10-second review: Taught eighth-grade learning disabled students strategy for revising. Pretest and posttest. Proportion of revisions rated as improvements increased from 47% to 83%; second drafts were rated as significantly better than the first drafts. Overall quality of final drafts increased substantially from pretests to posttests. Gains were maintained at two-month intervals and, even though the students in the study used word processing, gains were maintained in handwritten compositions.
Title: “A Peer Editor Strategy: Guided Learning-Disabled Students in Response and Revision.” B Stoddard and CA Macarthur. Research in the Teaching of English (February 1993), 76-103. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).
Summary/Quote: What is revision? “…revising distinguishes expert from novice writers. Older and more competent writers revise more extensively, make more revisions at the sentence and text level that affect overall meaning, and generally succeed in improving their compositions through revision. Revisions by less-skilled and younger writers are restricted primarily to corrections of mechanical errors and other minor changes that do not affect the overall meaning or quality of writing.” p. 76.
Strategy for teaching revision: “…focused on substantive revisions such as stating the thesis clearly, adding reasons, elaborating reasons, and closing with a concluding statement. The instruction resulted in increases in total revisions, in substantive revisions, and improved overall quality of compositions.” p. 79.
Comment: Useful definitions of terms. RayS.
No comments:
Post a Comment