‘Expressive’ talk and writing was one of the function categories in the model of language developed by Professor James Britton and his team of researchers during the Schools Council ‘Development of Writing Abilities’ project in the 1970s. Britton observed that most of us use a spontaneous, fairly unstructured kind of speech when formulating action plans or new ways of construing our experience of the world. This he termed ‘expressive’ language which helped us make a start on organising our ideas. The sort of conversations people have in their homes and in the pub about political initiatives are often like this. Young children’s talk is full of their immediate interests, preoccupations and recent activities, and not surprisingly their first writing tends to resemble ‘written down’ speech in its spontaneity and openness about the mood of the moment. Often the child is not thinking about the needs of an audience but is eager to relate his or her immediate concerns – the visit to see the ducks in the park, the outing to swim in the local baths or the frog-spawn on the nature table. Britton argues that children’s writing development begins from this ‘expressive’ centre, moving on the one hand towards ‘poetic’ writing (with a form or pattern characteristic of different kinds of fiction) and on the other towards ‘transactional’ writing (which included all the factual genres). We recognise that a child’s writing is moving towards the poetic end of the ‘writing continuum’ when there are signs of ‘the deliberate organisation of sounds, words, images, ideas, events, feelings’ (Britton, 1970, p. 177). When a child’s writing moves from the expressive towards meeting the demands of the factual, it becomes more explicit. Britton explains that: ‘…some features that might be omitted from the expressive version because they are implied when we write for someone of similar interests and experiences to our own, have now to be brought into the writing’ (p.
177). So, for Britton, writing development was at least partly to do with differentiation and increasing control over a greater number of writing types.
‘Expressive’ writing is not mentioned in current frameworks. As early as 1980 there were fears that too much ‘expressive’ writing might take time that could be spent on helping children develop other more disciplined kinds of writing (Allen, 1980). And thinking in Britain was influenced by teachers and scholars in Australia who became known as the ‘genre theorists’ and who felt that narrative genres, and particularly stories and writing with an ‘expressive’ function, dominated too much in primary schools. They argued that children should be helped to use a much wider range of reading and writing, not least non-fiction kinds. This research and thinking influenced the National Literacy Strategy and Framework for Teaching indicates where the different kinds of non-fiction reading and writing fit into the programme. This influence continues in the renewed Framework (2006).
There is no doubt that some kinds of non-fiction writing were often neglected, or at least unsupported, in the primary school before the 1990s. However, expressive kinds of language have an important role in children’s development of language and thinking. We should welcome the expressive touches in children’s early writing that show they are trying to make sense of all their experience. Early Years teachers are rightly concerned that children are not nudged too early into mature forms of writing. I believe that children are more likely to become successful talkers and writers if they have the opportunity to explore their experience and ideas in an expressive way.
Allen, D. (1980) English Teaching Since 1965: How Much Growth? London: Heinemann Educational Books.
Britton, James (1970) Language and Learning London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press.
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