Strategy based writing instruction

Bai, B. (2015). The effects of strategy-based writing instruction in Singapore primary schools. System, 53, 96-106.

Background

The authors highlighted research that consistently demonstrated a positive relationship between strategy use and writing competence. This suggested that underachieving writers needed to be taught to utilize the strategies used by successful writers through writing interventions.

Aims

The study aimed to assess the impact of strategy-based instruction (SBI) on Singapore primary school students’ writing competence.

Sample

The participants were 442 Primary 5 students from three schools in Singapore, and 12 form teachers of these intact classes. Two experimental classes and two control classes were identified in each school.

Method

The data sources included pre- and post-intervention questionnaires, pre-, post-, and delayed writing tests, and interviews. Weekly conferencing, researcher observations, and teacher journal logs were also used as other sources of evidence for the SBI intervention. The five-phase SBI intervention began with a ‘preparation’ phase, in which learners’ current learning strategy use on a familiar task was discussed. In the ‘presentation’ phase, the teacher explained and modelled the target strategy use. The third phase was ‘practice’ where learners had to use the new strategy on a task. The ‘evaluation’ phase required learners to evaluate their strategy use after the task. In the final phase, i.e., ‘expansion’, learners transferred the new strategy to a new task. Four groups of writing strategies, i.e., planning, text-generating, feedback handling, and revising were taught during the intervention.

Findings

The results indicated that the intervention brought about significant improvements in the participants’ writing competence and overall use of writing strategies. The delayed-test results showed that the effect of the SBI sustained one month after the intervention. There was also statistically significant improvement by the experimental group’s use of three of the four target groups of strategies, i.e., feedback handling strategies, revising strategies, and text-generating strategies. The post-intervention interviews revealed that the students possessed a higher level of awareness in their planning strategies (although the data did not show significant improvement in the execution of these strategies), had enlarged their repertoire of writing strategies, and were able to plan more extensively and orchestrate their strategies more effectively after the intervention.

Implications

The author suggested that primary students should be encouraged to apply the groups of writing strategies more often in writing compositions. Writing strategies should be embedded into existing writing lessons and taught explicitly.

Original article retrieved from ScienceDirect.