Direct instruction fit for purpose: applying a metalinguistic toolkit to enhance creative writing in the early secondary years

Abstract

This paper reports on a language-based model of direct instruction known as text-based, or genre, pedagogy, customised in collaboration with English teachers in four Australian secondary schools to teach creative writing in Years 7 and 8 classrooms. A distinctive feature of this pedagogy is a shared metalanguage used to make visible to students the literacy demands of specialised discourse, in this case, the specialised discourse of creative writing. We demonstrate the use of the metalanguage at four different levels of language, in order to build visible bridges from more general patterns of language use, in this case, the generic structure of narrative, to specific grammatical patterns that require more specialised terminology.