Amos van Gelderen

University of Amsterdam | UVA · Department of Education

94 PEDAGOGISCHE STUDIËN 2021 (98) 94-111 A literature review on interconnected reading and writing instruction Since reading and writing are considered interconnected language skills from a functional, cognitive and socio-cognitive perspective, interconnected reading and writing instruction (IRWI) may therefore benefit both skills. This article...

In the present study, effects of Genre Writing instruction added with planning and revising activities (GWPR) are investigated in teacher education. This type of instruction was considered promising because it appeared to lead to positive effects on topic knowledge and insight in previous studies conducted in secondary education. Researchers’ expec...

Prior studies suggest that teaching reading strategies promotes reading comprehension in adolescents who have difficulties with reading comprehension, yet the results of those studies are mixed. Individual differences in students’ vocabulary knowledge may explain these mixed results. This article examines to what extent vocabulary knowledge influen...

This study investigates the effects of instruction in genre writing with planning and revising activities (GWPR) on learning. This type of instruction appeared to be successful in promoting learning in several types of education. However, there are few studies on the effects on low achievers. Therefore, two studies were conducted with low-achieving...

This review examines which types of instruction in writing‐to‐learn lead to effects on insight and topic knowledge in different disciplines, in grades 5–12 and in higher education. Forty‐three empirical studies have been selected to answer this question. Four types of instruction are distinguished. Three of them are based on hypotheses proposed by...

Research Findings: The parental role in supporting young children’s oral language development at home is crucial for children’s language and literacy development. However, there is limited expertise in how teachers can support lower-educated parents effectively to enhance their interactions with their children and stimulate the use of language. The...

Low-achieving adolescents are known to have difficulties with reading comprehension. This article discusses whether principles of reciprocal teaching can improve low-achieving adolescents' reading comprehension in whole-classroom settings and to what extent treatment effects are dependent on implementation quality. Over the course of two years, exp...

It is hypothesized that variability found in the effects of family literacy programs results from differences in implementation by parents. In this study, the implementation and effects of a Dutch program were examined in a sample of 207 kindergarteners (mean age at pre-test: 64 months). No main intervention effects on children’s literacy developme...

Parental support is critical for young children’s language and literacy development. It is important that teachers are aware of this parental role. Particularly in the case of lower‐educated parents, teachers can improve their education when they engage parents in partnerships to support young children’s language development. These parents are ofte...

Background Various conversational contexts elicit stimulating parent–child interactions to a different degree. Shared reading, a scripted activity, is reported to elicit most abstract speech compared with other activities (e.g., toy play). Parental socioeconomic status (SES) is another key predictor of abstract talk. Shared reading can attenuate di...

Background There has been an increasing interest in negative or ‘undermining’ motivations for reading. In this study, we aimed to strengthen knowledge on the validity of the distinction between affirming and undermining motivations. First, we examined whether the structure of a questionnaire based on this distinction could be confirmed. Second, we...

Little is known about the effect of diverging pedagogies on the development of interactional oral skills in a foreign language. In a controlled study, we evaluated three newly developed instructional programmes that were situated in the same training context, but that differed in instructional focus and type of task. These were compared to the effe...

Little is known about the effects of different instructional approaches on learner affect in oral interaction in the foreign language classroom. In a randomized experiment with Dutch pre‐vocational learners (N = 147), we evaluated the effects of 3 newly developed instructional programs for English as a foreign language (EFL). These programs differe...

For the present review, we analyzed 28 studies researching the effects of interventions for parents with less education on the oral language development of their young children (ages 3-8). Two groups of interventions were distinguished: shared reading and other home activities. Within each group, we distinguished three categories of strategies: (1)...

Research has demonstrated that in controlled experiments in which small groups are being tutored by researchers, reading-strategy instruction is highly effective in fostering reading comprehension (Palincsar & Brown, Cognition and Instruction, 1(2), 117–175, 1984). It is unclear, however, whether reading-strategy interventions are equally effective...

Course materials play a vital role in the foreign language classroom. Relatively little attention has been paid, however, to analyzing the activities that foster oral interactional ability in course materials for English as a foreign language (EFL). For the purpose of this study, a coding scheme was designed that focuses specifically on the develop...

In a longitudinal design, 51 low-achieving adolescents’ development in writing proficiency from Grades 7 to 9 was measured. There were 25 native-Dutch and 26 language-minority students. In addition, the roles of (1) linguistic knowledge, (2) metacognitive knowledge, and (3) linguistic fluency in predicting both the level and development of writing...

This longitudinal study explored the degree in which level and development of writing proficiency of a group of 63 low-achieving adolescents can be explained by their engagement in literacy activities. These adolescents were intensively followed from grades 7 to 9, measuring their writing proficiency and their engagement each year focusing on affec...

This article explores ways to assess interactional performance, and reports on the use of a test format that standardizes the interlocutor’s linguistic and interactional contributions to the exchange. It describes the construction and administration of six scripted speech tasks (instruction, advice, and sales tasks) with pre-vocational learners ( n...

To examine what kinds of parent–child interactions are elicited by different literacy-related activities, an exploratory study was conducted with 19 mother–child dyads. Although prompting boards are widely incorporated in pre- and primary school curricula, and in various family literacy programmes, scientific knowledge supporting their use is lacki...

Effects of peer response using instruction in genre knowledge on the writing of 140 sixth-grade students are investigated. In one condition students were taught specific genre knowledge involving functions of linguistic indicators of time and place. In another condition students were taught more general aspects of communicative writing. Both condit...

Raising the literacy levels of young children is a major concern in many countries for which various programmes have been suggested. One of these is family literacy programmes. In previous meta-analyses wide variability in effects has been found and it has been suggested that this is partly caused by variability in implementation quality. This revi...

Este articulo forma parte de un proyecto que comenzo en 2006 con el objeto de profundizar los conocimientos acerca de las practicas culturales y sociales de la poblacion escolar, a fin de conocer mejor el perfil cultural de los adolescentes –en particular sus consumos tecnologicos digitales–, para poder discutir las representaciones de los docentes...

In a longitudinal design, we measured 50 low-achieving adolescents’ reading comprehension development from Grades 7 to 9. There were 24 native Dutch and 26 language minority students. In addition, we assessed the roles of (a) linguistic knowledge, (b) metacognitive knowledge, and (c) reading fluency in predicting both the level and growth of readin...

Low‐achieving adolescents are known to have difficulties with reading comprehension. This article discusses how reciprocal teaching can improve low‐achieving adolescents' reading comprehension in whole‐classroom settings (as opposed to small‐group settings) and to what extent intervention effects are dependent on teacher behaviour. Over the course...

This study examined whether instruction in genre knowledge enriches students' feedback on each other's writing, resulting in better writing quality. In total 140 sixth-grade students (age 11-13) participated in the study. Two approaches to peer response with additional instruction were compared. In one condition, students were taught specific genre...

This study examined whether instruction in genre knowledge enriches students’ feedback on each other’s writing, resulting in better writing quality. In total 140 sixth-grade students (age 11–13) participated in the study. Two approaches to peer response with additional instruction were compared. In one condition, students were taught specific genre...

In this study, we analysed the relationships between word decoding, vocabulary knowledge, meta-cognitive knowledge and reading comprehension in low-achieving adolescents and examined whether the strength of these relationships differed between Grade 7 and 9 students and between monolingual and bilingual students. Tests were administered to 328 stud...

This study examines the relationship between types and sequences of self-regulated reading activities in task-oriented reading with quality of task achievement of 51 low-achieving adolescents (Grade 8). The study used think aloud combined with video observations to analyse the students' approach of a content-area reading task in the stages of orien...

In this study we investigate the role of linguistic knowledge, fluency and meta-cognitive knowledge in Dutch reading comprehension of monolingual and bilingual adolescent academic low achievers in the Netherlands. Results show that these components are substantially associated with reading comprehension. However, their role appears to be different...

Peer response is viewed as an important aspect of writing instruction. Several meta-studies indicated that peer response is effective. However, these studies did not focus on the specific aspects of peer response that made it effective. The present review analyzes the effects of instructional factors accompanying peer response in 26 studies on writ...

On the basis of a validation study of a new test for assessing low-achieving adolescents' reading comprehension skills - the SALT-reading - we analyzed two issues relevant to the field of reading test development. Using the test results of 200 seventh graders, we examined the possibility of identifying reading comprehension subskills and the effect...

This study examines the relationship between patterns of cognitive self-regulatory activities and the quality of texts produced by adolescent struggling writers (N = 51). A think-aloud study was conducted involving analyses of self-regulatory activities concerning planning, formulating, monitoring, revising, and evaluating. The study shows that the...

This chapter presents an analysis of the Dutch and English writing proficiency of students who learned Dutch as a second language, compared to students for whom Dutch is the first language. Participants are 13/14 year-old secondary school students. The point of departure in the analyses is a regression model in which writing proficiency is decompos...

We report a classroom experiment directed at increasing lexical fluency in writing. Participants were 107 Dutch students in bilingual (EFL) education (Grades 10 and 11). According to current theories of writing such fluency allows writers to devote more attention to higher order aspects of text production, such as idea generation, selection and org...

This longitudinal study investigates the development of writing proficiency in English as a foreign language (EFL), in contrast to the development of first language (L1) writing proficiency in Dutch L1, in a sample of almost 400 secondary school students in the Netherlands. Students performed several writing tasks in both languages in three consecu...

Segalowitz and Segalowitz distinguish between speedup (mean reaction time [RT] and mean standard deviation of responses in an RT task decrease to the same degree) and automatization (mean standard deviation decreases more than mean RT). The coefficient of variation, which is the standard deviation divided by the mean RT, decreases in the case of au...

Schrijven van tekst behelst het oplossen van problemen met vele facetten (Flower & Hayes 1980; Bereiter & Scardamalia 1987). Analyse van schrijfprocessen maakt duidelijk dat zowel linguïstische vaardigheden, zoals het snel kunnen ophalen van lexicale elementen en deze combineren in zinnen, als zelfregulatieve vaardigheden, zoals het oriënteren op d...

which the test was developed. Its construction was part of the 'SALSA'1 project, an extensive study which combines quantitative and qualitative research methods to identify predictors of at-risk adolescents' literacy development. Subsequently, we will present the design of the test: we will discuss the way the reading texts were selected, and the w...

This study investigated the relationship between reading comprehension development of 389 adolescents in their dominant language (Language 1 [L1], Dutch) and a foreign language (Language 2 [L2], English). In each consecutive year from Grades 8 through 10, a number of measurements were taken. Students' reading comprehension, their linguistic knowled...

The teaching of grammar is discussed from an instrumental point of view: what beneficial effects does such teaching have for students' language abilities (especially writing)? Two ways of approaching grammar teaching are confronted with each other: the learning of explicit rules and meta-linguistic knowledge about language on one hand and learning...

In this article we report the results of a classroom experiment in grades 5 and 6 of primary education directed at improving children’s writing skills. Our theoretical assumption is that increased fluency in the use of linguistic operations facilitates students’ attention to the meaning level of their texts, resulting in better comprehensibility. W...

Lexical retrieval is an essential subprocess in language production, and its efficiency is crucial for writing. To improve writing quality in a second language, we developed an experimental, computerized training for improving fluency of lexical retrieval in a classroom setting, applying techniques previously restricted to laboratory use. In a coun...

Lexical retrieval is an essential subprocess of language production and crucial in fluent writing and speaking. In this study we discuss a new measure of the speed of written lexical retrieval in a second language, the Written Productive Translation Task (WPTT). In contrast to Picture Naming tasks, the WPTT is not restricted to concrete nouns and v...

The authors report results of a study into the role of components of first-language (L1; Dutch) and second-language (L2; English) reading comprehension. Differences in the contributions of components of L1 and L2 reading comprehension are analyzed, in particular processing speed in L1 and L2. Findings indicate that regression weights of the L1 and...

In this chapter we give a theoretical account of the roles of form and meaning in the revision process of inexperienced writers. The account is based upon theories about the writing process and cognitive constraints in working memory. From a review of empirical studies of children’s revising skills, it appears that their attention is almost exclusi...

In this study the relative importance of linguistic knowledge, metacognitive knowledge, and fluency or accessibility of this linguistic knowledge in both first language (L1; Dutch) and second language (L2; English) writing was explored. Data were collected from 281 grade 8 students. Using structural equation modeling, the relative importance of the...

In this article we present an analysis of the relationship between L3 reading comprehension and its constituent skills for bilingual Dutch students for whom English is a third language(L3) compared to monolingual Dutch students for whom English is a second language(L2). An analogous analysis is made for their Dutch reading comprehension, Dutch bein...

In this study the relative importance of linguistic knowledge, metacognitive knowledge, and fluency or accessibility of this linguistic knowledge in both first language (L1; Dutch) and second language (L2; English) writing was explored. Data were collected from 281 grade 8 students. Using structural equation modeling, the relative importance of the...

Snel woorden kunnen ophalen uit het geheugen is een essentieel onderdeel van vloeiende taalproductie. In een vreemde taal gaat dit proces trager en dit heeft mogelijk negatieve gevolgen voor de kwaliteit van de geschreven tekst. In het hier beschreven experiment, dat deel uitmaakte van het overkoepelende NELSON-project, werden leerlingen met een ni...

The efficiency of lexical retrieval, an essential subprocess of productive language skills, is crucial in fluent writing and speaking. We examine the feasibility of an experimental computerized training for fluent lexical retrieval in the second language in a classroom setting, applying techniques previously restricted to laboratory use. Results on...

In an explorative classroom experiment the effects of several instructional conditions for writing were compared. Studies on writing suggest that linguistic fluency is an important factor in writer's abilities to manipulate sentence structures in order to produce comprehensible text. L1 writing theories indicate that working memory limitations play...

This article presents the results of a study into revision skills of 32 elementary students in Grades 5-6 (van Gelderen & Blok, 1989). Their task consisted of improving an expository text, experimentally composed on the basis of several texts written by students of the same age as the subjects. The subjects were asked to think aloud and to give exp...

Rating of speaking ability in educational contexts is often confronted with the problem of selecting the most relevant criteria. Researchers as well as teachers are forced to design a rating scheme for each setting on an ad hoc basis. The most important characteristics of the setting are briefly discussed: purpose of rating, theoretical relevance o...