Oral Patterns as a Resource in Children's Writing: an Ethnopoetic Note 1

This tribute to Susan Ervin-Tripp is essentially a note to a recent book (Himley, 1991). Himley documents one young boy's writing activity. I want to show that what emerges uses patterns of oral narrative. That in itself is not surprising (cf. Dickinson, Wolf, & Stotsky, 1993). One kind of pattern, however, has seldom been taken into account. ²