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Improving Fourth-Grade Students' Composition Skills: Effects of Strategy Instruction and Self-Regulation Procedures

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Abstract

Extending S. Graham and K. R. Harris's (2003) self-regulated strategy development model, this study examined whether self-regulation procedures would increase the effectiveness of a writing strategies training designed to improve 4th graders' (N = 113) composition skills. Students who were taught composition strategies in conjunction with self-regulation procedures were compared with (a) students who were taught the same strategies but received no instruction in self-regulation and (b) students who received didactic lessons in composition. Both at posttest and at maintenance (5 weeks after the instruction), strategy plus self-regulation students wrote more complete and qualitatively better stories than students in the 2 comparison conditions. They also displayed superior performance at a transfer task requiring students to recall essential parts of an orally presented story. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Improving Fourth-Grade Students’ Composition Skills: Effects of Strategy
Instruction and Self-Regulation Procedures
Cornelia Glaser and Joachim C. Brunstein
University of Giessen
Extending S. Graham and K. R. Harris’s (2003) self-regulated strategy development model, this study
examined whether self-regulation procedures would increase the effectiveness of a writing strategies
training designed to improve 4th graders’ (N113) composition skills. Students who were taught
composition strategies in conjunction with self-regulation procedures were compared with (a) students
who were taught the same strategies but received no instruction in self-regulation and (b) students who
received didactic lessons in composition. Both at posttest and at maintenance (5 weeks after the
instruction), strategy plus self-regulation students wrote more complete and qualitatively better stories
than students in the 2 comparison conditions. They also displayed superior performance at a transfer task
requiring students to recall essential parts of an orally presented story.
Keywords: text composition, writing achievement, strategy instruction, self-regulated learning, self-
regulated strategy development model
Drawing on Graham and Harris’s (2003) work on teaching
cognitive and self-regulatory writing strategies to young and un-
skilled writers, in this study we sought to examine the potential
benefits of integrating self-regulation procedures into writing strat-
egies training designed to improve elementary school children’s
composition skills. Our aim was to demonstrate that self-regulation
activities are effective in the sense that they augment performance
effects of strategy instruction, ensure strategy maintenance, and
facilitate transfer of the learned strategies to untrained tasks. To
test these ideas, we taught fourth graders writing strategies in
combination with self-regulation procedures and contrasted this
treatment with two comparison conditions (teaching strategies
alone and didactic lessons in composing) in a pretest, posttest,
follow-up test design.
Theoretical and Empirical Background
Several prominent researchers (e.g., Graham & Harris, 2000;
Kellogg, 1996; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1986; Zimmerman &
Risemberg, 1997) have described skilled writing as a cognitively
demanding task that requires young writers to master a variety of
skills in a lengthy and often burdensome process of self-reflective
learning. Hayes and Flower (1980; Hayes, 1996; see also
Berninger & Swanson, 1994) outlined an expert model of writing
that had a considerable impact on educational research with de-
veloping writers. According to this model, writing involves three
kinds of mental activities: planning, translating, and reviewing.
The heart of the model is a “monitor,” or metacognitive authority,
that serves to control the execution of these activities so that they
operate in a synergistic manner until the writing product fits the
writer’s intentions.
As Hayes and Flower (1980) stated, planning includes three
components: generating ideas for what to write and how to write it,
organizing selected ideas to create a cohesive plan, and setting
goals that are stored for further consultation throughout the com-
position process. Translating contains two kinds of transforma-
tions: transforming an idea into a sentence (text generation) and
transforming the generated sentence into written symbols (tran-
scription). Reviewing involves both evaluating the existing text in
light of a writer’s intentions and modifying the text on different
language levels. Reviewing requires a high degree of coordination
among various subprocesses, such as reading, editing (e.g., cor-
rection of surface errors), and rewriting (e.g., addition of meaning-
changing information) parts of a story.
To manage these multiple processes of composing, the monitor
acts as a metacognitive control center that ensures that a writer can
flexibly switch his or her attention between different tasks when
composing. Unfortunately, developing writers, and especially chil-
dren with learning difficulties, show only little metacognitive
activity when composing. Indeed, a considerable body of evidence
(see Fitzgerald, 1987; Graham & Harris, 2003; McCutchen, 1995;
Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1986) suggests that novice (or unskilled)
writers (a) lack knowledge about genre-specific discourse sche-
mata and associated strategies for composition; (b) show almost no
evidence of planning and revising activities; and (c) often fail to
monitor the whole writing endeavor, although they tend to over-
estimate their writing capabilities.
Instructional approaches that seek to remedy the aforementioned
deficiencies and improve novice writers’ composition skills gen-
erally comply with principles spelled out by theorists of self-
regulated learning (e.g., Zimmerman, 1998) and good information
processing (e.g., Pressley, Borkowski, & Schneider, 1989): First,
to help young writers mindfully plan, compose, and revise their
Cornelia Glaser and Joachim C. Brunstein, Department of Psychology,
University of Giessen, Giessen, Germany.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Cornelia
Glaser, Department of Psychology, Justus-Liebig-Universita¨t Giessen,
Otto-Behaghel-Strasse 10F, D-35394, Giessen, Germany. E-mail:
cornelia.glaser@psychol.uni-giessen.de
Journal of Educational Psychology Copyright 2007 by the American Psychological Association
2007, Vol. 99, No. 2, 297–310 0022-0663/07/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0022-0663.99.2.297
297
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... Moreover, although the students did not use planning strategies before the intervention, after the intervention, they all organized their planning sheets and noted information using the five planning steps taught to them. In another SRSD study, Glaser and Brunstein (2007) also tested SRSD intervention's effects on the development of planning and revising abilities, as well as writing quality, among 113 fourth-graders. The results revealed that compared with students in the control condition, students in the SRSD condition wrote higher-quality texts that contained more story components at both posttests and maintenance tests. ...
... It is unclear why writing quality was maintained over time, but not the planning strategy, given that the latter is supposed to be pivotal to students' progress. Thus, even though several studies have demonstrated that the SRSD intervention enabled students to develop planning strategies , 2021Glaser & Brunstein, 2007;Harris et al., 2019;Limpo & Alves, 2018;Salas et al., 2021), it remains to be demonstrated that development of this planning strategy is, indeed, at the root of the improvement in students' writing production. ...
... For instance, it remains unclear: (1) whether SRSD impacts monitoring accuracy; (2) whether schema-driven planning strategies that encourage students to generate and organize ideas around the important parts of a story really help them expand and better structure their texts; (3) whether the text's structure and the number of ideas it contains explain improvements in text quality; and (4) whether certain factors moderate the SRSD intervention's effectiveness. Also, while some studies have yielded some initial clues as to the nature of the psychological mechanism that could underpin SRSD's effectiveness (Brunstein & Glaser, 2011;Fidalgo et al., 2008;Fitz-Patrick & McKeown, 2020, 2021Glaser & Brunstein, 2007;Harris et al., 2019;Torrance et al., 2007), the literature on this subject remains limited, with contradictory results concerning the real benefit of the newly acquired planning strategies in explaining the SRSD intervention's positive effects. Furthermore, not all of these studies were conducted in reallife classroom settings (i.e., Brunstein & Glaser, 2011;Glaser & Brunstein, 2007), and in some cases, students were required to plan their texts within a mandatory time frame, so we cannot know whether the students who underwent the SRSD training would have spontaneously (i.e., without prompting) used planning strategies (e.g., Brunstein & Glaser, 2011;Glaser & Brunstein, 2007). ...
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... Personal goals are analyzed nomothetically, by being further assessed on a variety of characteristics. These characteristics include the extent to which individuals receive support for their goals, the feasibility of goal attainment, the level of abstraction or concreteness, the goal's orientation toward approach or avoidance, the extent of conflict with equally important or higher-and lower-order goals, as well as content categories (e.g., intrinsic vs. extrinsic goals), among others (see, for example, Brunstein & Maier, 2002or Brunstein, et al., 2007 for an overview). A central feature of Joachim Brunstein's longitudinal study on personal goals published in 1993 was that he described goals with a few constructs derived from theory, measured them with several items and predicted well-being longitudinally. ...
... Some ten years later, after the Munich Housewives Study and many more studies (e.g., Brunstein, , 1999) and reviews about personal goals from his group, Joachim Brunstein and colleagues formulated their teleonomic model of subjective well-being. In their original model, Brunstein and colleagues describe how and which goal processes influence subjective well-being Brunstein & Maier, 2002;Brunstein, et al., 2007). Distal factors influencing well-being include goal commitment and perceptions of goal attainability (see Figure 1). ...
... In 2004 he moved to Justus-Liebig University, Giessen, where he would spend the rest of his academic career, holding the Chair for Educational Psychology. In Giessen, he branched out into studying reciprocal learning, improving students' writing skills, and research on reading comprehension, reflecting his passion for turning basic psychological research into meaningful interventions, accompanied by rigorous evaluations of treatment effectiveness and a thorough elucidation of mediating mechanisms (e.g., Brunstein & Glaser, 2011;Glaser & Brunstein, 2007;Spörer & Brunstein, 2009). Some of the doctoral and postdoc students Joachim Brunstein worked with during his years at Potsdam and later Giessen went on to have their own prolific careers in educational psychology. ...
... In addition, these mechanisms served as a driver to induce strategic adjustments in writing processes and actions. Scholars identified a great number of SRL strategies that writers utilized to manipulate environmental, behavioral, and personal processes in their self-regulation of writing (Glaser & Brunstein, 2007;Graham & Harris, 2000;Zimmerman & Riesemberg, 1997). Self-regulated writers employed multiple SRL writing strategies through different stages of the writing process (Glaser & Brunstein, 2007). ...
... Scholars identified a great number of SRL strategies that writers utilized to manipulate environmental, behavioral, and personal processes in their self-regulation of writing (Glaser & Brunstein, 2007;Graham & Harris, 2000;Zimmerman & Riesemberg, 1997). Self-regulated writers employed multiple SRL writing strategies through different stages of the writing process (Glaser & Brunstein, 2007). In the phase of planning, writers control the environmental setting, analyze writing task requirements, set their performance goals, and plan and generate their writing messages by employing SRL strategies such as goal setting and planning, seeking information, record keeping, environmental structuring, and time planning. ...
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... Metacognitive strategies are defined as skills to regulate and control learners' cognitive resources to accomplish learning tasks (Winne, 2010). Planning, goal setting, monitoring, and evaluating are among the most frequently adopted metacognitive strategies to self-regulate one's writing process that could contribute to deep processing (Glaser & Brunstein, 2007;Oxford, 2013); As described by Usher and Schunk (2018), cognitive engagement is warranted for every self-regulatory act. Cognitive strategies refer to rule-governed approaches for organizing, producing, and transforming written texts, including composing, text generating, and revising (Glaser & Brunstein, 2007;Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997); Social strategies in L2 writing include peer feedback and help-seeking. ...
... Planning, goal setting, monitoring, and evaluating are among the most frequently adopted metacognitive strategies to self-regulate one's writing process that could contribute to deep processing (Glaser & Brunstein, 2007;Oxford, 2013); As described by Usher and Schunk (2018), cognitive engagement is warranted for every self-regulatory act. Cognitive strategies refer to rule-governed approaches for organizing, producing, and transforming written texts, including composing, text generating, and revising (Glaser & Brunstein, 2007;Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997); Social strategies in L2 writing include peer feedback and help-seeking. Despite the benefits of social interactions in increasing learning effort and engagement (Schunk & Zimmerman, 2007), social strategies have been insufficiently studied under the SRL framework (Shen & Bai, 2022); Similarly, motivational/affective regulation has been rarely incorporated into traditional SRL models, but with recent beliefs in its prominent role (Schwinger & Otterpohl, 2017). ...
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... Writing self-efficacy has been conceived to be closely related to writing self-regulation (e.g., Zimmerman, 2000;Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997). Students employ various techniques or strategies to manage their environmental, behavioural, and personal processes to facilitate their self-regulation of writing (Glaser & Brunstein, 2007;Graham & Harris, 2000). SRL writing strategies attracted scholars to concentrate their attention on factors influencing L2 students' use of such strategies (e.g., Bai, 2015;Bai et al., 2014Bai et al., , 2020Teng & Zhang, 2018). ...
... Self-regulation could enable writers to manipulate the syntactic and semantic dimensions of writing (Bruning et al., 2013;Zimmerman & Bandura, 1994;Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 1999, 2002 and to improve their utilization of writing strategies (Brunstein & Glaser, 2011;Graham & Harris, 2000). Scholars identified a great number of SRL strategies that writers utilized to manipulate environmental, behavioural, and personal processes identified in the self-regulation of writing (Glaser & Brunstein, 2007;Graham & Harris, 2000;Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997). ...
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... The empirical studies were conducted on the effects of SRSs on English language skills and sub-skills of EFL learners. The In order to determine if teaching self-regulation improved the efficacy of a writing technique education program, [78] conducted a research. They contrasted teaching selfregulation and composition methods alone with teaching only composition strategies. ...
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... Without sufficient knowledge regarding strategies used in a particular domain, students might be unable to circulate the self-regulated learning cycle of planning, implementing, monitoring, and adjusting strategy phases effectively (Zimmerman, 1989). In this sense, a few intervention studies expected synergistic effects of self-regulated learning instruction embracing strategy instruction (Glaser & Brunstein, 2007;Guthrie et al., 2004;Lau, 2020;Stoeger et al., 2014). According to these studies, teaching domain-specific strategies (e.g., underlining, highlighting, and/or mind mapping to find main ideas in a text) combined with metacognitive or self-regulatory strategies (e.g., goal setting, planning, monitoring) is more effective than teaching strategies alone. ...
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... In line with written planning-related improvements, both SRSD interventions also had a positive impact on opinion essay structure and length. This finding agrees with prior studies, showing that SRSD instruction helps students to write longer texts complying with the genre structure (Glaser & Brunstein, 2007;Salas et al., 2020). These benefits of SRSD are assumed to result from the taught written planning strategy that may help young writers to store and organize their ideas into a written plan to be transposed and updated during text writing (Graham & Harris, 2007). ...
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111 With some pride I hereby introduce the 10 volume in the Studies of Writing book series. This volume aims to be a tool-book for writing research. In my opinion, the editors and authors of this volume succeeded in this endeavor. Four guiding questions are answered in all chapters on online-techniques. How to ... The key to such a book is providing insight in the decisions researchers make when developing 'tools and techniques'; such information is not found in jour­ nal articles and in the best case hidden in technical reports. This book provides read­ ers with detailed information about the ins and outs of various online techniques. When to ... Another contribution of this tool-book is to provide insight into when the 'tool' can be used, in other words, to relate the tool or technique to the theoretical claims about the writing process or cognitive processes underlying writing processes. Theory, methodology, tools and techniques, handling data and interpretation form a coherent unit. When not to ... There is no cow without a spot' (Dutch: er is geen koe zonder vlekje) is the literal translation of a Dutch expression. Techniques/tools have their limitations, and their problems: in applying them, and/or handling or interpreting the data they produce. In a book like this, researchers took the opportunity to provide readers with a look behind the curtains, in the process of research. Scientific, critical reflection is one of the strong features of this book.
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