Tailoring Multicomponent Writing Interventions: Effects of Coupling Self-Regulation and Transcription Training

Abstract

Writing proficiency is heavily based on the acquisition and development of self-regulation and transcription skills. The present study examined the effects of combining transcription training into a self-regulation intervention in Grade 2 (age 7-8). For that, 43 students receiving a self-regulation plus transcription intervention (SRSD+TR) were compared with 37 students receiving a selfregulation-only intervention (SRSD), and with 39 students receiving the standard language arts curriculum. Compared to control instruction, SRSD instruction, with or without transcription training, resulted in more complex plans, longer, better, and more complete stories, and the effects transferred to a story written recall. As expected, transcription training produced an incremental effect on students' composing skills. In particular, the SRSD+TR intervention increased handwriting fluency, spelling accuracy for inconsistent words, planning and story completeness, writing fluency, clause length, and burst length. Importantly, compared to the SRSD intervention, the SRSD+TR intervention was particularly effective in raising the writing quality of poorer writers. Altogether, this pattern of findings suggests that students benefit from writing instruction coupling self-regulation and transcription training from very early on. This seems to be a promising instructional approach not only to ameliorate all students' writing ability and prevent future writing problems but also to minimize struggling writers' difficulties and support them in mastering writing.Keywords: writing, self-regulation, transcription, strategy instruction COUPLING SELF-REGULATION AND TRANSCRIPTION TRAINING 3 Tailoring Multicomponent Writing Interventions: The Effects of Coupling Self-Regulation and Transcription TrainingOne of the truisms of the cognitive approach to written composition is that writing is a complex and cognitively demanding activity. This is mostly due to the plethora of processes involved in writing (Hayes, 1996), and seems to be one of the reasons why it is so difficult to master it (Harris & Graham, 2013). Fortunately, research has progressed in developing evidencebased practices to teach writing and support its development (Graham, McKeown, Kiuhara, & Harris, 2012;Graham & Perin, 2007). An effective way to boost writing competence of beginning and developing writers is by promoting either self-regulated, strategic writing or efficient, automatic transcription. High-levels of self-regulation allow the effective management of writing processes. Automatic transcription enables the effortless transformation of linguistic representations into written text. Therefore, the road to writing proficiency relies on the development of increasingly sophisticated self-regulation capabilities supported by the progressive automatization of transcription (Limpo & Alves, 2013a). Nevertheless, self-regulation and transcription have been studied independently. Thus, it is important to study the benefits of promoting transcription and self-regulation togeth...

Promoting handwriting fluency in fifth graders with slow handwriting: a single-subject design study

“…Indeed, by limiting the writers' ability to enact other processes concurrently with transcription, slow and effortful handwriting may impede the recursiveness (Hayes & Flower, 1986) and interactivity (McCutchen, 1988) among writing processes that characterizes expert writing. The high cognitive cost of non-efficient handwriting may additionally constrain the enactment of self-regulated strategic behaviors in writing (Limpo & Alves, 2017a). These behaviors are fundamental to produce high-quality texts by helping writers to set goals and action plans to orient writing as well as to monitor their effectiveness and adjust them when needed.…”

“…For that, we shortened a handwriting program designed for second graders (Limpo & Alves, 2017a) and adapt it to match the needs and motivations of older students. This program combined explicit instruction with intensive and systematic practice in writing cursive letters, words, and sentences fluently and accurately, through fast-paced activities to write the alphabet and copy words or sentences.…”

“…Information provided by the alphabet task, which requires access to accurate representations of letter forms in serial order in memory, followed by retrieval and written production of those forms, is complemented by information provided by the copy task, which does not require access to letter forms in long-term memory (Berninger et al, 1997;Graham et al, 1997). Research has showed these tasks to be valid and reliable measures of handwriting skill, sensitive to individual differences and change, and predictive of different aspects of writing performance (Alves et al, 2016;Limpo & Alves, 2013a, 2017aLimpo et al, 2017). The administration and coding procedures of either the alphabet or the copy task are also straightforward and quick to implement.…”

Análisis de pausas y ejecuciones para el estudio de procesos de escritura

“…Generalmente, aquellas investigaciones interesadas en el estudio de procesos relacionados con la transcripción consideran pausas entre los 15 milisegundos y los 2 segundos (ver Alamargot, Plane, Lambert, & Chesnet, 2010;Limpo & Alves, 2017;Puntry, Barnett, Wilmut, y Plumb, 2013;2014;Wengelin, 2006). Estos estudios han mostrado, que las habilidades de transcripción, cuando no están automatizadas, suponen una alta demanda cognitiva provocando que el escritor tenga que parar para atender dicha demanda.…”

“…Generalmente, los efectos de la instrucción son evaluados de manera general (ej. calidad textual) más que a través de medidas específicas del proceso (para excepción ver Alves et al, 2016;Limpo & Alves, 2017). A pesar de la importancia de la evaluación general de la intervención, el análisis de medidas específicas del proceso es fundamental para aumentar el conocimiento sobre el funcionamiento las intervenciones eficaces y cómo pueden adaptarse a las necesidades de escritura de los estudiantes.…”