ABSTRACT
During the 1980s many teachers were realising that all was not well in the teaching of writing. One of the key problems was that many children were being turned off by writing, and this was supported by some evidence from the Assessment of Performance Unit (APU) . The APU found that as many as four in ten children did not find writing an enjoyable experience and ‘not less than one in ten pupils [had] an active dislike of writing and endeavour[ed] to write as little as possible’ (DES, 1988:170). Somewhat later the National Writing Project gathered evidence that many children, particularly young children, tended to equate writing with presentation skills rather than content. Wray (1993) also acknowledged that previous research evidence confirmed this but his own research suggested that there may be a developmental influence. He argued that perhaps children are concerned about the aspects that are ‘bothering them at the time’ (Wray, 1993:7), suggesting that children in the early stages might naturally be concerned with particular skills as they try to master them.
