CHILDES English Sawyer Corpus

Keith Sawyer School of Education University of North Carolina rksawyer@email.unc.edu website

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Citation information

Sawyer, Keith. (1997). Pretend play as improvisation: Conversation in the preschool classroom. Erlbaum: Mahwah NJ.

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Project Description

The goals of the study were to determine the turn-by-turn interactional dynamics of unstructured children’s play, with the ultimate goal of analyzing how such unstructured interactions might contribute to the development of conversational skills, social skills, and creativity. The data were gathered from naturally occurring play encounters in a preschool classroom with approximately 24 3, 4, and 5 year olds, during their unstructured free play time. The researcher sat on the floor, silently, next to the target play group, and placed a microphone as close to the group as possible without interfering with the natural flow of their play. Consequently, these transcripts represent “fly on the wall” observations of what preschool children do and say during unstructured free play. Children’s ages are given in months. The transcripts are linked to audio.

Code	Code name	Birthday	Age
A	Artie	7/27/87	54
AL	Alicia	9/1/88	40
AS	Anne	8/19/88	41
AX	Aretha	10/10/88	39
B	Bernie	8/8/88	41
CH	Corinna	2/25/87	59
E	Eddy	6/28/88	43
J2	Jennie	11/12/86	62
JE	Jerry	11/30/88	38
JN	Jan	9/1/87	52
JO	John	11/19/86	62
JW	Jennifer	11/1/86	62
KF	Kathy	11/3/86	62
KL	Karen	11/3/86	62
KN	Karl	2/13/87	59
KT	Kim	7/2/88	42
M0	Mrs. Sharp		0
MA	Matt	12/31/87	49
MB	Miss Benson		0
MC	Mrs. Cohn		0
ME	Keith		0
MI	Mikey	8/31/88	41
MR	Mark	5/18/88	44
MU	Muhammed	1/14/88	48
MW	Mrs. Winston		0
MX	Parent		0
N	Ned	10/16/87	51
R	Rachel	6/10/88	43
SC	Sam	12/11/87	49
Y	Yung-soo	6/23/87	55