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Social Processes in Education: a Reply to Sawyer and

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Social Processes in Education:
A Reply to Sawyer and Watson
(and others)
J. R. Martin, Frances Christie &Joan Rothery

Towards a genre-based approach

GENRE - BASED APPROACHES to writing development are the result of a
long standing research initiative within the field of educationailinguistics by
teachers, teacher/linguists and linguists who have attempted to translate the
linguistic theory of M.A.K. Halliday and his colleagues into teaching practice.
This research initiative comprises two main phases. The first began in London
in 1964, funded by the Nuffield Foundation and later the Schools Council, and
directed by Halliday. It brought together a group of academic scholars and
experienced school teachers to look into the teaching of English from the
standpoint of modem developments in linguistics. The best known publications
of this phase focused on the early school years (Mackay et al., Breakthrough to
literacy. 1970) and secondary school (Doughty et al., Language in Use. 1970);
these were later followed by middle school materials ( Forsyth and Wood,
Language and Communication. 1980).
The second phase began in late 1975 when Halliday arrived in Sydney to
take up the founding Chair of Linguistics at the University of Sydney. In 1976
he was appointed consultant to the Curriculum Development Centre's Language
Development Project. At Sydney he qulckly built up what was to become one of
the largest Applied Linguistics programmes in the world. It was in this
programme that Martin, Christie and Rothery first met, beginning their work on
writing in Martin's discourse and register course in 1978. In 1979 Halliday
organised the flfSt of a series of Language in Education conferences in order to
bring together teachers, teacher/linguists and linguists with an interest in a broad
spectrum of issues. Further Language in Education conferences have been held
since 1978, the latest at Macquarie University in November 1986. The
proceedings of most of these have now been published.

58
 Over the last few years, teams of linguists, teacher/linguists and teachers
have explored the implications of systemic perspectives on language, register and
genre for classroom teaching. Listing just a few of these teams demonstrates the
scope of the interest and the intensity of the investigations: Brian Gray and Julia
Price working with aboriginal children at Traeger Park School, Alice Springs;
Frances Christie and several teachers working with mother tongue and migrant
children at a school in Geelong; Jenny Hammond, working with ESL children at
Cringila Public School in Wollongong; Joan Rothery, Barbara Ryan and Lee
Pledger working with middle class children at North Sydney Demonstration
School in North Sydney; Jim Martin, Colin Todd and Jill Finch, working with
Aboriginal and working class adults in T AFE's adult literacy program,
Liverpool; John Carr and his staff in the Department of Education, Queensland;
Barbara Vasdekis and Clare Houston of the Child Migrant Centre in Brisbane;
Mike Callaghan and his colleagues in the Metropolitan East branch of NSWs
Disadvantaged Schools Program in Sydney; Beth Graham in the Northern
Territory's Bilingual Education Program. Critics of genre-based approaches to
writing development (e.g. Gill, 1986; Tucker, 1986; Sawyer & Watson, 1987)
frequently fail to acknowledge how extensive the research has been.

What is genre?

In essence genre theory is a theory of language use. The genre theory underlying
the so-called 'genre-based' approaches to writing\development was developed by
Hasan (1978), Kress (1982), Martin (1985) and others as an extension of earlier
work on register by systemic linguists including Halliday, Gregory, Ure and
Ellis. Genre theory differs from register theory in the amount of emphasis it
places on social purpose as a detennining variable in language use.
Martin defines genre as a staged, goal oriented social process. Most
members of a given culture would participate in some dozens of these.
Australian examples include jokes, letters to the editor, job applications, lab
reports, sennons, medical examinations, appointment making, service
encounters, anecdotes, weather reports, interviews and so on. Genres are referred
to as social processes because members of a culture interact with each other to
achieve them; as goal oriented because they have evolved to get things done; and
as staged because it usually takes more than one step for participants to achieve
their goals.
Like all semiotic systems, genres have evolved in such a way that they
introduce a kind of stability into a culture at the same time as being flexible
enough to participate in social change. In this respect they are like language
itself. Tagalog for example is obviously different from English; and a linguist
can sit down and write rules which show the ways in which the structures of

59
these two languages differ. At the same time both languages are constantly
changing, adjusting to the needs of the cultures they serve. The informant who
worked with Bloomfield on Tagalog in the early part of this century would no
doubt be surprised by the language of urban Manila today; just as English
speakers may have difficulty understanding literary texts written three centuries
ago, and might not recognise Beowulf as English at all.
Linguistics has always concerned itself with both aspects of semiosis -
stability and change. Building models of language which show more clearly how
the two interact will have to be one of the major achievements of linguists of
the 21st century. As with language, so with genre. In one sense genres are
'fixed'. A story is different from an essay and at the level of genre the differences
are relatively easy to bring to consciousness. Orientation! Complication!
Resolution is not Introduction! Body/ Conclusion, as most teachers and students
know. The structures are different because they do different jobs. At the same
time, genres obviously change. The evolution of narrative in our culture is
perhaps the best studied example of this process. Keri Hulme and the Gawain
poet for example write different types of story; but neither came out of the blue.
Both made small significant changes to the genres with which they worked,
helping them evolve to make new meanings to serve a culture at a particular
point in time.
P~rhaps the single most important fact to keep in mind about genres as far
as education is concerned is that genres are evolved systems. This is to say that
no individual, let alone linguists, sat down and designed the genres we use.
Rather, they arose as the members of our culture negotiated meaning to get on
with the living of life.
What exactly does it mean to say that genres are evolved systems, and that
genres are functional? To explore this further let us consider two small texts
from the Year 8 History textbook Before Yesterday that is used in some
Australian junior secondary schools. The first is a short biography of Joan of
Arc.

Text 1. Joan of Arc

But an uprising of French rebels led to a dramatic chllnge. The French
claimant to the throne, Charles VII, was a mean cringing man unable to inspire
his troops who were constantly defeated until the French held only one important
city, Orleans. Then occu"ed one of the most famous events in French history.
A poor peasant girl, Joan of Arc, became convinced she heard the voices of
saints urging her to save her country. Leaving her native village in Lo"aine,
she made her way through enemy territory to Charles. She convinced the king
tha! she had a divine mission. In 1429 Joan, then about eighteen years old,
was given command of some 4000 or 5000 men and marched to the relief of
Orleans. Wearing armour and riding a white horse she so inspired her soldiers
tha! they defeated the English. In July 1429, she stood beside Charles as he was

60
crowned king of France in the cathedral at Rheims. Next year loan was taken
prisoner by the Burgundians. allies of the English. who sold her to the English.
The English arranged for her trial at Rouen by a group of Norman clergymen
and she was condemned to death as a heretic. Charles VII made no anempt to
save the girl who had secured him his throne. In 1431 loan of Arc was burned at
the stake at Rouen.
Some twenty-five years later the pope reversed the decision of the Rouen
court and declared that loan was no heretic. In 1920 the Roman Catholic Church
made her a saint.
Despite the death of loan of Arc. the faith and confulence she had
given the French persisted. The English lost town after town . When the HWldred
Years War finally ended in 1453 the English retained only Calais.
(Nominalisations in bold face.)

It takes very little in the way of technical linguistic analysis to see that text 1 is
a kind of story. It focuses on a short but critical chapter of Joan of Arc's life-
the part that made her famous. The text is composed mainly of actions, the
people involved in them, and the relevant settings in place and time. These
actions are sequenced in time.
Text 2 on the other hand is a very different kind of text. Rather than telling
a story it analyses the cultural repercussions of the crusades. Generically
speaking it is a type of exposition, not narrative.

Text 2. Results of the crusades

Despite the apparent failure of the crusades. these wars had deep economic,
social. intellectual and religious influences. One of the most important was
the revival of trade. Many Italian and French towns started to trade with
Christian kingdoms in the Syria-Palestine region . Merchants made great profus
selling provisions to the crusaders. Soon trade was also conducted with the
Moslems and with the Greeks of the Byzantine Empire.
The swtus of women seems to have risen as a result of the
responsibilities they Wldertook while their husbands were absent fighting the
crusades. New fashions appeared in the West. Long flowing robes and full
beards. in imitation of Moslem fashions. became popular. Rice. lemons.
apricots and shallots were added to the foodstuffs of Europe. Previously honey
had been the only sweetening substance known in the West. bUl now sugar was
introduced and demand became so great that it was grown in sowhern Europe.
Plum trees were introduced from Damascus. Women now had glass mirrors in
place of polished metal discs.
The crusades helped revive the political influence of the kings. Many
kings got rid of troublesome nobles during the crusades. The kings of France and
England used the crusades as an excuse to introduce a direct tax in 1188. Royal

61
funds thus expanded. The first three crusades also built up the political power
of the church. After the Third Crusade, however, the kings began to act more and
more independently of the church.
Amongst the intellectual changes one of the most important was the
growth of a spirit of wierance. The early crusaders hated the Moslems. Later,
as they got to know their enemies better, a degree of undersllJnding and even
of sympathy developed. Richard I and Saladin respected each other and future
generations came to regard them both as figures of chivalry and valor. G
C(
(Nominalisations in bold face.)
th
This text is a kind of argument, outlining four outcomes of the crusades. These la
it reviews under five headings, which are explicitly foregrounded in the textbook: et:
the revival of trade; the status of women; new fashions; the political influence of
the kings; a spirit of tolerance. Four of these (excluding the status of women) m
are developed in paragraphs that exemplify the heading. Most of the people B
mentioned appear as generic classes, not individuals (Saladin and Richard 1 are Je
the exceptions to merchants, crusaders, Moslems, Greeks, Byzantines, women n<
c(
etc.). And the text makes much more use of abstract nominalisations than
text 1 : failure, influences, revival, status, responsibilities, imitation, demand, th
power, influence, changes, growth, tolerance, understanding, sympathy, chivalry,
valor (see Eggins, WigneU & Martin, 1986, for further discussion). et
It is clear then from even such informal analyses as these that texts 1 and 2 pc
differ. They differ in terms of their overall structure; they differ in terms of the re
language used to code each stage; and these differences are systematic and di
recurrent across a very large range of history texts. Most significantly these pc
differences are directly related to the different functions of the two texts. d
Historians used texts like 1 to record the past and texts like 2 to interpret it Text rij
WI
1 functions as a kind of evidence, text 2 as analysis. History has evolved in such
a way in our culture that both types of text are necessary for historians to get on
with their work. irr
Looked at in these tenns it is quite apparent that genres are not arbitrary de
conventions imprisoning the members of a culture. Quite the opposite. Genres Rc
ffii
represent the most efficient ways cultures have at a given point in time of going
about their business. It is in this sense that genres are functional. And because of
they are functional, they evolve. In this way genres, like all meaning systems, an
ch
introduce stability and flexibility into a culture at one and the same time.
Needless to say, genre theory depends on a careful linguistic analysis of the
textual features of genres. Any generic categories proposed for texts like 1 and 2
above need to be substantiated by looking in detail at these and a large range of G
agnate texts. Even Britton (1975), whose expressive, transactional and poetic
categories are notoriously ill-defmed, recognizes the need in education for close 11
textual analysis of this kind: M
(1"

62
 If our sets of categories prove of value to research or teaching ... it will be
essential that our original design should be complemented by inquiring
what linguistic features, if any, prove to be their exponents. (I am prepared,
in admitting that we have not done so, to blush with shame as often as is
necessary) .

Genre theorists would of course argue that had Britton done so, he would
certainly have seen the need to revise his categories. Seen in these terms, genre
theory can be interpreted as a language-based alternative to Britton's work on
language function. Producing such an alternative is an important initiative in
education at this time, for two reasons.
First, Britton's categories have always been slippery ones and difficult to
use (see on this and other relevant points Williams' excellent 1977 critique of
Britton's work and his rather patronising, even sexist reply entitled No, no,
Jeanette!'). Even in his own research, out of a total of 2122 scripts, 1428 could
not be assigned to the same function category by all three assessors! It is
consequently not surprising that since that time, on each occasion one hears
these terms used by educators one cannot be sure just what they mean.
Second, Britton's model of writing development, including the idea that
children begin with expressive writing before moving on to the transactional and
poetic, has now been thoroughly discredited. Newkirk (1984) draws on his own
research and that of others to show that children's early writing is clearly
differentiated according to function and that stories are not the primary starting
point for young writers. In support of this argument he presents his
classification of a variety of 'transactional' text types in the home: asserting
rights, making requests, apologizing and so on. In Australia John Collerson's
work on his own daughter's early writing confirms these observations.
The work of Christie (1984, 1985, 1986) has shown that the most
important factor controlling what children write is not their stage of
development, but rather the way in which the teacher sets up the writing context.
Research by Martin and Rothery confirms this point What is needed then is a
model that shows systematically how text is related to context This is the kind
of model that teachers require and could use. Hypotheses about language function
and writing development which make no direct or reliable connection with what
children actually write are an impediment, not an aid to good teaching practice.

Genre and field

The theory of social context being developed by Kress (1985), Martin (see
Martin, Wignell, Eggins and Rothery, to appear), Rothery (1985a) and Christie
(1986), though not Hasan, makes a clear distinction between genre and field.

63
This is because social processes like biography and argument can be used to
address a number of different activities (or 'topics'). In Before Yesterday for
example, we fmd biographies of Joan of Arc, Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci
and others; and we fmd arguments about the results of the crusades, outcomes of
the rise of towns, the reasons for the revival of classical studies in Italy and so
on. Similarly, closely related activities can be explored through different genres:
one could have analysed why Joan of Arc had the effect she did, though the text
itself treats her simply as a narrative heroine.
It is very important to recognize that genres make meaning; they are not
simply a set of formal struCt\ll"eS into which meanings are poured. What
happened for example in Joan of Arc's life is one kind of meaning; the way we
present it - as part of a story or part of an essay - is another. Technically
then both field and genre contribute meaning to a text
This is admittedly not the common sense view in our culture. Our culture
prefers to dualise meaning and form, separating what we think and feel from the
language we use to express ourselves. It thus feels comfortable thinking about
genres as arbitrary sets of conventions we employ when we want to pass our
ideas on to others. Genre-based approaches to writing development take a very
different view of meaning and form to this. They argue that language makes
meaning and that dualising meaning and form is fundamentally misleading.
The common sense duality of meaning and form is not a harmless one. In
education in particular it is pernicious and has proved a major stumbling block An
for progressive initiatives. The whole movement toward child-centred education mo
has foundered on the idea that children can understand and undertake history, bet
geography and other subject areas 'in their own words'. That this is a necessary clui
starting point, no one would deny, especially not those interested in genre-based ass
approaches to writing development But that children should be stranded there, diS!
writing stories for example as their only genre in infant and primary school, is ofl
impossible to accept It cuts them off absolutely from any real understanding of mo
what the humanities, social sciences and sciences are on about and denies them eve
the tools these disciplines have developed to understand the world.
These tools are fundamentally linguistic ones - the genres and varieties of nor
abstract and technical language associated with each discipline. Education cannot dis!
make access to these tools a viable goal unless it deconstructs the language serr
involved and the ways in which such language can be taught Ignorance of genre
and language, and the dichotomy of meaning and form which sanctions this
ignorance, are a major stumbling block to empowering a wider range of children
than currently succeed. In this context compare Sawyer and Watson's
interpretation of the role of everyday language in learning with some relevant
observations by Britton himself.

64
 /

It [i.e. genre theory] also overturns, without sufficient evidence, the view
put forward by Douglas Barnes et al. (1971) and by Nancy Martin and the
Writing across the Curriculum team (Martin et al., 1976) that learning is
facilitated when children are allowed to use their own language rather than
forced to conform to the particular language conventions of specific subject
areas. Science teachers, for example, have reported (e.g. University of
Leicester) that learning seems more effective when the children are allowed
to grapple with new concepts in their own language rather than being
given the added burden of producing proper' scientific discourse.
(Sawyer & Watson, this volume; emphasis added)

Surely it is the links between (original emphasis) 'common sense' and

'theoretical' concepts, the links between 'ordinary language' and 'theoretical
language' that make learning possible - whether in school or out - and
it is the ability to move back and forth on that continuum that characterises
thinking at any mature stage? (Britton, 1978)

Genre and mode

Another critical variable in the model of context under discussion here is that of
mode. This variable is set up in principle to take into account differences
between writing and speaking, but goes beyond simple recognition of the
channels themselves to consider the different types of meaning that are typically
associated with each. There is a sense for example in which the Joan of Arc text
discussed above was more like spoken language than the discussion of the results
of the crusades, although both were written. This is because the second text was
more abstract than the first; text 2 was somehow further removed from the
events it describes than was text 1. How does language achieve this?
In English, one of the most important resources for creating this effect is
nominalisalion (Martin, 1984a, 1986; HaIliday, 1985a. 1985b). And the
distancing effect noted in text 2 is in large part achieved by realising what are
semantically processes as nouns - as if they were in fact things:

PROCESS VERBAL FORM NOMINAL FORM

'fail' fail failure (In text 2)
'influence' influence influences
'revive' revive revival
'imitate' imitate imitation
'grow' grow growth
'change' change changes
'tolerate' tolerate tolerance
'understand' understand understanding
65
Abstract text is much more typical of writing than speech, but it does at times
occur in spoken genres, especially those that have been rather consciously exe
contrived. Consider text 3, two small parts of a record of a court proceeding. bet
the:
Text 3. Q: That's fine , Mrs Lymin. In your own words, could you recount ger
the events thal precipitated your filing of the aforementioned Petition for sec
Divorce? abs
A: You mean the reasons why I left? It was after he was breaking and
throwing those things . ... Enl
Q: Very well. Mrs. Lymin. in your Statement of Claim you state: The facI
violent and unrestrained nature of my husband's temperament caused me to be,
fear for my life and the well-being of my children.' What do you mean natl
by this? re12
WO]
A: Well. he got mad a lot. And he couldn't help himself.

This spoken text in fact contains both spoken and written styles of meaning, use
alternating systematically between the language of the lawyer and petitioner. The org
lawyer's language is much more abstract, coding processes in nominal nOIl

expressions: the events. your filing of the aforementioned Petition for Divorce. spe
the violent and unrestrained nature of my husband's temperament. the well-being clru
of my children. Moreover, it uses the verbs precipitated and caused to express the
WO)
logical relationships between processes. In casual speech these relationships are
normally realised through conjunctions like because and so. Conversely, the
petitioner replies in a much more spoken style, in effect translating the abstract Sav
discourse into concrete text. Thus the events that precipitated your filing of the mat
aforementioned Petition for Divorce becomes the reasons why I left. And the thal
violent and unrestrained nature of my husband's temperament twns into he got gen
mad a lot. And he couldn't help himself. moc
One might well question whether justice is in fact being served by hov
exchanges such as these. But this would not be to argue that abstraction is
disfunctional in such texts. From the point of view of the lawyer, it is very
functional indeed. It symbolises prestige; and more significantly it enables the
lawyer to control the cross-examination in a way that would scarcely be possible
otherwise. Compared with the lawyer, the petitioner sounds like a child. And it Tea
is precisely this problem that young writers must overcome if they are to write the
effectively in a wide variety of school and community genres, including those wril
represented by text 2 above. clas
It should also be noted at this point that abstraction is not just a question of use
power and prestige. Nominalisation is also an important resource for organising far;
text As noted above in the discussion of text 2, the argument was organised prol
around five 'headings': the revival of trade, the status of women. new fashions. COIl
the political influence of the kings and a spirit of tolerance. Each of these
headings is an abstraction, four of which are developed in paragraphs coni

66
exemplifying the general statement So unless young writers learn to shift
between spoken and written styles of meaning where appropriate, not only will
they sound like children when they write, but they will never master a range of
genres depending on abstraction as a basic principle of organisation. All
secondary school subjects make use of one or more genres that depend on
abstraction in just this way (cf. Eggins, Wignell and Martin, 1986).
Why is writing typically more abstract than speech? Why has written
English evolved in this way? From a psychological point of view the critical
factor is consciousness. Written text is an object in a way spoken text can never
be, and can be worked through and worked over in such a way as to scramble the
natural iconic relation (i.e. processes as verbs, qualities as adjectives, logical
relations as conjunctions, people and things as nouns etc.) between meaning and
wording made use of in speech.
From a social perspective the answer is again a functional one. Writing is
used to store and consolidate information and interpretations, which need to be
organised. Abstraction is a powerful resource for achieving this. In addition
nominalised text codes an alternative and complementary view of reality to
speaking (Halliday, 1985b). It treats the world as if it were a thing - to be
classified and partitioned, with the relationships between the bits and pieces at
the heart of the interpretation. Speaking tends on the other hand to explore the
world as process - a place of dynamism, evolution and change.
Obviously then both spoken and written genres have their place in learning.
Sawyer and Watson (this volume) ask : 'Why is writing essentially any more a
matter of conscious learning of structures than is speech?' Part of the answer is
that children cannot be expected to understand in their own spoken words what
generations of scholars have interpreted in writing. Because of the difference in
modes, the understandings could never be the same. This raises the question of
how to teach children the more conscious reflective written modes.

Learning written genres

Teaching, like writing, is a social process. Genre theory is just as applicable to
the ways in which teachers go about teaching writing as it is to what children
write. It is simply a question of whether we wish to look at spoken or written
classroom genres. Christie (1984, 1985) refers in general to the genres teachers
use to teach as curriculum genres. One of the most popular of these at present as
far as teaching writing in infant and primary schools is concerned is that
proposed by process writing, with its familiar staging: Pre-Writing! Drafting!
Conferencing/ Publishing.
Genre-based approaches to writing development have been particularly
concerned with curriculum genres, both from the point of view of assessing

67
current methodologies and as well from the perspective of developing new genres
which will teach writing more effectively to a wider range of children. In order to
develop more effective genres it has been assumed that two critical factors must
be addressed. First, ways must be found of introducing strategies familiar to
children from their experience of learning to talk into their experience of learning
to write. A place must in other words be found for interaction and guidance in
the context of shared experience. Second, ways must be found to take into
account the fact that written language is different from spoken language and that
anything even vaguely approximating the kind of immersion experienced when
learning to talk is out of the question. Writing is just too slow -
exponentially so.
One of Rothery's early suggestions for a genre-based approach to teaching
writing is outlined below. Stages 3 and 4 are oriented to developing shared
experience as a basis for writing. Interaction is explicitly built into stages 3 and
6. And guidance is a feature of every stage.

1. Introducing a genre - modelling a genre implicitly through reading to or by

the class; for example reading Little Red Riding Hood.

2. Focusing on a genre - modelling a genre explicitly by naming its stages;

e.g. identifying the stages Orientation, Complication and Resolution in Little
Red Riding Hood.

3. Jointly negotiating a genre - teacher and class jointly composing the genre
under focus; the teacher guides the composition of the text through questions
and comments that provide scaffolding for the stages of the genre; e.g. in a
narrative the following question might point towards a Resolution stage: 'How
will x escape from the witch? Does she have to do it alone, or will someone
help her?'

4. Researching - selecting material for reading; notemaking and summarizing;

assembling information before writing (normally these skills cannot be
assumed).

5. Drafting - a fIrst attempt at individually constructing the genre under focus.

6. Consultation - teacher, pupil consultation, involving direct reference to the

meanings of the writer's text; e.g. questions that help the writer to resolve the
Complication stage of a narrative; young writers tend to fmd Complications
easy, but resolving their characters' problems is hard; consultation involves
getting into the text, not standing aside from it

68
7. PubLishing - writing a final draft that may be published for the class
library, thus providing another input of genre models, and of course enjoyable
reading.

The purpose of introducing this particular curriculum genre is not to provide

a reciPe for teaching practice. It has in fact been superseded by a more general
model better integrating both reading and writing perpectives. Nevertheless it
does serve to illustrate certain key ways in which interaction and guidance in the
context of shared experience can be built into a writing program.
Stages 3 and 6 require special consideration. Stage 3 is based on work by
Brian Gray (see Gray, 1980, 1985) on concentrated language encounters. The
basic idea is for teachers and students to jointly construct a model of the genre in
focus. An excerpt from one such negotiation is reproduced below.

Text 4. (The Year 2 teacher and students have decided on the following opening
- the general Classification in Report structure: There are Lots of different
kinds of ships. At the Maritime Museum we saw modeL ships. loan Rothery is
in the class and contributing to the negotiation.)

T: TeLL me what you know about the ships. Or what we saw.

C: What do you mean ?
T: WeLL, how can we go on now? Let's read what we've got. (Teacher and class
read first two sentences.)
C: Do you mean Complication?
T: No, it hasn't got a Complication. That's the tricky part in this. This is not a
Na"ative. This is a Report. We have to say exactLy what we saw and exactLy
what we know about what we saw. (Teacher reads: At the Maritime
Museum we saw model ships.) Perhaps we couLd have what sorts of model
ships.
J: I didn't see them. I'd Like to know exactly what kinds of ships. Were they
sailing ships?
T: That's what we need to do, isn't it? Remember who we're writing for.
J: I didn't go. You have to teLL me about the ships you saw.
T: Remember we're writing a Reportfor Mr CampbeLL to put in his book about
excursions. If someone picks it up they're Like Mrs. Rothery. They won't
know what's there. But they'll want to say, Wow! That's great. Let's go
there.' What can we say?
C: We saw the Endeavour.
T: Right. We saw the Endeavour. What about the Endeavour? What can you teLL
me about the Endeavour? What Idnd of ship is it, Jack?
C: It's an oLden days ship.
T: (scribing) It is an oLden days ship. What eLse do we know about it?

69
C: Captain Cook sailed around the world on it.
T: This is a great Report. (Teacher scribes.) What else do we know about the
Endeavour. Gordon?
C: He sailed to Australia. He discovered Australia in it.
C: It was a pirate ship.
C: No. it's not. He wasn't a pirate.
T: No , he wasn't a pirate.

(Negotiated text to this point: There are lots of different ldnds of ships. At the
Maritime Museum we saw model ships. We saw the Endeavour. It is an olden
days ship. Captain Cook sailed around the world in it. He discovered Australia in
it.)

Negotiations such as these are an extremely effective method of modelling

genres for children. The text is based on shared experience, with the children
assuming the responsibility of developing the field. The teacher's role is that of
guiding them into the appropriate genre (in this case taking care to steer them
away from recowlt and into report). This type of interaction makes it possible
for teachers to provide scaffolding for writing in a way that is parallel to learning
spoken genres. The responsibility for developing a successful text is assumed
jointly, as when learning to talk.
Writing is of course, by nature, monologic discourse. And the purpose of
providing jointly constructed models is to enable children to write texts of their
own, when they seem ready to do this. However, as Graves' work: (e.g. 1984) has
demonstrated, it is possible to interact with children as they write. The text
illustrates stage 6 in the genre-based model outlined above: consultation. This
term is preferred to conferencing because it explicitly acknowledges the teacher's
guiding role.

Text 5. (A Year 2 writer consults with Joan Rothery, beginning by reading her
text aloud.)
C: Once upon a time there was a big giant. He lived in a big hole in the woods
and he was rich. He went out of the hole. He found a trap door. He went into
the trapdoor and he got in trouble by a gigantic man.
J: Is tha! finished?
C: Yes.
J: I think it would be good to know what happened to him. What sort of
trouble did he get into?
C: I don't know.
J: Well. let's make it up.
C: Well. I'll get a piece of paper.

70
J: Don't write it down yet. Let's just say it into the tape. What sort of trouble
might he have got into?
C: He might have got into trouble because he might have broken something?
J: Yes, like what?
C: Like what. Like a ...
J: What might make someone very angry if you broke it?
C: Aaaah. There's a trapdoor. Perhaps it should be something . .. a vase?
J: A precious vase?
C: Yes.
J: So once he got inside he got into trouble.
C: Because he broke a precious vase.
J: And then what happened?
C: Then what happened . . .
J: Yes, what's going to happen to the giant. I mean he's just got into trouble.
C: Then the giant went back home.
J: Weell . . .
C: That can't be because it didn't get sorted out.
J: No, it didn't really, did it? He's got to get away from the gigantic man, hasn't
he?
C: Yes.
J: We know that he got into trouble, he broke the precious vase . ..
C: Mmmm.
J: Is he going to escape?
C: He paid some money.
J: (laughing) That's not a bad idea.
C: Because he was rich, remember? (points to drawing that accompanies text.)
That's a big thing, full of money.
J: All right, so what will you say? That the giant was very rich and paid the
man to let him go.
C: But what about when he broke the vase? I have to write about that too.
J: Yes, write about that first and then write about him paying the money so he
could go.
C: And the man became his friend!
J: All right. OK. So the man became his friend and let him go.
C: Yes.
J: I think . ..
C: No, the man umm the man began to be his friend and they all lived happily
ever after.
J: Oh, so they lived happily together. Oh, that's a good idea. OK. Let's play it
back.

71
Once again the child generates the field, with minimal guidance from Joan. But
as far as genre is concerned Joan takes a very positive role, scaffolding the
Complication/Resolution staging that is fundamental to this kind of narrative. It
is this guidance that makes the teaching work.
Interaction alone, without guidance, is not an effective teaching strategy.
Gray (1986) cites the following negotiated text in which photos of the chidren
making toast were used to scaffold the field, but generic guidance is obviously
lacking.

Text 6. All the things are on the table. We will use them to make toast. There
is honey, vegemite, peanut butter, bread, margarine, jam, a knife, a plate and a
toaster. We are ready to make toast. Kevin is getting two slices of bread out of
the packet. Then he puts the bread in the toaster. The bread goes down
automatically with a spring. The element starts to get hot and red. Kevin puts
his hand over the toaster to feel how hot the toaster was. The control switch
makes the bread brown. Kevin watches the bread inside the toaster cooking. It is
still white. The toast came popping out. Jean is getting the toast out of the
toaster. The bread has gone brown. Jean had to be careful because of the
electricity and also because the toaster was hot.

This kind of writing is not functional in our culture. Generically speaking it is

neither recount (i.e., what we did), nor procedure (i.e., how to do something).
And the mode is wrong: parts of the text read like a running commentary on the
photos scaffolding the field. But ruMing commentaries are spoken, not written
down. Even this is inconsistent, as can be demonstrated by examining the
variety of tenses used: are (present); will use (future); is getting (present in
present); came (past); has gone (past in present). Moreover running
commentary makes use of (present in present) tense for actions. But actions in 6.
are usually the 'timeless' (present) characteristic of reports: puts, goes, starts,
puts, makes (not is putting, is going, is starting etc.). This is not just a case
of mixing up tenses. Tenses, like the rest of grammar, are functional. They are
designed to mean. Rather the inconsistency of tense selection is symptomatic of
the lack of generic focus given by the teacher to the negotiation. The teacher had
no clear social purpose in mind.
Unfocused conferencing is just as ineffective. In the following example from
Graves (1983: 114-15) the teacher explores the writer's thoughts and feelings
about his field, but does not directly help the young writer shape the structure of
his narrative. It may even be of course that narrative is not the appropriate genre
for exploring the benefits of football training in the first place. In what sense,
one wonders, will the teacher'S interaction help his student avoid 'just writing
and wandering around?'

72
Text 7. (Graves style conference showing what he calls 'the process of working
on the main idea'.)
Mr Sitka: What is this paper about. Anton?
Anton: Well. I'm not sure. Atfirst I thought it was going to be
about when we won the game in overtime with the penalty
kick. But when I got going on how our team had won because
we were insuch good shape for overtime. You see. the other
team hardly move at the end. Took me way back to our earlier
practices when I hated the coach so much. Gosh. I don't know
what it's about.
Mr Sitka: Where are you now in the draft?
Anton : Oh. I've just got the part down about when we won in
overtime.
Mr Sitka: So. you've just got started then. Well. it's probably too early
to tell what it's about. What did you figure to do with the next
draft , then?
Anton: I don't know. I don't want to just write and wander around. I've
written about when we've won but it just sort of has me stuck
at that point.
Mr Sitka: Tell me about that coach of yours.
Anton: God. how I hated him! I almost quit three or four times
maybe. I thought he couldn't stand me. He'd yell. catch every
little thing I did wrong. We'd run and run until we couldn't
stand up. Have some passing drills. Then he'd run us some
more. He'd just stand there yellin' and puffin' on his cigar.
Course he was right. When we won the championship. I think
it went right back to those early practices.
Mr Sitka: The way you tell it sounds as though you have quite a
live beginning to your story. Try just writing about early
practices. then see what your piece is about.

Texts such as 6 and 7 demonstrate the kinds of problems that arise when teachers
and students do not share knowledge about language and genre. Guidance
becomes at best indirect, and may well be absent completely. Only bright
motivated middle class children are sure to read between the lines and learn to
write. apparently effortlessly, without being taught
What about differences between speaking and writing? Why won't it work
simply to surround children with print? A glance back at texts like 4 and 5
illustrates the nature of the problem. Both texts are highly interactive; but at the
same time, and in fact because of this, both texts are mainly talk. Neither
immerses the learner in writing. The alternative of course is to get the children
reading; but this eliminates the interaction and guidance, and possibly the shared
experience as well. For these reasons, learning to write can never be the same

73
kind of process as learning to talk. Somehow, shortcuts must be found to get
over the difference in mode.
The most obvious of these is to make use of the fact that when children
arrive at school they can all use language to learn. This language can be used to
acquire knowledge about writing - specifically knowledge about genres and
their staging; and about the language used to realise each stage. Rothery (1985)
has demonstrated that such knowledge can be introduced to children in infant
school, and that once introduced it paves the way for more effective negotiations
and consultations as well as providing children with their own individual
scaffolding that can be deployed as needed to produce successful texts.
Knowledge about generic structure was used explicitly in text 4 and 5
above, and in countless other exchanges in Barbara Ryan's Year 2 class.
Knowledge about grammar was also introduced and successfully deployed in order
to orient children to the kinds of nominal group appropriate in reports. None of
the children felt uncomfortable with knowledge of this kind. For them, learning
about language is as natural as learning about any other aspect of their world.
They had not yet learned that in our culture knowledge about language is taboo.
It needs to be stressed at this point nonetheless that knowledge about genre
and language was introduced in the context of the children's writing, that as far as
genre was concerned it was oriented to the structure of whole texts, and that the
grammar used was a semantically oriented functional one (based on Halliday,
1985a). It also needs to be stressed that in the past no one has seriously studied
the effectiveness of teaching this kind of knowledge about language in this way
(John Carr is currently pursuing post-graduate research in this area; see KoHn,
1981, for a thorough critique of the research that is supposed to have
demonstrated that teaching grammar does not improve children's writing -
KoHn concludes that most of the research is methodologically suspect. and more
importantly that when grammar was taught in conjunction with writing, instead
of as a separate subject. some studies showed that writing did improve). The real
question that needs to be put is : How could one deal effectively with texts like 6
without knowledge of this kind?

A note on teaching narrative

Martin, Rothery and Christie use the term narrative to refer to one particular
type of story, and make use of Labov and Waletzky's 1967 terms to define its
staging: Abstract! Orientation! Complication! Evaluation! Resolution! Coda.
This is not the only 'narrative-type' text they have identified. Martin and Rothery
(1981) distinguished as well recount. which lacks a Complication (and thus a
Resolution), and thematic na"ative, in which recurring Complication Resolution
sequences might be used to articulate a literary theme. Subsequently Martin

74
(1984b) reviewed in addition: the moral tale, myth, spoof and serial. This seven-
genre framework has to date proved adequate for characterising story writing in
Australian infant and primary schools.
Martin and Rothery also noted in their work that although teachers did not
often make their expectations explicit, many teachers valued the Labov and
Waletzky style narrative highly. Consequently when choosing genres to focus on
in the curriculum genres they were designing to teach writing they chose this as
one important genre for children to learn. Their work on developing strategies for
teaching this particular genre has now been reported in numerous publications
(esptfCially, Rothery, 1985b). At the ARA meeting in Perth in 1986 Martin
reported on teaching this genre to seven-year-olds, along with work on teaching a
number of factual genres, including report, procedure, explanation, exposition
and discussion in both infant and primary schools. Bunbury (1986) comments
on the Perth paper as follows - speaking, it should be added, two years after
Martin (1984) in the same Macarthur symposium series at which he had
discussed six different narrative styles:

Amongst the people who help to reduce literature to a trite level are
systemic linguists such as lim Martin, loan Rothery and Frances Christie.
For them, the narrative form is- adequately described as a genre which has
an orientation, a complication and a resolution, and sometimes a coda.
Children's written texts are analysed in these terms and teachers are
encouraged to teach narrative by instructing children so that they recognise
these elements and then model their own writing on works which are
identified as containing these elements. Such an approach implies a very
limited view of narrative; it inhibits readers' response and the range of
discussion; and it certainly restricts the teaching of literature/narrative in
class.

And later in the same article:

There might be less objection to the idea of orientation, complication and

resolution if these concepts become play things (as in the above example)
which young people used to explore the many possibilities within
narrative. But even this is a very restricted approach to narrative: What for
instance, has happened to episode, viewpoint, conflict, crisis, theme, voice,
frame, tone, to name but a few? When the range of narrative concepts is
restricted by didactic instruction so too are the readers' expectations;
and if expectations are restricted, so too are responses.

75
Two comments will perhaps suffice. First, the term narrative is used
by Bunbury to refer to what genre theory would have to classify as a wide
range of genres. Christie, Martin and Rothery use the term TUlffative for
just one of these. Second, it is by no means clear that literary terms such as
episode, viewpoint, conflict, crisis, theme, voice, frame and tone are well
enough defined to inform teaching practice. And even if they are, is
Bunbury really suggesting that they be introduced to seven-year-olds? And if
so, at the expense of how many factual genres?
Bunbury also suggests that a more flexible approach to genre might well
lead to 'imaginative' texts like 8. One must indeed wonder what infant
school children would make of models such as these.

Text 8. She drowned and a bubble rist up

and a man came riding by

and he had a rope with him
and he sore them
and he through the rope in
and savt her
thak you
Said the little girl

there was a little girl

She was walking on the path
She found a pond that was to deep
but She didn't now
so she just went in

Bunbury no doubt feels that texts like 8 are in some sense creative. Behind this
lies a deep ideological concern with the possibility of social change. As noted
earlier, genres do change; they are in no sense fixed and immutable as Sawyer
and Watson seek to imply. But Year 2 students are not James Joyce. They are
not the artist who moved slowly, over a period of a lifetime, through the
relatively conventional Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, to
the intriguing Ulysses and finally to Finnegans Wake, a book that had evolved
so far beyond the narrative genres of its time that it still takes years of
specialised training to be able to read it at all. Like all individuals who learned to
make new meanings, Joyce learned familiar meanings first. It is these meanings
that genre theorists propose to begin with in initial literacy programs. Once
established, only if established, do they afford the possibility of creativity or
social change.

76
Freedom

What is freedom? Is a progressive process writing classroom really free? Does

allowing children to choose their own topics, biting one's tongue in conferences
and encouraging ownership, actually encourage the development of children's
writing abilities? Will genres, if taught, imprison children? Why can't genre
theorists just leave children alone and let them get on with learning in their own
words? Questions such as these, often couched in deeply ideological metaphors,
are a recurring feature in the discourse of those alarmed by the emergence once
again of explicit discussion of language and context in educational debates.
Consider then a process writing classroom, in the Northern Territory, with
a large population of Aboriginal children. The children are encouraged to choose
their own topics. At the end of the year one collects the writing, and analyses it
for field. It turns out that all the children have written about one or another of
four themes:

a. visiting friends and relatives

b. going hunting for bush tucker
c. sporting events
d. movies or TV shows they have seen

Then one examines the texts from the point of view of genre. Here the analysis
is simpler still. Every one of the texts is a recount - a simple sequential
retelling of events.
One repeats the study year by year, following the children through infants
and primary school. The results are the same (see Gray, 1986, for discussion of
the reality corresponding to the scenario posited here). What kind of freedom is
this.?
Looked at from the point of view of social theories of language
development, the results are hardly surprising. Because from the point of view of
these theories it is social context, not individual choice, that has the greatest
influence on what people say or write. The children concerned have a limited
range of personal experiences to draw on. and they make use of these. Their
teachers have not guided them into a variety of written genres, and so they fall
back on an oral genre that deals effectively with this personal experience. What
else could they possibly be expected to do? And are urban Sydney children really
different? Will genres in their writing simply spring spontaneously from within?
It is more than obvious that they do not Martin and Rothery's study of a
Sydney western suburbs process writing school showed that city children behave
very similarly to the Aboriginal children described above. Their teachers do not
create choices for them, so they do not have choices to take up. Offering choice
in classrooms such as these is not enabling. It is pseudo-choice. Writers cannot
take up options they do not have.
77
 The alternative, put simply, is to teach - to create options. But because it
C
has turned its back on language, progressive education is in a very poor position
E
to take up this challenge. It lacks the tools to analyse and consbUct the
curriculum genres that could be used; and it lacks the tools to monitor children's
C
speaking and writing to see if development is taking place. The fact that Sawyer
w
and Watson include no text at all in their critique is symptomatic; and they are in
Lt.
good company - if it were not for the occasional consideration of children's
C
texts from the point of view of handwriting and spelling most process writing
publications would not contain any examples of children's writing either, let
Cl
alone analysed texts (e.g. Walshe, 1981; Turbill, 1982; Graves, 1983, 1984;
Cl
Walshe, 1986; Camboume & Turbill, 1987). Similarly Dixon (this volume)
or
considers only a single text, and that is one provided by Christie. th
Twenty years ago, this was perhaps forgivable. Many of the tools required
simply did not exist. But since that time various schools of linguistics, Cl
especially systemic theory, have developed socially based theories of language di:
and language learning that are directly applicable in classrooms. The problem M
now is not with linguistics but with education. Most educators are either unable Al
or unwilling to look seriously at language. They take it for granted in a way
which has made and will continue to make it impossible for them to achieve Cl
their goals. Se
Genre theory puts language back into the picture. This is not 'Back to an
Basics'. But it is the key to providing progressive educators with somewhere to
go. C(
Di
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