Knowing and Writing School History

Because school history often relies on reading and writing and has its own discipline-specificchallenges, it is important to understand the language demands of this content area, the typicalwriting requirements, and the language expectations of historical discourse. History uses languagein specialized ways, so it can be challenging for students to construct responses to historicalevents. It is only through a focus on these specialized ways of presenting and constructinghistorical content that students will see how language is used to construe particular contexts.This book provides the results of a qualitative study that investigated the language resources that8th and 11th grade students drew on to write an exposition and considered the role of writing inschool history. The study combined a functional linguistic analysis of student writing with educational considerations in the underresearchedcontent area of history. Data set consisted of writing done by students who were English language learners and otherculturally and linguistically diverse students from two school districts in California. The book is an investigation of expository schoolhistory writing and teachers' expectations for this type of writing. School history writing refers to the kind of historical writing expectedof students at the pre-college levels.The audience for the book includes researchers and students in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in applied linguistics andeducation. The book is particularly valuable for those interested in applications of systemicfunctionallinguistics in education. The issues covered in the book make it appropriate forthose concerned with the expectations and challenges of literacy development in secondarycontent area classes.