Assessing the Writing Achievement of Young Struggling Writers

Abstract

This study examined the number of writing samples needed to obtain a reliable estimate of young struggling writers' capabilities. It further assessed if performance in one genre was reflective of performance in other genres for these children. Second-and third-grade students (81 boys, 56 girls), who were identified as struggling writers in need of special assistance by their teacher and scored at the 25th percentile or lower on a norm-referenced story-writing test, wrote four compositions: a story, personal narrative, opinion essay, and informative text. Applying generalizability theory (G-theory), students' scores on three writing measures (total number of words [TNW], vocabulary diversity, and writing quality) for the four compositions were each portioned into variance due to the following sources: students, writing tasks, and the interaction between students and writing tasks. We found that 14, 8, and 11 compositions, respectively, would be needed to obtain a reliable estimate of these students' writing capabilities in terms of TNW, vocabulary diversity, and writing quality. Furthermore, how well these students wrote in one genre provided a weak prediction of how well they wrote in other genres.

Influence of Writing Ability and Computation Skill on Mathematics Writing

“…However, current research (Graham, Hebert, Sandbank, & Harris, 2016) only shows a low to moderate correlation among writing genres (i.e., story, personal narrative, opinion essay, and informative text). Coffman (1966) found that a minimum of five writing tasks was needed to reliably assess the writing achievement of typically developing students, Huang (2008) reported that three writing tasks were needed, and Graham et al (2016) reported that five to eleven were needed, depending on the measure and criteria. In addition to pure writing concerns, students must interpret mathematics presented in the abstract form (i.e., numerals and symbols) and within scenarios presented with words to complete mathematics-writing tasks.…”

“…Although computation skill was more strongly correlated with the mathematics-writing tasks, these correlations were also in the moderate range, suggesting that students may not simply be able to transfer their mathematics skills to mathematics-writing tasks. In fact, the correlations were smaller than correlations between genres found by Graham et al (2016), who suggested students may not be able to generalize writing knowledge from one genre to another. Moreover, the correlation between the Total Scores for MW-WP and MW-FR was only .48, suggesting that students' performance on one mathematics-writing task may not be a strong predictor of students' performance on a different mathematicswriting task.…”

Changing How Writing Is Taught

“…Regardless of the processes that shape students’ growth as writers, writing development is variable , with no single path or end point (Bazerman et al, 2017). It is uneven, as students are better at some writing tasks than at others (Graham, Hebert, Sandbank, & Harris, 2016). It does not follow a steady progression from point A to point B, as students’ growth can accelerate, plateau, or regress.…”

Writing Characteristics of Students With Learning Disabilities and Typically Achieving Peers

“…Because studies in this review spanned 40 years, it is possible that improvement in measures and study techniques as well as changes in the LD population may have systematically affected study outcomes. No prediction was made for this analysis, but we did expect that writing genre would be related systematically to study outcomes as even struggling writers' performance can vary from one type of text to the next (Graham, Hebert, Sandbank, & Harris, 2016).…”