Session Information
31 SES 06 B, Developing Skills In Writing: Textual, generative, and multilingual perspectives
Paper Session
Contribution
Text writing proficiency is an important skill in our society. We use writing to communicate and share information with other people and, moreover, writing is important for learning and for organizing one´s knowledge and ideas. With increasing educational demands and dependence on written information from multiple sources, text writing is even more important now than ever before. Consequently, learning to compose meaningful texts different kinds should be an important part of children´s education. Knowledge about how children learn to write and what affects their performance is important for the teaching of writing teaching in schools.
The theoretical model this study is based on is Berninger and her collaborators´ simple view of writing (Berninger and Amtmann, 2003). According to this model, three main skills lay the foundation for text writing proficiency: transcription skills, text generation skills, and self-regulation. At the beginning, transcription skills are the strongest predictor of children´s text writing performance (Berninger, Abbott, Abbott, Graham and Richard, 2002). With increasing automation in transcription, the importance of text generation skills increases (Abbott, Berninger and Fayol, 2010). Self-regulation can affect children´s text writing at all ages but younger children do not use strategies to plan, review and revise their text to the same degree as older children do (Limpo, Alves and Fidalgo, 2014).
The relative influence of transcription and text generation skills may differ by the orthographic depth of languages. The acquisition of writing, especially learning to spell, is easier in languages with shallow orthography than in languages with deep orthographies. Transcription in shallow orthographies might terefore not block working memory to the same degree as in languages with deep orthographies, making it easier for children to activate their text generation skills. Until recently, most research on children´s writing focused on English, a language with deep orthography. A few recent studies, however, indicate that transcription skills are not as strong predictors of children´s writing performance in languages with shallow orthographies (Babayigit and Stainthorp, 2011; Pinto, Bigozzi, Tarchi, Gamannossi and Canneti, 2015). Further research on children´s writing in different languages is necessary to better understand the relationship between orthographic depth and the effects of foundational skills on text writing development. Icelandic has a relatively shallow orthography, thus research on Icelandic children´s writing can contribute to our understanding of the effect of transcription skills, languages and self-regulation on text writing in languages with shallow orthography.
According to the simple view of writing, the effect of the three main foundational skills might not only change with age, it might also be different for different text genres. Children’s knowledge about text genres might affect the degree to which they can activate their text generation skills and executive function skills in their writing. It is also easier for children to plan, review and revise a text if they are familiar with the structure of the text genre.
Only few studies have compared the interplay of transcription skills, text generation skills and self-regulation for different text types and from a developmental perspective as was done in the present study. The research questions were as follows:
1) What is the relative effect of transcription skills, text generation skills, and self-regulation on Icelandic children´s text writing in the early grades?
2) Is the effect similar or different for two different text genres, narrative and information text?
3) Does the relative effect of these three variables change with age?
Method
Eighty-three Icelandic children were followed up from first through fourth grade. In first grade the children´s transcription skills, text generation skills and self-regulation were evaluated. Transcription skills were assessed with a spelling test. For text generation skills an Icelandic version of PPVT vocabulary test was used and an oral narrative. Self-regulation was measured with the Child Behavior Rating Scale (CBRS), a list of ten questions about children´s attention and behavior at school which their teachers answered. In second and fourth grade the children composed two written texts, a narrative and an information text. Text samples were analysed according to spelling and text quality. A score of spelling accuracy was calculated by dividing the number of correctly spelled words by the total number of written words. The analysis of text quality included four dimensions; text length (number of written words), vocabulary (measured by word length), cohesion (measured on a four points scale) and structure (in narrative writing one point was given for each of five story elements found in the text, in information text writing structure was evaluated on a three points scale). For text quality a fifth variable was also computed, based on the scores for the four variables used to evaluate text quality (text length, vocabulary, cohesion and structure). All four variables were given the same weight in the new variable (global score) by dividing a child´s score by the maximum score for each of the variables in question. A multiple regression model was used to assess the importance of the three foundational skills on writing dimensions in both grades and for both text genres.
Expected Outcomes
The results indicated that transcription skills predicted spelling for both genres and in both grades, self-regulation was also significant for spelling in two instances. For other measures of text writing the effect of the independent variables was weaker. Self-regulation significantly affected more writing variables than transcription skills and text generation skills. For other measures than spelling, the effect of transcription skills on narrative writing was weak in both second and fourth grade. For information texts the effect of transcription skills was stronger in fourth than in second grade. These results indicate that the effects of the three foundational skills are not only different between languages but also between different text genres. The results indicated that transcription skills are not a strong predictor for text quality in Icelandic. Even in second grade transcription skills did not account for variance in children´s performance on the four dimensions used to evaluate text quality, except for word length in narratives. These results correspond to results from other studies on children’s text writing in shallow orthographies which indicate that the effect of transcription skills is not as strong as in languages with deep orthographies. The results also indicate that the effects of the three foundational skills develop in different ways in the two text genres and that children are able to activate their text generation skills for narrative writing earlier than for information text writing. Still, the effects of text generation skills were weak for both text genres which might indicate that Icelandic children get insufficient support for their text writing development. In fact, the teaching in Icelandic schools seems to focus more on transcription skills such as spelling and handwriting with less attention on writing contents.
References
Abbott, R. D., Berninger, V. W. and Fayol, M. (2010). Longitudinal relationships of levels of language in writing and between writing and reading in grades 1 to 7. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102(2), 281-298. doi:10.1037/a0019318 Babayigit, S. and Stainthorp, R. (2011). Modeling the relationships between cognitive-linguistic skills and literacy skills: New insights from a transparent orthography. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103(1), 169-189. doi:10.1037/a0021671 Berninger, V. W., Abbott, R. D., Abbott, S. D., Graham, S. and Richards, T. (2002). Writing and reading: Connections between language by hand and language by eye. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 35(1), 39-56. doi:10.1177/002221940203500104 Berninger, V. and Amtmann, D. (2003). Preventing written expression disabilities through early and continuing assessment and intervention for handwriting and/or spelling problems: Research into practice. In H. Swanson, K. Harris, and S. Graham (Eds.), Handbook of learning disabilities (pp. 323- 344). New York: The Guilford Press. Limpo, T., Alves, R. A. and Fidalgo, R. (2014). Children's high-level writing skills: Development of planning and revising and their contribution to writing quality. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 84(2), 177-193. doi:10.1111/bjep.12020 Pinto, G., Bigozzi, L., Tarchi, C., Gamannossi, B. A. and Canneti, L. (2015). Cross-lag analysis of longitudinal associations between primary school students' writing and reading skills. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 28(8), 1233-1255. doi:10.1007/s11145-015-9569-9
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