Research in Language and Literacy
Coordinators: Debra Myhill and Ros Fisher
The Research in Language and Literacy group is interested in all aspects of literacy and language development across the lifespan, including both first and second language development; intercultural communication; language and identity; and how language policy is implemented in professional contexts. Researchers in the group represent a broad church of methodological approaches and we are interested in the methodological issues raised by language and literacy research.
What are some of the questions we are currently exploring? Read on!
- What is an appropriate pedagogy for the teaching of poetry writing? Although many teachers actively encourage poetry writing, it has never been adequately theorised in terms of a shared professional understanding of what progression in poetry writing might be and how it might best be taught. Writing research has singularly ignored poetry and there has been no consideration of how theories and models of writing apply to the writing of poetry.
- From talk to text: how does talk support writing in the Early Years writing classroom? The transition for spoken utterance to written text is a challenging one for novice writers and talk has long been advocated as a supportive tool in this process. We are looking at three kinds of talk: generational talk which creates ideas; oral rehearsal which gives opportunities to practise written text orally; and reflective talk which invites young writers to think about the process of writing.
- What can linguistic analysis of children’s writing tell us about writing development in the secondary phase? As secondary writers achieve transcriptional fluency and broaden the range of genres in which they write, their ability to construct and manipulate written linguistic structures develops. We have analysed children’s writing and explored their metacognitive understanding of their own writing processes and their metalinguistic awareness of choices made in the construction of their texts.
- What accounts for boys’ underachievement in literacy? There is national concern about the gap between boys and girls in English tests at every stage of schooling, a concern which is mirrored in many other English-speaking countries. We have been exploring girls’ and boys’ perceptions of literacy and comparing the way that boys and girls write.
- How do older students perceive text difficulty when reading in a Modern Foreign Language? Typically, A level MFL students are given ‘authentic’ texts for reading and we have been interested in pursuing student perceptions of what makes one text seem more difficult than another, and through linguistic analysis, investigating the linguistic characteristics of those texts.
Professor Bob Burden
Dr Ros Fisher
Ms Rosemary Hopper
Dr Susan Jones
Dr Malcolm MacDonald
Professor Debra Myhill
Kevin O'Connell
Jo Pye
Ms Sarah Rich
Dr Salah Troudi
Professor Rupert Wegerif
Dr Anthony Wilson