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Educational Insights Why Talk for Writing Accelerates Learning

16 May 2018

In this Educational Insights Series, experts from across the Wellington College group give advice, practical help and tips for parents who are keen to give further support for their children's learning. In this article from the series, Katie O' Donoghue from Wellington College in Tianjin discusses about “Why using Talk For Writing accelerates learning in all students."

Katie O' Donoghue Year 5

This year in the Junior School, we have implemented a different approach to teaching Literacy. Talk For Writing (T4W), created by Pie Corbett and supported by author Julia Strong, is an approach that is growing in popularity in the UK. It focuses on the use of discussion.

By learning a model text by heart, pupils are familiarising themselves with the language and sentence structure targeted for their age and ability. They are given a goal to work towards but are also given the tools and support to reach this goal. Pupils can then use this example, which they now know well, to innovate and adapt the original text to fit their own writing task. With a focus on the grammatical and writing features of the text, children can progress to inventing their own text; applying all the language and sentence structures they have learnt from the original text.

Why do we use T4W?

There have been numerous studies and research into how T4W can improve writing in primary aged children.For children who are learning English for the first time, it exposes them to vocabulary within a relevant context and allows them to continuously practise this vocabulary in different ways.For the majority of our pupils, it supports their understanding of sentence structure, tenses, grammar, punctuation and the writing skills they need to use to meet their age-related expectations.For our more able writers, this approach can give them the independence to explore their own ideas and self-assess their work; a valuable life skill, particularly for those wishing to succeed at University.

Since introducing T4W to the pupils at Wellington, we have seen extensive progress across the year groups. Pupils are more engaged in Literacy classes and are gaining the confidence they need to plan and write their own story or non-fiction text independently. We are looking forward to seeing the progress children make as they move through the year groups, using this approach to support their writing.

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