The Development of Written Language from Middle to Senior School: a Case Study

Abstract

The development of written language during the school years is of interest to both educators and linguists. While the existing research is extensive, little attention has been paid to empirical examination from a linguistic perspective of such development in individual students over an extended period of the school years. This research undertook a case study to trace such a trajectory, mapping the written language development of one student in an Australian school from Year 6 to Year 12 (age 12-18) in her classroom writing for the learning areas of history and science. The analysis drew on the theoretical model of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) across the strata of context, discourse semantics and lexicogrammar. The focus was on ideational and textual meanings, or the development of language related to content knowledge within the two learning areas and then how that content knowledge was organized into written texts. Detailed analysis of 32 representative texts is presented. The findings identify the specific changes across the time period, as the written language developed from a transition into educational meanings in Year 6 to highly specialized and abstract language at the end of schooling. In this extensive development, the most significant advance, changing the quality of the writing, was in the development of abstraction and technicality, largely dependent on the use of grammatical metaphor, in which the ‘uncommonsense’ educational meanings of the secondary school curriculum were realized. This change demonstrated the student’s culturally based semiotic development. In tandem with associated growth in rhetorical text organization, realized in the text types of each discipline, the expanding use of these new resources evidenced her learning of curriculum knowledge as inseparably linked to her learning of language. She was learning to mean as a historian and a scientist. The development in the lexicogrammatical resources of transitivity, clause complexing and Theme involved continual expansion rather than major changes in the types of resources. Comparison of the two learning areas identified differences and commonalities. The trajectory was found to be built on a strong foundation in Year 6, and was characteristically incremental in nature, even when demands were multiple, but with some gaps in consistency. A range of linguistic learning strategies were implicated in the incremental changes. In responding to the demands of the specific school context, the student’s written language trajectory advanced in parallel with the continually changing demands of the assigned writing tasks, particularly in genre, Field, and the quantity of writing required, with likely additional influence from other written language experience within the broader curriculum. The primary contribution of this study is in its presentation of the authentic trajectory of one individual’s written language development in secondary school in context, providing exemplification of a successful pathway and of the process of learning disciplinary curriculum knowledge through language. The importance and nature of language growth in secondary school are implicated. Further research may compare other individual trajectories and expand understanding of the linguistic processes involved.