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Berit Lundgren Reflection This article, the aim of which has been to describe and analyse the writing discourse in one classroom and how students learn through studying a topic, i.e. the teaching and learning of written argument, has looked at a teaching practice in a literacy field. Both the process and product have been studied. The process comprises the teacher’s literacy teaching and dialogues between the teacher and students. The product, which does not have an actual recipient, is the students’ letters to the editor, which in its final form was written on a computer. This study shows that a full reconstruction of a letter to the editor was not possible. What, then, is it in the text product or the teaching process that reveals this? As regards the extent to which the teaching gives the students access to the structure and language of a letter to the editor, the study shows that the teacher explicitly teaches about letters to the editor on the basis of the didactic interrogatives why, how and what. The structure of the teaching with deconstruction, enabling access for the students, reconstruction of a letter to the editor, feedback and students’ reflections, emphasises the teacher’s role as a gatekeeper. As a gatekeeper, the teacher hands over the building blocks that a letter to the editor consists of. The teacher’s scaffolding, as in the reproduced dialogue, proves to be necessary for understanding (cf. Gibbons 2006). It is the reading of letters to the editor from youth magazines and the dialogues about them that bridge different discourses, visualise and deconstruct the building blocks (cf. Bergh-Nestlog 2009). When the students then read their own letters they have knowledge of some of the building blocks that are to be included. For some students, however, it was only after a mega-cognitive activity that they were able to reconstruct and write a letter to the editor of their own with all the building blocks. It was in the concluding task, where the students talk together about their texts to detect shortcomings and development opportunities in the texts, that the knowledge can be said to have been internalised. The study thus shows that both opportunities and limitations arise from the perspective of the writing discourse. One limitation emerges when the teaching only demonstrates and describes how to write a letter to the editor. This preserves the dominant structures that the students have not been given tools to understand and develop (cf. Bergh Nestlog 2009). According to the Swedish syllabus, the teaching should result in the students being able to express themselves, adapt the language to different aims, recipients and contexts and distinguish linguistic structures, i.e. understand a genre’s dominant expressions. The students should also be able to appraise a text and critically review it (Swedish National Agency for Education 2011). Literacy competence can give the student access to and knowledge of a genre that makes it possible to reproduce it while a critical attitude also means that the student learns that texts are constructed by a person for a particular aim and in a specific context (Janks 2010). The teaching about letters to the editor creates or can create a considerable difference for the student between copying down, understanding and 328
Bridging discourses in a writing classroom reflecting and, by extension, being able to switch perspective to recipient. According to Janks (2010), teaching is not a neutral activity since the teaching is influenced by political, time-specific codes of practice and teachers’ knowledge of a genre and the teacher’s possibilities to choose and decide on content in teaching situations. If the student is given encouragement and the opportunity to reflect, they can begin their development towards critical literacy. But for this to happen, the student also needs access to the language and its grammar in order to write argumentative texts. This access is not given to the students solely by means of a limited correction of misspellings. In conclusion, it is clear from this and similar studies (Heath 1983; Berg Nestlog 2009; Janks 2010) that the teaching needs to act as a bridge between giving the students access to a genre’s language and structure and possibilities to reconstruct a text from a critical perspective. The teaching should also be based on the students’ mixed previous knowledge and values, their pre-understanding, in a varied range of literacy events to bridge between different discourses of writing. In the study, productive and relational situations such as the reproduced dialogue and reflections on texts have contributed to a critical awareness of how to write a letter to the editor. Berit Lundgren is doctor in Educational work at <strong>Umeå</strong> University, Department of Language Studies. Her research fields are language and literacy from an educational perspective. Currently she is conducting research in compulsory schools in Sweden as well as in multilingual schools in South Africa. She has published articles, for example about literacy teaching, Bridging discourses in a writing classroom, Student Teachers’ narratives, Reading events from child to student and young students’ vernacular literacy, Elvaåringars textbruk till vardags och i skolan. 329
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