Writing like a reader: developing metalinguistic understanding to support reading-writing connections

Abstract

Becoming a writer is a challenging task, and one of the few tasks where the cognitive demands do not decrease with maturity because ‘as writers mature and gain expertise, they invest more effort and reflective thought in the task’ (Kellogg 1994, p.204). Part of this reflective effort relates to an increased awareness of the implied reader of the text and a more goal-oriented sense of what the writing should achieve. Arguably, this requires the writer to hold in mind both his/her writerly intentions and the imagined response of the reader to the emerging text. Barrs &Cork (2001) conceive of the notion of ‘the reader in the writer’; however, our interest is in the symbiotic relationship between reading and writing, not simply ‘reading like a writer’ but also ‘writing like a reader’. Drawing on data from writing conversation interviews with students aged 9-14 over three years, this chapter will explore these young writers’ developing metalinguistic understanding of how to shape and craft their written texts to satisfy both their own authorial intentions and the needs of the reader.