This 3 year study will investigate the impact of high quality classroom talk on children’s writing. Writing is a particularly demanding activity because it does not simply involve transferring words-in-the-head to words on paper, but involves making deliberate choices according to audience, purpose, and rhetorical effect. Although research suggests that metalinguistic understanding (knowledge about language) underlies writing competency, because it helps writers to control and craft their writing, very little is known about how it is developed. This study will build on research (Myhill and Newman 2016) which suggests that metatalk (talk about writing) may be important for the development of metalinguistic understanding. While there is extensive evidence that high quality classroom talk supports learning, very little research has examined the impact of talk on writing specifically. In an educational context of persistent underachievement in writing, this study aims to make an important theoretical contribution which impacts teacher practice and educational outcomes, specifically student attainment in writing.
Sponsor: Economic and Social Research Council
Project Director: Dr Ruth Newman
Funding Awarded: £304,778
Project active Years: 1 Jan 2020 – 31 Dec 2023
Research from within the Centre for Research in Writing suggests that developing metalinguistic understanding may require high quality metatalk which focuses on language choices in relation to their purpose or effect (Myhill et al 2016; Myhill & Newman 2016). Building on this research, this study will investigate how metatalk can enhance metalinguistic thinking which has an impact on students' writing. It will investigate the nature of teachers' interactions: how they enable high quality whole class metatalk to occur, and how they scaffold metatalk between students working in pairs or groups. It will examine how metatalk, in these different instructional contexts, can inform students' thinking about their writing and shape their writing choices. it will examine the close relationship between high-quality metatalk and open dialogic discourse roles while exploring the particular complexity of metatalk for writing. Crucially, it will examine and determine the impact of metatalk on students' writing.
The study will span 3 years and comprise a 4-phase research design of Exploration, Development, Intervention, and Impact and Engagement. The study will involve working closely with 6 English teachers from 6 different secondary schools in the South West of England. Each teacher will work with three different Key Stage 3 (ages 11-14) classes: one class for exploration in phase 1, one class for development in phase 2, and one class for intervention in phase 3. In phases 1, 2 and 3, sub-samples of 4 students (with a gender balance and spread of attainment) will be selected for focused qualitative data collection. The sub-sample students in each class will be paired during lessons for episodes of student peer-to-peer metatalk. The study will generate an inter-related, multimodal dataset of audio-video and textual data to provide the first comprehensive analysis of metatalk in the context of writing.
The study’s key objectives are therefore:
- to generate new theoretical knowledge about metatalk in first language writing
- to determine the impact of high quality metatalk on students’ writing
- to develop scaffolding strategies and materials to support metatalk about writing in the secondary English classroom
- to develop analytical coding frameworks for use in future metatalk research
Project Director
Ruth is a Senior Lecturer in Language and Literacy Education in the Graduate School of Education at The University of Exeter. Her research interests focus on the role of talk in the teaching of language and literacy, including the role of dialogic metatalk in the development of metalinguistic understanding and writing. Ruth teaches mainly on the Secondary English PGCE programme and MA in Language and Literacy Education.
Email: R.M.C.Newman@exeter.ac.uk
Phone: 01391 724746
Graduate Research Assistant
Email: J.L.Lane@exeter.ac.uk
Project Information and Consent forms
Parent Information and Consent Form
Information Sheet for Schools
Parent Information and Consent Form
Student Information PPT phase 2
Parent information and consent form Phase 2
Phase 2 Student Sub Sample Consent Form
Reading
Myhill Newman Watson 2020 Preprint
Project Meeting 1
Project Meeting 3
Writing Cycle 1 - A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars
Lesson plan template - cycle 1
Lesson plan template - cycle 2
Cycle 2 Rewriting a Jigsaw of Fire and Stars
Resource Bank
Teacher Modelling Writing
Peer Metatalk
Peer Metatalk about their Own Writing
Peer Metatalk about Text Activities
- Concrete Noun List
- Descriptions
- Sequencing Sentences
- Fill the Gap
- Targeted Text Questions
- Comparing Sentences
- Text Marking Argument
Peer Collaborative Writing
Teacher Led Questioning
Developing Metatalk