Browsing by Subject "writing"

Goals. The writing performance level of finnish schoolchildren has raised concerns over the past few years. The present study is part of a longitudinal intervention study (RoKKi) which has created an encouraging feedback model for trying to find ways to enhance writing skills. Pupil experience has not figured significantly as an issue in writing research, so this thesis will tackle that subject by asking if the encouraging intervention affected the writing experiences of the 5th-graders and how the pupils experienced writing in different genres. Peer review is a central element of the encouraging feedback model. The idea of the model is that the pupils feel that attention is being paid to what they have written. Methods. The study was carried out in three 5th-grade classes between autumn 2011 and autumn 2012. The established class had already used the encouraging feedback model before the intervention. The treatment class started to use it at the beginning of the intervention and continued to use it throughout the whole school year. In the control class, the teacher gave feedback according to a more traditional manner. The data consists of four measures of the writing experience. They were analysed using one-way analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) and repeated measures ANOVA. Results and conclusions. The writing experiences of the pupils varied statistically significantly in the three classes. The established class had the most-positive experience of writing, whilst the control class had the least-positive experiences. The interaction of the class and the intervention was not statistically significant, which means that the variation in the writing experiences was instead linked more to the variation that occurred during the intervention (e.g. genre or the intervention) than to the starting situation of the classes. The different classes experienced the same genre, e.g. opinion, very differently. As expected, the writing of stories was experienced more positively than writing factual texts. The fact that the established class had the most-positive experiences of writing suggests that the encouraging feedback model might be useful in long-term use.