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VELS level 1 & 2 – Developing literate language (Christie, Clay, Wells)

This section uses the recount of six-year old Suzy to illustrate the differences between written and spoken-like language.

Suzy’s recount

The following text was written by Suzy, 6 after a school excursion to Werribee Park.

We went to Werribee Park. When we got off the bus we went in the mansion. I liked the beds and the lounge room and the stairs after that we went to the garden and I liked the flowers and the colours. Then we went to the bus we got our lunch and ate it all. Then we went to see the animals and we saw lambs sheep ducks a kangaroo emus goats camels water buffalo pigs guinea pigs zebras rhinoceros and after that we played on the swings and then we went to the island and we climbed the island and when Mandy and I climbed it the mud was all slippery and we had to come down and go on to the top and we found a cave and there was a door in the cave and there was steps on the island and nearly everyone went into the cave and Stephen and I was the monster and it started to rain so we went home and all of us were tired. The end.

(F. Christie 2000)

Questions

Staging:

• Suzy’s text is a recount. Look at its overall organisation. Does it have a clear orientation stage (establishing when and where the events took place and who was involved), a record of events (description of what occurred) and a reorientation (summary or conclusion)? Mark these stages on the text.
• It is customary for the orientation to a written recount to establish time and place as well as introduce characters. Does Suzy include all of these elements in her orientation?
• Which elements could she be encouraged to include so that her written text becomes more ‘context independent’ or self-sufficient, so that it makes sense to a reader in another place and time?

Spoken-like use of language

We have looked closely at the characteristics of spoken language. Can you find evidence of the following features of spoken language in Suzy’s text?

Context dependency:

• Does Suzy assume that the reader shares the same information as she does?
• Where in the text is this most apparent?
• Look at her opening sentence: who does ‘we’ refer to?
• List all the participants in the text. Does Suzy assume we know their identity? Do we?
• How might you support Suzy to introduce participants in a story?

Adding on information:

In spoken language, information gets added through linking words, also known as conjunctions. The most common include: additive conjunctions such as ‘and’ as well as temporal (time) conjunctions such as ‘then’, ‘and then’, ‘when’, ‘after that’.

• Look at Suzy’s text again. In what stage of the text do most of these additive and temporal conjunctions occur? Underline them.

Written language

One of the key characteristics of written texts is that lots of information is compressed or ‘packed in’ through the noun group.

• Underline as many noun groups as you can find in Suzy’s text.

The tropical plants from Port Douglas

Pre-modifiers (e.g. the tropical) are words that modify the meaning of the head noun by making it more specific. Pre-modifiers often contain an article (‘the’ or ‘a’). The function of the article is to point to what is under focus in the noun group.

Post-modifiers, as their name suggests, come after the noun. They come in groups of words such as ‘from Port Douglas’. They can also be embedded clauses (e.g. which flourish in far north Queensland).

• Which resources does Suzy use most: pre-modifiers or post-modifiers?
• How could we encourage her to compress her written language more?

The spoken to written continuum

There is no clear dividing line that separates spoken and written language. Some texts are neither exclusively spoken or written-like. It is useful to conceptualise the relationship between the two as a continuum.

Is Suzy’s text closer to ‘spoken-like’ language or ‘literate’ (written) language?

Related material

Previous key concept - Language and learning (Halliday)

Next key concept - Repertoires of language (Gee, Halliday, Snow)

Teaching strategy - Adding on information - noun groups