Single Paper Session 23

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Learning to write in grade 4: Support with didactic writing tasks

Keywords
learning to write;speaking and writing;text linguistics;writing at school
Domain
Teaching and Teacher Education

Abstract

Tasks are the didactic core of learning arrangements. For written assignments in primary school, it is particularly important to discuss solutions and approaches to solving them (Vode 2023). In written argumentation, this allows peers to be brought into the writing situation, which would otherwise be missing in a monological structure in written instruction . This makes the content and linguistic expectations transparent for all learners, which is necessary for effective feedback (Busse, V., Graham, S. & van Keer, H. 2024). School writing requires academic language which in turn must be learned in all areas. Cohesive devices are particularly challenging in this regard, as they clarify and unambiguise logical relationships within and between parts of sentences in texts (Domenech, M. & Mundt, E. 2024). These are special learning tasks for primary school students.As part of this elaboration project, the influence of oral task introduction on cohesion building in fourth-grade pupils' texts (n = 38) was investigated. For this purpose, the learning groups were given oral task introductions of varying scope and length for an otherwise uniform argumentative writing task. The design of the task and the task introductions were based on the principles of the task profile concept, scaffolding (Gibbons 2002) and the SRSD approach (Harris & Graham 1996).The text products were analyzed offline using a custom-made script and natural language processing via the Stanza Library of the Stanford NLP Group with regard to their cohesion devices.The evaluation of the categories (connectors; subordinate clauses per sentence; number of repeated lemmas and pronouns; overall cohesion), it was observed that students with the more comprehensive task introduction wrote significantly longer texts (mean number of words = 79.23 vs. mean number of words = 106.06 with p = 0.022) and, overall, used more cohesive devices per word (p = 0.032; Cohen's d = -0.648 (Hₐ: μ1 < μ2)). It is noteworthy that subordinate conjunctions and comparative particles were used more frequently by students who received the shorter introduction.For teaching practice, this means that even a structured introduction to a writing task lasting 5 to 10 minutes can have a measurable effect on students' texts.

The influence of early oral language on later narrative and expository writing in primary school

Keywords
developmental aspects of writing ability;literacy;writing at school;written language competence
Domain
Developmental Aspects of Instruction

Abstract

Oral language underpins the development of subsequent literacy skills, yet longitudinal studies that investigate how children’s oral language contributes to later writing performance are rare. Further, it remains unclear whether the influence of oral language is uniform across writing genres. The aim of this study was to examine how vocabulary, grammar, and narrative skills shape later writing development, and specifically whether oral language exerts distinct effects on narrative and expository writing. We report data following a cohort of monolingual English-speaking children (N = 62; 24 males) for four years from school entry. Oral language skills (vocabulary, grammar and narrative skills) were initially assessed at school entry (authors published). Spelling, handwriting, reading and writing were assessed 18 months later (Time 2) (authors in press). In this presentation we report on participants’ writing skills assessed a further 30 months later (Time 3: final age of participants 8-10 years) using two writing tasks - one narrative and one expository prompt. Writing products were assessed for productivity, accuracy and text quality. The impact of predictive and concurrent dimensions of oral language on written compositions were examined for both writing genres. Productivity and scores of text quality were significantly higher for the narrative writing task, with large effect sizes. By contrast, no differences were found for spelling accuracy and handwriting legibility in the two writing genres. Associations between oral language measures and writing productivity and quality also differed by writing task. Clarifying the mechanisms linking early oral language to later written expression in different genres is critical for theory development and has practical relevance for classroom instruction.

Writing Quality on a LEGO-Based Procedural Writing Task: Gender Differences in Analytic Traits

Keywords
education;text composition;writing at school;writing tasks
Domain
Assessment and Evaluation

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Young writers demonstrate substantial potential for composing texts, and measures of cognitive capacity related to writing show no gender differences (Bourke & Adams, 2012). Despite this, boys often report lower motivation for school-based writing and greater difficulty with transcription and text production (Olinghouse, 2008), and girls consistently outperform boys on writing assessments (Kim, 2017). These differences may be partly genre- and topic-related, as girls more often prefer narrative texts and boys factual or expository materials (McGeown, 2016). This study therefore examined gender differences in writing quality on a hands-on procedural task designed to broaden engagement and explicitly specify audience and purpose.METHODS: Seventy Norwegian sixth-grade students viewed an image of a six-piece LEGO figure and wrote instructions so a peer could rebuild the figure without the image. Texts were then rated using the six subdimensions of the 6+1 Traits framework (Culham, 2003).RESULTS: Girls outperformed boys on all dimensions except Word Choice, with the most robust gender difference observed for Voice (Hedges’ g=0.83). Smaller but underpowered gender differences were observed for remaining traits (0.15-0.48). All subscores were strongly correlated with total score (rs=.67-.94), and the correlational structure was equivalent between genders. Girls produced longer texts than boys (d = 0.48), and word count was moderately related to writing quality (rs=.38-.64). Adjusting for word count partially attenuated gender differences (38-71%), though controlling for word count may remove substantively meaningful variance, as word count likely reflects underlying differences in fluency and task engagement.CONCLUSIONS: Overall, gender differences in writing persisted even on the hands-on task designed to broaden engagement. Specifically, girls continued to outperform boys in expressive voice even after adjusting for word count, suggesting that while engaging task design is important, it may be insufficient to reduce gender differences in writing quality and potentially a focus on expressive voice for instruction, particularly for boys.REFERENCES:Bourke, L., & Adams, A.-M. (2012). Educational and Child Psychology, https://doi.org/10.53841/bpsecp.2003.20.3.19.Culham, R. (2003). Scholastic Publishing, ISBN-10: 0439280389Kim, Y.-S. G. (2017). Reading and Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-016-9719-6.McGeown, S. P. (2016). Journal of Research in Reading, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9817.12055. Olinghouse, N. G. (2008). Reading and Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-007-9062-1.