The Article
In this essay, Professor Anne Haas Dyson traces the dramatically different views on oral and written language relationships that have been articulated in the language arts literature in the last 30 years, and clarifies an emerging view of the relationship between oral and written language.

Discussion
Dyson notes that in the 1970s, oral language was viewed seen primarily as the raw material for writing. “Developmentally speaking, it was the symbolic stuff that children had to learn to put on the page.” However, by the end of the 1970s, things began to change and speech was not seen as a solution, but as a major problem for student writers who write like they speak. The mantra was, “You can say it, but you might need to think twice before you write it,” especially if you speak nonstandard vernacular English. Through research on the spoken word, a relatively new perspective has emerged on the oral/written relationship. Speech is viewed as a rich resource for composing. The mantra, in this case, is, “If you listen, you can craft in writing what you’ve heard others say and thereby give voice to your own responsive truth.” The idea, Dyson writes, is that students themselves listen to the speech of those around them and use those voices to construct their own voiced response. Dyson then provides a description of a 6-year-old student who is a participant in Dyson’s ongoing enthnographic study. Dyson chronicles the girl’s school literacy practices and her and her classmates’ attention to everyday voices. Dyson documents how the student incorporated the voices around her into literacy practices. It is, for Dyson, how children learn to use language itself—they listen, take ownership, and then revoice. However, this attention to the spoken word is in conflict with the current emphasis on mandated testing, she points out, which reinforces “hierarchical views of language and language varieties.” She concludes: “In many contemporary classrooms, linguistic disrespect is a ‘basic skill,’ since students are to master the singular or ‘proper’ way to write and to speak, as opposed to learning to be flexibly astute in language use. Yet, I see no reason that educators should confine their theoretical and pedagogical imagination to the narrow limits of those composing currently literacy policies.”

What It Means To You
Your district’s literacy curriculum may focus on the basics, but does it make room for the learning that can be generated in children by the spoken word? Are teachers in your district open and supportive of early elementary students’ use of the voices they hear all around them?

For More Information
Dyson, A.H. (2005). Crafting “The Humble Prose of Living”: Rethinking oral/written relations in the echoes of spoken word. English Education, 37(2), 149-164.

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