Reading, writing and talking: Researcher discovers discussion is key to improving skills

A fictional (you’ll see why in a few lines) ninth-grade English class has been assigned to write a paper predicting the outcome of the William Golding novel, Lord of the Flies.

Amanda places the shipwrecked boys back in civilization, leading peaceful, productive lives. When she finishes presenting her paper to class, another student, Todd, raises his hand to disagree, arguing the novel’s central people-as-animals metaphor.

This sort of classroom give-and-take required fabrication because it so rarely happens.

See also: English skills: Not just for English class

Integrated, sustained, in-depth discussion of writing assignments doesn’t take over real-world classrooms often enough, asserts Martin Nystrand, professor of English and director of the UW–Madison’s National Research Center for English Learning and Achievement. “Typically, classroom discourse and writing proceed independently of each other,” he says. “Yet, we discovered that writing tasks function to extend classroom discussion.”

The “we” refers to Nystrand’s research team, which has just completed a study of the uses of reading, writing and discussing in ninth-grade English and social-studies classrooms. Other team members include Adam Gamoran, UW–Madison professor of sociology and educational policy; and William Carbonaro, a researcher at UW- Madison’s Center for Education Research.

The researchers found that an educational elixir of related reading-writing-discourse tasks had a profound impact on the development of students’ writing skills.

“Writing performance was higher in classes in which more time was spent in oral interaction,” he says. But he adds that more than 85 percent of class time involves a combination of lecture, question-and- answer recitation and seat work — usually worksheets and study questions.

“When a verbal exchange between students and teacher does occur, it’s usually used to check answers, not to engage in sustained discussion. Teachers rarely consider how oral interaction in their classrooms can influence students’ writing development,” says Nystrand, noting that the team observed no writing at all in about half the ninth- grade English and social-studies discussions studied.

In contrast, Nystrand says that superior teachers often approach their teaching holistically. “They seem to think of their classrooms in ‘ecological’ terms,” he says. “They understand that learning critically depends on the environment the teacher creates, and that this environment is shaped by writing, reading and talk. Even more, it is shaped by how writing, reading and talk interact with each other.”

Nystrand says excellent teachers are on continuous alert for opportunities to talk about writing, and to write about discussion. He says that in addition to regular writing assignments, these teachers also may employ:

• Short but frequent writing tasks, most if not all ungraded, and many not even collected.
• Written “speculation” exercises in which students predict how stories, dramas and novels will end. “Then, of course, they keep reading to see if they were right!” Nystrand says.
• Writing components used in small-group assignments to help students keep track of their ideas so they can explain them to the rest of the class.

Nystrand says such master teachers tend not to worry if they run out of class time in the middle of a hot discussion — they can keep it going through written homework, which can then prompt more discussion the next day.

“In these classrooms, discourse contributes to the environment of writing development, and writing provides an important context for focused discussions.”