ABSTRACT
It is obvious from the illustrations and the examples of the text shown in Figure 32 that here is a child engaged in composing in a serious and purposeful
way. Here the ‘common ground’ between reader and author is made explicit in action; here the notions of cohesion, interest and language combine in a text which shows the internalisation of ‘book’ language and literary conventions. Children
do not grow out of dictated stories, they transform them into more complex stories and they use them to try out their newly acquired book knowledge.
