and took editing their peers’ work very seriously, often calling on Ms Chetty to assist.
If a girl found that the work required too much editing, she would take the boy’s book to Ms Chetty for her to work one-on-one with the boy. It seemed that the girls received less editing and assistance than the boys from both their teacher and peers.
During the editing process a few minor arguments broke out between the boys and their female peers over corrections that were made. One altercation involving a boy and his female peer arose from the fact that the girl felt that he did not want to listen to her and make her suggested corrections. He responded by saying he was tired of her always checking his work and telling him what to do. Daly (2004) states that over interference in how boys structure their writing and the imposition of another’s language and ideas can lead to feelings of resentment, which was evident in this instance. Ms Chetty had to intervene and check the boy’s work herself. A few girls also requested that Ms Chetty, or someone other than their desk partner, edit their work, because they stated that the boys who sit next to them were unable to identify errors.
This can be expected where an academically advanced learner is seated next to a learner who experiences difficulties with reading and writing; the former is able to edit the latter’s draft, but the latter is unable to edit the former’s. When asked about this, those boys explained that they could not see anything wrong. This is not surprising because their drafts had many errors and needed much editing. Ms Chetty also told the learners to read through and check their own work before writing their final drafts.
Peer editing in School B was not possible because most learners, especially most of the boys, had not completed their drafts. Instead, they read out what they had written, were stopped short while reading because their work was copied from another text, and they then worked as a class to correct each boy’s draft. During this time, the teacher had to discipline several boys because they had not completed the work, were being disrespectful, laughing and chatting or not paying attention. As in the previous two lessons (during the planning stage), one boy tried to dominate by yelling out unsolicited answers to questions, so he was disciplined and told to give others a chance to think and give answers.
The process genre approach to writing foregrounds the importance of understanding the purpose for writing the genre, the language associated with the genre and the context in which the writing happens (Badger & White, 2000). The CAPS (DBE, 2011a) states that Grade 6 learners must be able to produce different types of texts for different purposes. The boys in both schools had to produce narrative stories during the lessons that were observed. It is interesting that both teachers selected the narrative genre as it was one that they both indicated, during the interviews, they had learnt to write when they were at school. Having attended school during the apartheid era, Ms Chetty recalled writing many “stories”, sometimes about topics that she was unable to relate to, such as ‘My first train ride’. “None of the learners in my class had ever been on a train ride.” She said that they did other types of writing such as
“descriptive, expository, narrative, uhm, there are five types, but I can’t remember all now.” She turned to a colleague who was sitting on the far end of the staff room where the interview was being conducted to ask if she could remember the others. Ms Naidoo’s response was the same in terms of writing stories about unfamiliar topics, but she felt that those helped to develop her imagination. She said that they also learnt to write letters and poems and upon analysing her boys’ books, I noticed that the text types that they had engaged with earlier in the year were stories, letters and poems.
To determine what other genres they had previously written, the boys were given the following instruction in the activity-based questionnaire:
1. Stick green stars on all the types of writing you do in class Stories Descriptions Plays/
dialogues Letters Cards Poems News reports Posters Invitations Adverts Other
(write in these blocks)->
In both schools, almost all the boys stuck green stars on most of the types of writing, and during the interviews their teachers also indicated that they taught their learners how to write a variety of texts. Although this suggests that they had been exposed to writing for different purposes as prescribed by the CAPS, Daly (2004) states that boys
prefer reading and writing action stories, and when completing the activity-based questionnaire, the genres that most boys in both schools indicated they enjoyed were action, adventure and comics.
The CAPS provides a summary of text types that must be covered across the IP (DBE, 2011a, p.27). This tabulated list is divided into essays and transactional texts, and indicates the text type, purpose, text structure and language features (Refer to Chapter 2, Table 3). This table is a valuable resource for teachers to familiarise themselves and their learners with the purpose, language features and structure of different genres. When used, learners will not only understand what is expected when they encounter the same genre in future grades but understanding these aspects of the genre will also contribute to the learners’ comprehension process when reading a text of the same genre (Mather, 2012). In addition to this summary of text types, there is a table that details the length of text for learners in each Grade in the IP (DBE, 2011a, p.32).
The instruction in the workbooks provided for learners in School A was to write a description of a dream. During the class discussion and when their teacher was explaining the activity, she did not explain that the type of text they were expected to produce was a description of a dream, as stated in their workbooks, which would entail a vivid description of the features or characteristics of their dreams, using adjectives, adverbs, figurative language and, in this instance, the past tense for an event has already occurred (DBE, 2011a). These salient language features help the reader to distinguish a descriptive essay from other types of essays. Adding to these instructions, the prompts on the mind map are:
Following these prompts could also lead the learners more towards writing a narrative essay, as they would be writing in the first person, sequentially using connectives that signal time, which are all language features of the narrative essay. Moreover, if one
1. What I did before I slept.
2. How the dream started.
3. How I felt during the dream.
4. How the dream ended.
considers the structure that the learners’ stories followed, it was more of a narrative text structure orientation to introduce the characters and setting (prompt 1), events leading to a complication (prompt 2) and the resolution (prompt 4 and 5). In contrast, the descriptive text structure begins with a general orientation of the subject, followed by a description of the features or characteristics of the subject (DBE, 2011a).
Therefore, the learners are expected to write a story (narrative essay) in which they describe a dream or nightmare. Highlighted here is the importance of topic choice and wording, especially at the IP level where learners are still new to many genres and could become easily confused and unable to distinguish between the different types of texts.
However, the topic and type of text are appropriate for the age and level of the learners and cater for different interests, as the learners can base their dreams on anything that they might enjoy writing about. This is particularly advantageous for boys, as it allows for them to write action and adventure stories. The workbook is also colourful and has pictures, which King and Gurian (2006) state is helpful when teaching boys writing because they respond well to visual stimuli. In the observed lesson in School A, that the teacher limited the dream to a nightmare may have been a disadvantage, especially for sensitive learners. This choice was probably made for pedagogical reasons, as Ms Chetty explained that co-creating a nightmare during the whole-class discussion was fun and stimulated the boys’ interest with action and sounds. The length of the essay that Ms Chetty asked the learners to produce was not in keeping with the expectations of the CAPS (although, most boys wrote more than the three paragraphs of 4–5 lines that the teacher requested).
In School B, the learners were asked to write a story on a topic of their choice. The word story was used to indicate the type of text, but both teachers did not use the word narrative, so later in their schooling careers when the learners are asked to write a narrative, they will be unfamiliar with the word. Ms Naidoo did, however, try to explain narrative genre concepts such as plot, mood, setting and character, using a narrative text, titled ‘The Bump’, that the class had read the previous week. The learners seemed to struggle to grasp these concepts and determine how to integrate them into the story. At one point in her lesson Ms Naidoo also tried to explain what the climax of the story was, but the lesson was not well structured and sequential, so the learners
may have been unsure of how that element fitted into the writing of their stories.
Eventually, most girls who read their work aloud in the class chose to write fairy tales that they were familiar with, and the boys chose adventure stories like ‘The ten mile an hour dog’, ‘The fierce storm’, ‘The flying horse’, and ‘The taxi ride to town’.
The story length that Ms Naidoo asked for was the same as Ms Chetty’s and did not accord with the expectations of the CAPS. Perhaps she prescribed this length because all her learners were second language English speakers thus, using her knowledge of her learners, she anticipated their limitations. South African schools often elect to offer English at HL level even though most of the learners are second language speakers, as was explained in Chapter 2. Thus, learners fall further and further behind because, as they progress to a higher grade, each teacher has the challenge of trying to develop the concepts that the learners were unable to grasp at the prescribed time in the previous grades (Mather, 2012). Unfamiliarity with concepts was evident in School B, as Ms Naidoo tried to accustom the learners to aspects that ought to have been covered in earlier grades such as the writing process, elements of a narrative essay and different linguistic aspects. These were not easily grasped by the learners and resulted in the production of incomplete, poorly constructed stories by many of them.
Another possible reason for Ms Naidoo’s learners struggling to write a well organised, grammatically correct narrative text may be the existing gap created by the fact that they were learning English at HL level which was too high for them.