Writing at Key Stages Four and Five

2. Exploring genre, audience and purpose

As student teachers increase their knowledge and understanding of the National Curriculum, particularly progression from the Framework for teaching English: Years 7, 8 and 9 to Key Stages 4 and 5 they will become increasing familiar with the acronym GAP (Genre, Audience and Purpose). It is important that they appreciate what they themselves may understand implicitly about genre writing, as it has to be made explicit to and easily replicated by the students that they will be teaching at this level. The following activities help to increase student teacher awareness of genre and to allow them to consider successful teaching and learning strategies for use in schools.

Stage one: Confidence in writing – an introductory activity

• Student teachers are asked to write three sentences describing themselves; the only instruction is that the writing must be witty and erudite and that it will be read out to the rest of the group for everyone to comment on. (The instructions are deliberately couched in this way in order to allow the student teachers to empathise with the pressure many students feel when asked to undertake such writing tasks).
• Student teachers are asked to report on how they felt and hopefully issues of confidence and self–image will arise in the discussion.
• A further activity can be for student teachers to work in pairs to produce three sentences describing the PGCE English group. This activity should promote discussion of the value of collaborative scaffolding as a precursor to specific genre writing tasks.

Stage two: Writing repertoire

• The student teachers are asked to write down everything they have written in the last 24 hours and to categorise the writing in terms of genre, audience and purpose.
• In pairs student teachers then analyse and group the texts in terms of levels of formality/informality and identify the linguistic features. The first chapter in Writing for Assessment by Angela Goddard (2003) presents a similar activity for in an A level English Language class.

Stage three: Genre writing exercise

• Pairs of student teachers are given a card, each pair having a different writing task. The following examples can be used:
  • Advertisement – for a new game in a computer magazine
  • Story – a tale of horror and suspense
  • Newspaper article – on falling standards in schools, for The Daily Express
  • Biography – of a famous person of their choice
  • Review – of a recent film or play for the local evening newspaper
  • Diary – of a university student undertaking a PGCE course
  • Weather Forecast – for TV after the news at six o'clock
  • Personal Letter – from a teenager to a close friend
  • Formal Letter – to a constituency MP complaining about the increase in student fees
  • Screenplay – for a romantic comedy
  • Playscript– for a 'kitchen sink' drama
  • Academic essay – on the role of women in gothic fiction

  Each pair has to write roughly 100 words following the task on the card. This is done with the pairs not knowing each other's tasks.

The pairs read out their writing and the rest of the groups identify the genre.

• Small groups of student teachers discuss how they were able to identify the conventions of the genre; they must then make a list of the features and consider what and how they would need to make explicit to students to teach this type of writing.
• The following quotation from Shirley Franklin provides a good focus for discussion:

The range of writing outlined in the National Curriculum for English, requires that we encourage our pupils 'to write ... to inform others through instruction, explanation, argument, narration, reportage, description, persuasion...' through a range of textual forms. We are also required to 'introduce our pupils to a wide variety of literature ... drawn from a variety of genres.' Pupils therefore have to understand and to manipulate a broad spectrum of text types, using a variety of writing processes. Not only is the language different from everyday usage, but the processes and concepts involved are often different. For effective learning, therefore, teachers have a duty to expose the mysteries of the school writing and learning processes ...

(Franklin, 1998:26)

Stage four: Writing commentaries

• One activity to draw to the attention of student teachers is the value of getting students to write analytical commentaries on their own writing; commentaries that serve to illuminate the process of writing and to aid the drafting process and reflection.
• The writing of commentaries is common practice at Key Stage 5 but less established at Key Stage 4. Some examples of where commentaries can be used as an effective addition to students’ own writing are:
  • After studying Willy Russell’s play Blood Brothers for GCSE. Students are set the task of writing an extra scene for the play plus an accompanying commentary where they explain how they have used the linguistic and thematic features from the original.
  • After studying Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire at AS level students are asked to write a poem about one of the central characters using imagery from the original play. This is to be accompanied by a commentary that serves to illustrate the writing process and to provide an understanding of the original text.

Stage five: Research findings on assessment and the linguistic features of writing at GCSE

• After reading and discussing Debra Myhill's article Writing Matters (1999) student teachers are asked to undertake their own research following Myhill's model.
• Student teachers collect three to five examples of writing in different genres completed by Key Stage 4 students and assess these against the criteria set down by examination boards and note if their findings reflect the same issues as those read about.

The same activity of collecting samples of writing and assessing them against the examination criteria and also analysing the linguistic features using the research framework can be undertaken on Key Stage 5 writing.