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PubMedDate not supplied

The effectiveness of a highly explicit, teacher-directed strategy instruction routine: changing the writing performance of students with learning disabilities.

This study examined the effectiveness of a highly explicit, teacher-directed instructional routine used to teach three planning strategies for writing to fourth and fifth graders with learning disabilities. In comparison to peers who received process writing instruction, children who were taught the three planning strategies-goal setting, brainstorming, and organizing-spent more time planning stories in advance of writing and produced stories that were qualitatively better. One month after the end of instruction, students who had been taught the strategies not only maintained their advantage in story quality but also produced longer stories than those produced by their peers who were taught process writing. However, the highly explicit, teacher-directed strategy instructional routine used in this study did not promote transfer to an uninstructed genre, persuasive essay writing. These findings are discussed in terms of their relevance to effective writing instruction practices for students with learning disabilities.

Child↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Writing performance assessments: how important is extended time?

Students in Grades 5 and 8 completed a 30-minute writing performance assessment and a writing performance assessment completed over 3 days. Assessments were evaluated on four traits (ideas, organization, conventions, and sentence fluency). A significant interaction was found at Grade 5 between length of time allotted for the assessment and students' educational classification (general or special education). Grade 5 students performed significantly better on the 3-day writing assessment, with students in special education benefiting the most. At Grade 8, there were no differences between scores on the 30-minute and the 3-day assessments. No significant differences were found in students' writing performance across various types of discourse (narrative, imaginative, persuasive, and expository); significant differences were reported across certain writing traits. We shared three hypotheses for reported differences: (a) students' proficiency with the writing process, (b) scoring scale bias, and (c) differences in the revision behaviors of developing and mature writers. Educational implications related to statewide test programs are discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1989

Reading efficiency and the development of left-to-right writing by the ancient Greeks.

Ancient Greeks added vowels to a consonantal language and changed their horizontal writing direction from right-to-left to left-to-right. The idea that the dextral majority in ancient Greece developed left-to-right writing solely because writing efficiency was greater is questioned. Cerebral hemispheric functions that might be involved during fixation pauses in reading suggest that horizontal ancient Greek was read more efficiently from left to right than from right to left, the other direction in which it usually was written. The same considerations suggest that horizontal consonantal scripts are read more efficiently from right to left than from left to right. The importance of boustrophedon, a continuous writing style, in the development of left-to-right writing and aspects of the reciprocity between cerebral hemispheric functioning and writing direction of vocalic scripts are discussed.

Functional Laterality↗

PubMed1989

Effectiveness of writing groups in nursing homes.

We examine the effect of participation in an 8-week writing group in six nursing homes. Pretest and posttest assessments of cognitive and affective functional status were administered to 62 participants and 54 control subjects. We asked writing-group participants about previous writing experience and perceived ability to convey feelings, ideas, life experiences, and memories to others. Weekly assessments were conducted on eight group process measures. Findings suggest that participation in writing groups may reduce depression, particularly among residents with higher cognitive ability and greater depression. Significantly more participants than control subjects report an ability to relate feelings and ideas to other residents and staff. Improvement in group process measures is greatest for cognitively impaired participants and those with high physical function scores. There is considerable improvement in residents for whom writing-group participation frequently is considered inappropriate: those without writing experience, the depressed, and the cognitively impaired.

Aged↗

PubMed2005

"Grab" and good science: writing up the results of qualitative research.

Qualitative researchers have an array of choices in how to write up their research. Yet many write in distanced, third-person voices and give short shrift to the voices of informants, as if neither they nor their informants were part of the research. In doing so, they might believe that their writing style is scientific. Unfortunately, such styles of writing not only silence their informants and themselves, but many times they also contradict the philosophies of science on which many forms of qualitative research are based. If our philosophies of science are science, then how we write up our research, when it is consistent with our science, must logically be scientific. "Grab," or writing that is both interesting and memorable, goes hand in hand with good science.

Humans↗

PubMed2005

The effects of expressive writing on pain, depression and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in survivors of intimate partner violence.

This study examined the effects of expressive writing on depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and pain symptoms among women who have survived intimate partner violence (IPV). Forty-seven women completed baseline and four-month follow-up assessments and were randomly assigned to four writing sessions of either expressive writing focused on traumatic life events or writing about a neutral topic. Main effects were not significant for changes in depression, pain or PTSD symptoms. However, among depressed women, those assigned to expressive writing showed a significantly greater drop in depression. For depressed women with IPV histories, expressive writing may lead to reduced depression.

Attitude to Health↗

PubMed2006

Developing effective written communication and advocacy skills in entry-level health educators through writing-intensive program planning methods courses.

Written communication is a requisite skill for practitioners in the field of health education. Advocacy skills are now considered to be both a professional competency and an ethical responsibility. Given that many advocacy strategies involve written communication, it makes sense that the skills of writing and advocacy be developed concomitantly and within a writing-intensive class. The purposes of this article are twofold: (a) to describe the role of writing-intensive program planning methods courses in the development of written communication and advocacy skills in entry-level health educators and (b) to suggest strategies for planning, implementing, and assessing writing-intensive assignments and instructional activities designed to develop students' written communication and advocacy skills. Multiple examples of writing assignments are presented that can be used in helping students in developing their critical thinking, writing, and advocacy skills.

Curriculum↗

PubMed2004

The feasibility and effectiveness of an expressive writing intervention for rheumatoid arthritis via home-based videotaped instructions.

BACKGROUND: Expressive emotional writing has demonstrated efficacy for improving health status in a wide variety of healthy persons and recently in patients with chronic disease. PURPOSE: This study was a randomized, controlled effectiveness trial with 4 arms: 2 active treatment writing groups, 1 inactive writing group, and 1 attention control group. It represents the first attempt to translate the expressive writing intervention into a low-cost, community-based intervention in the form of a videotaped program. METHODS: Feasibility of the approach and patient adherence were examined in a community rheumatology practice with rheumatoid arthritis patients (N = 373). RESULTS: The videotape format was able to convey the intervention instructions accurately and produced the expected and differential ratings of stressfulness and emotional provocation across the 3 writing programs. Seventy-nine percent of eligible patients agreed to take the program home; 49% of these patients reported that they followed the protocol. Physician Disease Activity Rating and the Physical Component Summary of the SF36v2 Health Survey were assessed pre and post program. CONCLUSIONS: Intent-to-treat analyses found no effect of the treatment. Pretreatment differences among the protocol-adherent patients complicated treatment outcome interpretation. The standard writing instructions did not yield an effect; a modified set of instructions to extract meaning from the traumatic event yielded equivocal results. Contrasts between efficacy and effectiveness trials and the challenge of achieving significant outcomes in effectiveness trials are discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed2006

Children's autobiographies of learning to write.

BACKGROUND: Learning conceptions may be studied as specific implicit theories based on theory of mind. Previous studies suggest that a developmental shift from a direct implicit theory of learning to an interpretative one occurs during childhood. Here we explore the development of children's autobiographies of learning to write by adopting this framework. AIMS: We aim to study children's autobiographical accounts of learning to write and whether these accounts change according to the mentioned developmental shift and sociocultural environment. SAMPLE: Sixty children attending public schools in Argentina that were equally distributed according to school level (kindergarten, first grade, fourth grade) and sociocultural environment (middle and marginal). METHODS: Children were interviewed individually at school and requested to write 'as you used to when you were just beginning to write'. This question was repeated for one-year-intervals until child's current age was reached; anticipation of writing next year was also requested. Children's responses were coded into descriptive categories. A multiple correspondence factorial analysis studied the relations among response categories, school grade and sociocultural environment. On the basis of these results, categories were ordered into a Guttman scale. RESULTS: A developmental shift from a focus on isolated products to the integration of procedural and representational changes was evident. School grade and sociocultural environment were statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: Children's writing autobiographies show developmental differences that suit the shift from a direct to an interpretative theory of learning on the basis of hierarchical integration rather than conceptual replacement.

Autobiographies as Topic↗

PubMed2005

Language use in emotional writing.

This brief report provides descriptive data on uses of language in emotional writing to give some dues on the mechanism of emotional writing. Two written samples, emotional writing and superficial writing, were analyzed using the program, Korean Linguistic and Word Count. Emotional writing has more complicated language structure and more cognitive words than the superficial writing.

Adult↗

PubMed1997

A note on measuring apprehension about writing.

Having revised Daly and Miller's 1975 unidimensional Writing Apprehension Test, Riffe and Stacks in 1992 proposed eight multidimensional factors derived from responses to 56 items in their Mass Communication Writing Apprehension Measure, administered to communication students to identify the various dimensions of apprehension about writing shared with business writers and specific to their major. The current authors administered the questionnaire at the beginning of an academic year to 419 freshmen from all undergraduate schools and majors at a private liberal arts university. It was hypothesized that the factors found among the homogeneous population of communication majors would not be replicated among the more heterogeneous student population. The hypothesis was partially upheld. Seven factors were identified. Two duplicated most items found by Riffe and Stacks (1992), four added items, and one was new. The results of this study suggest that, although the general population of students differs from students in mass communication, as Riffe and Stacks remarked, the groups also share similar content in their writing apprehension, that writing apprehension is multidimensional, that caution must be exercised when administering any instrument for the diagnostic and counseling purposes suggested by Riffe and Stacks, and that writing apprehension should also be investigated from the perspective of locus of control.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Effect on performance of timely feedback on state writing assessments.

The effect of timely feedback for a state writing assessment on subsequent writing performance was investigated. Also, agreement between teachers' scores on assessment and the state department's scores was compared. Eighth grade English teachers (N=8) were trained on an analytic scoring method which yielded scores on ideas, organization, voice, and conventions. September state writing assessments from the teachers' class were scored by the teachers who also scored assessments for a partner teacher's class. A second parallel writing assessment was administered in February to the trained teachers' classes and eight control classes. Analysis showed good agreement between the teachers' scores and those by the state department. There was 75% agreement on the designation of adequate or inadequate for the students' writing between the teachers and the state department. There was no difference between the writing performance for students of the trained teachers and students in the control classes on the follow-up assessment.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1995

Is writing as difficult as it seems?

Experiment 1 assessed the time and effort allocated to writing subprocesses while generating written and verbal protocols over 10 weekly writing sessions. Within a 40-min session, planning time consumed about 45% in the first 5 min, but stabilized at near 30% thereafter. Generating text initially consumed 40% of the writers' time, peaked at 50% midway, and then declined to its original level. The time spent revising and reviewing was negligible early in writing sessions, but increased substantially late in the sessions. The highest and lowest quality documents could be differentiated on the basis of the amount of time the writers devoted to revising and to the magnitude of their RTs in a secondary interference task. Writers showed consistent, distinctive patterns of transitional probabilities between writing subprocesses both within and across sessions, yielding quantitative representations of their writing styles. In Experiment 2, writers overestimated the amount of time they devote to revising and overestimated the amount of effort they allocate to planning and text generation. Their estimations did not improve after 10 weeks of composing. A time-and-effort-based analysis of writing is proposed to account for these data.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

The enhancement of writing skills among post-RN students.

Nurses need to communicate in oral and written formats, but the emphasis on concise charting and multiple-choice examinations hinders the development of scholarly writing skills. A questionnaire completed by 97 students identified the areas within writing and formatting that needed strengthening. Three strategies, useful to continuing education programs for nurses, were incorporated in a post-RN program to enhance the students' writing abilities: a writing skills workshop, an in-class writing exercise and a draft paper assignment. Student evaluations have supported these strategies as well as guidance by faculty in assisting students to improve their writing.

Adult↗

PubMed1992

Effect of writing across the curriculum techniques on students' affective and cognitive learning about nursing research.

A descriptive design evaluated the effect of writing across the curriculum techniques on students' attitudes toward, and critical understanding of, nursing research. Using a semantic differential, students' (n = 17) attitudes were measured prior to a research theory course, immediately after the course, and at the end of the following term in which they were required to write a partial research proposal. This writing assignment was supported by a writing laboratory. Data analysis included paired t tests to measure differences after the course and after completion of the writing assignment and to measure differences in quality of papers submitted by those who attended the writing lab and those who did not. Results demonstrated significant positive changes in students' feelings about doing research and their beliefs about the desirability of research. No significant differences in quality of papers were found.

Attitude↗

PubMed2004

Psychometric evaluation of the Writing-To-Learn Attitude Survey.

The Writing-To-Learn Attitude Survey (WTLAS) was developed to measure the effects of using writing-to-learn activities in the classroom, but adequate psychometric data have not been reported for the measure. Using the pretest scores from 149 basic and RN-to-BSN nursing students enrolled in a Nursing Management and Leadership course, the reliability and validity of the WTLAS were evaluated. The initial 30-item measure demonstrated acceptable reliability, but the item intercorrelations suggested revision of the subscales was appropriate. After exploratory factor analyses, the WTLAS was revised to 21 items and consists of two factors: Apprehensions about Writing Abilities and Perceived Benefits of Writing-To-Learn Activities. Both subscales possess acceptable internal consistency reliability and conceptually sound, significant correlations with a separate measure of writing apprehension. The revised WTLAS appears to have adequate psychometric properties for further use in the evaluation of students' perceptions of writing-to-learn activities.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Reflective journal writing: how it promotes reflective thinking in clinical nursing education: a students' perspective.

According to the outcomes-based education and training system of education (OBET) in the country and the South African Nursing Council, education should focus on "creating" reflective learners and practitioners. This article seeks to determine the effectiveness of reflective journal writing in promoting the reflective thinking of learners in clinical nursing education and to validate the guidelines described in a bigger study on how to facilitate reflective thinking using reflective journal writing. A qualitative, contextual, explorative, descriptive research design was used to determine the learners' perceptions on whether reflective journal writing did promote their higher-level thinking skills during the six-month placement in a psychiatric clinical practice using the reflective diaries. From a population of seventeen fourth-year students, six volunteered to participate in a focus group interview. The data was analysed by means of the descriptive method of open coding of Tesch (in Creswell, 1994:154-156). Positive and negative results from the perceptions of the participants and a literature review served as a basis for deducing and describing guidelines for the effective use of reflective journal writing in promoting reflective thinking in clinical nursing education. The positive perception was the development of problem-solving skills attained through reflection by using analytical critical thinking, synthesis and the evaluation of situations. Self-evaluation leading to intellectual growth and self-awareness indicated a positive perception. Negative perceptions were that reflective journal writing is time consuming, content based with a lack of clear expectations from the teacher, and distrust of students about the information written. Guba's model of ensuring trustworthiness in qualitative research as described in Krefting (1991:215-222) was employed. It is concluded that reflective journal writing in clinical nursing education does promote reflective thinking and learning. The use of the developed guidelines will minimise the negative perceptions. It is recommended that the guidelines be used in basic training at all levels of training to attain the objective of nursing education and training, which is to produce a critical, analytical thinker through reflection to improve practice.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗

PubMed2003

[Writing disorders in primary progressive aphasia].

We investigated longitudinally three patients with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) who exhibited fluent aphasia at the early stage, in terms of writing disorders. The writing disorders were the most striking during the aphasia quotient (AQ) was 50-60 for all these patients. The characteristic features were as follows: (i) several types of perseverative errors, especially on spontaneous writing rather than on dictation (ii) confusion between letters and pictures (iii) preserved copying ability and (iv) total loss of writing ability at the final stage. Additionally, through the progression, linguistic level of the perseverative errors changed from sentence to word and finally to phoneme. The results suggest that the fluent type PPA patients have difficulty to recall proper letters and to arrange them in correct order following the writing plan, in addition to disinhibition and lexical stereotyping which were commonly observed in perseverative patients. The results also suggest that their writing disorders seem to be based on difficulty of letter manipulation as symbols.

Aged↗