Facilitating Text Production in Fourth Graders: Effects of Script-Based Knowledge and Writing Prompts

Abstract

This study aimed at providing evidence that prior knowledge (semantic relatedness) and its organization (scripted versus not related) prompted either through pictures alone, pictures and associated words, words only have different impacts on several components of text produced by fourth graders. The results showed that the semantic relatedness affected three dependent measures: prompt words recalled, coherence and quality of texts. The nature of the prompts impacted on planning (number of ideas) and translating (number of propositions and length of texts) processes. Findings, instructional applications, limitations, and proposals for future research are discussed.

Text structure as an indicator of the writing development of descriptive text quality

“…Our findings concur with previous studies in that length and TS quality are associated in both DICT and P&P modalities (McCutchen, 2011). Longer texts containing more words and more clauses (ideas) across the grade-levels relate to TS quality ranks (Tolchinsky, 2019;Castillo & Tolchinsky 2017), and the effect of length on TS quality depends on grade-level and modality (Salas & Tolchinsky, 2017;Olinghouse et al 2015;Bourdin & Fayol, 2022). The length of a P&P production contributes to TS quality in terms of ideas (clauses) at all grade levels, and in 2nd and 4th grades it is also enhanced by the number of words used to express these ideas (Carvalhais, Limpo, & Pereira, 2021).…”