by Karen Harris, Young-Suk Kim, Soobin Yim, April Camping and Steve Graham
Original article: LINK
Being able to read and write well is super important in today’s world. It helps you do well in school, work, and life in general. But, there’s a problem – lots of students aren’t very good at writing, and it’s been an issue for a long time.
There is a big challenge ahead to help all students become better readers and writers, and it starts with making sure children get good instruction in these skills.
Recently, there’s been a debate about whether young children can learn to write well before they’ve fully mastered basic writing skills like spelling, handwriting, and grammar. Experts say yes, they can. Others say they can’t.
Those who think children should learn these basic skills first, fast and only worry that trying to teach composition and transcription at the same time might overwhelm children. However, these worries are more hypothetical than based on reality. Research has for a long time shown that children can handle composing texts alongside learning basic skills, and that doing so is actually better for their overall writing development.
There are different ideas about how to teach writing. Some think that children should focus on learning basic skills like spelling and grammar before they are given ‘the right to write’. This is often called a skills-based or ‘writing readiness’ approach.
On the other hand, there’s the naturalistic approach, which says that children should just learn writing by doing it a lot. Instead of focusing on skills first, these teachers believe that writing skills will simply develop magically (I mean naturally) as children practice writing and read a lot.
However, experts suggest taking a centralist position. Research suggests taking the best of both approaches while mitigating for their weaknesses. Explicitly teach children foundational transcriptional skills while also letting them use and apply what they are learning by giving them time to write. This way, children learn both ‘the basics’ and how to be a writer.
Graham (2019) looked at a bunch of studies about how teachers teach writing in classrooms today. He found that most elementary school teachers aren’t teaching their pupils specific writing strategies. When it comes to teachers of even younger children, many are spending the majority of their time teaching about grammar and transcription. Graham suggests that this might be what is causing writing underachievement and suggests that teachers need to take a more communicative position where they teach skills, strategies, and the writing processes. He also suggests that teachers should give children more time to actually write. Other studies agree. They say that from the very beginning, teachers should focus on combining foundational skills, teaching the writing processes, and teaching explicit writing strategies.
Based on what they’ve learnt from previous research, the researchers conducted a new study to tackle the so-called debate about only teaching foundational writing skills in the earlier years of schooling. This study is the first of its kind to experimentally test combining instruction in basic writing skills (like spelling and handwriting), alongside writing strategies and the writing processes.
All the students in the study came from an area in the U.S. that struggles with poverty and lacks resources. Instruction which included transcription and composition was implemented three times a week, for 45 minutes, over a period of 10 weeks during the winter and spring. All instruction took place in small groups consisting of 3-4 students, conducted in a pull-out setting. Students in the control group received their typical (largely naturalistic) writing instruction from their regular teachers.
The results of the study are presented as follows:
- Students who received the integrated approach performed better on all measured outcomes when compared to their peers.
- The average writing quality score for these students was significantly higher.
- Students showed more effective planning and included a greater number of structural genre elements in their writing compared to their peers. They also wrote more.
- There were no significant differences between children’s handwriting in the integrated approach when compared to their peers, but their spelling was better.
The findings from this study challenge the notion that teaching transcription skills while asking children to compose texts would overwhelm them. Contrary to concerns about cognitive overload, students who received such instruction thrived, demonstrating their ability to write successful informative essays.
These findings suggest that withholding effective and evidence-based writing instruction from children until they have somehow mastered transcriptional skills and complex sentence structures isn’t necessary. In fact, such an approach could actually hinder children’s writing development.
Conclusion
This study explored the effectiveness of a communicative approach to writing instruction with pupils from an economically underserved school setting. The study utilised evidence-based writing instruction practices, aligned with enduring recommendations that have a strong track-record of improving children’s writerly development.
This study is significant as it’s the first experimental exploration of integrating transcription and compositional instruction, particularly in the context of writing information texts in the younger years.
Concerns have been raised about whether young learners can learn about transcription and composition simultaneously without experiencing cognitive overload and academic underperformance. If teachers utilise evidence-based writing practices, those concerns could appear to be unfounded.