Studying children's writing development with a corpus

One of Randi Reppen's major contributions has been her pioneering corpus research into school children's writing. In this paper, I will discuss how such research can contribute to both theory and educational practice. I will then look at two sets of unresolved methodological issues in this area: the issue of defining appropriate linguistic and textual categories, and the issue of drawing valid developmental inferences.

The issue of categories arises because corpus analysis depends on abstracting away from specific instances of language use in specific texts to make claims about the use of linguistic categories (e.g., noun phrases, low-frequency vocabulary) in textual categories (e.g., stories, science reports). Such abstraction enables researchers to draw out patterns of language variation that are difficult to spot by other means. But it also raises the problem of how to define categories that are reliably operationalizable, that capture consistent developmental patterns, and that are theoretically and educationally informative.

The issue of drawing valid inferences stems from the fact that corpus data record the products of complex, contextually contingent writing processes, involving the interaction of many variables. Capturing the combined outcomes of these complex processes promotes ecological validity. However, it also creates challenges for researchers who want to draw conclusions about specific aspects of the writing process, such as writers’ knowledge of vocabulary or grammar, or their emerging awareness of audience.

This paper will discuss these issues in detail, illustrating their impact and suggesting ways forward for educationally informative corpus research.