The whole point of the thing

How nominalisation might develop students’ written causal arguments

Frustrated that previously taught writing frames seemed to impede his A-level students’ historical arguments, James Edward Carroll theorised that the inadequacies he identified in their writing were as much disciplinary as stylistic. Drawing on two discourses that are often largely isolated from each other – genre theory and the work of the history teaching community – in this article Carroll explores how the construction of colligatory generalisations can help students express causal arguments in more sophisticated ways.

James Edward Carroll is a History Teacher at Esher College (Thames Ditton, 16-18 sixth form college).