individual differences in undergraduate essay writing strategies a longitudinal study

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Writing as a learning tool: Testing the role of students’ writing strategies

• Published: March 2006
• Volume 21 , pages 17–34, ( 2006 )

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• Marleen Kieft 1 ,
• Gert Rijlaarsdam 1 , 2 &
• Huub van den Bergh 2  

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The claim that writing facilitates students’ learning, although widely accepted, has little support from empirical research. A possible explanation for the lack of empirical evidence is that writing-to-learn research has disregarded that students use different writing strategies. The purpose of the present experimental study is to test whether it is effective to adapt writing-to-learn tasks to different writing strategies when teaching literature. A course “Learning to write argumentative texts about literature” was developed in two different versions: one adapted to a planning writing strategy, the other to a revising writing strategy. Participants were 113 tenth-grade high school students in the Netherlands. Our hypothesis is an adaptation hypothesis: we expect that the more a student will use a planning writing strategy, the more the student will profit from the lessons in the planning condition, and that the more a student uses a revising writing strategy, the more beneficial the revising condition will be. However, results show that for improving literary interpretation skill, a course adapted to the planning writing strategy is more effective for almost all students.

L’affirmation selon laquelle l’écriture favorise l’apprentissage chez les collégiens est largement acceptée mais peu soutenue par des résultats de recherches empiriques. Une explication possible à ce manque d’évidences empiriques tient au fait que la recherche relative à l’apprentissage de l’écrit a négligé l’étude des différentes stratégies d’écriture des collégiens. L’objectif de cette étude expérimentale est de voir s’il est efficace d’adapter une stratégie d’écriture réécrivant et une stratégie planifiant à des activités d’apprentissage de production écrite dans l’enseignement de la littérature. Un cours intitulé “Apprendre à écrire un texte argumentatif sur la littérature” a été proposé sous deux formes différentes: l’une pour la stratégie d’écriture planifiant, l’autre pour la stratégie réécrivant. Les participants étaient 113 collégiens en classe de troisième aux Pays-Bas. Notre hypothèse est une hypothèse d’adaptation: on s’attend à ce qu’un collégien ayant une stratégie d’écriture planifiant profitera davantage des leçons adaptées à cette stratégie et que les leçons de type sculptural seront bénéfiques pour les lycéens ayant une stratégie d’écriture réécrivant. Cependant, les résultats montrent que, pour améliorer la compétence d’interprétation littéraire, un cours adapté a une stratégie d’écriture planifiant est plus efficace pour quasiment tous les collégiens.

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Effective Planning and Revising Strategies for Meeting the Needs of Students with Learning Difficulties and Literacy Needs

Teaching Writing

Feedback and Revising in an Intelligent Tutoring System for Writing Strategies

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Graduate School of Teaching and Learning, University of Amsterdam, Wibautstraat 2-4, 1091 GM, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Marleen Kieft & Gert Rijlaarsdam

Utrecht Institute of Linguistics, Utrecht University, Trans 10, 3512 JK, Utrecht, The Netherlands

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Kieft, M., Rijlaarsdam, G. & van den Bergh, H. Writing as a learning tool: Testing the role of students’ writing strategies. Eur J Psychol Educ 21 , 17–34 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03173567

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Received : 15 August 2004

Revised : 15 April 2005

Issue Date : March 2006

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03173567

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