Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Teaching Writing According to Vygotsky

I was reading for another class and came across this passage, which I think ties nicely into the themes of this class:

     Vygotsky identified reasons for the child's difficulty in learning writing that also explain its contribution to developing thinking. First, it does not reproduce oral speech but is a unique speech function. It requires a high degree of abstraction that "uses representations of words rather than the words themselves." In other words, "written speech is the algebra of speech."   
     Second, it is a conversation with a sheet of paper rather than another individual. Therefore, the child must conceptualize the receiver of the message. Third, the motivations for oral speech are present prior to conversing with another, for example. However, the motivations for writing are less accessible to the child when he begins to learn to write. In written speech, the writer must create the situation. Finally, in choosing words and phrases, unlike most oral speech, the process is intentional and must reflect expected syntactic sequence.
     Therefore, instruction in writing is one of the most important subjects in the child's early school years because it requires deliberateness and analysis. Learning to write assists the child to develop the foundational cognitive functions of conscious awareness and control of one's thinking processes.
     Some writing curricula in the early grades address the motivational and deliberateness of the process. Provided are uninterrupted reading and writing time; access to books, picture books, and magazines; opportunities for other students to serve as an audience for early drafts; and publication of the children's favorite pieces.

Gredler, M.E. (2005). Lev Vygotsky's Cultural-Historical Theory of Psychological
     Development. In Learning and Instruction: Theory into Practice, p. 328-329. Upper
     Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, Merrill, Prentice Hall.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for sharing Vygotsky's thoughts here. I agree that it does tie in well to what we have spoken about in class!

    ReplyDelete