>Bob,
   I in no way meant to disparage Perera's work or to imply she doesn't
talk about late acquisition. Nor do I feel I need to apologize for
learning about her work at an ATEG conference. ATEG has been enormously
useful to me. Ed asked for more recent work. Perera, of course, is
working in England, and our own situation in the schools is quite
different, in large part because of huge differences in the stances of
NATE and NCTE. I stand by the core of my statement; we don't have a
mainstream body of research looking at language maturation for native
speakers. The whole debate about grammar tends to focus on
"correctness". The kind of changes Schleppegrell talks about are
outside mainstream frame of reference.
   Halliday, as you know, has done very seminal work in coherence dating
back to the seventies. (1976: Cohesion in English, with Hasan). He
wrote about spoken and written modes of meaning in the eighties,
including a 1989 text published by Oxford (Spoken and Written
Language). I would highly recommend Writing Science: Literacy and
Discursive Power, with J. R. Martin, 1993. All these issues come up
routinely in his collected works.
   In Writing Science, Halliday directly takes on the notion that science
pushes changes in language that are necessary, but can become highly
dysfunctional. Both Peter Elbow and Joseph Williams have written about
the dysfunctionality of this kind of language without (I think) enough
respect for its usefulness in the work of the technical disciplines.
   My point--and I in no way intended to debate anyone's credentials for
talking about this--is that we have not had an adequate discussion or
debate about the kinds of changes that need to happen as a student
matures within the world of school. I think this is partly due to a
whole language philosophy that emphasizes acquisition through exposure.
The students who seem hurt most when standards are not made explicit
are those traditionally shut out of the professions.
   If second language literature sheds light on these changes, please give
us some suggestions.

Craig


 I am somewhat astonished by Craig's response to Ed Shuster's question
> about work on the acquisition of writing along the lines of K. Perera in
> the 1980s.
>
> Craig writes:
>
>  We have a rather astounding lack of research in the area, perhaps
> because for a few decades or so the prevailing view has been that
> language is primarily "acquired".
>
> *********************************
>
> The work by Perera in the 1980s makes this point, and, if you actually
> read this work, you
> will find that she actually cites linguistic structures which are
> relatively "late" (after the age of 12) in
> children's writing. I have read nothing by people working in systemic
> functional linguistics which provides the specificity of "late" acquired
> structures in the work of Perera.  Several years ago Craig reported on
> this list that he had just heard about Perera's work at
> an ATEG conference for the first time.
>
> I'm surprised that he apparently still has not read any of her work.
>
> ************
> In the  field of second language acquisition, there is an entire
> subdiscipline called English for Special Purposes that focuses on the
> discipline specific language.
>
> However, I have no special expertise to do the following, and I wonder
> if anyone on this list does.
>
>    Certain kinds of structures tend to be valued in certain registers,
> sometimes without the kind of reflectiveness that would call some of
> that into question. So we need to think about both sides of this. What
> can we offer various technical disciplines that would help improve
> their own discourse and how can we help students make the language
> adjustments they need to make to do well in those worlds.
>
> **************
> This is couched in such a high level of generality that is difficult to
> figure out what Craig thinks we can "offer various technical disciplines
> that would help improve their own discourse."
>
> Perhaps, Craig can give us an example of a "technical discipline" whose
> discourse needs assistance and the kind of assistance he would offer, so
> we can get a sense of his program of work.
>
> Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
>
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