I Wanna Take You Higher – Expanding Children’s Language Structures during Writing
2013 SERRRA Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Conference Handout
Wilmington, NC
Things I Believe Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Teachers Need to Know and Accept About Language
 Every language is amazingly complex.
Justice, 2004, p.1
 All languages are highly systematic.
Justice, 2004
 Children are proficient users of language before the begin formal schooling.
Freeman & Freeman, 2004
 “….we tend to hold to the belief that there is but one tongue and that there is but one tongue that
must be mastered…” Canagarajah, 2003, p. 2
 English is only one example of language.
Justice, 2004,
 “All English speaking people speak a dialect…” Dandy, 1991, p. iv
 “No one ‘talks’ like written language.” Purcell-Gates, 2002
 There is no such thing as incorrect grammar! Koefoed, 2005
 Language structure is how you put words together to show tense, number and
who is speaking.
Koefoed, 2005
 “…the nature of literacy and language as dialogue means that from the outset there is some degree
of mismatch in any literacy or language task.
Phillips, McNaughton & MacDonald
Quotes from Clay on Language and Literacy
The very foundation of literacy learning lies in the language the child has already constructed. Clay, BDP, p 2
An end-goal for the acquisition phase of literacy learning is for children to become efficient readers of
texts. After about three years at school they read long texts at speed with few errors, dealing with different
kinds of information in print silently and apparently simultaneously. By that time the language activities of
their classrooms will place heave demands on knowledge of sentence structure and shades of meaning. If
we harness the established power of children’s oral language to literacy learning from the beginning, so
that literacy knowledge and oral language processing power move forward together, linked and
patterned from the start, that will surely be more powerful. COT, p. 95 [emphasis added by Dr. Flo]
Stories read to children introduce them to new language forms….Reading to children from books beyond
their reading level is helpful and two reasons for this are because it contributes to incidental learning of
new vocabulary (Elley, 1989) and increases exposure to literary language. COT, p.95
It is powerful to harness the established power of children’s oral language to literacy learning from the
beginning, so that new literacy knowledge and new oral language powers are lined and patterned from the
start. Children with the least preparation for literacy learning need such an integrated approach if they are
to catch up to their classmates. COT, p. 95
This suggests that observant teachers could select texts for a particular child which not only draw upon working
systems which that child has in place, but also challenge these to change. This would explain what ‘matching text
to a child’ could really mean! What on the surface looks like a simple word-by-word reading [or writing] of a short
story involves children in linking many things they know from different sources. COT, p.96 98 [“or writing” added
by Dr. Flo]
Most of the information we use as readers is invisible information (phonological, structural and semantic),
brought to the text by the reader on the run in the sequential active of reading novel messages [and writing]: (a)
the sounds which can be associated with visible items in quasi-regular ways, (b) the rules for stringing words
together in sentences, and (c) the meanings transmitted not only by the word but also by its placement in the
sentence and text. COT, p.98 [“and writing” added by Dr. Flo]
Texts provide the opportunities to build up experience with the mixing of visible and invisible information,
including the ways in which one word influences another in a message. COT p.99
As speakers we monitor our own speaking and sometimes go back to select a different work or touch up the
grammar of the utterance. A listener tries to follow a speaker and parse the sentence so far to make sure that he
or she is receiving a ‘possible’ message. This parsing involves correctly relating particular sounds and words to the
spoken words that surround them (Pinker, 1994). COT, p. 101
Both groups (average readers in first year of instruction and proficient readers) construct a sentence or text
sequentially from beginning to end, using whatever activity they can muster to yield a good message. At each
point in the sequential reading final decisions are usually made at the word level, but getting to that is more
complex than merely recalling a word. Like speakers, readers parse as they go, and from time to time they
discover a need to revise the reading just as they would do when speaking.
COT, p. 101
Interconnectedness in the language of reading and writing is so obviously crucial. COT, p. 105
Sequential decision-making depends on tentative understanding of the message so far, while allowing the
language user to change direction en route. Early effective reading and writing of continuous text places high
demand on understanding groupings of words in the messages read or written so far. COT, pp. 106-107
The phrases children construct in their conversations lead to more awareness of language structures within
sentences in their writing and reading. Syntax refers to the structure of language which governs how words are
ordered in particular sequences, and syntactical rules change the inflections of words used in those sequences.
Syntax clearly demonstrates the linkages of words in continuous texts. Some error behavior of beginning readers
reveals the extent to which children allow the syntax of language to influence their responding. COT, p. 110
Syntax is also complexly involved in decisions about sentence beginnings, noticing and ‘reading’ punctuation,
reading fluently with phrasing, and using expression and intonation. Observant teachers notice how the texts
children read draw upon and extend their existing syntactic knowledge. COT, p. 110
It is apparent that the development of syntactic awareness and an effective reception of the messages of authors
would be less satisfactory if the young learner were reading contrived texts. One justification offered by
defenders of the old-style basal readers was that by the time children were in the middle of Grade 2 they would
be reading rich continuous text anyway. This would not be true of children with low achievement who needed
the help most. COT, p. 110
Children draw upon this oral language which they brought to school as they learn to read and write but at the
same time the tasks of literacy learning direct their attention back to units within their own speech of which they
were not previously aware. Children’s vague ideas about a completed ‘utterance’, or the breaks between words
(word juncture) become more explicit as they learn to read and write continuous texts. The sounds of language
become more apparent in their exchanges with texts, particularly when they are trying to write texts. Knowledge
stores for oral language structures become more varied and more complex a young talkers talk (Hart & Risley,
1999). COT, p. 116
When the teacher no longer needs to encourage the child to talk or read but is more concerned to increase his
control of the grammar of his writing, only then would the teacher make a teaching point of his error. Becoming
Literate, p. 108
The child who already uses a wide range of language features in a flexible manner will find it easier to work with
the sentence structures of written language [of written language added by Dr. Flo]
Becoming Literate, p.81
Quotes fromTalking Heads by Pinker, Stephen (1994). The Language of Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
pp. 190 – 230
Understanding a sentence is one of these hard easy problems. To interact with computers we still have to learn
their language, they are not smart enough to learn ours. p 191
How do we understand a sentence? The first step is to “parse” it. This does not refer to the exercises you
grudgingly did in elementary school…Speaking and understanding share a grammatical database (the language we
speak is the same as the language we understand), but they also need procedures that specify what the mind
should do, step by step, when the words start pouring in or when one is about to speak. The mental program that
analyses sentence structure during language comprehension is called the parser. p 194-195
As the parser has been joining up branches, it has been building up the meaning of the sentence, using the
definitions in the mental dictionary and the principles for combining them. p 195
Many linguists believe that the reason that languages allow phrase movement, or choices among more-or-less
synonymous constructions, is to ease the load on the listener’s memory. P 201
Languages have “bounding” restrictions that turn some phrases, like the complex noun phrase the rumor that
Mary likes him, into “islands” from which no words can escape. p 221