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Nominalisation in high scoring primary and secondary persuasive texts
Citation
To, V and Thomas, D, Nominalisation in high scoring primary and secondary persuasive texts, Handbook of the Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Association (ASFLA) Conference, 27 - 29 September 2016, Sydney, Australia, pp. 42. (2016) [Conference Extract]
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Abstract
The presentation examines the extent to which nominalisation was used in persuasive texts by the highest
scoring Tasmanian primary and secondary school students who completed the 2011 NAPLAN writing test.
Specifically, it draws on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to consider how these students used different forms
of nominalisation to persuade readers about the 2011 writing prompt: that too much money is being spent on
toys and games. The findings showed that high scoring students used nominalisation occasionally and strategically
to serve a range of rhetorical purposes, with the specific amount of nominalisation scaling up with each
subsequent year level. More specifically, nominalisation appeared infrequently in the high scoring Year 3 texts,
yet by Year 5 all high scoring students used this language resource, and this increased across the secondary years.
This finding suggests that although nominalisation is explicitly introduced the Australian Curriculum: English in
Year 8, it is possible that introducing promising young writers to nominalisation in the late primary and early
secondary years would be an effective teaching strategy for persuasive writing. Waiting until nominalisation is
formally introduced to all students in Year 8 may disadvantage some students when those who score most highly
are already making this language choice in the primary years. While this study provides useful insight into the use
of nominalisation by successful primary and secondary school writers in the controlled context of NAPLAN testing,
further research is needed to see how young writers use nominalisation for persuasive purposes in more
authentic contexts.
Item Details
Item Type: | Conference Extract |
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Keywords: | Nominalisation, persuasive writing, NAPLAN |
Research Division: | Education |
Research Group: | Curriculum and pedagogy |
Research Field: | English and literacy curriculum and pedagogy (excl. LOTE, ESL and TESOL) |
Objective Division: | Education and Training |
Objective Group: | Learner and learning |
Objective Field: | Learner and learning not elsewhere classified |
UTAS Author: | To, V (Dr Vinh To) |
UTAS Author: | Thomas, D (Dr Damon Thomas) |
ID Code: | 111692 |
Year Published: | 2016 |
Deposited By: | Education |
Deposited On: | 2016-09-29 |
Last Modified: | 2016-10-03 |
Downloads: | 4 View Download Statistics |
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