Using Talk to Support Writing presents a new and innovative approach to the teaching of early writing. The authors discuss both theoretical and practical issues around using talk in the classroom to support children as they learn to write. Set within the context of national concern for achievement in the development of writing ability, it addresses the gap in understanding early teaching and focuses on the exploration of talk and writing interface.

Author Thomas McCann invites readers to rethink their approach to teaching writing by capitalizing on students’ instinctive desire to talk. Drawing on extensive classroom research, he shows teachers how to craft class discussions that build students’ skills of analysis, problem-solving, and argumentation as a means of improving student writing. McCann demonstrates how authentic discussions immerse learners in practices that become important when they write. Chapters feature portraits of teachers at work, including transcripts that reveal patterns of talk across a set of lessons. Interviews with the teachers and samples of student writing afford readers a deeper understanding of process. Students also report on how classroom discussions supported their effort to produce persuasive, argument-driven essays. Book Features: A focus on “the thinking behind the practice,” as opposed to a collection of lesson ideas. Connections to important elements from the Common Core State Standards, especially arguments writing. Examples of students at work with examples of the writing that emerges from their discussions. Portraits of skilled teachers as they promote inquiry and sequence and facilitate discussions. Appendices with problem-based scenarios, interview questions for students and teachers, samples of debatable cases in the news, and more. “In this important book, Tom McCann has given us not only the admonition to change, but the details about what effective change must be and what it looks like, evidence that it works effectively, and details about how to bring it to pass.” —From the Foreword by George Hillocks, Jr., Professor Emeritus, Department of English, University of Chicago. “For a professional book to have an impact on the field, it needs to address a perceived need. Writing arguments for Common Core performance assessments is a HUGE need right now that this book helps address.” —Carol Jago, associate director, California Reading and Literature Project, UCLA.

A fresh and contemporary introductory textbook for all students of linguistics and language studies. >

Contains a collection of 101 reproducible activities and exercises designed to engage students in the writing process, encouraging children to write and talk about a wide range of text components.

This newly revised second edition looks at ways in which teachers can develop children's abilities in speaking and listening, as required by the National Curriculum. The authors discuss the links between language and learning; offer case studies and suggestions for classroom practice; and provide stimulating activities to help pupils to become more articulate, coherent and effective in standard English. The book is a suitable text for students taking primary initial teacher training courses. It will also be welcomed as a practical handbook for primary teachers.

In the last 15 to 20 years, writing centers have placed greater importance on tutor training, focusing on teaching tutors best practices in fostering student writers’ engagement and writing skills. Writing Center Talk over Time explores the importance of writing center talk and demonstrates the efficacy of tutor training. The book uses corpus-driven analysis and discourse analysis to examine the changes in writing center talk over time to provide a baseline understanding of the very heart of writing center work: the talk that unfolds between tutors and student writers. It is this talk that, at its best, motivates student writers to continue to improve their writing and scaffolds their learning and that makes tutors proud of the service that they provide. The methods and analysis of this study are intended to inform other researchers so that they may conduct further research into the efficacy of writing center talk.

Writing centers in universities and colleges aim to help student writers develop practices that will make them better writers in the long term and that will improve their draft papers in the short term. The tutors who work in writing centers accomplish such goals through one-to-one talk about writing. This book analyzes the aboutness of writing center talk—what tutors and student writers talk about when they come together to talk about writing. By combining corpus-driven analysis to provide a quantitative, microlevel view of the subject matter and sociocultural discourse analysis to provide a qualitative macrolevel view of tutor-student writer interactions, it further establishes how these two research methods operate together to produce a robust and rigorous analysis of spoken discourse.