Huub van den Bergh

Utrecht University | UU · Department of Dutch

Abstract: National assessments yield a description of the proficiency level in a domain while accounting for differences between tasks. For instance, in writing assessments the level of proficiency is typically evaluated with a variety of topics and multiple tasks. This enables generalizations from specific tasks to a domain. In (quasi-)experimenta...

In the Netherlands, the quality of the reading curriculum is currently under debate because of disappointing results on national and international assessments of students' reading skills and motivation. In a mixed-method study, we analyzed the content of Dutch textbooks for reading comprehension instruction (i.e., the implemented curriculum) and te...

In this study we examine process configurations in synthesis tasks. We study whether these configurations are students traits or vary within students per task. In a national survey with a representative sample of 658 Dutch upper-secondary school students, we collected writing tasks, registered students’ writing behaviors (via keylogging) and their...

In het onderwijs worden lezen en schrijven vaak in aparte lessen aangeboden. Het zijn immers aparte vaardigheden die afzonderlijk instructie vereisen. Echter, sommige taaltaken doen zowel een beroep op lees- als op schrijfvaardigheid. De vraag in dit hoofdstuk is op welke manier schrijfactiviteiten kunnen bijdragen aan het verhogen van tekstbegrip...

In Dutch L1 classrooms, style in non-fictional genres is typically taught by means of normative exercises in which students are tasked to identify stylistic lapses. Not much is known about the effectiveness of such exercises when teaching style. Unknown factors include what kinds of stylistic shortcomings are found in Dutch students' writing, and h...

Dialogical argumentation practice contributes positively to argumentative writing skills. Specifically, deliberative dialogues are effective in promoting argument and counterargument integration in students' essays. However, the potential of dialogic activities may be increased if they are combined with instructional practices. The primary objectiv...

Background: Understanding consumers' interpretation of allergy information is crucial for effective food safety policies. We evaluated consumer understanding of allergy information on foods in controlled, experimental studies. Method: Using 18 packaged foods, we evaluated consumer understanding of information about allergens in two experiments:...

Open textbook, available at https://hugoquene.github.io/QMS-EN, 290+ pp. Full text in multiple formats, source code, and supplementary materials are available at <https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4479620>.

Online open textbook, available at https://hugoquene.github.io/KMS-NL, 290+ pp. Full text in multiple formats, source code, and supplementary materials are available at <https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4113979>.

Effective readers consciously or unconsciously use reading strategies to help them process information on what they read. All readers can benefit from reading strategy instruction but empirical research on which strategies are effective is lacking. Less is known about reading strategy effectiveness in a second language (L2). This meta-analysis of 4...

The ability to read in a second language (L2) for academic purposes is essential for higher education students. Dutch colleges increasingly use materials in English or teach in English. This can be challenging for L2 readers, especially students entering higher education from vocational studies, who may have less experience with L2 academic reading...

Central to the debate on the production-comprehension link in prosodic development is the acquisition of focus-to-prosody mapping. To elucidate the nature of the production-comprehension link and shed first light on individual differences in the prosodic domain, the present study investigated developmental changes in production and comprehension of...

Writing a synthesis text-a text that integrates information from different sources-forms part of the educational curriculum of Dutch secondary education. Representative information on students' synthesis writing skills is currently missing. Therefore, we carried out a national survey on synthesis writing in the three highest grades of pre-universit...

In this meta‐analysis, the authors synthesize results from 44 (quasi‐)experimental studies on informational and narrative text structure interventions involving students in grades 4–6 in regular school settings. Findings show that text structure instruction had positive immediate effects on students’ reading comprehension but that effect sizes vari...

This paper presents a secondary analysis of data collected during an intervention study in which students learnt to synthesise pairs of texts presenting opposite views on controversial issues. The original intervention study included two treatments and examined the effects of two instruction conditions when instructional materials and tasks were he...

Insights from scientific reading research only partially resonate in Dutch teaching materials for reading comprehension, and hence in the classroom. As an attempt to bridge the gap between science and educational practice, a design-based research was conducted in which four primary school teachers translated four researcher-provided design principl...

Inflectional morphology causes persistent difficulties for second language (L2) learners (Montrul, Silvina & Kim Potowski. 2007. Command of gender agreement in school-age Spanish-English bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingualism 11(3). 301–328; Montrul, Silvina, Israel de la Fuente, Justin Davidson & Rebecca Foote. 2013. The role of...

The aim of this study was to test whether Cummins’ Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis (LIH) might also apply to writing, by determining to what extent writers’ text quality, source use and argumentation behavior are related in L1 and L2, how effective writers’ behavior is and whether their L2 proficiency influenced the relations between them. To...

Can non-native judges of language proficiency be trusted? To answer this question, we asked Dutch (N = 70) and English (N = 57) listeners to judge English speech produced by Dutch speakers, and we asked Dutch listeners to judge Dutch speech produced by these speakers. Results showed that the Dutch listen-ers to the English speech produced by the Du...

In this study the effect of a writing strategy for L2-writing is tested experimentally. 10th grade students (N = 67) took part in a writing experiment in writing German as a second language. In the experimental con-dition students were taught to pay attention to pre-writing activities (think and organize), find the right words in German, and post-w...

Empirically sound conclusions: A guide for language researchers Recently, there has been (and still is) a lot of discussion about the replicability of scientific findings. Hornikx and Batenburg (2016) try to explain the non- replicability in science, and discuss the situation for language research. We make the point that empirically sound conclusio...

The aim of this study was to provide insight into the current practice of writing instruction in Dutch primary education, as a stepping stone for designing and implementing sustainable innovations that could satisfy both practitioners and policymakers. We investigated the extent to which three domain-specific approaches—communicative writing, proce...

In two experimental studies, we examined the effects of types of written production mode (hypertext writing versus linear writing, Study 1 and 2) and learning mode (performance versus observational learning, Study 2). Participants in Study 1 (Grade 10) were initiating the more formal academic argumentative text, while in Study 2 students (Grade 11)...

Om het onderwijs in schrijfvaardigheid op de basisschool te verbeteren is in nauwe samen-werking met docenten de lesmethode Tekster ontwikkeld. Tekster is een strategiegericht lesprogramma voor schrijfvaardigheid voor de hoogste drie leerjaren van het basisonder-wijs (groep 6 tot en met 8 1), waarin leerlingen door een combinatie van modeling, expl...

Begrijpend lezen vormt voor veel Nederlandse leerlingen een struikelblok, terwijl wetenschappers de laatste decennia veel kennis hebben verworven over effectief leesonderwijs. Tijd dus om de huidige praktijk te spiegelen aan enkele wetenschappelijke inzichten. We inventariseren in dit artikel welke informatie leerlingen in zeven methodes voor begri...

This study examined the effects of an innovative comprehensive writing program in upper primary education on students’ writing performance and on teachers´ classroom practices, beliefs and skills. The program focused on the communicative nature of writing, on writing as a process, and on explicit teaching of five genre-specific writing strategies....

Veel leerkrachten corrigeren met engelengeduld de teksten van hun leerlingen, maar heeft al die feedback eigenlijk zin? Wat pakken leerlingen ervan op bij het herschrijven? Welke revisies zorgen voor de grootste vooruitgang? Dit onderzoek laat zien dat leerlingen uit groep 8 gebaat zijn bij feedback op hogere-orde-aspecten van de tekst. Vooral zwak...

In this study, we tested the effects of Tekster [Texter], a comprehensive strategy-focused writing instruction program, using a switching replication design. The program was implemented by fourth, fifth, and sixth grade teachers (N = 76) in 60 general education classrooms in the Netherlands. Students (n = 688) and teachers (n = 31) in Group 1 worke...

Previous studies show that respondents are generally more likely to disagree with negative survey questions (e.g., This is a bad book. Yes/No) than to agree with positive ones (e.g., This a good book. Yes/No). In the current research, we related this effect to the cognitive processes underlying question answering. Using eye-tracking, we show that d...

Docenten geven leerlingen vaak de opdracht om voor het schrijven eerst een kladversie te schrijven, maar helpt dat om uiteindelijk een betere tekst te schrijven? In dit onderzoek is gekeken naar het toepassen van prewriting door basisschoolleerlingen. We hebben een interventiestudie uitgevoerd, waarin we leer- lingen hebben aangeleerd om voorafgaan...

In this intervention study, we tested the effect of a newly developed interactive online writing course, Booster, for Dutch students in the upper grades of secondary education. The course aimed to enhance students' overall writing performance by offering them a general writing strategy in seven steps, thereby diminishing the cognitive overload that...

To improve writing instruction in the upper elementary grades, we developed the comprehensive strategy-focused writing instruction program Tekster [Texter]. The effects of Tekster were tested in two large-scale experiments, involving 2766 students and 144 teachers from 52 schools. The first intervention lasted 8 weeks (2 lessons a week), the second...

The present study examined whether knowledge of connectives contributes uniquely to expository text comprehension above and beyond reading fluency, general vocabulary knowledge and metacognitive knowledge. Furthermore, it was examined whether this contribution differs for readers with different language backgrounds or readers who vary in reading fl...

Empirically sound conclusions: A guide for language researchers Recently, there has been (and still is) a lot of discussion about the replicability of scientific findings. Hornikx and Batenburg (2016) try to explain the non-replicability in science, and discuss the situation for language research. We make the point that empirically sound conclusion...

It has been established that in the Netherlands, as in other countries, a majority of students do not attain the desired level of writing skills at the end of elementary school. Time devoted to writing is limited, and only a minority of schools succeed in effectively teaching writing. An improvement in the way writing is taught in elementary school...

Research on student learning has undergone many changes in the last decade. In particular, the research methodology has advanced in many different ways on the level of complexity of data collection and rigor of data analyses. In the quantitative research perspective, many off-line and online measures and statistical analysis techniques have been fu...

In the present study, aspects of the measurement of writing are disentangled in order to investigate the validity of inferences made on the basis of writing performance and to describe implications for the assessment of writing. To include genre as a facet in the measurement, we obtained writing scores of 12 texts in four different genres for each...

Op basis van een docent-oordeel over één geschreven tekst valt nauwelijks te generaliseren naar de schrijfvaardigheid van een leerling, gezien de grote verschillen tussen oordelen van verschillende docenten én de grote verschillen tussen prestaties op verschillende schrijftaken van leerlingen. In het onderzoek van Renske Bouwer en Huub van den Berg...

This paper is a longitudinal investigation of adjective use by children aged 1;8−2;8, and their caregivers speaking Dutch, German, French, Hebrew and Turkish. Each adjective token in transcripts of spontaneous speech was coded for semantic class. The development of adjective use in each semantic class was analysed by means of a multilevel logistic...

We examined the effect of two interventions on both the reliability and validity of regulatory judgments: adjusting the regulatory instrument and attending a consensus meeting. We adjusted the regulatory instrument. With a randomized controlled trial (RCT) we examined the effect of the adjustments we made to the instrument. In the consensus meeting...

The present study tests the effect of ability pairing in two instructional methods in L2 collaborative revision. Two continuous indices determine a pair: individual proficiency level, distance in proficiency between pair members (heterogeneity), and the interaction between both indices. Instructional methods tested are modelling and practising. Res...

For decades, survey researchers have known that respondents give different answers to attitude questions worded positively ("X is good. Agree-Disagree"), negatively ("X is bad. Agree-Disagree") or on a bipolar scale ("X is bad-good"). This makes survey answers hard to interpret, especially since findings on exactly how the answers are affected are...

Experimental studies demonstrate that contrast helps toddlers to extend the meanings of novel adjectives. This study explores whether antonym co-occurrence in spontaneous speech also has an effect on adjective use by the child. The authors studied adjective production in longitudinal speech samples from 16 children (16-36 months) acquiring eight di...

The influence of linguistic and cognitive skills on the temporal distribution of writing processes (planning, formulating, revision activities) was studied. In earlier research we had separated three equal episodes in the writing process, now we measured time in minutes. It was shown that cognitive skills and linguistic skills influence the distrib...

Background. Previous research has shown that observation can be effective for learning in various domains, for example, argumentative writing and mathematics. The question in this paper is whether observational learning can also be beneficial when learning to perform creative tasks in visual and verbal arts. Aims. We hypothesized that observation h...

It is the consensus that, as a result of the extra constraints placed on working memory, texts written in a second language (L2) are usually of lower quality than texts written in the first language (L1) by the same writer. However, no method is currently available for quantifying the quality difference between L1 and L2 texts. In the present study...

In recent years many countries have introduced authentic performance-based assessments in their national exam systems. Teachers’ ratings of their own candidates’ performances may suffer from errors of leniency and range restriction. The goal of this study was to examine the impact of manipulating the descriptiveness, balancedness, and polarity of t...

One of the opportunities to engage (future) language teachers in the use of ICT for interactive and collaborative language learning is by having them actively participate in ICT-enabled networked learning environments. This participation can take place at the level of task development, the level of task completion and the level of task evaluation....

ABSTRACT The current study used growth curve analysis to study the role of input during the acquisition of the English causal connective because and its German counterpart weil. The corpora of five German and five English children and their adult caretakers (age range 0;10-4;3) were analyzed for the amount as well as for the type of connective use...

Provides an overview of theory, methodology and practices in the assessment of writing. This title discusses whether varying definitions and varying operationalizations of writing ability are needed in various contexts, such as formative assessments versus summative assessments, different tasks, different genres, and different languages. © 2012 by...

Previous research has shown that adolescent readers differ in their ‘online’ processing of literary texts. Differences were found in the extent to which these readers performed certain (meta)cognitive and affective activities while reading literary texts. However, readers might also differ in flexibility; that is, in the extent to which they vary t...

Do different creative writing processes lead to qualitatively different writing products? In this study we examined how Dutch speaking secondary school students (16-years old, 11th grade) wrote two poems. Students’ on line writing processes were recorded by a keystroke logging program: Inputlog. Text production, pausing and several types of revisio...

The quality of governmental websites is often measured with questionnaires that ask users for their opinions on various aspects of the website. This article presents the Website Evaluation Questionnaire (WEQ), which was specifically designed for the evaluation of governmental websites. The multidimensional structure of the WEQ was tested in a contr...

One of the main objectives of the European Networked Interaction in Foreign Language Acquisition and Research (NIFLAR) project is to make foreign language learning and teaching processes more relevant and rewarding for reaching intercultural communicative competence. This is realized by offering foreign language learners and pre-service teachers op...

This study shows that in order to measure writing skills reliably one needs multiple assignments rated by multiple raters. However, the number of assignments needed to assure a reliable measurement depends on the population studied. For first-year university students, one does not need to rate as many texts as for ninth-graders. Especially, when wr...

In a previous study, we demonstrated that the experience of learning a new language positively influences the metacognitive awareness of young plurilingual children in terms of willingness to communicate and strategic competence. In the present study, we expanded the analyses of the observations of 101 children to examine two hypotheses. First, we...

There have been many studies into the relation between cognitive processes during writing in the mother tongue (L1) and writing in a second or foreign language (L2). As task situations during writing continuously change, so does the probability of occurrence of cognitive activities. This chapter focuses on the orchestration of formulating activitie...

Teachers in primary education experience difficulties implementing process-oriented writing didactics. In particular support during the writing process and aid in rewriting texts is not provided sufficiently. Research has shown that writing skills of pupils are seriously deficient. It has been shown that they do not practice frequently and are not...

Various methods have been suggested to teach novice revisers to improve their revision and writing skills such as peer interaction and collaborative revision, and strategy instruction. One form of strategy instruction which has proven to be particularly effective as far as learning-to-write and learning-to-revise is concerned is observational learn...

Current theory about writing states that the quality of (meta)cognitive processing (i.e. planning, text production, revising, et cetera) is, at least partly, determined by the temporal distribution of (meta)cognitive activities across task execution. Put simply, the quality of task execution is determined more by when activities are applied than by...

Respondents are more likely to disagree with negative survey questions (This text is boring. Yes/No) than to agree with positive ones (This text is interesting. Yes/No). The size of this effect, however, varies largely between word pairs. A semantic classification of adjectives in closed scale/absolute and open scale/relative types was predicted to...

Objectives: In the scientific literature about reliability, the main approach to increasing reliability seems to involve increasing the number of observers and improving the instrument used. Other aspects for improving reliability - like the training of raters - seem to receive less notice. It is worth asking whether this technical approach could...

Survey designers have long assumed that respondents who disagree with a negative question (“This policy is bad.”: Yes or No; 2-point scale) will agree with an equivalent positive question (“This policy is good.”: Yes or No; 2-point scale). However, experimental evidence has proven otherwise: Respondents are more likely to disagree with negative que...

Objectives Reliable and valid judgments are necessary for regulatory authorities to merit confidence from care institutions and society and preserve authority. Moreover, limited reliability and validity of regulatory judgments increase the risk of limited improvement of the quality of health care. The goal of the study is to obtain insight in (dis)...

This study examines the construct validity of the Young Schema-Questionnaire at the item level in a Dutch population. Possible bias of items in relation to the presence or absence of psychopathology, gender, and educational level was analyzed, using a cross-validation design. None of the items of the YSQ exhibited differential item functioning (DIF...

In the official report on learning trajectories ('doorlopende leerlijnen') it is specified which achievement level students have to reach at different thresholds in the Dutch educational system: at the change from primary to secondary education, and at the different thresholds from secondary education to either intermediate vocational education (mb...

In order to ascertain which school characteristics can explain the differences in effectiveness between schools, important methodological choices have to be made in school effectiveness research. One of these choices relates to the criterion or criteria the researcher wishes to use to compare schools. Should, for example, a school be deemed effecti...

The present study was set up to evaluate the extent to which the context in which a foreign language is learned can influence the strategic competence of children. To assess this we conducted a series of think aloud protocols with 101 children. We compared children who have learned an additional language in a formal context (abbreviated LLE, i.e. L...