1 / 63

Improving Writing: Results From Writing Intervention Research

Sources for Effective Practice. Professional Writers

jihan
Download Presentation

Improving Writing: Results From Writing Intervention Research

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

    1. Improving Writing: Results From Writing Intervention Research Steve Graham Vanderbilt University steve.graham@vanderbilt.edu

    2. Sources for Effective Practice Professional Writers – many draw on their experience to give advice on either how to teach writing or facilitate writing development This advice ranges from useful to simplistic to ridiculous

    3. Don’t use words to big for the subject. C.S. Lewis When you catch an adjective kill it. Mark Twain

    4. Have something to say. Say it. Stop when you have said it. Give it an accurate title.

    5. Rules for Writing a Paragraph Set type for as long as you can hold your breath without getting blue in the face Then put in a comma When you yawn put in a semicolon, and when you sneeze, that’s time for a paragraph.

    6. Sources for Effective Practice Experienced Writing Teachers This can involve the insights they have acquired from teaching or insights acquired from others who study them

    7. LIMITATIONS Difficult to separate “wheat from shaft” Often no direct evidence on effectiveness (validity -- testimonials) Evidence is often selective (generalizability -- possible bias) Evidence often based on 1 or a few teachers (reliability – can’t predict its effectiveness)

    8. Sources for Effective Practice Scientific Studies -- Should be more trustworthy than insight and experience Collect evidence Present findings for all participants Replicability Strength of Impact

    9. In this presentation, I present what we know about teaching writing to adolescents using 3 sources of scientific information – I will start with the findings from WRITING NEXT

    10. Effect Size Effect Size provides a standardized measure of the quantitative differences between the two treatments, providing information on both the direction and magnitude of this difference.

    11. RULE OF THUMB Effect sizes OF .80 is LARGE Effect Size of .50 is MODERATE Effect size of .25 is SMALL

    12. All journalism students learn the five W’s and H of their trade. Who, what, when, where, why, and how Not all of them learn this well.

    13. Writing, Working, Worrying, Wondering, Who knows, and Help

    14. 1. Strategy Instruction Involves explicitly and systematically teaching students strategies for planning, revising, and/or editing text. Instruction is designed to teach students to use these strategies independently. Writing strategies range from processes such as brainstorming (which can be applied across genres) to strategies designed for specific types of writing, such as stories or persuasive essays.

    15. Strategy Instruction, Cont. N = 20 ES = .82

    17. LOST DOG: Mixed breed, shaggy, left front leg amputated, missing top of right ear, partially blind, bad case of mange, tail was broken and healed crooked, some teeth gone, scars on head and back, has been castrated. Answers to the name

    18. LUCKY

    19. 2. Teaching Summarization Involves explicitly and systematically teaching students how to summarize texts. This can include teaching strategies for summarizing text or instructional activities designed to improve students’ text summarization skills. N = 4 ES = .82

    20. Teach these 6 rules of summarization: Delete unnecessary material Delete redundant material Compose a word to replace a list of items Compose a word to replace individual parts of an action Select a topic sentence Invent a topic sentence if need be

    21. 3. Peer Assistance Involves students working together to plan, draft, and/or revise their compositions. N = 7 ES = .75

    22. 4. Setting Product Goals Involves assigning students specific goals for the written product they are to complete. N = 5 ES = .70

    23. IMPORTANT NOTICE: If you are one of the hundreds of parachuting enthusiasts who bought our EASY SKY Diving book, please make the following correction: On page 8, line 7, the words “state zip code” should have read

    24. “pull rip cord”

    25. 5. Word Processing Involves having students use word processing and related software to write. N = 18 ES = .55

    26. When a child in an affluent neighborhood was asked to write a story about a poor family she chose her own.

    27. Once upon a time there was a poor family. The father was poor. The mother was poor. The children were poor. The nannies were poor. The pool man was poor. The personal trainer was poor.

    28. 6. Sentence Combining Involves teaching students to construct more complex and sophisticated sentences through exercises where two or more basic sentences are combined into a single sentence. N = 5 ES = .50

    29. 7. Process Approach Involves extended opportunities for writing; writing for real audiences; engaging in cycles of planning, translating, and reviewing; personal responsibility and ownership of writing projects; high levels of student interactions; creation of a supportive writing environment; self-reflection and evaluation; personalized individual assistance and instruction; and in some instances more systematic instruction.

    30. Process Approach Cont. N = 21 ES = .32

    31. 8. Pre-Writing Activities Involves students engaging in activities (such as using a semantic web or brainstorming ideas) designed to help them generate or organize ideas for their composition. N = 5 ES = .32

    33. 9. Inquiry Involves engaging students in activities that help them develop ideas and content for a particular writing task by analyzing immediate and concrete data (e.g., comparing and contrasting cases or collecting and evaluating evidence). N = 5 ES = .32

    34. Example of Inquiry: Goal – Describe the action of people Analyze Data – observe one or more peers during specific activities Specific Strategies – Ask the people observed why they did what they did Apply – Write a story based on insights

    35. “Poetry is when every line starts with a capital letter and doesn’t reach the right side of the page.”

    36. 10. Study of Models Involves students examining examples of one or more specific types of text and attempting to emulate the patterns or forms in these examples in their own writing. N = 6 ES = .25

    37. A grasshopper is nervous and jumpy because he cannot sleep. He cannot sleep because he has no eye-lids. He has no eyelids because he is too nervous and jumpy to sleep

    38. 11. Writing As A Tool for Learning ES = .23 Have students use writing as a tool for learning content material.

    39. Give me an example of a double negative.

    40. Never-Never land

    41. Oh that’s not a double negative. “I don’t know no double negatives.”

    42. Grammar Involves the explicit and systematic teaching of grammar (e.g., the study of parts of speech and sentences). N = 11 ES = -.32

More Related