Emerging cognitive skills for writing: Sensitivity to audience presence infive- through nine-year-olds' speech

A prevailing claim in frequently cited writing research is that children in the early primary grades cannot modify their speech to be verbally informa tive for an audience that they cannot see or hear. In this study, I test th at claim. Ten children between 5 and 9 years old taught 5 magic tricks to a bsent and present peers through tape-recorded and face-to-face instructions . Children's informative, descriptive, and persuasive speech was compared f or absent and present peers, and effects of age, practice, and trick length were assessed. When dictating their instructions for an absent peer, child ren used more descriptive words and phrases, talked about more steps, and l isted the materials needed for the tricks. However, children were less like ly to remark about their absent peer's attitudes or explain for absent peer s why steps had to be done in a certain way. These results reveal skills fo r informative and expository writing-a task that permeates schoolwork-that primary school teachers can build on in young children.