This study is an ethnographic investigation into the teaching of writing in an African secondary school in the Pietermaritzburg area. The research described in this thesis was carried out from 1993-1996 and in 1998 and 1999 in the secondary school in the Pietermaritzburg area.
Research Aims and Questions
Research Site
Thus, they will provide a means of understanding and evaluating these issues in the research context of this investigation. Insights from the literature will be used to develop criteria against which school practices can be assessed.
Findings
The various sources and methods used for data collection will be described along with the history of the ongoing research process.
Conclusions and Implications
Critiques of Genre-Based Approaches
Johnson (1994) raises similar concerns to Kress in an exploration of the value of genre-based approaches to access and inclusion in the South African context. Finally, concerns were expressed that in the South African context there were many teachers who were inadequately trained and without access to training.
The New Literacy Studies and Critical Social Literacy
All of these issues have implications for teacher education, which will be discussed in the implications of this study's findings. Possibly because this article represents the preliminary stages in the formulation of a pedagogy of multiliteracies, there is a degree of vagueness about the content of the pedagogy.
Genre-Based Methodology
Second, it does not link assumptions about language learning to practice in the cycle. The assumption is that students develop through interaction and mediation with adult tutors, but this is largely limited to the joint negotiation of texts. We divided the verbs into: action verbs (actions that take place in the world); mental verbs (actions that occur in people); and relational verbs (which define, describe or identify - 'to be', 'to have'). Students then placed verbs into these three categories from an essay arguing about packaging issues. This contrasted with the predominance of action verbs in their writing to models of more mature writing where writers used nominalizations to turn actions into things.
I TENOR I
Assessment and Response
The final methodological area to explore is the assessment and response to student writing. Macken and Slade argue that to be effective, assessment practices must be linguistically principled, criteria-based, diagnostic, formative and finally summative. This means that assessment must be based on explicit criteria against which students' writing and language performance can be assessed.
They argue that systematic functional linguistics provides a model of language that provides a contextualized view of language. It enables clear criteria to be developed that are contextually and linguistically informed, and provides teachers with the tools to systematically link purpose and audience to the language itself. Elsewhere in this chapter. it is demonstrated how a text is shaped by four environmental/contextual factors, namely, genre, trend, field and mode which are important for the interpretation and production of a text and therefore its evaluation.
Implications for the Research Process
By paying attention to the four interconnected aspects of the text environment, teachers and students will be able to develop explicit criteria and a metalanguage for assessment. This will help students write for real purposes (academic and professional) and understand appropriate linguistic skills. criteria for doing this. It will also enable teachers to diagnose problems and provide specific strategies for their resolution. The insights from the literature review also provide guidance on the data that should be collected in the research process if one is to gain insight into the teaching of writing in a school and the factors that have shaped that teaching. A central aim of this study was therefore to understand all the factors that influence the teaching of writing in the school context that I examined.
This is followed by a description of the community and school in which the research took place.
The Nature of Ethnographic Research
For my research topic, it was necessary to understand how the learning and teaching of writing in the classrooms of the city's former DET school is embedded in ever-widening contexts, such as the school, the educational and examination system, the community in which the school is located, and the wider society. For example, in my research, I used literary life histories (discussed later in this chapter) as a means of eliciting students' perspectives and experiences of learning and teaching writing in the communities and schools I researched. . I felt that this would provide some explanation for the teaching and writing practices I encountered, both in the classes I taught and in the school as a whole.
A final principle of ethnographic research to consider is the role of theory in the research process.
Research Methodology and its Evolution
- Research Site: Community and School
- Probing the Field and Developing the Research Process
The problems between these youths and the youth organization affiliated with the UDF quickly erupted into armed conflict between the groups in the late 1980s. This is indicative of the weak ties that seem to exist between the community and the school and the lack of ongoing community involvement in school. I had developed a good rapport with a number of teachers and felt that my presence was accepted at school.
How much writing are students expected to do in high school and what is the nature of the writing they do.
Literate Life Histories as an Ethnographic Research Tool
I also had access to teachers in the normal processes of the working day, the only difference was that I was not there all day. I chose two that I considered the most capable, two in the middle range and two of the weaker students. I also looked for their perceptions of the problems and possibilities of the situation in which they and the students work.
This seemed to have disappeared by the time I started school because the principal simply consulted the school's PTA about my presence there rather than the education authorities.
Other Data Gathering Processes
Essentially, the research process is an attempt to describe and analyze the teaching of writing in schools in relation to the whole system of which it is a part. These data are analyzed in terms of what types and levels of literacy competencies the teaching of writing imparts to students in the particular school under study. Excerpts from their interviews are included in the appendices, along with background information on each.
This affects the school in a number of ways. School property has often been vandalized or stolen, resulting in the installation of high-security fences around the school.
Analysis and Interpretation of the Learners' Literate Life Histories (LLHs)
- Quantity of Writing and Range of Genres Experienced
- Textbooks and Literate Development
- The Teaching of Writing
- Assessment of Writing
- Summing up of Learners' Literate Life Histories
Thulani talks about how his writing during a school day consists largely of copying notes from the board, '..in History we are taught, then given the outline notes of the chapter and then the teacher asks us to most of the time to make our own notes. I make notes in History, Biology and Geography'. Macdonald (1990a,b) commented on the effect of the sudden transition from mother tongue instruction for the first four years of schooling (with English as a subject) to English as the medium of instruction (MOI) in the fifth year. English on there they just underline it and say it's not the right word'. The only rewrites he mentioned were corrections.
Roka has had similar experiences where if the teacher makes a mistake, he 'just put a line'. The focus of the comments was on grammatical errors.
Triangulating Data from Other Sources
- Interviews with Teachers
- The Impact of Teachers' Response Behaviours on Student Writing
- Systemic Constraints: Examinations, Syllabuses and Teacher Guides
- Analysis of Students' Writing
The first was that only four of the thirty-four students in the class submitted their essays. There is an unusual difference between the marks awarded during the extended writing year and the marks awarded in the examination. Dialogues based on the main language structure are introduced, memorized and acted out in class.
The first problem concerns the emphasis on the Communicative Approach to Language (CLT) in the syllabus.
Summary
Personal reference 'we' and 'I' is used and strong modality ('must') is used throughout the text. There is no evidence of knowledge of the appropriate vocabulary related to the negotiation issue. There is no evidence of coherently developed text and paragraph themes, nor are there any clause themes consistent with the purpose of the text.
In this way the chapter has attempted to provide 'a descriptive and interpretive-explanatory account' (Watson-Gegeo) of the teaching of writing in school.
CHAPTERS
Conclusions
Students are not taught about the relationship between contextual factors such as domain, tenor and mode, and how these systematically influence language choice. As a result, students are not sensitized to the differences between speaking and writing. The assessment of writing in schools can best be described as arbitrary and far from the linguistically principled and criterion-referenced practices developed by Macken and Slade (1993). The single criterion that seems most important in the minds of students is grammatical correctness, which stems from the emphasis on grammar exercises that pervades language teaching.
This devalues writing in the eyes of students who internalize the idea of writing as an exercise in grammatical correctness.
Implications for Teaching, Teacher Training and Further Research
The centrality of writing in the development of higher order skills has been emphasized by many of the commentators cited in this research (Vygotsky 1962, Bernstein 1996, Macken-Horarik 1996). The PEI research pointed to the importance of textbooks and teaching materials in the development of higher order skills and students' knowledge base. Stein has given some examples of how this can be achieved in the South African context.
This research has painted a picture of a school environment that is likely to be found in many schools in the South African context.
Inside Lives: The Quality of Biography.In R.R.Shermanand R.B.Webb (Eds.), Qualitative Research in Education: Focus and Methods. 1988). Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the Modern Age.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Unsworth (Ed.), Literacy learning and teaching: Language as social practice in the Primary School (pp. 1-54).
An Analysis of the Implementation of the Communicative Approach (CA.) in the Secondary Schools in the Pietermaritzburg Circle No. Jofthe Department of Education and Training.
APPENDICES
Appendices
Criteria for Effective Narratives
T We were not encouraged to write uniform composition, not taught to be independent, how to write a composition. If you tell us to write the composition, you will see that we have a problem.. are not trained in how to write it. So what you say you didn't know and planned something you just wrote you got a topic. What did the teacher say.
It was from the teachers that we were told how to organize ourselves in this way, like a spider diagram.
Extracts from Interview with Gladys
Well (sic), now, when you were in primary school, what kind of reading did you do in class, do you remember, did the teacher read to you, did you read yourself, what happened. Aha, so if you think about how many books you read in primary school yourself. Did you write essays, write about your life or write letters in English in primary school?
Have you written friendly letters, letters to friends or to family members or have you written to a.
Extracts from Interview with Prof
You see you have to put some arguments and after that you put some, some examples and you put some facts around it yah. And they taught me to write some special essays where you have to go and do some research before you write. And we wrote some letters, only the letters were the same as primary, but if you wanted to do a composition or an essay you have to go and do research for the different people, and then you have to write your essay.
When you want to have a debate here what should you do, like you should go research, like if if.
