Page 144 - Literacy in the New Media Age

MEANING AND FRAMES 133

O-level GCE Art 1958
RSA Arithmetic
But O-level standard was reached in all other subjects except French
Certicficate in Management Studies—BTEC 1985
My present occupation in TRAINING INSTRUCTOR with British Gas South East
Region.
I had a two week in house training before taking new starters in customer accounts
through a two week induction course, training in what I had previously been doing. I
then trained Senior Staff in the laws that govern their actions as set out in the GAS
ACT. & DATA PROTECTION ACT and the governing bodies of British Gas i.e. the Gas
Consumers Concil & OFGAS. I had to research and set up teaching aids, plans &
organize, time and arracge unassisted and then take the presentation to all the offices in
Kent, Surrey and Sussex. After this I set up and ran ACCOUNTS COLLECTION
courses for people familiar with coustomer accounts but lacking in councleling &
advising customers on payment methods etc.
Looking Back
I don’t remember anythin about the nursery school, I was placed there so that my
mother could work, parttime in a factory to supplement my father’s wages as a stoker
at the Gas works at Vauxhall.
I remember my first day at infant’s school, I sat at a disk and waited to be taught,
whilst waiting I looked at the A for apple etc pictures all around the walls. I could read
them all. The teacher finally said to me would you like to join the other children in the
playhouse, I said when will the lessons start. I didn’t like joining in their pretend games,
the boys wouldn’t play properly e.g. weighing on balance scales, they would throw
handfuls of counters on instead of noting the numbers & colours. One boy was a
laughing stock as his mother brought him to school in a pushchair, but another wet his
trousers. I felt sorry for him. Conditions were bad with smelly outside toilets and it was
humiliating having to ask the playground attendant for toilet and it was humiliating
having to ask the playground pupils but they were kept separate having different start,
end & play times.
Figure 8.1 Writing in the private and the public domain: the notion of the sentence once
more

One further example of the speech–writing relation
The resources which we use for representing are always shaped in the cultures
and in the social lives in which we act. The example (Figure 8.1) here seems a
particularly revealing text from that point of view.
The preceding discussion has I hope provided sufficient analytical/theoretical
material to show the issues here clearly, and so I will not go into detailed
analysis. What is striking to me is the clear distinction in forms of writing
between the recollection of childhood years and the description of the writer’s
current professional life. The former, the domain of the personal/private, is in the
mode of writing which is close to transcription, particularly in the clause
structures of the sentences; the latter, the domain of the institutional/public, is in
a mode of writing which is much much further on the line towards writing-like