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Writing Matters

Module description

Writing matters! On a personal level, students who can write confidently can express their deepest feelings, communicate their own ideas and emotions with passion and feeling, and argue for the things that matter deeply to them.  At the same time, being a successful writer is educationally critical: writing remains the dominant form of educational assessment, and is a key tool for learning and thinking.  Yet in many international educational jurisdictions, students’ progress in writing lags behind their achievement in reading.  This module draws on inter-disciplinary understandings of writing as a cognitive process, as a social practice, and as linguistic mastery to develop your understanding of writing, being a writer, and teaching writing.

Module aims - intentions of the module

The principal aim of this module is to enable you to develop a stronger theoretical understanding of writing and the teaching of writing which will have a direct impact on your own professional practices and on your own understanding of being a writer. 

Specifically, the module aims to address the following questions:

• What do we know about the writing process and how we write?
• Can you make connections between theoretical models of the writing process and your own experiences?
• Can you articulate an effective pedagogy for writing?
• What is your own sense of ‘being a writer’ or being a ‘teacher as writer’
• Is there a role for grammar in the teaching of writing?
• What is the relationship between talk and writing?

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. demonstrate a critical understanding of theoretical models of the writing process
• 2. critically evaluate different disciplinary perspectives of writing and the teaching of writing
• 3. demonstrate a critical understanding of the craft of writing and what it means to ‘be a writer’

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 4. consider and critically reflect on ideas concerning the relationship between educational theory, research, policy and practice
• 5. critically reflect upon and evaluate your own understanding of current issues and debates in education and those of others

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 6. synthesise and organise ideas to present an argument;
• 7. present ideas and engage in critical reflective debate.
• 8. undertake both directed and independent study to recognise, justify and analyse key ideas in the literature and relate these to research, theory, policy and practice

Syllabus plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover the following topics:

• Theoretical models of the writing process
• The role of grammar as choice in the teaching and execution of writing
• The concept of metalinguistic understanding and its significance in writing
• The craft of writing, creative writing, and ‘being a writer’

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Banaji, S., Burn, A., Buckingham, D (2010) The Rhetorics of Creativity: A literature review. 2nd ed. Creativity, Culture and Education. https://www.creativitycultureeducation.org//wp-content/uploads/2018/10/rhetorics-of-creativity-2nd-edition-87.pdf
• Beard, R., Riley, J., Myhill, D., & Nystrand, M. (2010). The SAGE handbook of writing development. Sage Publications.
• Cremin, T., & Myhill, D. (2013). Writing voices: Creating communities of writers. Routledge.
• Cremin, T. and Oliver, L. (2017). Teachers as writers: a systematic review. Research Papers in Education, 32(3), 269–295.
• Lefstein, A. (2009). Rhetorical grammar and the grammar of schooling: Teaching powerful verbs in the English national literacy strategy. Linguistics and Education, 20(4), 378-400.
• Love, K & Sandiford, C. (2016) Teachers’ and students’ meta-reflections on writing choices: An Australian case study. International Journal of Educational Research, 80, 204-216
• Myhill, D.A & Wilson, A.C. (2013) Playing it safe: Teachers’ views of creativity in poetry writing. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 10, 101– 111
• Myhill, D.A. Jones, S and Watson, A. (2013) Grammar Matters: How Teachers’ Grammatical Subject Knowledge Impacts on the Teaching of Writing. Teaching and Teacher Education, 36, 77-91
• Myhill, D. Newman, R. and Watson, A. (2020) Going Meta: Dialogic Talk in the Writing Classroom. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy. 43 (1) 5-16.
• Sandiford, C. and Macken-Horarik, M. (2020) Changing stories: Linguistically-informed assessment of development in narrative writing. Assessing Writinghttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.asw.2020.100471

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

ELE http://vle.exeter.ac.uk/

Key words search

Education; global issues in education; debates in education; language and literacy; writing;