ABSTRACT
Writing and its teaching has certainly been the subject of some radical rethinking over the last ten or so years, with the work of Donald Graves and his colleagues having had immense impact. The National Writing Project acted as a significant catalyst for changes in teaching practice and it is now common to hear primary teachers talk about, and see them make classroom provision for, writing for a range of purposes and audiences. This, perhaps, has helped to prevent in the United Kingdom the often acrimonious debate which has raged in Australia between advocates of a Gravesian ‘process writing’ approach and those claiming the need for more specific teaching of written genre structures. In British schools, broadening the range of genres with which children gain experience of working has become almost synonymous with, and not contradictory of, a process approach to writing. It was for this reason that the major part of Chapter 7 in Literacy and Language in the Primary Years was concerned with the range of purposes and forms of writing with which primary children might engage.
