English in the Primary School
The writing of their own stories was started from the very first, long before the children could read. The thought came from them, and was interpreted by means of a picture. When the picture was finished, each one told me what it was about, and I wrote for them a few words about their picture. I have kept a set of books all by one child, between the ages of four and a half and seven years, which make a most valuable study of infant progress.
Jeffery came to me at four, a bright little fellow with a mop of wonderful auburn curls and a gift of romancing which one morning caused him to rush into school declaring that a sow had just bitten his head off 'down by the church'. He showed skill in handling crayons and writing tools straight away, so I made him a sewn book and began on an illustrated version of 'The House that Jack Built', a rhyme which he knew. He drew all the pictures, and after each one copied, in his fashion, the appropriate text. Next came a book called 'The Farmer', in which he himself thought up a situation every day and drew a picture of it; then I came along, wrote for him what he wanted to say, and he copied it. As soon as this was finished he demanded a new book in which to write the 'story of my donkey-the one that ran away'. As he had never had a donkey, I recognized his romantic imagination at work, and was delighted at the thought of it being put to such good use. This book was full of the most wonderful, lively pictures and it was evident that Jeff was often considerably irked by the necessity of having to wait for me to write down what he wanted to say. He was by this time only a month or two over five years old, but was already beginning to read and I used to find him struggling valiantly on bits of odd paper to write for himself the next part of the tale.
Then we reached the long summer holiday. After it, Jeff returned to me a much more mature little boy, and though still only five and a half, was reading very well when we had been a month or so into the new term. His new book was called 'Jeff the Brave Cowboy', and this time he wrote for himself on a piece of paper. I corrected it, and the fair copy was made into his book. This book was really remarkable for the sudden leap forward he made in his use of English. It was vigorous and economical, with adjectives and adverbs appearing quite naturally in the right places, but only where they were needed for extra emphasis. The undoubted success of 'The Brave Cowboy' put Jeff's feet firmly on the road to authorship. He was away on 'The Dog Fight' before the previous one was really finished, because, having seen a dog fight on his way to school one morning, he simply could not wait to start putting down his memory of it. This was a change from the purely imaginative work of his previous creations and very good as English practice, for he discovered not only the value of possessing powers of keen observation, but of knowing the language that allowed one to record what one had noticed in detail.
It appeared that Jeff's mother, a glorious red-head like himself, had thrown a bucket of water over the fighting dogs. While he was drawing a picture of this, giving his mother unmistakable hair, he was thinking deeply about it, for he must have been wondering how to record the mood of the moment in words. He came to me for advice. Although he was still only five years old, I explained to him the use of conversation marks, thinking that that was what he had asked. He was not satisfied.
'Does that make it say how Mummy said it?' he asked. 'She didn't just say "Stop it". She said (miming the throwing of the water and stamping his foot) "STOP IT!" '
After Christmas Jeff, now six, wanted to write a pirate story. After reading some pirate books, he started on 'Jeff and the Flying Bird', this time writing his own book without any correction or other interference from me.
One day (Jeff) stood on the prow of his ship, he lookted in his telscope.
What did he see?
He saw a ship sailing across the sea to Jeffs ship.
Attack shouted Jeff.
At seven he wrote 'Jeff the Space Man', text in pencil but pictures in coloured inks. At the end of his first session with his new book, he came to me to show it. I was sitting at my desk, he standing by the side of it. I took the book from him, admired the picture, and read aloud:
Jeff pulled the lever and pressed the button. The space ship, swished up into the air and was gene
I happened to glance at the real Jeff, who was pressing with all his might an imaginary button on the side of my desk, after which he held the pit of his stomach and gazed at the school ceiling.
'Gosh,' he said, in an awed voice, 'can't you just hear it?' I could.
'The ssspace ssship ssswissshed ....' Of course! After that Jeff went on exercising his imagination, his observation, and his increasing command of English, in book after book after book. His last was a treatise on freshwater fish and how to catch them. At eleven-plus his I.Q. showed him to be only of good average intelligence. I mention this just to prove that he was not the brilliantly academic type of child from whom one would expect this lively interest in English as a matter of course.
(From An Experiment in Education, by Sybil Marshall.)