In early writing, we can expect lots of talk to surround writing, since what children are doing is figuring out how to get speech onto paper. Early teaching in composition should also attend to helping children get used to producing language orally, through telling stories, explaining how things work, predicting what will happen, and guessing about why things and people are the way they are. Early writing experiences will include students explaining orally what is in a text, whether it is printed or drawn.
As they grow, writers still need opportunities to talk about what they are writing about, to rehearse the language of their upcoming texts and run ideas by trusted colleagues before taking the risk of committing words to paper. After making a draft, it is often helpful for writers to discuss with peers what they have done, partly in order to get ideas from their peers, partly to see what they, the writers, say when they try to explain their thinking. Writing conferences, wherein student writers talk about their work with a teacher, who can make suggestions or re-orient what the writer is doing, are also very helpful uses of talk in the writing process.
To take advantage of the strong relationships between talk and writing, teachers must minimally understand:
• Ways of setting up and managing student talk in partnerships and groups.
• Ways of establishing a balance between talk and writing in classroom management.
• Ways of organizing the classroom and/or schedule to permit individual teacher-student conferences.
• Strategies for deliberate insertions of opportunities for talk into the writing process: knowing when and how students should talk about their writing.
• Ways of anticipating and solving interpersonal conflicts that arise when students discuss writing.
• Group dynamics in classrooms.
• Relationships -- both similarities and differences -- between oral and literate language.
• The uses of writing in public presentations and the values of students making oral presentations that grow out of and use their writing.

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