Bullock (1975)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Foreword, Membership, Contents, Introduction

Part 1 Attitudes and standards
Chapter 1 Attitudes to the teaching of English
Chapter 2 Standards of reading
Chapter 3 Monitoring

Part 2 Language in the early years
Chapter 4 Language and learning
Chapter 5 Language in the early years

Part 3 Reading
Chapter 6 The reading process
Chapter 7 Reading in the early years
Chapter 8 Reading: the later stages
Chapter 9 Literature

Part 4 Language in the middle and secondary years
Chapter 10 Oral language
Chapter 11 Written language
Chapter 12 Language across the curriculum

Part 5 Organisation
Chapter 13 The primary and middle years
Chapter 14 Continuity between schools
Chapter 15 The secondary school
Chapter 16 LEA advisory services

Part 6 Reading and language difficulties
Chapter 17 Screening, diagnosis and recording
Chapter 18 Children with reading difficulties
Chapter 19 Adult literacy
Chapter 20 Children from families of overseas origin

Part 7 Resources
Chapter 21 Books
Chapter 22 Technological aids and broadcasting

Part 8 Teacher education and training
Chapter 23 Initial training
Chapter 24 In-service education

Part 9 The survey
Chapter 25: I Introduction
Chapter 25: II Primary commentary
Chapter 25: III Secondary commentary
Chapter 25: IV The questionnaire forms (not online)
Chapter 25: V Technical notes (not online)

Part 10 Sumary of conclusions and recommendations
Chapter 26 Conclusions and recommendations

Appendix A Witnesses and sources of evidence
Appendix B Visits made
Glossary
Index

Report of the Committee of Enquiry appointed by the Secretary of State for Education and Science under the Chairmanship of Sir Alan Bullock FBA

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1975
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

Chapter 11 Written language
[pages 162 - 187]

INTRODUCTION

11.1 We have considered talking and listening, two of the modes in which language is used, and have referred to the use of the spoken language in the special context of dramatic work. In earlier chapters we had much to say on a third, that of reading. We come now to writing, the fourth mode, but before approaching it we need to draw a clear distinction between those four modes on the one hand and another activity often closely associated with them in school, namely the study of language. We regard the distinction between use and study as crucial to any discussion of the place of language in the curriculum. The two are easily confused, since the use of language - for example in reading a difficult text or giving a written account of a complex idea - may be a strenuously 'studious' or thoughtful process. Let us give an illustration of the distinction as we see it. The reading of a paragraph to make out its meaning is an example of the use of language. If, however, the reader compares items from a paragraph with items from elsewhere, not to determine the meaning of the original but to make a generalisation about language, then that constitutes a study. In order to use language a person has, of course, to apply his knowledge of it. Some of that knowledge may have resulted from study, but much of it will have been picked up in the course of actually using language, and will remain implicit or unspecified. There is no satisfactory evidence to show how far an explicit knowledge of the rules governing language can reinforce an implicit knowledge, or substitute for it. This chapter is therefore based on the following premises:

(1) A child learns language primarily by using the four modes of talking, listening, writing and reading in close relationship with one another.

(2) Curiosity about language is widespread among children and enables them to engage successfully in occasional studies or linguistic 'experiments' arising out of their reading, writing, listening, and talking. The teacher encourages this curiosity and seizes the opportunity of pursuing some general question about language as it arises from usage, collecting and organising further examples for the purpose of answering the question. Studies of this kind may develop an experimental attitude towards language and provide a method of enquiry which helps pupils solve their own problems of language usage as they meet them.

(3) These ad hoc studies may in favourable circumstances, for example with older pupils, lead to systematic language studies. The value a pupil gains from these lies in the grasp of principles that may affect his understanding of himself and other people, rather than in any direct effect upon his language performance.

(4) Explicit rules and facts about language, that is to say the outcomes of other people's studies, have direct practical value to a pupil when (a) they solve particular problems in the tasks he is engaged on, or (b) he is able to reconstruct for himself the analysis that led to the rule.

11.2 Writing has always been accorded a high prestige in our educational system, and this is due in large part to its traditional use as a means by which students put on record what they have learned. Written examinations have contributed to this emphasis, since they became the principal medium for judging achievement in most subjects of the curriculum. One result has been that until recent years spoken language has received relatively little attention. Another has been that most of the writing required of pupils is for purposes of record or assessment. A recent research study (1) on writing in the secondary school revealed that over 80 per cent of the written work in some subjects was judged to have been carried out for test purposes. In English itself the figure for the first year was 6 per cent but by the seventh year it had risen to 41 per cent. In junior schools in the past, the demands of the eleven plus examination often led to restrictions upon the kinds of writing the children were asked to produce. The removal of selection tests has undoubtedly expanded the range. What is open to question is whether this expansion has been as far-reaching as is sometimes believed.

11.3 It has, of course, long been the practice of most junior school teachers and secondary school English teachers to give their pupils opportunities for 'personal writing'. This is a loose term which distinguishes the writing from those 'impersonal' uses by which knowledge is acquired and recorded, and it ranges from the autobiographical to the fictional. The form that has attracted most attention is that which has become known as 'creative writing', a term which has acquired emotive associations and has sometimes polarised attitudes. Applied to the teaching of English it is a term of comparatively recent origin. In the Hadow Report of 1926 literature was described as 'great creative art', but that was the only use of the word in the five pages devoted to English. It was in fact in the visual arts that teachers first discovered that children could express their individual responses to experience without first acquiring techniques by deliberate practice. It is perhaps surprising that a similar discovery in respect of writing should have come so much later in this country, since there was always plenty of evidence that children learn to speak without deliberate teaching and often achieve a high degree of fluency before coming to school. The discovery of spontaneity led in due course, principally in the secondary school, to a number of attempts to provoke or startle children into spontaneous utterance. 'Free writing' and 'creative writing' were names given to procedures that focused upon the stimulus. This was usually some display or symbolic object to which the pupils would then be asked to respond in whatever way moved them.

11.4 This approach is still a popular one in many junior and secondary school classrooms, and indeed it has found its way into a number of course books. However, there is now more healthy scepticism about the value of this emphasis where it is at the expense of other kinds of writing. In their evidence a group of teachers gave their view of it in these words:

'Many teachers see "creative writing" as the high point of literacy. We need to re-think this: over-emphasis on it has distorted a whole view of language. It usually means, in actuality, colourful or fanciful language, not "ordinary", using "vivid imagery". It is often false, artificially stimulated and pumped up by the teacher or written to an unconscious model which he has given to the children. It is very often divorced from real feeling.'

11.5 This lack of agreed definition reflects the absence of a clear rationale for the work to which it refers, and this applies equally to such terms as 'free', 'expression', and 'personal'. In our view the main stream of activity in the area of 'personal writing' should arise from a continually changing context, not from a prepared stimulus. This context will be created from the corporate enterprises of the classroom and the individual interests and experiences of the children, cumulatively shared with the teacher and the rest of the group. Moreover, the writing should be constantly developing in its capacity to fulfil the demands this context produces. Wherever spontaneity is exclusively valued this kind of development can be inhibited. Children reach a point where they need new techniques, having run through the satisfaction of their spontaneous performances. If the climate is one which is discouraging to such a concern there is inevitably stagnation. The solution lies in a recognition on the part of teachers that a writer's intention is prior to his need for techniques. The teacher who aims to extend the pupil's power as a writer must therefore work first upon his intentions, and then upon the techniques appropriate to them. When this is understood there is every reason why spontaneity should be an element in a great deal of what a child writes. Spontaneity then becomes capable of surviving the transition from artlessness to art; or in plainer terms, of supporting a writer in his search for new techniques appropriate to his novel intentions.

11.6 The difficulty of structuring development in writing, whether in English or in other subjects, has too often been regarded as insuperable, or as likely to lead to mechanical exercises and practices. There has not been enough thought given to the different varieties of English, and to the stages of language development at which children can begin to cope with them. Some categories are too rough and ready to be of much value - the division into subjective and' objective writing, for example, or into narrative, descriptive, reflective, and argumentative. These still influence the setting of many O Level examination papers, and not only the work of the pupils preparing for them but that of others much younger. We believe that a more useful frame of reference is to be found in the categories devised by the Schools Council Writing Research Unit (2). These consist of three major functions superimposed upon a prior division into two modes of use: 'language in the role of participant' and 'language in the role of spectator'. In its participant role language is a means of getting something done in the world, such as giving instructions, setting up a hypothesis, exchanging information, or solving a problem. By contrast, language in the role of spectator is used to reconstruct past events or construct imagined ones. Putting the distinction in another way, an utterance in the role of participant is a means to an end beyond itself; an utterance in the role of spectator is an end in itself, something to be entered into and enjoyed by both writer and reader (3). The three main categories superimposed upon these are Transactional, Expressive and Poetic. The Expressive is the central one. It is language 'close to the speaker', often the language used by intimates in a shared context. It relies upon a reader's interest in the writer as well as in what he has to say. Because of these qualities it has great educational importance, since it provides the tentative stage through which a pupil's new thinking must pass on its way to the comparative certainty of knowledge. This transitional process represents a continuum from the Expressive to the Transactional, which covers uses of language in the role of participant. As this role becomes more dominant it will demand greater explicitness in the writing, a more pressing concern for accuracy of reference. The other continuum, that between Expressive and Poetic, covers language in the role of spectator. As the demands of this role come to take precedence over the expressive needs of the writer, he finds organisation and formal patterning more and more essential to the fulfilment of his purpose. A gossipy letter and a work of literature are both examples of writing in the spectator role, but one is at the expressive end of the spectrum and the other at the poetic end. At the risk of repetition we must go a little more deeply here into this aspect of writing, and will defer until the next chapter a closer examination of the participant role.

11.7 We have already placed special emphasis on the importance of the pupil's intention as a writer and have suggested that this will arise out of the context of work in the class or the broader one of his out of school life, as shared with his teacher and classmates. It is upon these contexts that the teacher works with a view to arousing specific individual intentions, sometimes developing them tactfully in talk, and providing technical guidance as it is needed. If a teacher is to succeed in this he will need to learn all he can about the processes involved in writing and above all the satisfactions to be derived from it. In the case of Expressive and Poetic writing this is no easy matter, for the satisfactions lie well below the surface. We attempt here no more than brief indications:

1. When a child writes autobiographically he offers his experiences as a basis for forming a relationship of mutual interest and trust with the reader he has in mind. His satisfaction in the writing, if he succeeds, lies in the rewards of that relationship. Since for the teacher this mutuality is in fact a professional relationship and one that is necessary to the kind of teaching and learning we are concerned with here, he will aim at establishing it with every child he teaches.

2. When a child writes in the spectator role, whether autobiography or fiction, he exposes, by what he chooses to write about and the way he presents it, some part of his system of values, and his satisfaction lies in having his feelings and beliefs corroborated or modified. But this exchange is not indiscriminate; since trust between people is based above all on shared values, it is from those with whom the child has this kind of relationship that he derives most satisfaction in the exchange.

3. In offering his feelings and beliefs the child is in fact presenting himself in the light he would like to be seen in; acceptance of what he offers confirms for him that picture, and this is probably the deepest kind of satisfaction to be had from the whole process. Again, this is not an indiscriminate undertaking; it matters who plays the part of respondent.

4. There is finally the sheer satisfaction of making, of bringing into existence a pleasing verbal object. Such satisfaction is likely to increase as the writing moves towards the poetic end of the spectrum.

11.9 There is one further feature of written communication which is no less important in the development of children's competence: the nature of the 'audience' to which the writing is addressed. The writer's sense of audience is one of the ways in which the quality of the communication can be assessed. It has long been realised, and research has confirmed the fact, that by far the largest amount of writing done in schools is explicitly or implicitly directed at the teacher. The remaining small proportion is divided between writing for self and writing for other pupils. Clearly the teacher has the responsibility of providing continuity in his capacity of principal receiver of what the children write. Nevertheless, we believe that writing for other audiences should be encouraged. If a child knows that what he is writing is going to interest and entertain others, he will be more careful with its presentation. Unfortunately, large numbers of children are still denied this assurance, and their work does not emerge from the covers of the exercise book. Children's writing should be attractively displayed, and they should have many opportunities to read aloud what they have written. This practice is most effective when it takes place in small groups as a naturally accepted activity. Where such opportunities are confined to very occasional readings to the whole class they can promote exhibitionism, resentment, or defeatism in some children. We welcome the development to encourage writing for audiences outside the classroom, where certain constraints and criteria offer additional challenges. (An example of this is writing for younger children, as described in para 14.14). By varying the demands the teacher will broaden the range of the pupils' writing experience. They should be faced with the need to analyse the specific task, to choose the language appropriate to it, and to establish criteria by which to judge what they have achieved.

11.10 We suggest in this chapter that there are wide-ranging possibilities for ad hoc study of language, and that such study may encourage experimental attitudes towards language in use. It follows from this that the child should not be made to feel that it does not pay to take risks. If a pupil is progressively to develop control in his handling of language he needs opportunity to experiment with new forms, and to do so with security. The teacher's first response to a piece of writing should be personal and positive. Only after responding to what has been said is it reasonable to turn attention to how. Correction and revision are then of unquestionable value. The best approach to these is for the teacher to go over the pupil's work with him, discussing persistent errors, suggesting solutions where the writing has run into difficulties, and talking over alternative ways of phrasing something. In much of the writing that takes place in school the pupil's first attempt is expected to be the finished article; there is not enough encouragement of the idea of a first draft to be followed by a second, more refined production. Merely to assign a grade to every piece of writing works against the notion of writing as communication. Obviously there will be occasions when the teacher wants to grade a piece of work for a specific reason. He may, for instance, have instructed the whole class in some technical point and feel the need to assess a sharply focused writing task to follow. Assessment is not in question; it is when it becomes an automatic and unvaried process that it loses its value for both teacher and pupil. When every piece of work receives detailed scrutiny on every occasion teachers are marking against the clock, and this is a further pressure towards confining the corrections to surface points. There is less time for attention to such features as style, choice of word or image, or inappropriate colloquialism. And there is still less for engagement with the subject matter and for such discussion points as 'can you find any point at which your main character behaves inconsistently, and explain why?' A useful approach the teacher might adapt to suit his own purposes is that of some CSE Boards, where a candidate is able to offer for evaluation a selected proportion of the work of the past year. What the teacher needs is the time to give a proportion of each pupil's work the kind of close attention we have been advocating.

11.11 In recent years there has been a welcome increase in opportunities for teachers to discuss the assessment of children's written work. This has ranged from the experience of inter-school assessment and moderation in 16+ examinations to the informal study of primary school children's writing in teachers' centres. We should like to see such opportunities taken up more widely, for we have no doubt that the understanding that grows from them can have a considerable influence on the development of children's writing.

11.12 With regard to spelling, which is examined in greater detail in the annex, we believe the most important step the teacher can take is to improve the pupil's confidence in his own capacity. Repeated failure reinforces a poor self-image, and the correction of written work can make matters worse unless its purposes are carefully worked out. Earlier in the chapter it was pointed out that a child should have the opportunity to write for an audience, and that if he knows his writing is to be read with interest by others he will be more careful with its presentation. His experience of writing should not be one that leads him to look upon each assignment as a minor test, the almost certain outcome of which will be a number of spelling corrections to be written out three times. We have suggested that the most effective form of correction a teacher can practise is to discuss with each child the nature of his errors. How much time a teacher can spend with an individual pupil or a small group of two or three depends upon his classroom organisation. This should certainly be such as to allow personal attention for the children who need special support with their spelling. The teacher needs to be able to direct the pupil's attention to the essential features of the word, to accustom him to looking at it 'with intent to remember'. From this process the pupil's own word list will emerge, and he will be helped to learn those words for which he clearly experiences a need. For example, in one school we visited the children were required in some of their work to produce their first drafts in pencil on paper with a wide margin. The teacher then wrote the correct spelling in the margin as he discussed the piece of work with the child. The child erased his mistakes, substituting the correct spelling, and he was encouraged to do this from memory, having first learned the word. He then cut off the margin and clipped it into his folder of words essential to his own needs. We use the word 'learn' quite deliberately, for when the teacher has discussed the word with the child it is valuable for the directed visual perception to be reinforced in this way. It is a process of look, read, visualise, reconstitute, and reproduce. Clearly there must be no overloading. The teacher has to use his judgement as to which of the errors should receive specific attention, taking account of the child's measure of confidence, his expressed need for particular words, and so on. At the heart of the process is the concentration of attention on the internal structure of words, and this is something that rarely takes place when the conventional mark/correct procedure operates. We believe that in the course of their writing children should acquire a knowledge of the spelling rules and an ability to generalise about words, and that this should be rooted in the curiosity about language that the good teacher arouses. In some schools the mention of spelling rules has come to be regarded as almost heretical, but in our view this is to deprive the children of a valuable support. We were, in fact, encouraged to see schools whose commitment to a lively and imaginative approach to English included a recognition of the need for such a support. Typical was a large comprehensive school whose head of English had included spelling rules in the departmental guidance sheets he and his colleagues produced.

11.13 In the secondary school there is the additional complexity that the pupil is now writing for a number of different teachers and with an increased range of constraints. There are the words he needs for his own purposes but also the words the subject teacher requires him to have, and the uncertainty can be sharply increased within a matter of weeks. This calls for a high degree of patience and cooperation on the part of the staff. It is a common experience among English teachers to be constantly receiving criticism about the pupil's standards of writing in other subjects, and spelling is often the focal point of the censure. We believe that language production is a collective responsibility and that the subject teacher should be willing to cooperate by observing and recording in a way which will help his colleague. This in turn calls for an agreed policy based on an understanding of the factors at work in spelling weakness, a policy which will produce consistency of response to errors. Once a practice of consultation has been established the English teachers will be in a position to take continuing account of the words the pupil needs in other contexts. If the child is to be helped to an image of himself as a competent speller this cooperation and consistency of approach are essential.

11.14 In summary we must emphasise that in our view a systematic approach to spelling should be placed firmly in context. Any work on spelling should emerge from this context and its results should in turn become a contribution to it. System and purpose need to go together. When the child has been helped to perceive the essentials of the word he will find it easier to memorise and can go on attempting the word until he has assimilated it. But it will be his own word; one which answers to a real purpose or is likely to recur constantly in his writing. What is needed in attention to spelling is a sense of perspective. We believe it should be part of the fabric of normal classroom experience, neither dominating nor neglected. The climate should be such that the child has a motive for spelling correctly, and he should then be helped to it by an effective system.

LANGUAGE STUDY

11.15 For many people language study means the study of grammar, and this word featured prominently in the evidence, particularly the evidence of those witnesses who felt that standards of writing had fallen. What are the effects of grammar teaching on the ability to write? How much grammar should be taught, at what ages, and how? What, for that matter, is meant by grammar in the sense intended by those who suggest there should be more of it? In our discussions with teachers it became obvious that the term was often being used to include sentence construction, précis, paragraphing, vocabulary work, punctuation, and more besides. 'Grammar' has, of course, a highly specific and technical meaning, which we might roughly characterise as an analytical study of those formal arrangements of items in a language by which utterances have meaning. What is under discussion here, however, has a wider concern. It is the degree to which language study of several kinds, and practice arising from study, can be effective in improving a pupil's ability to use language in general. It is a central recommendation of this chapter that the teacher should take deliberate measures to improve his pupil's ability to handle language. The point at issue is what form these should take, and this is a question to which we have given much consideration.

11.16 The traditional view of language teaching was, and indeed in many schools still is, prescriptive. It identified a set of correct forms and prescribed that these should be taught. As they were mastered the pupil would become a more competent writer and aspire to a standard of 'correctness' that would serve him for all occasions. Such a prescriptive view of language was based on a comparison with classical Latin, and it also mistakenly assumed an unchanging quality in both grammatical rules and word meaning in English. In fact the view still prevails. Letters to the press are rarely more fierce than when complaining of the way in which a particular word is being misused or used in a new sense. 'Brutalise' and 'hopefully' are two recent examples, and there are many precedents. Dr Johnson tried to eliminate 'fun', 'clever', 'budge', and 'mob'; and it is ironical that the very word Swift used for fixing the language in a permanent and authorised condition was 'ascertain', which has completely altered its meaning since his day. One may regret some of the changes, which can deprive the language of valuable distinctions. One may decide to resist them and insist on keeping to existing forms, and this is natural and understandable. But if change is to occur it will in due time occur, since growth and change are essential characteristics of a language. Writing less than a hundred years ago Trollope used the past participle 'gotten'; if it were uttered today it would be rejected as an intrusive Americanism. As one commentator has colourfully put it: 'The living language is like a cowpath; it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims and needs'. Montaigne said as much in the 16th century, when he remarked that only a fool would fight custom with grammar. Many of the rules in use today were invented quite arbitrarily by grammarians in the 17th and 19th centuries, including the embargo on the split infinitive and on the ending of a sentence with a preposition. Before the 18th century they are both to be found in common use, along with other constructions proscribed today. John Donne regularly split infinitives, and Burns was no stranger to the practice. In a letter to The Times in 1907, Bernard Shaw wrote: 'There is a busybody on your staff who devotes a lot of time to chasing split infinitives. Every good literary craftsman splits his infinitives when the sense demands it. I call for the immediate dismissal of this pedant. It is of no consequence whether he decides to go quickly, or quickly to go, or to quickly go. The important thing is that he should go at once.' And, of course, there is Churchill's famous note in which he expressed his impatience with those who always struggled to avoid ending sentences with prepositions: 'This is the sort of English up with which I will not put'.

11.17 We give these examples not to suggest a free-for-all, but to put prescriptive attitudes in perspective. One of the disadvantages of the prescriptive approach to language teaching is its negative aspect. Ironically, many of these manufactured additions to the language took on a special status in school textbooks, which often put the emphasis less on knowing what to say than on knowing what to avoid. Pupils not too certain of their ability with language would thus be looking for the gins and snares, to the equal detriment of their confidence and their writing. This kind of teaching has often inhibited a child's utterance without strengthening the fabric of his language. It has nurtured in many the expectation of failure and drilled others in what they already knew.

11.18 More fundamental, however, is the question of whether exercises in themselves and by themselves will improve the child's ability to write. Since the beginning of this century a good deal of research has been devoted to this subject, and though many believe its results to be inconclusive some of the individual experiments have carried much conviction. One (4) such study is particularly worth singling out for attention. One class in each of five schools was taught formal grammar over a period of two years, a corresponding class in each school having no grammar lessons during that time. The latter took instead what might be described as a 'composition course', consisting of practice in writing, revising, and editing, and an inductive approach to usage. At the end of the period both groups were given a writing test and a grammar test. In the writing test the 'non-grammar' classes gained significantly higher scores than the 'grammar' classes, and overall there was no effective correspondence between high scores in the grammar test and improvement in writing.

11.19 We do not conclude from this that a child should not be taught how to improve his use of language; quite the contrary. It has not been established by research that systematic attention to skill and technique has no beneficial effect on the handling of language. What has been shown is that the teaching of traditional analytic grammar does not appear to improve performance in writing. This is not to suggest that there is no place for any kind of exercises at any time and in any form. It may well be that a teacher will find this a valuable means of helping an individual child reinforce something he has learned. What is questionable is the practice of setting exercises for the whole class, irrespective of need, and assuming that this will improve every pupil's ability to handle English. What is also open to question is the nature of some of these exercises, where pupils are asked to fill in the blanks in sentences, convert masculine into feminine forms and singular into plural, insert collective nouns and give lists of opposites. Examples we saw included such tasks as: Change all words of masculine gender to words of feminine gender in 'Mr Parker's father-in-law was a bus conductor'; and: add the missing word in 'As hungry as a ......', 'As flat as a ......'. It would be unjust to say that all the exercises in current use take this trivial form; but it is certainly true that an unwarrantably large number of them demand little more than one-word answers and afford no opportunity for the generation of language. Most give the child no useful insight into language and many actually mislead him.

11.20 In our visits to schools we found that the teaching of language through weekly exercises was still commonly to be found at all age levels, but particularly in the primary school. In some primary schools organised on 'informal' lines children would take an assignment card from the language corner for this purpose. In the main such work was not a reinforcement of something newly learned in the course of some other classroom activity, but a task performed outside any context which would give it meaning. Our questionnaire results show the extent of certain kinds of language work at the four age points: 6, 9, 12, 14. These are reproduced in tables 56, 57, 96 and 97, and it will be seen that they cast some doubt on the popular belief that primary schools spend very little time on 'formal' language teaching. For example, we asked whether during the week of the survey any planned attempt was made to extend the children's vocabulary by means of exercises. The answer 'yes' was given by 67 per cent of the teachers of the nine year olds, and 50 per cent of those of the six year olds. For reasons explained in the statistical appendix to the survey it is not possible to draw direct comparisons between primary school and secondary school data. Nevertheless, it would seem that less time is spent in the secondary school on 'formal' language work. For instance, in the week of the survey only 21 per cent of the twelve year olds and 19 per cent of the fourteen year olds gave any time to vocabulary exercises. The figures for grammar exercises were 24 per cent and 10 per cent respectively and for punctuation exercises 16 per cent and 10 per cent respectively. In our discussions with secondary English teachers we found a good deal of uncertainty about the teaching of language. Some regarded language improvement as a by-product of the talk, writing, and literature which formed the core of their work; and they gave it no specific attention. Others set aside at least one period a week for it, usually working from a coursebook. A substantial number considered that the express teaching of prescriptive language forms had been discredited, but that nothing had been put in its place. They could no longer subscribe to the weekly period of exercises, but they felt uneasy because they were not giving language any regular attention. It seems to us that this uncertainty is fairly widespread, and that what many teachers now require is a readiness to develop fresh approaches to the teaching of language.

11.21 We believe that extensive reading and writing are of prime importance for language growth but that they should be supported by explicit instruction. We cannot accept that the development of language can be left to chance, on the principle that a 'relevant moment' will occur. There was an interesting comment on this practice in a report (5) by a visiting team of American educationists. In 1968 they spent 164 days observing the teaching of English in 42 British secondary schools, and on this issue they remarked:

'Most (i.e. teachers of English) suggested that whatever direct instruction in how to write might be needed by pupils could be presented by teachers during classroom writing lessons and could be based on actual experience in written communication. Yet hour after hour of classroom observation failed to reveal many efforts to provide such direct help.'

11.22 It is understandable that there should be many teachers who want to work through a series of items from a textbook, for it gives the feeling of reassurance that progress is being made along a measurable line that will lead to total language competence. We have given our reasons for questioning this approach, but we have also made it clear that we are not opposed to the notion of levels of achievement, or of objectives described in terms of specific skills. It is certainly unrealistic to attempt to tie particular competencies to given age points; and it is not rewarding to treat language like a set of building bricks. But it is reasonable to set clear targets which the children recognise to be achievable. With this in view the teacher should determine appropriate language objectives, devise his own ways of fulfilling them, and assess the extent to which they have been achieved. Experienced teacher witnesses were critical of the kind of language teaching we have been questioning; but they were of one mind in their concern for recognisable progress in a child's command of language. As one head of department put it: 'I would quarrel with the philosophy that problems sort themselves out by continued and increased exposure to books and good English'.

11.23 The important thing is to define carefully what is meant by targets of achievement. It cannot mean that all the children in a class advance from one step to another at the same pace and at the same time. There is evidence of a general relationship between age and linguistic maturity in a pupil, as one would expect, but there is no simple correlation. Recent research (6), carried out at Nottingham University, suggested the following line of development: 'The advance towards linguistic maturity is modest but steady over the first junior school year, quickening somewhat in the second year, accelerating markedly in the third, and slowing to something like the first year pace in the fourth'. Other evidence indicates a further acceleration in the first year of the secondary school, followed - on some variables, at least - by a plateau in the second year. The important thing to note is that the developmental pattern on a variety of language measures is not a simple one. Thus, although there is a general advance over the years, there are considerable variations, not only from one pupil to another but from one feature of language to another. It follows from this that to expect a whole class to maintain a steady and uniform advance along a line of linguistic achievement is unrealistic. The class lesson certainly has its part to play, but in response to particular situations, not as a timetabled substitute for a more comprehensive policy. The parts of speech are commonly made the subject of this kind of clockwork attention. It is perfectly reasonable that by the end of the middle years children should know about the parts of speech, but they should encounter them in the course of looking at language in a living context. For instance in the talk that precedes and surrounds the children's own writing the teacher might look with them at how another piece of writing has achieved its effects. In doing this he will not be offering models for imitation but getting pupils to look closely at language and what it can do.

11.24 If one were to apply this kind of purposeful attention to say, the following passage from Martin Chuzzlewit the pupil would learn with far greater effect what an adjective does than he would be underlining it in an exercise: 'The mistress of the Blue Dragon was in outward appearance what a landlady should be: broad, buxom, comfortable, and good-looking ... She had still a bright, black eye, and jet black hair, was comely, dimpled, plump and tight as a gooseberry'. Or from the following anonymous passage, where the writer has carefully produced changes in the values of the adjectives by the way he has placed them in their context: 'His plump hands waved persuasively and his smooth face took on a comfortable expression as he explained how he had made a handsome profit from the famine'. 'Plump', 'smooth', 'comfortable', and 'handsome' normally have favourable connotations, but these positive values slip away from them in this context. The child who could recognise the connotative change in 'plump' and 'comfortable' in these two contexts would have learned something of much greater value than a label,

11.25 What we are suggesting, then, is that children should learn about language by experiencing it and experimenting with its use. There will be occasions when the whole class might receive specific instruction in some aspect of language. More frequently, however, the teacher will operate on the child's language competence at the point of need by individual or small group discussion. As a background to all this activity he should have in his own mind a clear picture of how far and in what directions this competence should be extended. This is best considered in terms of a succession of developments in the handling of language, all of which are likely to arise when a particular situation in writing creates the demand for them. The teacher should then provide for the range of writing experience to encompass these needs, and in doing this he should naturally take account of the pupil's capacity. The novel features in the task and the language it demands can be explored in discussion with the individual or the group, and supporting examples collected and worked upon. The child should thus be led to greater control over his writing, with a growing knowledge of how to vary its effects. This can happen only if the teacher has a clear understanding of the range of language experiences necessary to develop this control. Knowledge of this kind will help him design experiences which lead the pupils to experiment with language over a widening spectrum.

11.26 During recent years there has been a growing interest among teachers in the application of linguistics to English teaching. Fortunately, this has not taken the form of an attempt to introduce a 'new grammar' into the classroom, as happened in the USA. Many American educationists embraced the 'new grammar' as somehow more likely to succeed than the old; and there was much discussion on the relative merits of structural* and transformational* grammar for high school students. The following is an extract from the English syllabus of a large high school we visited: 'Of all the grammars available we have deliberately opted for Transformational-Generative Grammar (hereafter TG) as the one that gives us the most plausible 'platform' upon which to stand ... TG is incomplete, but it is evolutionary, seeking to nurture traditional grammar scholarship, to provide a bridge from the past to the present, to make English come alive for the teacher and the student'. But the majority of American teachers to whom we talked felt there was no useful place for this kind of work. Many had tried it and found it to be no more successful in improving their students' English than the grammar teaching it had replaced. In our view linguistics has a great contribution to make to the teaching of English, but not in this form. As one American (7) has expressed it: 'The study of language is inseparable from the study of human situations ... Is there anyone here who truly believes that it matters to anyone but a grammarian how you define a noun, or what the transformational rules are for forming the passive voice, or how many allomorphs there are of the plural morpheme?' We believe that the influence linguistics can exercise upon schools lies in this concept of the inseparability of language and the human situation.

*See glossary.

11.28 It is, of course, up to the individual teacher to add to the assignments in each unit, or to omit from them what does not suit his purpose. The authors make clear that it is left to the teacher to decide 'how any particular unit might meet the needs of a class ... the actual shaping, pacing, and detailed content of the lesson is left in his hands'. However, there is an inevitable danger that teachers might work mechanically through the units, and this possibility of misuse has attracted criticism. Where it happens - and there is little doubt that it does - both teacher and taught are working on the mistaken principle that language tasks can be fulfilled on a 'made to measure' basis. Language might come to be seen by some pupils as a series of stereotypes which can be produced to a specification. Unimaginatively used, the programme can become divorced from other aspects of English teaching. This has given rise to the further criticism that it does not commit itself to fundamental values; that it remains in essence a training in techniques. There is some justice in these reservations, but the programme makes no bid to provide the total language experience of the pupil in his work in English.

11.29 If used with the same dogged commitment as to a textbook, such materials as Language in Use will not fulfil their best purpose. Mediated by a teacher who can turn practical suggestion into imaginative reality, work of this kind has a valuable contribution to make. We have advocated through out this section that children should progressively gain control over language by using it in response to a variety of demands. They can be helped to do this by studying how it works in various situations, not in any sense of choosing models or opting between stereotypes, but by insight into its richness and infinite possibilities. This will depend upon the teacher's imagination and inventiveness. Above all it will depend upon his knowledge of language and of his equal knowledge of his pupils' individual abilities, needs, and potential.

11.30 Many teachers, however, protest that the greatest constraint upon them in helping children to gain a progressive control over language is the public examination system, because there is so little variety in the demands it makes. This is a complaint of such long standing that it needs some examination itself, especially since there has been more change in the system in the last decade than in the half-century which preceded it.

11.31 Some ten years ago a forthright judgement was delivered on GCE English Language examinations at Ordinary Level:

'We have considered most seriously whether we should advise the cessation of these examinations for educational reasons, as well as for reasons related to the changing demand for qualifications in English Language. We have come very near that conclusion.'

11.32 The Newbolt Report suggested that examinations should be tests of the power of 'communication' in English rather than tests in grammar, analysis, and spelling. The only compulsory test it was prepared to recommend was one of the ability 'to grasp the meaning of a piece of English of appropriate difficulty'. The Committee also recommended that 'oral examination should be resorted to more frequently' and urged that a reasonable standard of English should be required in all subjects of the curriculum. Two years earlier than the Newbolt Report the Secondary Schools Examination Council had recommended that there should be no separate test of formal grammar; awareness of grammar would be shown in candidates' writing. It also asked for more imaginative and fewer abstract essay subjects, but to no avail. The Council's recommendations, then and later, had no more effect than those produced by the Newbolt Committee. The Council had been set up in 1917 to carry out the Board of Education's new responsibility as a coordinating Authority for Secondary School Examinations. Eight Examining Boards were approved, and the patterns of their papers were established by the early twenties; forty years later, in the early sixties, they had changed little. There was a précis, letter writing, paraphrase, analysis and other grammatical exercises, the correction of incorrect sentences, the punctuation of depunctuated passages and, of course, an essay, the titles of which in 1961 were sometimes indistinguishable from those of 1921.

11.33 Thus, when the report 'The Examining of English Language' appeared in 1964 it was after a long period of relatively little change in basic attitudes to testing English. The report set out a number of criticisms, as follows:

the low standard of English among those who passed;

the large numbers entered, and the fact that teaching became a series of practice performances in examination techniques;

the negligible contribution of many of those techniques to the development of writing;

the unreliability of the examinations;

the unsuitability and irrelevance of many essay titles;

marking schemes for continuous writing might encourage teachers to give it less attention in their teaching;

the meagre literary merit of passages set for comprehension, and the trivial questions asked upon them;

the unreality of some of the summarising tasks, such as reduction to 'one third of the original';

questions on the 'correctness' of a particular usage out of context;

grammatical minutiae ('Some of the most eloquently critical of the replies we received from the schools were directed against these questions; we share the view that they are of doubtful utility in any examination of English language and that in their present form they do great harm').

internal examinations with external moderation;

improvements to the existing examinations;

the separation of language and literature;

tests of spoken English.

11.34 For the Examining Boards had grown restless on their own account, as can be illustrated by the following comment of the Joint Matriculation Board made in 1960. 'Comment ... has concentrated mainly on the fact that to accept a pass in English Language at the Ordinary level has proved an unsatisfactory means of ensuring that at entry to a university all students are capable of using the English language with the degree of competence which is essential at that stage. Other universities than the five constituents of the Board are also making the same comment.' After the publication of The Examining of English Language the Board organised what it modestly described as an experiment in school assessing in English Language. The project set out to devise (a) methods by which pupils could be taught without any direct preparation for any O Level examination, (b) means of making school assessments which the Board could endorse as indicating that pupils had achieved not less than an O Level pass standard in their writing and understanding of English. Since its inception the number of schools has increased from 10 to 34. The JMB has also carried out its own enquiry into the reliability of examinations at Ordinary level. Both enquiries had financial support from the Department of Education and Science. We have used these experiments as an illustration because they have been comprehensively documented, but other Boards are conducting or are ready to consider internal examinations which are externally moderated. It is important to add that the Boards have always been willing to consider special syllabuses from schools (and applications from other schools to participate in these syllabuses once approved), but there have never been many applications.

11.35 While the GCE Boards have responded in various positive ways to the criticisms made in the 1964 report, the new CSE Boards have been free, indeed encouraged, to experiment much more widely. In the three years before that report was issued the Secondary School Examinations Council had published four which were concerned primarily with the Certificate of Secondary Education, and with the establishment of new examining bodies for it. The Council's first Examinations Bulletin, The CSE: some suggestions for teachers and examiners, asked the new Examining Boards to consider what English language examinations should be testing, and offered them a statement on English studies in school:

English, well-taught, should train a sixteen year old secondary school pupil to use the language confidently, appropriately and accurately, according to the circumstances in which it is used. He should be able to speak his own mind, to write what he has thought, and to have a care for the correctness of written and spoken English. He should be able to understand what he reads and hears, to master the ideas and restate them in his own way. He should have some understanding of the different uses of language, of the language which relates, describes, evokes, persuades, and is the instrument of the creative imagination.

(i) Course Work
All Boards offer opportunities for the presentation of course work, which allows the inclusion of a variety of writing, carried out on a variety of occasions. One Board, in making suggestions for the kinds of work which might be submitted for assessment, has for its eighth example: 'Any other work which in the opinion of the candidates or the teacher might help to establish the candidates' ability in English'. The very bulk of the work thus offered presents formidable problems of assessment and comparability, but the candidate is judged across a range of his writing. In Mode 3 syllabuses the scope is often wider still, extending to drama, film making, tapes, and group work.

(ii) Personal Writing
Syllabuses which prescribe or permit course work allow a proportion of writing which is an entirely personal response to experience, direct or imaginative. Sometimes papers testing 'composition' also make room for such writing.

(iii) Comprehension
In paragraph 11.32 we remarked that the only compulsory test of English language the 1921 Newbolt Committee was prepared to recommend was 'a test of power to grasp the meaning of a piece of English of appropriate difficulty'. This concept survives in all CSE syllabuses, though it is sometimes subsumed in a larger notion of 'response'. What is preserved is an anxiety that pupils should be able to read and understand, not just the 'sense' but also the feeling, tone, and attitude of the language they meet. And the language which stretches, which exercises them most is the language of literature. The choice of material has sometimes led to criticism from teachers that Boards not only provide the wrong texts but also ask the wrong questions. This is undoubtedly true in some instances, but the Boards are alert to the need to select with great care.

(iv) Literature
The Boards have experimented considerably, abandoning set texts, allowing texts to be used in the examination room, and providing a greatly extended list of books from which choice may be made. In particular, much more contemporary writing has been included. Mistakes have been made and some of the books chosen have been juvenile or trivial or not substantial enough for intensive reading. Nor could it be said that the Boards have succeeded universally in setting questions which, as Examinations Bulletin No. 1 (11) put it, 'are not so general as to be vague, or so obvious as to be anticipated by the textbook and the teacher's note'.

11.38 This is a necessarily brief account of the past and present situation of English language examinations, but it will serve to show how thoroughly and over how long a period the subject has been discussed. Our main reason for giving it is that our own views are founded upon those that others have expressed before us, both in recent years and in the distant past. In presenting our conclusion we must begin by affirming our belief that English should be assessed at 16+. The Newbolt Committee's wise remarks on the matter are no less true today than when they were made. The demand made by society and by parents for the evaluation of a pupil's performance is a perfectly reasonable one. What is more, many pupils themselves feel the need for such assessment, a factor that tends to be overlooked. We therefore welcome the extension of opportunities for assessment throughout the ability range and hope they will be made available to increasing numbers of pupils now that the school leaving age has been raised.

11.39 Our selective account of the evolution of examinations in English will have indicated the line of development we favour. English requires a wider and more flexible range of assessment than most other areas of the curriculum. We believe that rigid syllabuses are not the best means of achieving this and that there should be an increase in school-based assessment with external moderation. We hope that this assessment will increasingly reflect the kind of approach to language development which has been advocated in this chapter.

11.40 We have made it a policy in this Report to confine ourselves to discussing English for pupils up to the age of 16. Nevertheless, we must depart from this rule to make an observation on the question of a language examination at the conclusion of a sixth form course. The 1964 Report considered this possibility and recommended against in these words:

'We should not wish to see a separate language subject at advanced level, at least at the present time.'

ANNEX A: SPELLING

11.41 Some years ago a philologist remarked that if one used all possible combinations the word 'scissors' might be spelt in 596,580 different ways. This was a hypothetical exercise, but a recent researcher (15) took a simpler example, the word 'saucer', and examined how 1,000 ten year old children tackled it. Fewer than half spelt it correctly, and those who wrote it incorrectly gave 209 alternative spellings. And yet according to the norms of the Schonell word recognition test 71 per cent of eight year old children can read the word 'saucer' correctly and without any supporting context. This is one of many indications of a fundamental difficulty: that many who have little trouble with reading may still spell uncertainly when they write.

11.42 Spelling is a complex skill, and one in which many adults and children fail. The reasons are various, and some carry greater weight than others. Poor spellers may have lower verbal intelligence. They may have difficulty in their visual perception of words and then in recalling them through imagery. They may be weak in generalising from the serial probability of letter occurrences. There are other determinants, but research has shown these to be the major ones. It has to be accepted at once that some people will have difficulty with spelling all their lives, but we believe that the teacher can bring about substantial improvement with the majority of children. No doubt the first question to be faced is: does it matter? It is sometimes suggested that spelling is a convention and that if it is of any consequence at all this is slight compared with so many other considerations in the teaching of English. There is no question about its being a convention, but in our view it is a convention that matters. It is of little relevance for today to argue that in Faerie Queene Spenser spelt 'hot' in at least six different ways: or that the Oxford English Dictionary lists 30 versions of 'little' by 16th and 17th century writers.

11.43 In the first place confidence in spelling frees the child to write to fulfil his purpose. In the second place spelling disability is an undoubted handicap in society, however many distinguished exceptions may be paraded to refute the view. But there is probably no need to press this point. Most of the contention surrounding spelling is concerned with timing and method rather than justification. Some teachers feel that so long as children leave school with spelling competence it should receive no special attention at the primary stage. Some believe that it can be acquired incidentally and that systematic teaching is the wrong approach. Few affect a total disregard for it.

11.44 The arguments about spelling go back a long way. Almost a century ago to this very year there was openly expressed anxiety about standards; and certainly around the turn of the century the debate was in progress as to whether spelling should be directly taught or could be breathed in naturally if the air was right. One of the first in the field was Rice, whose article The Futility of the Spelling Grind (1897) suggested that spelling received too much prominence in the timetable. He was followed by a succession of researchers who argued from objective data in favour either of a 'taught' or a 'caught' approach. Most of the research conducted in the last half century has been on spelling vocabulary, instruments for measuring spelling ability and for diagnosing errors, and the teaching methods by which children's spelling should be improved. The search to discover what words children should learn began quite early. Originally an arbitrary process, the compiling of lists became more systematic in adopting as a principle the frequency with which words occurred. Some were derived from children's own writing, some from that of adults. Lists have commonly come to be used as a teaching instrument, though many teachers have always relied upon their own observation of children's needs in deciding what words to present to them.

11.45 There is no need to trace the history of these lists, but certain of the more influential developments are worth pausing on. Many of the lists were derived from children's own writing, though a number were based on adult reading matter or correspondence. A major principle of selection is that of frequency of occurrence. For example, in the USA in 1926 Horn combined the results of earlier enquiries with his own word counts. His resulting Basic Writing Vocabulary contained the 10,000 words most likely to be written by adults. In 1944 Thorndike and Lorge, also in the USA, produced The Teacher's Word Book, a 30,000 word list again based on adult material. These two major enterprises provided the basis for one of the most popular lists in use in English schools today, though its author, Schonell, also incorporated extensive work of his own on the spelling and written material of English schoolchildren. He set out to distribute the words in his list on the broad principle that 'the child should be taught the word when he wants to write it'. But others suggested that lists could not be made to serve this principle, arguing that they are never able to supply the particular word a person should learn at a particular time. This is, of course, a central issue, and one which has an important bearing on the success of the teacher's efforts.

11.46 Two comparatively recent lists, produced by councils for educational research in Scotland and New Zealand, were planned to constitute teaching aids based on detailed field work. The aim of the Scottish Council for Research in Education was 'to assemble a vocabulary based on familiar situations and bearing a close relationship to the child's own life'. The result was a list derived from a count of the words in 70,000 pieces of writing by 7-12 year old Scottish children on matters of interest to them. The other list was compiled by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. The 2,700 words were examined very carefully by inspectors and teachers in colleges and schools, and intensive checking followed. A feature of this list was that it enabled the child to ascertain the probability of his needing a particular word, and gave him specific guidance on how to learn. This interesting project therefore combined the principle of word count by frequency with a well ordered learning method that depended on the pupil's assessment of his own needs.

11.47 More conventional word lists have been criticised on the ground that they encourage ineffectual teaching. It is one thing to practise the spelling of words from a list but quite another to use them in writing. Not all pupils require practice on the same groups of words, and the permanence of the learning is a very uncertain outcome. Children may be able to cope with all the words in a given list after concentrated study, but they may still fail with the same words when they come to use them in writing. The fact is that success is most likely when their spelling is closely associated with the needs and purposes of their own writing. Young children have less difficulty with such words as 'orange', and 'penny' than with equally simple words like 'these' and 'outside' which have less meaning for them in terms of concrete experience. In saying this we are not advocating incidental learning, since we do not believe that all children will acquire spelling ability as an automatic and natural outcome of a healthy language environment. Certainly a child will have an excellent foundation if he is interested in language and curious about its workings, but he needs more than just the right climate.

11.48 Nisbet (16) estimated that the average child 'picks up' the spelling of only one new word out of every 25 he reads. Peters (17) concluded that spelling ability is 'caught', concurrently with other linguistic skills, by certain favoured children, but that less favoured children need to be taught, and taught rationally and systematically. Her results indicated that their attention should constantly be drawn to details of word structure, similarities of letter sequence, and the varying probabilities of such sequences. The importance of a favourable background diminishes in the junior and middle years, but it provides initial skills which help the child to develop good spelling habits. This accords with evidence submitted to the Committee from a number of sources, including workers in EPAs, on the education of disadvantaged children. As one expressed it with particular reference to reading: 'An incidental learning approach is hazardous for all children, but particularly so for those from disadvantaged homes'. Research and opinion does not all run one way, and other experimenters have expressed more optimism about the success of incidental learning. However, our own view of the weight of experimental evidence is that the limitations of this approach can be no less marked than those of the rote memorisation of words bereft of context.

11.49 It is interesting to observe that in our own questionnaire only 10 per cent of the sample of nine year old children spent no time at all on spelling during the week of the survey. 67 per cent spent up to half an hour of class time on it, and 20 per cent more than half an hour. In another section the questionnaire inquired into the general methods in use in the class. The questions were directed to discover whether the children were:

(a) expected to learn spellings from their own or other children's errors and/or lists devised by the teacher,

(b) required to learn spellings from commercially produced lists,

(c) tested to see that they had learned these spellings.

(a) spelling practice from lists,

(b) spelling practice by dictation of passages,

(c) spelling practice arising from written work,

(d) spelling tests.

ANNEX B: HANDWRITING

11.50 The Ministry of Education pamphlet Primary Education, published in 1959, said:

'It is a heartening thought that, in an age when so little of craftsmanship is expected of anyone, and when it is easy to say that few people care about quality and standards of work, very many are deeply concerned to give handwriting once more its proper dignity as the most universal of all crafts'.

11.51 The ability to write easily, quickly, and legibly affects the quality of a child's written output, for difficulty with handwriting can hamper his flow of thoughts and limit his fluency. If a child is left to develop his handwriting without instruction he is unlikely to develop a running hand which is simultaneously legible, fast-flowing, and individual and becomes effortless to produce. We therefore believe that the teacher should devote time to teaching it and to giving the children ample practice. The first requirement is that the school should decide which style of handwriting is to be adopted and should as far as possible do so in consultation with the schools to which the children will pass. We realise the difficulties of such consultation in some circumstances and have acknowledged them in Chapter 14. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that many children are confused by having to learn different models as they go from one school to the next. Liaison is not a simple matter when an infant school sends children to more than one junior school, but the remarks in paragraph 14.6 about continuity in the teaching of reading apply equally in this case.

11.52 We do not propose to enter into the question of which model is best, for this must be a decision for the schools themselves. There are, however, certain basic principles which need to be taken into account when the matter is being discussed. One question on which opposing views are often expressed is that of the kind of handwriting with which children should begin in the infant school. Some teachers believe that a print script should be used and that this should be as near in appearance as possible to the typeface of the child's first books, so that he will have fewer characters to learn. There is certainly economy in using the same alphabet for both reading and writing, but the opponents of print script contend that it ignores a fundamental requirement of handwriting - a continuous, linear, rhythmic movement. They observe that many children do not find it easy to change later to a cursive script, since there are no indications in the lower case letters of print script to suggest how they might eventually be joined. Conversely, they point out, a modified cursive or italic script makes possible a much smoother evolution to a running hand.

11.53 Whichever form is adopted there are certain conditions of general relevance, obvious enough in themselves to the experienced teacher but by no means fulfilled in every infant classroom. For example, the paper on which the children are to write should always be unlined and of a sufficient size to be unrestricting, and there should be plenty of suitable tools: soft pencils, crayons, and felt tips, large enough in the barrel for small hands to manage them lightly and easily without strain. The correct hold should be encouraged from the outset, and the child helped to achieve the right sitting posture and relaxation of the muscles. He should also be shown how to form the letter shapes in the right way. For most children an upward stroke of the pencil seems to be the most natural movement, but if a child is allowed to form the habit of beginning letters from their bases the result will be a hampering movement which makes more difficult the development of a fast running hand. Brushwork and pattern making and various well tried kinaesthetic and tactile methods can reinforce the teaching of the initial downward movement and help a flowing technique to become established. If faulty techniques take root they are extremely difficult to correct, so the child has to be encouraged to persevere in what so often seems to him to be an awkward way to hold a pencil or a slow and unnatural way of forming letters. This points to the need for individual and small group teaching and for plenty of short, frequent practice, never of a length that leads to boredom or cramped fingers. In our view this instruction should not be intruded while children are actually at work in their own personal writing, for it is likely to interrupt their flow of thought. From the beginning there should be the proper kind of support and help for left-handed children, and when they come to use pens they should be given nibs specially suited to their needs.

11.54 As a child becomes more adept he should be encouraged to develop speed, for the laboured copying of individual letters will not lead to fluency. The need for regular practice continues throughout the early and middle years, particularly during the transition to a full cursive hand and when pens are introduced. Linking minuscules is a case in point, for ligaturing needs to be practised in a way that will ensure increase of speed and continuity of movement. It is best to classify the letters according to the method of joining, using the commoner letter pairs or letter groups, e.g. e d, ing, e a, o o. From these the child can progress to letter groups with a variety of ligatures, again in common use, such as tion, ous, ttle, ough. Practice with these not only helps to develop speed but has the advantage of reinforcing common spelling patterns. In the course of all this children should also be made aware of the rhythmical stresses of writing patterns and the affinity of letter forms which lead to a harmony of style.

11.55 We believe that the appearance of written work and the way it is set out deserves specific attention. Children should grow up accustomed to taking care in the way they present their work and to regarding its appearance as an important aspect of the whole production. This means that when their handwriting is being developed there needs to be attention not only to the shape of individual letters and words but to the spacing of words and lines, the relative heights of letters, the paragraph indentations, the form and style of headings, and the width and depth of surrounds. Practice in these matters should not take the form of drill, in which the child copies material of no other value. It should derive from activities where the task carries a purpose for the child, for instance in compiling a bound collection of his own writings or making fair copies of work which has involved personal investigation. The teacher will have many opportunities to organise situations which call for a high standard of presentation. Some of the more obvious are displays of work for other classes and for parents, and exchanges of work with other schools. Good handwriting is an important aspect of presentation and is an asset both in school and in later life, but we have tried to suggest that it is also an aid to the flow of thought during the process of writing. We believe that by the end of the middle years a pupil should have acquired his own personal style which is swift, economical of effort, relaxed, fluent, legible, and attractive.

References

1. The Development of Writing Abilities 11-18 Writing Research Unit: Schools Council: 1974.

2. Op. cit.

3. For the origin of this distinction see DW Harding The Role of the Onlooker Scrutiny, VI (3): 1937.

4. Harris RJ An Experimental Inquiry into the Functions and Value of Formal Grammar in the Teaching of English reported in Braddock, Lloyd Jones, and Schoer Research in Written Composition NCTE: 1963.

5. A Study of the Teaching of English in Selected British Secondary Schools US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare: 1968.

6. Children's Language Development University of Nottingham: 1973.

7. Postman N English Journal November 1967.

8. Doughty P, Pearce J, Thornton G Language in Use Edward Arnold: 1971.

9. The Examining of English Language HMSO: 1964.

10. The Teaching of English in England (The Newbolt Report) HMSO: 1921.

11. Schools Council Examinations Bulletin No. 1 - The Certificate of Secondary Education HMSO: 1963.

12. CSE English: An Interim Report NATE Bulletin Vol. 1, No. 3: 1964.

13. Criteria of Success in English A critical survey of CSE English syllabuses and specimen papers. NATE: 1965.

14. English Examined A Survey of O Level Papers. NATE.

15. Peters ML Success in Spelling Cambridge Institute of Education: 1970.

16. Nisbet SD Non-dictated Spelling Tests British Journal of Educational Psychology: IX, 1939.

17. Peters ML op. cit.