Instructional Approaches to Improving Students' Writing of Compare-Contrast Essays: An Experimental Study

Planning text structure as a way to improve students' writing from sources in the compare–contrast genre

“…The present study extended prior research (Englert et al, 1991;Hammann & Stevens, 2003;Spivey, 1991;Torrance et al, 2007;Wong et al, 1997) by showing that text structure instruction can improve the holistic quality of students' comparee contrast texts when writing from sources. Prior to the present study, Englert et al (1991) was the only compareecontrast instructional study that assessed texts holistically, that is, without specified criteria; however, in the Englert et al (1991) study, there were no source texts involved, and instruction was much broader.…”

“…Spivey (1991, p. 392) notes that, ''in the comparison, objects are interrelated in terms of various aspects, or features, which include similarities (shared features) and differences (differentiating features).'' Despite the fact that most people would conceive of compareecontrast writing much like Harris and Graham (1996) and Spivey (1991) do, there is no single conventional structure for compareecontrast texts (Hammann & Stevens, 2003;Spivey, 1991). Spivey (1991), in her study, provided a detailed description and analysis of compareecontrast text structures, and of the effectiveness of these structures.…”

“…Indeed, to our knowledge, there have been four compareecontrast instructional studies conducted prior to the present study, and all addressed these elements (Englert, Raphael, Anderson, Anthony, & Stevens, 1991;Hammann & Stevens, 2003;Torrance, Fidalgo, & Garcia, 2007;Wong, Butler, Ficzere, & Kuperis, 1997). The participants in these studies were students from 4th-to 10th-grade and instruction included many of the following elements: teacher modeling of writing strategies, pair/group work, independent work, examples of texts, and feedback on practice work.…”

“…Students were provided with examples of good and poor compareecontrast texts (in keeping with Chambliss, Christenson, & Parker, 2003;Hammann & Stevens, 2003;Hidi, Berndorff, & Ainley, 2002;Pressley et al, 1995;Risemberg, 1996). The good texts addressed both topics/objects equally and were written with the macro-aspect structure, while poor texts either addressed one topic more heavily than the other, or contained equal, but disorganized information about the topics.…”

Représentations, chez les enseignants, de la pratique du modelage dans le contexte d’une rédaction

“…En effet, leurs travaux mettent en évidence le sentiment d'insécurité ressenti par les professeurs face à la tâche de former les étudiants aux habiletés métacognitives et, par le fait même, soulignent l'importance du rôle de l'affectivité dans la volonté et la capacité du professeur à s'engager dans une activité à visée métacognitive. À un niveau plus général qui dépasse le simple contexte du modelage, ce constat fait écho aux observations de Cicurel (2007) (Graham, 2006 ;Graham et Harris, 2003Hamman et Stevens, 2003) dans le cadre de travaux portant sur l'enseignement de l'écriture de divers types de texte selon une approche cognitive.…”