How Fourth Graders Develop Points of View in Classroom Writing.

The purpose of this paper was to demonstrate that the manner in which children develop points of view in classroom writing is a function of how children verbally interact with their teachers. Eighty-two fourth graders were classified as using one of three verbal interaction patterns, or "registers" (Halliday, 1918). When given the instructions to write a story about a picture, children who employed an imitative response register used more descriptive information in developing their point of view than did children in the other two register groups; these imitative children developed mostly expository points of view. Children employing a noncontingent response register tended to use more schema-creative information in developing their points of view than did those in the other two register groups; these noncontingent children tended to develop narrative points of view in which a character's specified goal was only incidentally related to the outcome. Children who employed a contingent response register tended to develop points of view that made the most consistent use of task, stimulus, and schema information. These results are interpreted in terms of a proposed theory of perspectivetaking.

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