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http://hdl.handle.net/1942/14764
Title: | Influence of writing instruction and cognitive skills on undergraduate students’ academic writing | Authors: | RAEDTS, Mariet Rijlaarsdam, Gert |
Issue Date: | 2012 | Source: | SIG Writing Porto 2012: Program & Abstracts, p. 89-89 | Abstract: | We examined the effects of students' cognitive skills and three types of writing instruction on a academic writing task, i.e. writing a section for a literature review. Previous experimental studies compared the effects of two instruction types: observational learning and learning by doing (e.g. Braaksma et al.,2002; Couzijn, 1999; Groenendijk et al., 2011; Raedts et al., 2007; Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 2002). We added a third instruction method to our experimental design: learning from text models written by peers. One hundred and twenty-seven undergraduate students at a Belgian university participated in a 2-hour writing course in which instruction type was manipulated. Regardless of condition students received a 10-page course text. Each section dealt with one aspect of the writing task (e.g. choosing a suitable title or writing the conclusion) and ended with an exercise. Control group students (N = 48) completed the exercises themselves (learning-by-doing). Students in the learning-from-text-models condition (N = 40) evaluated peer answers. Students in the observational condition (N = 39) observed and evaluated a video-based peer model performing the exercises under think aloud conditions. One day after the intervention, all students wrote a summary text based on the same research articles. A two-way ANOVA yielded a significant main effect of instruction type on students’ synthesizing skills (F (2, 121) = 6,194, p = .003). Post-hoc analyses only showed significant differences between the learning-by-doing condition and observational learning (p = 002). Students’ cognitive skills (measured by a logical reasoning test at the beginning of the academic year) had no main effect on their writing performances; nor did we find an interaction between condition and cognitive skills. Hence, our findings provide evidence that observational learning facilitates the transfer of complex writing skills to a comparable writing task irrespective of student's thinking capacities. | Document URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/1942/14764 | Link to publication/dataset: | http://www.fpce.up.pt/sigwriting2012/SIG2012_program_abstracts.pdf | Category: | C2 | Type: | Proceedings Paper |
Appears in Collections: | Research publications |
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File | Description | Size | Format | |
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Earli Sig Writing_2012_Raedts & Rijlaarsdam_10 07 2012_versie 2.pdf Restricted Access | Supplementary material | 1.15 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open Request a copy |
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