G.C.W. Rijlaarsdam

Chapter 2.01.15: Effective Instructional Strategies in Collaborative Revision in EFL: Two Empirical Studies

Various methods have been suggested to teach novice revisers to improve their revision and writing skills such as peer interaction and collaborative revision, and strategy instruction. One form of strategy instruction which has proven to be particularly effective as far as learning-to-write and learning-to-revise is concerned is observational learning. The two research questions were explored in two relatively large-scale semi-experimental studies with undergraduate foreign language learners. In the two studies different forms of strategy instruction were implemented in collaborative revision to determine the impact of each separate approach. Pair composition moderates the effect of observation: homogeneous dyads in terms of writing proficiency seem to profit more from observation than from practising, whereas weak, heterogeneous dyads made up of two initially weak writers benefit significantly more from dyadic practising. Keywords: heterogeneous dyads; strategy instruction; writing proficiency; writing skills

List of Volumes

This section of this book titled Measuring Writing: Recent Insights into Theory, Methodology and Practices contains a list of volumes. Keywords: writing ability, formative assessments

Written narations by 8- to 10-year-old Turkish pupils in flemish primary education: a follow-up of seven text features

This semi-longitudinal study examined the development of narrative writing quality of young Turkish second language learners in mainstream Dutch-only education, and the impact of student-level and classroom-level predictors of narrative writing quality, using hierarchical linear modelling. Writing samples of 106 third graders and 111 fourth graders of seven Flemish primary schools were collected at the beginning and at the end of the school year. Measures included one holistic primary trait judgement, and six objective indices of text quality. Student-level predictors included age, SES and home language, while the classroom-level predictor focused on the home language pattern of the classroom. There was a significant mean growth for each index in each grade, but effect sizes differed from quite large for content and word level indices over moderate for sentence level indices to small for the text level index. Home language (Turkish) had a significant negative effect on all but one variables, particularly in Grade 4, while the negative effect of low SES was much more limited. A supplementary negative effect was found for homogeneity of classroom population. Implications of the study highlight the importance of student and classroom characteristics in writing achievement as well as the need to consider the poor performance of Turkish children.

Chapter 9: The Dynamics of Idea Generation During Writing: An Online Study

Generating and translating can be considered as the two basic processes in writing. If one has no ideas, or has no access to ideas, one has nothing to write about. If one has ideas but no means to express them, no communication occurs. This chapter elaborates on the multifunctionality of cognitive activities such as generating and on the dynamic character of writing. It explores whether we should distinguish different types of idea-generation processes, whether these different processes are more likely to occur at particular times or stages in the completion of a writing task, and the combined effect of the occurrence of a generating process and the point in the writing process at which it occurs on the quality of the final text. To understand the occurrence of cognitive activities we need to study the patterns of individual writers in detail. The chapter also presents author note and an appendix. Keywords: cognitive processes; idea generation; writing process