SECOND GRADE: A DIDACTIC APPROACH
3. SUBJECTS AND PROCEDURE
Twenty-one second graders (11 boys, 10 girls; mean age 7 years, 8 months) partici- pated in this study. They all attended the same classroom in an elementary school in Queretaro, Mexico. All of the children were middle-class, Spanish native speakers.
The didactic sequence took approximately 20 hours, distributed over two months (in the middle part of the school year), with 30-50 minute sessions. The teacher at- tended four preliminary sessions, in order to ensure her full understanding of the didactic sequence, and attended another weekly session to discuss children’s pro- gress and modes of intervention. The teacher was in charge of all of the sessions.
The sequence involved the following steps:
3.1 Production of First Drafts
First, the teacher encouraged children to tell jokes to the whole class.
Each child wrote his/her favourite joke (first draft).
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3.2 Production of Second Drafts 3)
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Children read jokes from several magazines. Teacher centred their attention on how they could differentiate when different speakers intervened (use of hy- phens), and the presence of capital letters and full stops. All of these jokes in- cluded a narrator and two speakers.
Exercises were given in their notebooks where children had to:
Correct small texts (between 6 and 10 lines of text) by placing punctuation marks (mainly periods and capital letters). These texts were all written in lower- case letters, and there was a total absence of punctuation. Two more similar ex-
ercises were given in which upper- and lower-case letters were mixed (in begin- ning, middle and end positions).
Decide whether to use upper- or lower-case letters in blank spaces in a short story. These included the first letter in the text, the first letter after a full stop, and the first letter in proper names and common nouns. In these two exercises, children compared their corrections and discussed the reasons underlying their decisions.
Identify speakers and narrator in printed short jokes and stories. Children were asked to read the text individually. After that, children were asked to distinguish what was “said” by the teller of the story (the narrator) and what was actually said by each one of the characters. Children were ask to identify any marks that showed when a character spoke.
Identify upper-case letters, exclamation and question marks and comment about what they thought their function in the text was.
The whole group made corrections on one of the students’ first drafts, as the teacher wrote what they indicated on the text, using an overhead projector. Use of beginning capital letter, final full stop, and differentiation of speakers and turns of speech were emphasized.
In groups of 3, children made comments about their first drafts. Later on, each author wrote a second draft.
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3.3 Production of Third Drafts
The teacher told a joke and then wrote it on the board, as the children indicated what she should write. Children indicated the use of punctuation marks. The teacher pointed out interpretation problems (for example, how to differentiate between speakers and the difficulties in identifying whether a character was speaking or another character was reporting what a character had said.)
Children did more exercises of the same kind in their notebooks (see production of second draft), and some new exercises were included. Mainly:
Placing the appropriate punctuation marks in texts (mainly hyphens, periods, interrogation and exclamation marks) in small texts. Children worked individu- ally, and after that they discussed their work in pairs.
Writing stories, taking special care in introducing upper-case letters, full stops, and hyphens to introduce direct speech. Their texts were revised in small groups, with the teacher pointing out problematic passages in texts.
Each child wrote a third draft, re-read this draft and corrected it for the final version.
Jokes were published in the school’s newspaper, which is distributed to all stu- dents, teachers and parents.
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4. RESULTS
In this analysis, we will discuss the ways in which the children differentiated direct and indirect speech; how they indicated speaker’s turns; and how they contrasted the beginning and end of quotations. Additional mention will be made concerning the use of full stops at the end of the text, capital letters to start the text and periods (in- cluding full-stops) in children’s jokes. Some examples will be given. As it is impos- sible to include a large number of examples, we will rely heavily upon the texts pro- duced by a few of the children.
4.1 First Drafts
First drafts show an almost total lack of punctuation. Only one of the children started the text with a capital letter, and one of them mixed upper- and lower-case letters in most of the words, in both beginning, middle and end positions. Ten of the children included a final full stop to show the boundary of the written text. None of them used any other punctuation marks.
With one exception, children distinguished quoted speech through the use of verbs like “say” or “shout” (lexicalization). It is interesting to note that 18 of the children either used two verbs to introduce direct speech (for example “shout”, fol- lowed by “say”) or made use of the same verb both at the beginning and end of the quote. Mariana (age 7;4), for instance, wrote the following (versions will be tran- scribed exactly as they appear in the child’s text, followed by the closest possible translation into English within brackets, using a normalized spelling):
(...) y cuando bolbio a ber la leche le grito a su mama y le dijo mama mama el pan se esta tomando mi leche
and when he saw the milk again he shouted to his mother and he said mother mother the bread is drinking my milk
The only child (Alam, age 7;8) that did not use lexicalization to signal quoted speech (and continued this way in all his versions) used juxtaposition. He had probably understood that the use of “say” in a repetitive way makes jokes less effec- tive. In the first version, quoted speech was not differentiated, and could only be distinguished by the reader through contextual clues:
Era una vez franquinstain y Dracula y iban en un carro y franc iba manejando iva a 140 franc y iba una viejita en enmedio de la ca rretera caminando y Dracula franc la viejita la viejita franc la viejita y lo agarra de los hombros franc la viejita franc la viejita y la atropello uf franc pence que te la ibas a echar.
There was once frankenstein and Dracula and they were in a car and frank was driving he was going at 140 frank and an old lady was walking in the middle of the road and Dracula frank the old lady the old lady and grabs frank from the shoulders frank the old lady frank the old lady and runs over her oof frank I thought you were going to get her
4.2 Second Drafts
In second drafts, all of the children seemed to deliberately establish the limits of direct speech. Although 20 children started using hyphens to do so (mostly at the beginning, but not at the end of quotes), 19 of them used lexicalization as well. All of the children were able to delimit turns of speech,
Establishing contrasts between direct and indirect speech seemed to be more dif- ficult. Thus, 50% of the children who used hyphens at the beginning and end of di- rect speech, made use of them whenever they used verbs such as “say” or “shout”, in reported speech as well. This is an example from a boy (7; 9):
(...) y los pilotos dijeron – Tiren maletasno podemos sostener tanto peso y tiraron maletas y y ano que donada y – los pilotosdijeron lo mismo y tiraron el piso y el mexi- cano dijo – yo me tiro por mi pays ielruso – dijo lo mismo (...)
(...) and the pilots said – Throw away your bags we can’t handle the weight and they threw away the bags and there was nothing left and – the pilots said the same and they threw away the floor and the Mexican said – I throw myself for my country and the Russian – said the same (...)
Only one of the children (age 7;5) started using exclamation marks in his second draft to establish boundaries between the beginning and end of quotes. He did not use a hyphen, even though he used this punctuation mark consistently in all other cases of direct speech. It is possible that, in this case, the child felt that boundaries were sufficiently clear through the use of opening and end signs (¡!).
Mariana, whose first draft we have seen previously, is the only child who did not use hyphens in her second draft. Instead, she used periods to establish the presence of a quotation as well as to delimit sentences and clauses:
Había una vez en la casa de Pepito. Su mamá le dijo a Pepito que se fuera a desayunar.
Y agarró su pan y lo puso en su leche. Y cuando volvió a ver su leche le grito a su ma- má. Y le dijo. Mamá mamá el pan se esta tomando mi leche.
Once upon a time in Pepito’s house. His mother told Pepito to go and have breakfast.
And he took his bread and put it in his milk. And when he looked at his milk again he shouted to his mother. And he said. Mother mother the bread is drinking my milk.
In her text, periods seem to be insufficient to delimit sentences and clauses. Proba- bly that is the reason for an additional “and” to be added.
Whereas periods had not been used in first drafts to divide one clause or sentence from the other, 57% of the children started using them in their second drafts. All of them included a capital letter after each period.
4.3 Final Drafts
In their final drafts, all of the children used hyphens to signal direct speech. Only 2 of them did so when introducing reported speech through the use of verbs such as
“say”. Except for Alam, all of the children used verbs to introduce direct speech,
together with hyphens. However, three children continued with the use of two verbs to establish the boundaries of direct speech.
Eighty percent of the children began to make use of exclamation and/or interro- gation signs in a conventional way, at the same time as using hyphens for quotes.
All of the children made some use of periods to delimit sentences or clauses and placed a capital letter after each period. Only two of the children, who had not used periods in their previous drafts, delimited these units both by a period and the use of
“and”. Only one child (age 8;0) used quotation marks to indicate the name of a ho- tel:
One day 1 man recommended to 1 chinese man the hotel “John the great”. The chinese man went to the hotel and asked the owner – Can I spend the night in 1 of your rooms –.
The owner said – I only have the bloody-hand room. The Chinese man answers – Not me! I am afraid! (...)
Only two of the children used commas. In this case, commas had exactly the same uses as periods. Both appear in the final text in alternation.
Table 1 indicates the frequency of texts that include punctuation in each of the drafts: