toolkit' of language features that would be modelled and
taught explicitly. These features included, for static descriptions,
relating verb groups (e.g. was) used with extended noun groups (e.g. a
pretty decent-looking bloke) and adjectival groups (e.g. generally
polite), and for dynamic descriptions, action verb groups (e.g. snored,
smacked [his lips]) were introduced as key resources.
Scaffolding through the stages of the teaching and learning cycle
The literacy teaching and learning cycle was designed to scaffold
the expansion of the students' creative writing repertoire by
shifting the focus of attention from the top down, in other words, from
the stages of the whole narrative, to the composition of phases, and to
the structure of clauses used to compose each phase. In this section we
outline the activities in a lesson sequence designed to support student
writing of narrative phases, specifically the description phases used to
describe character and setting. The cycle of genre-based teaching and
learning activities is interpreted below in terms of the seven steps of
the direct instruction pattern.
Building the context
In line with the first three steps of the direct instruction
pattern, the initial context building stage clarified for the students
the learning intention and success criteria, and engaged them in the
study of the literary text. The learning intention was explained in
terms of learning how to write more sophisticated narrative texts. In
clarifying the assessment criteria, teachers drew on the metalanguage
they already shared with students from prior learning, including labels
for the stages of a narrative text, and the literary features of
narrative texts related to characterisation and plot structure. In our
sample instructional sequence, the literary text, Lockie Leonard, Human
Torpedo (Winton, 1990), was introduced not only as a means for
determining explicit success criteria for the students' own
creative writing of narratives, but also for exploring issues of
interest and relevance to students in the early secondary years.
Teaching and learning activities in the context-building stage were
designed to engage students in the study of the text through reading the
story together for pleasure, sharing personal responses to events and
characters, and discussing the themes and issues in relation to their
own experiences. On this basis, students' knowledge of the context
can be expanded beyond their lived experiences through teacher-led
discussion of the historical, cultural and social context of the novel.
Classroom discussion about the novel Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo
included an exploration of the relationship between the characters and
the Western Australian coastal environment where the story was set, as
well as the challenges the characters faced in that environment.
Modelling and guided practice
The modelling and guided practice stages of the text-based cycle of
teaching and learning exemplify the fourth, fifth and sixth steps of the
direct instruction pattern. In the creative writing lesson sequence,
teachers extended students' prior knowledge of the narrative genre
and its typical stages by introducing the idea of story worlds, and the
way these are built within and across literary texts. This opened up for
students a more delicate and sophisticated field-related approach to the
development of setting and character. First, students participated in
small group activities to explore characters, settings and events in
familiar story worlds of literary genres such as fantasy, crime, science
fiction and historical and contemporary realism. During these activities
students begin to create their own story worlds and build their
understandings of audience expectations of narrative, expectations
creative writers can choose to meet, or to confound.
The metalanguage introduced by the teachers to talk and think about
story worlds enables student exploration of more delicate phases of
meaning within narratives, at the discourse semantic level of language.
Using the metalanguage customised to talk about creative writing, phases
were introduced in the lesson sequence as 'chunks' of meaning
for building the inner and outer experiences of the characters. A phase
in a narrative can express meanings related to characters' outer
experiences through an Action, contributing to the plot. Meanings
related to inner experiences are typically expressed through a Reaction,
providing details of the characters' emotional responses or
thoughts, and a Description of a character or setting. Interactions
between characters may contribute to building both inner and outer
experiences. The function of each of these types of phases in the
creation of story worlds can be discussed and illustrated with examples
taken from an episode of the model text. Examples taken from Lockie
Leonard, Human Torpedo, with accompanying planning notes made by
teachers are presented in Table 3.
Teachers reported that the metalanguage of 'story-worlds'
and the terminology for naming narrative phases expanded their
repertoire for talking about narrative structure. The functional
orientation, and parallel sound patterns, of the terms action, reaction,
interaction and description produced an accessible metalanguage for
students. The examples in Table 3 also illustrate that, while phases are
often contained within paragraphs, their length varies and it is rare to
find a phase that does not include traces of other phases. Providing
examples such as these encourages students to consider language units in
terms of potential and function, rather than as 'rules' that
must be slavishly followed.
To attend to description phases used to introduce characters to an
audience (Table 2) teachers guided students in a close reading of phases
describing characters in the literary text. Students were then invited
to draw a portrait of each character to represent visually their
comprehension and interpretation of the description. The drawing
activity was designed to enhance students' appreciation of the
literary work involved in composing each description phase and to
prepare them for studying the language patterns used to do this work,
patterns they could later use in their own creative writing.
Students' responses to the drawing activity were used to
introduce the metalanguage, static and dynamic, and as a means of
drawing attention to the distinctive rhetorical patterns of each
description phase type. Static descriptions were identified as patterns
of qualities (e.g. a pretty decent-looking bloke; generally polite;
clean and tidy). Dynamic descriptions, in contrast, were identified as
patterns of behaviours, or activities (wetting the bed; snored, smacked
his lips like he was at a barbeque). To avoid reductive accounts of
phase types, examples were also provided of description phases in which
both qualities and activities are combined. The students were invited to
grade these descriptions on a cline between the extremes of static
description and dynamic description.
Using the terms 'dynamic' and 'static', as well
as the terms 'qualities' and 'activities', students
were invited to participate in a whole class guided composition of
descriptions of shared acquaintances. In the examples presented in Table
4, a guided practice activity prepared by a teacher participating in the
intervention includes excerpts from Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo
(Winton, 1990), alongside responses recorded in one participating Year 7
classroom.
This activity was designed to support students to appropriate the
rhetorical patterns they had explored in the literary text as the basis
for successful composition of their own description phases. Once the
students were familiar with these patterns, they were ready to examine
them more closely to understand the clause level grammar that constructs
the meanings made by the patterns. In the following section we
illustrate this by describing how clause level grammatical patterns used
to create static descriptions were modelled to students.
Modelling grammatical patterns (static descriptions)
To explore and model grammatical patterns in static descriptions,
phases from the model literary text were used, as well as phases
composed by teachers and students collaboratively, and by students
individually. Before introducing more technical grammatical terminology,
the teacher may use everyday 'bridging' metalanguage to model
two basic clause patterns used to compose static character descriptions:
the 'who is who?' pattern, to identify characters, and the
'who is what like?' pattern, to describe characters (Table 5).
The more technical terminology for identifying the lexico-grammatical
features of the clauses is provided in the last row of each table,
although, this was not initially shown to students.
Meaning based bridging metalanguage was used to familiarise
students with how to chunk grammatical elements in terms of meaning, at
group, rather than word level. Group level structures provide creative
writers with more potential to expand descriptive meaning, including
adjectives (initially named using bridging metalanguage as 'short
describers') before the main noun, and adjectival phrases and
clauses ('long describers') after the main noun. The meaning
potential of this pattern is illustrated in Table 6 using a descriptive
clause from the model literary text, Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo
(Winton, 1990).
Once a number of examples of clauses composed using these patterns
were explored, the technical grammatical terms at both group and word
level (e.g. noun, noun group, adjective, adjectival phrase) were
introduced. The grammatical forms labelled by these terms were carefully
related to their function, as illustrated in Table 6.
As can be seen in the examples, static descriptions are composed
largely of extended noun groups and adjectival elements (e.g. a pretty
decent-looking bloke), while dynamic descriptions deploy a range of verb
types, often with enriched meanings (e.g. snored, smacked). The two
excerpts below have been annotated to illustrate these patterns.
Entities represented as extended noun groups are underlined and
qualities expressed adjectivally are double underlined. Relating verbs,
used to link entities and qualities, are highlighted, and action verb
groups are in bold font. The metalanguage used by teachers to name these
lexico-grammatical features refers to the function of the feature as
well as to the form.
Text 2 a
At twelve and three quarters, Lockie Leonard was a pretty
decent-looking bloke. He was generally polite and (he) knew how to keep
himself clean and tidy ... but ... Lockie's method of eating
Weetbix was truly, awesomely foul. (Winton, 1990, p. 8)
Text 3 a
It was easy to cut a kid like Phillip. But sometimes he wanted to
tie those stinking PJs around Phillip's neck and sling him out into
the rain. Ai well as wetting the bed, Phillip snored and smacked his
lips like he was at a barbeque. (Winton, 1990, p. 7)
During the intervention teachers were encouraged to emphasise that
grammar should be considered in terms of patterns rather than rules,
encouraging students to create descriptions that mixed static and
dynamic meaning patterns in innovative ways. Nevertheless, by first
introducing these two patterns as distinct types, teachers were able to
distinguish for students the distinctive grammatical functions and forms
needed for composing literary descriptions.
Independent composition
The previous section illustrated how metalanguage was used to
describe language patterns for creating, at multiple text levels,
experiential meanings in stories. For some students, the use of the
metalanguage at the discourse semantic level may be sufficient to
support them in creating rich and extended descriptions in their
independent writing. For others, however, and particularly students
learning English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D), explicit
modelling of the lexico-grammatical resources may be needed for them to
create these literary description patterns independently. In the next
section we will briefly discuss an analysis of how metalanguage was used
first to support students during independent writing and then to provide
them with feedback on their work.
Using metalanguage for independent writing and feedback
During the first three stages of the instructional sequence based
on the novel Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo (Winton, 1990) students were
provided with the support they needed to construct description phases
independently in the last stage of the sequence. Teachers reported that
students' need for guidance during this stage varied. In one Year 8
class with a high proportion of EAL/D learners the teacher provided
guidance by showing an image of a boy dressed in a football club uniform
holding a football. After brainstorming possible storylines relating the
image to the youth issues theme, students independently composed a
description of the character to use in their story. The following is a
character description, which the teacher reported was typical of those
written by students in the class:
Text 10
Ai John pulled his favourite brown Hawthorne
jersey on over his shirt, he became an almighty
warrior ready to face the crucial grand final that
stood ahead of him. He stormed out of the change
room and onto the football field.
When analysing the text with her colleagues and the academic
mentor, the teacher used the metalanguage to attend to the way the
student had combined both static and dynamic description, and had used
extended noun groups (e.g. his favourite brown Hawthorne jersey) and an
expressive action verb (stormed). This demonstrates the value of using
metalanguage to attend to language features of student texts at both the
discourse semantic and lexico-grammatical levels.
Impact of direct instruction intervention on student writing in one
school
While an analysis of specific improvements in students'
independently written narratives in all participating classes is beyond
the scope of this article, teachers' formal assessments of Year 8
students' writing in one school demonstrated the effectiveness of
the intervention. In this school, participating teachers in three Year 8
classes reported that they used both the metalanguage introduced in the
professional learning workshops and the resources designed
collaboratively with academic mentors and colleagues, including those
shown in Tables 2-6. These teachers found a significant gain in student
achievement in narrative writing assessments following the intervention
when compared with assessments undertaken prior to the instructional
cycle. Specifically, 95% of students across the three Year 8 classes in
which the cycle was implemented improved their achievement by one or two
letter grades (e.g. from a C grade to an A grade) in a period of three
months. Teachers' own evaluations revealed their increased
confidence to use the approach in subsequent teaching with some also
commenting on the 'engaging and interactive' nature of the
lessons.
Also significant are students' own evaluations of their
progress. In a web-based self-assessment task students commented on
their own writing by responding to the following question:
What is one thing you have learned to do better in
terms of describing characters or setting?
The following comments, reported by teachers as representative of
students across the three classes, indicate that the students too were
able to use aspects of the metalanguage to make formative assessments of
their writing.
Student A: What I have learned is expanding noun
groups.
Student B: I can use action words as well as normal
descriptive language to describe a person.
In these examples, students do not yet use metalanguage at the
level of phase (e.g. dynamic description); however, they do show an
awareness of the functional role of both noun groups and verb groups,
and, crucially, the contribution of these resources to building
character in description phases of narratives.
The cycle of teaching and learning described above, and the way the
students were supported to use metalanguage as a resource for creative
writing, is illustrative only. Nevertheless, this description resonates
with a growing body of literature demonstrating the value of teaching
knowledge about language explicitly using direct instruction techniques,
and of providing students with a metalanguage that enables them to talk
and think reflectively about their language use (Brisk, 2012; Gebhard,
Harman and Seger, 2007; Myhill, Lines & Watson, 2011; Schleppegrell,
2013).
Conclusion
In this article we have reported on the design of an instructional
sequence which was implemented in four early secondary creative writing
classrooms. This sequence features a shared metalanguage at the heart of
a type of direct instruction known as text-based, or genre, literacy
pedagogy. Genre pedagogy comprises cycles of instruction that
instantiate the general principles underlying direct instruction, as
described by Hattie (2009), in particular explicit instructional
procedures used to meet planned success criteria. We have argued that
for direct instruction to be fit for purpose in the context of
text-based approaches to teaching writing, a metalanguage shared by
teachers and students is required. As demonstrated in the resources
produced by academic mentors and participating teachers across four
participating schools, a shared metalanguage makes visible for students
the literacy demands of the specialised discourse of narrative, beyond
basic generic structure. Furthermore, it provides students with a means
for analysing exemplary literary texts so they can identify the
discourse patterns and strategies used by expert writers, and to
appropriate, reflectively, these patterns and strategies to enhance the
quality of their own writing.
As illustrated in the evaluation of the intervention in one school,
the metalanguage introduced with and illustrated by model texts becomes
a valuable resource students can use to reflect on their own writing
during the revision and editing process. The use of metalanguage
liberates the pedagogy from the didacticism often associated with direct
instruction in general, and text-based literacy pedagogies in
particular. Playful activities, such as composing visual representations
in response to written literary descriptions and re-applying discourse
patterns to the drafting of rich descriptions of characters in their own
stories, demonstrate the individual control and creativity the
metalanguage affords the students. In this paper, we have presented the
metalanguage as a tool students can use to reflect on their own writing.
The potential of the metalanguage as a teaching resource for providing
students with principled and systematic feedback against success
criteria is yet to be explored. Ongoing analysis of the case study data
from the four early secondary projects presented above will no doubt
reveal more about this potential.
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Sally Humphrey
Australian Catholic University
Susan Feez
University of New England
Sally Humphrey is Senior Lecturer in literacy education at the
Australian Catholic University. Sally has worked for many years in the
field of literacy and social semiotics as a teacher educator and
educational linguist in school and higher education contexts. Her
research has drawn on systemic functional linguistics, genre and
appraisal theory and rhetoric to support adolescent learners to develop
the literacies needed for participation in academic and civic life.
Susan Feez is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the
University of New England. She teaches and researches in the field of
educational linguistics, with particular interest in the teaching of
English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D), initial literacy
education and discipline-specific literacy education. Susan also has
expertise in Montessori education. In addition Susan has a special
interest in applying research findings to pedagogy and resource
development.
Table 1. Critical language resources for expressing experiential
meanings in narrative texts
Language Resources for Narrative Texts (4x4)
Levels/Functions Whole text Phase level
(genre and register) (discourse semantics)
Language to Literary themes and Inner and outer worlds
express ideas story 'worlds' unfold unfold through phases
around a central of:
Experiential complication, which is
meanings related resolved in some way. * action
to FIELD Story worlds include: (problems, solutions)
everyday, fantasy,
science fiction and * reaction
historical worlds. (thoughts, feelings)
* interaction between
characters
* description
(dynamic, static)
Language Resources for Narrative Texts (4x4)
Levels/Functions Sentence and clause Word & Expression
(grammar)
Language to Noun groups build Vocabulary choices as
express ideas characters and events nouns, adjectives,
within the field of the adverbs, verbs build a
Experiential story. vivid literary world.
meanings related
to FIELD Verb groups represent a Auxiliary and main verbs
range of processes create tense (e.g. past
(action, saying, simple).
sensing, relating) to
build phases.
Adverbials specify
circumstances of time,
place, manner.
Table 2. Static and dynamic description phases in
the novel: Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo
Text 2 a more static description Text 3 a more dynamic description
At twelve and three quarters, It was easy to cut a kid like
Lockie Leonard was a pretty Phillip. But sometimes he wanted
decent-looking bloke. He was to tie those stinking PJs around
generally polite and (he) knew Phillip's neck and sling him out
how to keep himself clean and into the rain. As well as wetting
tidy ... but ... Lockie's method the bed, Phillip snored and
of eating Weetbix was truly, smacked his lips like he was at a
awesomely foul. (p. 8) barbeque. (p. 7)
Table 3. Story phases in opening chapter of the novel: Lockie
Leonard, Human Torpedo
Phases Teaching notes for modelling
Text 4 (Excerpt) The first day Lockie Reaction phase:
Leonard saw this town it was raining. Novel starts with emotional
The old family Falcon had been loaded and sensory reactions of the
down like a refugee boat as they rolled family to the description of
into this little place fresh from the the town and house.
city. The whole family had tried to be
cheerful about it, but the place looked
awful. The town was small and crummy-
looking and when they saw the house the
police force had organised for them,
everyone in the car went quiet.
Lockie's little brother looked at him,
pegging his nose with his fingers. His
baby sister squirmed on the front seat.
His dad left the motor running. His mum
just started bawling, (p. 5)
Text 5 (Excerpt) Funny thing is, Lockie Description phase
got to like that place. It was a big Lockie's initial emotional
old fibro joint with a rusty tin roof, reaction creates a contrast
and it went all higgledy-piggledy with the preceding phase.
inside, like whoever built it kept The following description of
having more kids and just bunged on a features justifies his
room every Christmas. It was on swampy positive reaction.
ground next to the showgrounds ... (p.
5)
Text 6 (Excerpt) The first few weeks in Action phase
town, Lockie lay on his bed getting up Lockie's behaviours are
a sweat, or went out walking around the implicit reactions, and
swampy drains behind the house. He evidence of a troubled mood.
played his Van Halen tapes and stood in
front of the mirror with his tennis
racquet, giving it vibrato and thrash
chords and feedback to forget his
troubles. He really hammered that old
Slazenger like it was connected to a
million watts of distortion, (p. 6)
Text 7 (Excerpt) The baby was called Interaction phase
Barbara, but Lockie called her Blob. Lockie's interaction with
'G 'day Blob,' he muttered. 'Ock-ock- his sister shows his soft
ock!' 'She wants to sit on your lap, side and a good relationship
love,' Mrs Leonard said. Here, then.' with his family.
Lockie reached up and took Blob under
the arms ... (p. 7)
Table 4. Year 7 Guided practice activity
Guided practice in creating description phases
Description phases are important for introducing characters and
settings in ways that create particular narrative worlds. Below are
some sample description phases from the early chapters of Lockie
Leonard, Human Torpedo, which create the settings and characters in
this contemporary realist world. Identify the type of description
and then follow that pattern to write your own descriptions of
settings or people in your own world.
Description phases from Type of Your description
Lockie Leonard, Human description
Torpedo
Description of Lockie's Static Description of your school
school
The school wasn't anywhere
Text 8 as spacious as the high
schools in the country.
(Excerpt) The school wasn't Country high schools
anywhere near as ugly as looked like barns you see
the high schools in the on outback movies ...
city. City schools looked
like those in concentration
camps you see on movies.
The place was old. It
looked kind of dignified.
Out the front, at the edge
of the sloping lawns, there
were hedges clipped in the
shape of animals, (p. 10)
Description of Lockie's Dynamic Description of a sibling,
brother cousin, friend or pet!
Text 9 (Excerpt) As well as slobbering,
Billy gobbles his food
... As well as wetting the like he hasn't eaten in
bed, Phillip snored and days.
smacked his lips like he
was at a barbeque. (p. 7)
Table 5. Basic clause patterns used in static description phases
(a) 'who--is--who' clauses
who is/was who
Lockie Leonard was a pretty decent-looking bloke.
Lockie's mum was the serious sort
She was just a flaming nuisance
Noun group/pronoun to name relating noun group with describing
person verb adjectives
(b) 'who--is--what like' clauses
who is/was what like
He was generally polite
She was concerned, conscientious
noun group/pronoun to name relating adjectival wording to describe
person verb quality
Table 6. Group level structures in a descriptive clause
Clause a big hairy country-looking kid with
bad teeth swooshed past him on a wave
Noun group a big hairy country-looking
Function short describers
Form article adjectives
Clause a big hairy country-looking
kid with bad teeth swooshed
past him on a wave
Noun group kid with bad teeth
Function thing long describers
Form noun adjectival phrase
