Evaluation of explicit teaching of text structure, and planning and revision strategies

Long, M. Y. (2002). Assessing the effects of explicit teaching of text structure and planning and revising strategies on primary two students’ narrative texts (Master’s thesis). Retrieved from http://libris.nie.edu.sg/

Background

In view of the process vs. genre writing debate, the author hoped to combine the explicit instruction of the linguistic features of text types with the teaching of process strategies for writing so as to get the best of both approaches.

Aims

This study investigated the effect of explicit instruction in text structure, planning, and revising strategies on the quality of narrative writing by primary school students.

Sample

Thirty-six Primary 2 students participated in the study.

Method

In the pre-intervention phase, the students wrote a fairy-tale narrative. Time spent on planning, writing, and revising was recorded. The intervention explicitly taught the students text structure, planning strategies, and reviewing strategies. The lessons followed the genre-approach to teaching, involving deconstruction, explanation, joint construction, and independent construction. In the post-intervention phase, the students wrote a second fairy-tale. Data sources other than the two fairy-tales included group questionnaires and interviews.

Findings

The quality of all the students’ narratives was judged to have increased after the intervention, especially in the areas of content and organisation. They were able to produce more elaborate narrative staging and to include more evaluative comments after each stage and to resolve complications in a more satisfying manner. The students were better able to give detailed characterisations, and create suspense and atmosphere. Creation of the context of the narrative also improved.

The intervention also improved the students’ procedural and declarative knowledge of narrative writing. They increased their employment of strategies in both planning and revising and were able to better verbalise their knowledge of text structures.

The number of students who planned and revised their essays doubled, from 18 to 36. The kinds of changes the students made to their post-intervention narratives included surface editing (tenses and spelling), dialogues and text structure.

Implications

The author concluded that to help young students improve their writing, teachers needed to articulate their expectations explicitly, rather than teach with the less explicit traditional band descriptors.

Original article retrieved from NIE Digital Repository.