Special Issue of Applied Corpus Linguistics on Research into Children’s Writing

Overview

Learning to write effectively is one of the primary aims of education. Through their school years, children’s written language grows in accuracy, range, and linguistic complexity as they learn to construe their thoughts, experiences, and imaginations in socially appropriate ways though an increasingly diverse and sophisticated range of topic areas and genres. Understanding this development is central to understanding the nature of written language and of language development in general. It is also of immense practical importance in relation to education. Studies of writing development can help us understand the linguistic demands that are placed on students by the writing they are assigned in different subject areas and at different stages in their education. It can help us evaluate the outcomes of particular programmes of study and the ways in which particular curricula or interventions influence writing development. It can inform assessment by clarifying what distinguishes higher- from lower-achieving texts and so to make explicit the often tacit constructs of quality and sophistication.  

Learner corpus research has a potentially crucial role to play in this endeavour. By enabling researchers to study large samples of authentic student writing, it offers the promise of contextually valid, statistically robust, analyses that are sensitive to subtle features of language use and to both qualitative and quantitative differences in such use across a range of writers, topics, genres, and contexts. 

Historically, much research into the texts that children write can be characterized as ‘pseudo-corpus’ research. Studies have collected samples of texts and systematically studied linguistic features both quantitatively and qualitatively. However, most have been based on ad-hoc collections of writing, elicited by researchers for the purposes of a single study. Very few have shared the corpus linguistic aims of creating a representative body of authentic writing or of making texts available to the wider research community.

In recent years however, this picture has started to change, with several projects sowing the seeds of a distinctively corpus linguistic strain of child writing research. This special issue aims to consolidate research in this area by showcasing recent corpus research into writing produced by school-age children. Each article will overview the way that its author(s) have used such corpora in their own research and how they see work in this area developing in the future. Specifically, each article will discuss:

  • The main aims of the authors’ research;
  • The main corpus/corpora they work with;
  • The analytical methods they have used;
  • Key illustrative findings from their research;
  • Prospects for extending their research.

Timeline

  • Submission of abstracts: January 31st
  • Responses to abstracts: February 28th
  • Submission of full draft: October 31st