Immediate and delayed effects of invented writing intervention in preschool

This study examined the effects of a 10 week invented writing program with five-year-old preschoolers (mean age 5.7 years) on their immediate post intervention literacy skills and also the facilitative effects of the intervention on the subsequent learning to read during the first 6 months of schooling. The study included 105 children (54 girls) from 12 preschools in Norway. The preschools were randomly assigned to the experimental group with the invented writing program, or the control group with the ordinary program offered to preschoolers. The classroom-based programs (40 sessions) were conducted by the children’s regular teachers. The children’s emergent literacy skills were evaluated using a pre-test, a post-test and a follow-up test 6 months later, and the data were analyzed using latent autoregressive models. The results showed that the invented writing group performed significantly better than the control group on the post-test for the measures of phoneme awareness (d = .54), spelling (d = .65) and word reading (d = .36). Additionally, indirect effects were observed on the delayed follow-up tests on phoneme awareness (d = .45), spelling (d = .48) and word reading (d = .26). In conclusion, we argue that invented writing appeared to smooth the progress of emergent literacy skills in preschool, including the subsequent reading development in school. Contextualized in a semi-consistent orthography and a preschool tradition that does not encourage the learning of written language skills, the findings add to our knowledge of how children learn to write and read.     

Pupil Speech during Morning News: the effects of reducing teacher questions and increasing pauses and praise

Classroom discourse patterns were examined in the morning news sessions of a primary school classroom. The effects of reducing teacher questions and increasing rates of teacher pauses, praise and directives were investigated. Child words spoken and child expansions were recorded, as well as class call‐outs and teacher control statements. Frequencies of child words spoken showed no significant changes across the phases of the study. However, reducing teacher questions and increasing teacher pauses significantly decreased child expansions, while reducing teacher questions and increasing teacher praise significantly increased child expansions. Replacing teacher questions with directives had no significant effect upon child expansions. Class call‐outs and teacher control statements showed no significant changes across the intervention phases. The results of this study suggest that, for this teacher and class, teacher questions may be decreased without adversely affecting either child utterances or class behaviour, and that replacing questions with praise may increase children's contributions — particularly in the form of verbal expansions — to morning news talks.     

Relationships between writing motivation, writing activity, and writing performance: effects of grade, sex, and ability

A convenience sample of 618 children and adolescents in grades 4 through 10, excluding grade 8, were asked to complete a writing motivation and activity scale and to provide a timed narrative writing sample to permit an examination of the relationships between writing motivation, writing activity, writing performance, and the student characteristics of grade, sex, and teacher judgment of writing ability. Female students and older students wrote qualitatively better fictional stories, as did students with higher levels of writing ability based on teacher judgment. With respect to writing activity, more frequent writing in and out of school was reported by girls, better writers, and younger students. In a path analysis, grade and sex directly influenced writing activity, while sex, teacher judgment of writing ability, and writing activity directly influenced some aspects of writing motivation. Overall, teacher judgment of writing ability, grade level, and motivational beliefs each exerted a significant direct positive influence on narrative quality, whereas performance goals exerted a significant direct negative impact on quality.     

The mind is not a black box: Children's ideas about the writing process

We studied children's conceptions of the writing process while the complex cognitive activity of writing is carried out through a pictorial representation of the writing process. Sixty children attending Kindergarten, first grade and fourth grade in Bariloche, Argentina, were presented individually with a sequence of four questions about the content of a child's thought at four key moments of writing production (anticipating, writing, revising, rereading), which were depicted on picture cards. Textual analysis, the application of Simple Correspondence Factorial Analysis (SCFA) and Modal Response procedures, indicated significant developmental changes in the focus of children's ideas about writing. More specifically, we looked at children's conceptions of the nature of thinking while writing, given cognitive processes of increasing complexity and internalization. Main educational implications indicate the need to rethink practices for teaching writing at initial and primary school levels in order to promote teaching interventions directed at getting pupils to be explicit, revise and redescribe their conceptions about the writing process. We suggest that learners' conceptions of writing processes outline a tacit learning curriculum of writing, which operates by guiding learning efforts and self-evaluation standards.     

A generational examination of instructional Facebook use and the effects on perceived instructor immediacy,credibility and student affective learning

This study examined Millennial student perceptions of use of social networking, specifically Facebook, by instructors. Two independent variables were examined: instructor age (Baby Boomer or Millennial) and use of Facebook (utilising a course group site through the service versus not using the service at all). Results revealed that Baby Boomer instructors who used a class Facebook group were rated more highly on mediated immediacy, credibility and affective learning than Baby Boomer or Millennial instructors who did not use Facebook. The role of expectancy violations theory in Millennials’ perceptions of their instructors’ communication is discussed and recommendations are made for future research.     

Relationships between writing motives,writing self-efficacy and time on writing among Chinese students: path models and cluster analyses

Reading and Writing - Motives for writing is a new research area in the field of writing motivation. Recent studies have identified important motives for students’ writing. Adding to this...     

Transition planning and writing instruction: the effects of a brief intervention

This study used a multiple probe design across behaviours to determine if four high school students with learning disabilities could plan post‐school transition goals using a modified GO 4 IT … NOW! intervention while learning essential paragraph and essay writing skills. The results of this study indicate a functional relationship between the intervention and increased writing skills needed for high‐stakes testing and increases in students' knowledge of transition planning. During baseline, students produced extremely short essays and did not include essential paragraph elements. After instruction, students wrote longer compositions and included more details, and paragraphs contained more paragraph elements. All participants increased essay quality during the intervention as measured by the rubric used to evaluate end‐of‐instruction writing prompts.     

衔接手段的使用对飞行学生写作的影响研究

飞行学生的写作质量可以在一定程度上反映其英语基础程度,并且可以在一定程度上可促进其阅读水平,因此,对飞行学生的写作加以研究可帮助反映其外语水平。本文将以飞行学生的作文为分析材料,将其作文中的衔接手段作为研究对象,并探索衔接手段和作文质量之间的关系,旨在对飞行学生进行更加有效的写作指导。结果表明,作文质量较高的学生更易使用上下义词作为衔接手段,而较少使用单纯的重复手段。     

Examining the effects of writing on conceptual and procedural knowledge in calculus

It has been claimed that writing to learn mathematics (WTLM) may benefit students' conceptual understanding as well as their procedural ability. To investigate this claim, we collected data from students in two sections of an introductory calculus course. In one of the sections, students used WTLM activities and discussed the activities after completing the writing; in the other section, students used similar activities that did not involve writing but engaged them in thinking about the mathematical ideas and in discussing the activities. The errors from the in-class and final exams of both groups of students were categorized and analyzed for information about the students' conceptual and procedural understanding. We found no significant differences between the WTLM group and the non-writing group, which suggests that the real benefit from writing activities may not be in the actual activity of writing, but rather in the fact that such activities require students to struggle to understand mathematical ideas well enough to communicate their understanding to others. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The effects of writing systems and scripts on cognition and beyond: An introduction

Reading and Writing -     

Revising lecture notes: how revision,pauses, and partners affect note taking and achievement

Note taking has been categorized as a two-stage process: the recording of notes and the review of notes. We contend that note taking might best involve a three-stage process where the missing stage is revision. This study investigated the benefits of revising lecture notes and addressed two questions: First, is revision more effective than non-revision? Second, what revision method is best? Experiment 1 addressed the first question by comparing the performance of participants who revise or recopy lecture notes. Experiment 2 addressed the second question by investigating whether revision was best done (a) during pauses throughout the lecture or one equally-timed pause after the lecture, and (b) with a partner or alone. Dependent measures were original and additional notes and fact and relationship test scores. Results upheld three effects: (a) a modest revision effect—revisers recorded more additional notes and achieved somewhat higher scores on relationship items than re-copiers, (b) a pause effect—those revising during pauses outperformed those revising after the lecture on the notes and achievement measures, and (c) a modest partner effect—those revising with partners recorded more original notes than those revising alone. Furthermore, the combination of pauses and partners has merit and holds promise as a means for revision. Overall, findings suggested that revision is a new student-centered means to boost lecture note taking and achievement.     

Writing through time: longitudinal studies of the effects of new technology on writing

This paper contributes to the discussion about the effects of new technology on writing by assessing whether or not people's writing styles and ways of thinking change when new technologies are introduced. The writing styles of the three authors, prolific writers in their own fields, were assessed by comparing materials written by each author over a thirty-year period. During this time there were, for each author, great changes in the ways that they used new technology to help them to write. Nonetheless, the results indicated that, although the writing styles of each author differed from each other, their individual styles were remarkably consistent over time. These results thus suggest that although the new technologies may change the ways that individual writers work, they do not alter the styles of their resulting products.     

Effect of intersolution interval,chlordiazepoxide, and amphetamine on anticipatory contrast

Previous experiments have shown that the intake of a 0.15% saccharin solution is suppressed if saccharin access is followed by access to 32 % sucrose in brief daily pairings. The present experiments found that: (1) the degree of suppression was not altered when no time elapsed between presentation of the two solutions each day (15 sec had been the minimum in previous experiments and was used as the control in this experiment); (2) the degree of suppression was not altered by chlordiazepoxide (6, 12, or 20 mg/kg), although the drug had large appetite-stimulating effects; (3) suppression was not influenced by amphetamine (0.25 or 0.50 mg/kg); and (4) contrast could be established or eliminated, even after extended training, by manipulating the sequences of solutions presented (saccharin-saccharin or saccharin-sucrose). The results were interpreted in terms of a contrast effect based on the learned anticipation of a preferred substance. The chlordiazepoxide data suggest that this contrast is different from successive negative contrast, and the intersolution interval data suggest that the occurrence of contrast rather than a reinforcement effect is not due to a time gap between presentations of the two solutions.     

Children writing: Multimodality and assessment in the writing classroom

Multimedia has had a widely recognised impact on society, but it is still under‐represented in the literacy pedagogies of many schools. This may relate to the way we view assessment for literacy, which is still almost wholly monomodal. Students assessed at a low level as producers of verbal text may respond positively when working multimodally, but the only assessment instruments we have do not reveal this. In a class of 26 ten‐year‐olds in Victoria, Australia, with rich access to computers, five children performed at a very low level when working with verbal expression only, but responded remarkably when invited to work multimodally. A programme of text production was monitored and the results analysed, progressing from handwritten monomodal work, through stages of multimodality to full multimodal expression. The results suggest strongly that some children need multimodal scaffolding in order to communicate complex ideas effectively. This, however, requires an acceptance of multimodal texts as part of the primary literacy curriculum. It is therefore suggested that assessment of multimodal composition, both narrative and other texts, should be developed to help teachers accept the value of introducing multimodal literacies into the classroom.     

Comparing effects of different writing activities on reading comprehension: A meta-analysis

The purposes of this review were to determine: (1) if different writing activities were more effective than others in improving students’ reading comprehension, and (2) if obtained differences among writing activities was related to how reading comprehension was measured? Meta-analysis was used to examine these questions across studies involving students in grades 1–12. Nineteen studies were located that met inclusion criteria, resulting in 4 writing activities comparisons with 4 or more studies per comparison: summary writing versus answering questions (k = 5), summary writing versus note taking (k = 7), answering questions versus note taking (k = 4), and answering questions versus extended writing activities (k = 6). Effect sizes calculated for each writing activities comparison indicated there were no statistically significant differences for any of these comparisons when effects were averaged over all reading comprehension measures, excluding treatment-inherent measures. However, statistically significant differences were found for two of the comparisons on specific measures. Extended writing enhanced reading comprehension better than question answering on measures where comprehension was assessed via an extended writing activity, whereas summary writing enhanced reading comprehension better than question answering on a free recall measure. The results provide limited support for the theoretical viewpoint that writing activities are differentially effective in improving reading comprehension based on how closely the writing activities are aligned with a particular measure.     

Improving the writing performance,knowledge, and self-efficacy of struggling young writers: The effects of self-regulated strategy development

Writing is a complex task. Its development depends in large part on changes that occur in children’s strategic behavior, knowledge, and motivation. In the present study, the effectiveness of an instructional model, Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD), designed to foster development in each of these areas, was examined. Adding a peer support component to SRSD instruction to facilitate maintenance and generalization was also examined. Struggling, third grade writers, the majority of whom were minority students attending schools that served primarily low-income families, received SRSD instruction focused primarily on learning writing strategies and knowledge for planning and composing stories and persuasive essays. These students wrote longer, more complete, and qualitatively better papers for both of these genres than peers in the comparison condition (Writers’ Workshop). These effects were maintained over time for story writing and generalized to a third uninstructed genre, informative writing. SRSD instruction boosted students’ knowledge about writing as well. The peer support component augmented SRSD instruction by increasing students’ knowledge of planning and enhancing generalization to informative and narrative writing. In contrast, self-efficacy for writing was not influenced by either SRSD condition (with or without peer support).