Efficacy of explicating teaching of writing

Yeo, S. C. (2002). Effect of explicit teaching of character development in narrative writing (Master’s thesis). Retrieved from http://libris.nie.edu.sg/

Background

The author observed that students who did not read were unaware of the genre features of narratives and often wrote uninteresting recounts.

Aims

This study examined if explicit teaching of narrative writing would improve character description and development by secondary school students.

Sample

Thirty-three Secondary 4 students participated in the study.

Method

In the pre-intervention phase, the students completed a pre-test that asked them to write a narrative without any explicit instructions. During the intervention the students first read a literary text on their own. After that, the teacher deconstructed the text to show the students how three strategies could be used when they write their own stories. The three strategies focused on were: (1) setting a goal or rhetorical intention, (2) choosing and using epithets (physical appearance, mood, and behavioural characteristics), and (3) creating ideational tokens (representations of emotion that evoke the desired qualities and produce the desired effects in readers). In the post-intervention phase, the students rewrote their pre-test. Other data sources included learning journals.

Findings

In the post-test, the students wrote with more awareness of rhetorical intention than in the pre-test. The number of essays that showed inconsistencies in the depiction of characters was reduced from nine to four even though the number of descriptive details increased. The number of essays with discordant details in character description decreased from 11 to four. The number of epithets increased from 106 to 208. The percentage of epithets used appropriately increased from 88.7% to 93.3%. The number of ideational tokens increased from 83 to 166, with 97.6% of them used appropriately.

The journal entries showed that the students no longer found it difficult to write without explicit instructions but felt that their essays had become more creative and interesting after the intervention. Thirty-one journals provided positive feedback on the intervention. Nineteen students indicated a gain in self-confidence in writing.

Implications

The author concluded that explicit teaching is effective and that students should be explicitly taught text features and to treat writing as a thinking task.

Original article retrieved from NIE Digital Repository.