TESOL and Applied Language Studies Research Seminar

School of Language , Culture and Communication

Institute of Education , University of London

in collaboration with

The Committee for Linguistics in Education

Linguistic Development in Writing

Professor Debra Myhill

University of Exeter

Wednesday 15 February 2006

4.00-5.20

Room 691

Institute of Education , University of London

20 Bedford Way , London WC1H 0AL

The presentation will consider the findings of an ESRC project investigating the linguistic features of secondary-aged writers of differing ability. The writers were in year 8 or year 10 and were stratified by gender and writing achievement. The research involved detailed quantitative linguistic analysis at sentence and text level of a sample of 720 pieces of writing, and was paralleled by a qualitative analysis of each text. The writing sample comprised two writing tasks: a personal narrative drawn from personal experience, and a persuasive argument. Finally, the presentation will offer a model of linguistic development in writing at the secondary level.