Routledge Talking Texts: How Speech and Writing Interact in School Learning

This volume examines how oral and written language function in school learning , and how oral texts can be successfully inter-connected to the written texts that are used on a daily basis in schools. Rather than argue for the prominence of one over the other, the goal is to help the reader gain a rich understanding of how both might work together to create a new discourse that ultimately creates new knowledge. Talking Texts: Provides historical background for the study of talk and text Presents examples of children’s and adolescents’ natural conversations as analyzed by linguists Addresses talk as it interfaces with domains of knowledge taught in schools to show how talk is related to and may be influenced by the structure, language, and activities of a specific discipline. Bringing together seminal lines of research to create a cohesive picture of discourse issues germane to classrooms and other learning settings, this volume is an essential resource for researchers, graduate students, classroom teachers, and curriculum specialists across the fields of discourse studies, literacy and English education, composition studies, language development, sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics. Review "I loved Talking Texts. The book is wonderful. Rosalind Horowitz has put together a great line of authors. They have written about some of the most significant issues in literacy theory and pedagogy. And they present these big ideas in a register that is as engaging as it is authoritative!"--P. David Pearson, Professor, Language and Literacy, Society and Culture, and Dean, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley. "People in composition badly need to learn what these linguists and cognitive psychologists can tell us about the role of speech in writing."--Peter Elbow, Professor of English, Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. "This multi-modal, marks-and-speech-based foundational beginning of a child's mental life provides a solid foundation on which educational theorists and practitioners may depend for generating the educational strategies for talking texts including the coherence (p. 463) and comprehension envisioned by Dr. Rosalind Horowitz."--Teachers College Record, November 2008 "… [This] is an excellent book that, hopefully, will become worn with use as it passes through many hands at every level of academia. Many of the chapters address similar themes and topics, yet their different solutions concerning research projects and studies make the anthology interesting reading even for instructors and scholars already thoroughly familiar with social constructive learning (and teaching) methods."--Education Review, April 2010