2. Devitt et.al (1989)
Lexicalist approach to text construction
Worked on news reports
Used authentic texts taken from
newspapers
3. David Little (1994)
enumerated the steps followed by Devitt
et.al in their experiment where they made
use of Venn diagrams and linear
flowchart as aid in text construction
4. Steps by Little
1. Learners are given a jumble of content words and
phrases derived from authentic text.
2. The learner’s second task is to write each word or
phrase on a separate Post-it (a small adhesive label
that can be used many times.
3. The learner’s sort the words and phrases into
overlapping categories of time, place, person and
event by sticking the Post-its onto a large Venn
diagram.
4. The learner then devise a schema, or story outline,
by arranging their post-its in a linear sequence.
5. The learners expand the skeletal discourse into a
text that exploits word meaning to generate
sentence structures.
