Comprehension and Writing Strategy Training Improves Performance on Content-Specific Source-Based Writing Tasks
- PDF / 610,202 Bytes
- 32 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 84 Downloads / 193 Views
Comprehension and Writing Strategy Training Improves Performance on Content-Specific Source-Based Writing Tasks Jennifer L. Weston-Sementelli 1 & Laura K. Allen 1 & Danielle S. McNamara 1
# International Artificial Intelligence in Education Society 2016
Abstract Source-based essays are evaluated both on the quality of the writing and the content appropriate interpretation and use of source material. Hence, composing a highquality source-based essay (an essay written based on source material) relies on skills related to both reading (the sources) and writing (the essay) skills. As such, sourcebased writing must involve language comprehension and production processes. The purpose of the current study is to examine the impact of reading, writing, and blended (i.e., reading and writing) strategy training on students’ performance on a contentspecific source-based essay writing task. In contrast to general source-based writing tasks, content-specific source-based writing tasks are tasks wherein writers are provided the source material on which to base their essays. Undergraduate students (n = 175) were provided with strategy instruction and practice in the context of two intelligent tutoring systems, Writing Pal and Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking (iSTART). Results indicated that participants in the blended strategy training condition produced higher quality source-based essays than participants in the reading comprehension-only, writing-only, or control condition, with no differences observed between the latter three conditions. Further, the benefits of this blended strategy instruction remained significant regardless of prior reading and writing skills, or time on task. Keywords Source-based writing . Content area writing . Reading . Writing . Intelligent tutoring systems
* Danielle S. McNamara [email protected]
1
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
Int J Artif Intell Educ
Introduction Writing takes many forms. In our daily lives, we write notes, email messages, tweets, and blogs. As professionals and academics, we write reports, chapters, and journal articles (such as this one). As students, we are required to write essays that demonstrate our writing proficiencies. These assignments take several forms. Students may be asked to write about what they did over the summer, discuss the consequences of a particular historical event, or express their opinions on political, scientific, or pop culture issues. To assess writing skills, educators and researchers often use persuasive essays that prompt students to discuss their opinions on various topics, primarily because this task generally does not require students to utilize source material or have significant prior knowledge of a particular domain. By contrast, source-based essays ask students to read material and answer integrative questions about a particular topic. These essays are generally assigned in content area courses such as science, social studies, history, and literature, wherein the student needs to read and integr
Data Loading...
