Written Communication Jul 1994

The Effects of Written Between-Draft Responses on Students' Writing and Reasoning about Literature

GEORGE E. NEWELL

Abstract

Although studies of writing and literary understanding have demonstrated the value of analytic essay writing for enhancing story understanding, these studies have focused on student's initial interpretations without considering the effects of a teacher's support and direction. The purpose of this study was to explore how 9th- (n = 6) and 11th- (n = 6) grade students reformulated and extended their initial written analyses of two short stories through revisions fostered by two different kinds of between-draft written comments. After revising initial drafts in two response modes (directive and dialogue), the students wrote paragraph-length responses to posttest questions of story understanding. Results indicated significant (p < .05) main effects for response condition and grade level, with the dialogue condition enhancing story understanding more than the directive condition, and the 11th graders attaining higher posttest scores than the 9th graders. Data from composing-aloud protocols revealed that the dialogue condition supported the students' reformulation of their own interpretations constructed in the initial drafts, while the directive condition seemed to shift the students away from their own initial interpretations of the stories.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
1994-07-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088394011003002
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
teacher development literary studies
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (3)

  1. HAYES et al. (1999)
    Issues in Measuring Reliability: Correlation Versus Percentage of Agreement
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  2. YOUNG et al. (1998)
    Writing from Primary Documents: A Way of Knowing in History
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  3. GELDEREN (1997)
    Elementary Students' Skills in Revising: Integrating Quantitative and Qualitati…
    Written Communication

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