Children as Designers of Texts

Punctuating Persuasive Writing

Authors

  • Andrew Burrell
  • Roger Beard

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.34314/f8vbdb88

Keywords:

Children's writing, Advertisments, Design, Playful punctuation

Abstract

Framed within literacy education and applied linguistics, children's playful punctuation is considered within a paradigm of 'writing as design'. Drawing particularly on the work of Sharples (1999), the article examines data from a repeat design study of 9-11 year old children tackling a persuasive description task. The data showed evidence of children making plans, setting goals and satisfying constraints to fulfil communicative effect. As well as being testament to children's ingenuity in using punctuation in creative ways, the findings have implications for how the writing process is conceptualised and for how writing is taught.

Author Biographies

  • Andrew Burrell

    Andrew Burrell is an experienced early years and primary (elementary) school teacher. He has an MA and PhD from the UCL Institute of Education, where he has also worked in teacher training and on several research projects focusing on children's language and literacy development. He has published widely both in professional and research journals and was co-editor with Jeni Riley of Promoting Children's Wellbeing (Continuum Books). He is interested in typography, especially its playful use in children's literature and how punctuation and other typographical marks are used by children in their own writing. This interest in typography stems from being given a John Bull Printing Outfit as a young child, which provided hours of typographically creative enjoyment by allowing you to print short sentences using a pair of tweezers to insert tiny rubber letters into a frame or channel. He is co-author with Roger Beard of Language Play and Children's Literacy (UCL loE Press)

  • Roger Beard

    Roger Beard is Emeritus Professor of Primary Education at the UCL Institute of Education in London, where he was previously Head of the School of Early Childhood and Primary Education. Before this, Roger taught in primary schools, in a college of higher education and at the University of Leeds, where he was Reader in Literacy Education. In 2019, Roger was elected to the Literacy Research Association's Hall of Fame in the United States.

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Published

2024-09-13

Issue

Vol. 58 No. 2 (2024): Visible Language

Section

Journal Article