TheMeaning Makers : : Learning to Talk and Talking to Learn / / Gordon Wells.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter MultiLingual Matters Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Wells, Gordon,
• Place / Publishing House: Bristol ;, Blue Ridge Summit : : Multilingual Matters, , [2009]; ©2009
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Language: English
• Series: New Perspectives on Language and Education
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (344 p.)

The Meaning Makers is about children’s language and literacy development at home and at school. Based on the Bristol Study, “Language at Home and at School,” which the author directed, it follows the development of a representative sample of children from their first words to the end of their primary schooling. It contains many examples of their experience of language in use, both spoken and written, recorded in naturally occurring settings in their homes and classrooms, and shows the active role that children play in their own development as they both make sense of the world around them and master the linguistic means for communicating about it. Additionally, this second edition also sets the findings of the original study in the context of recent research in the sociocultural tradition inspired by Vygotsky’s work and includes examples of effective teaching drawn from the author’s recent collaborative research with teachers.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Prologue to the Second Edition -- Introduction to First Edition -- Notes on Transcriptions of Dialogue Extracts -- 1. The Children and Their Families -- 2. Learning to Talk: The Pattern of Development -- 3. Learning to Talk: The Construction of Language -- 4. Talking to Learn -- 5. From Home to School -- 6. Helping Children to Make Knowledge Their Own -- 7. Differences Between Children in Language and Learning -- 8. The Centrality of Literacy -- 9. The Children’s Achievement at Age 10 -- 10. The Sense of Story -- 11. A Functional Theory of Language Development -- 12. Toward Dialogue in the Classroom -- 13. The Interdependence of Practice and Theory -- Epilogue: Making Meaning Together -- Appendix 1: The Bristol Language Development Scale -- References -- Index