I f we believe that “students learn best by constructing and evaluating the knowledge that we wish them to acquire” (Mohanan, 2000:3), then we are likely to view students as research apprentices who gain ownership of knowledge by raising their own questions about existing knowledge. What I would like to highlight in this short piece is the key role of language, particularly writing, in the process of student knowledge-construction.

I think most of us would agree that the key to ‘knowing’ a subject or discipline is understanding its unique ways of knowing. Whatever is known, however, is inseparable from the symbols (mostly words) in which the knowing is codified. It follows then that knowledge of an academic discipline crucially involves the discursive ability to speak, read and write the discourses of that discipline.

Writing, I would argue, plays an especially important role in this equation. Most literacy researchers agree that writing is more than speech written down. And, although saying it first and then writing it down may be the way in which children first learn to write, the writing process associated with knowledge-building tends to be one in which “the thoughts come into existence through the composing process itself, beginning as inchoate entities and gradually, by dint of much rethinking and restating, taking the form of fully developed thoughts” (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987:10). In other words, writing has a mathetic¹ potential (Prabhu, 1989; Halliday, 1975 & 1985) which spoken interaction does not quite match because of the different nature of the two processes. In spoken interaction, meaning is usually constructed more collaboratively, whereas writing requires that “shared information among co-present interlocutors…be made more fully explicit for readers distant in time and space” (Haneda & Wells, 2000:432). This struggle to make things clear for one’s readers necessitates clarifying ideas for oneself, making writing a powerful means of developing understanding of an idea. Moreover, because of its relative slowness and durability, writing allows for extensive revision, ‘re-visioning’ of ideas.

Thus, while oral interaction offers a useful starting place to sensitise students to the notion of knowledge-construction as a dialogic process (an ongoing rational argument involving multiple voices), the highest levels of knowledge-building clearly call for writing to take its rightful place in the university curriculum—as an integral means of driving deep, independent learning, rather than an optional extra.

Developing syllabi that use writing to drive learning, however, is easier said than done. Subject specialists may feel less than confident when talking about writing in their field, because while they possess both procedural and declarative knowledge of content, they may possess procedural but not declarative/metacognitive knowledge of how writing in their chosen field works. Yet, if students are to receive a holistic apprenticeship, then we clearly need to view learning as an apprenticeship not just to the modes of inquiry/research paradigms of a discipline, but also its writing/discursive paradigms.

Perhaps, as a start, we could do two things. One would be to ascertain whether the writing tasks we set invite students to engage in problem-finding—wrestling with an issue in order to create a viable research space by articulating a worthwhile research question which they then attempt to find rationally satisfying answers to. By inviting students to determine their own questions we would be encouraging them to author texts, in the sense of being authorities on their chosen topic, which is what expert writers tend to do/be.

Next, in order to ‘walk the talk’ in terms of conveying the idea of writing as dialogic, and of texts as works-in-progress, we might attempt incorporating peer feedback and discussion of student-writing as a regular feature of the modules we teach. As writing researchers Haneda and Wells (2000:433) point out, “writing creates a more permanent representation of meaning than speech, whatever the field or discipline concerned. Consequently, the text can become the focus of discussion within the community in an effort to understand it, improve it, or respond to it in some way that gives voice to the community’s interest and concerns”. Such careful reading and constructive response to one another’s writing would offer students invaluable practice in writing for colleagues with potentially conflicting value systems, assumptions, background knowledge and, possibly, different purposes for reading—the very task that knowledge-creators the world over are engaged in as they write position papers, journal articles, and reports of various kinds: i.e. have the papers etc. reviewed; then revise them, based on the peer feedback obtained.

In short, the trinity of reading/writing/revising, far from being a cosmetic detail, mirrors the real-life activity of master knowledge-builders, and thus represents a concrete way to actualise the stated pedagogical objective of treating learners as apprentice knowledge-builders. And, situating texts and their producers against the backdrop of a community’s values and discourse conventions moves literacy into the real world, where knowledge is capital, and literacy, an integral means of creating it.

References

Abraham, S.A. (1995). ‘Writing and the Process of Knowledge-Creation’. Topics in Language and Literature. No. 3. Singapore: Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore.

Bereiter, C. & Scardamalia, M. (1987). The Psychology of Written Composition. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Halliday, M.A.K. (1975). Learning How to Mean—Explorations in the Development of Language. London: Edward Arnold.

Halliday, M.A.K. (1985). Spoken and Written Language. Victoria: Deakin University Press.

Haneda, M. & Wells, G. (2000). Writing in Knowledge-Building Communities. Research in the Teaching of English, 34:430-457.

Mohanan, K.P. (2000). ‘Knowledge Content and Modes of Inquiry in General Education’. http://www.nus.edu.sg/gem/gemodes.rtf. (Download date: 6 August 2001).

Prabhu, N.S. (1989). ‘The Mathetic Function of English as a World Language’. Paper presented at the International Conference on English in South Asia, Islamabad, January 1989.

1. Linguist Michael Halliday (1985:7) suggests that every human language is a potential for meaning in two ways: “it is a resource for doing with; and, it is a resource for thinking with”. Halliday (1975:3) labels these two functions of language—“language as doing/action” and “language as learning/reflection”—the pragmatic and mathetic functions, respectively. Language in its mathetic function involves “the use of the symbolic system not as a means of acting on reality but as a means of learning about reality” (p. 106) “serving in the construction of reality” (p. 75). Prabhu (1989) argues that this function of language often receives far less attention than the pragmatic function.