Teaching Summative Writing within an Introductory Sociology Course: Do Paragraph Frames Improve Students’ Writing Skills?

Abstract

This article describes the use of a summary writing assignment within an intro sociology course for application of sociological knowledge to current events. Summative writing is paramount to moving through the college curriculum, yet students struggle to be able to begin summary writing exercises, often procrastinating until the last moment, and thus are unsuccessful. Scripts or summary frames are also helpful in the transition to academic language acquisition skill-building, noting scripts, even for speech, provide scaffolding. Thus low states summary writings such as in introductory sociology courses are allowing students to build upon their learned skill as they move through into their upper level discipline focused courses. The skill is transferable to all disciplines and is not relegated to discipline specificity. The following article describes a Time 1/Time 2 assessment of the use of summary frames, with Time 1 using non-prompted writing within the assignment, and Time 2 using prompted writing within the assignments. Additionally, an assessment of the Readability Flesch-Kincaid is considered.

Strategies in Teaching Academic Essay Writing, Level of Effectiveness, and Instructional Barriers: The Case of Filipino Learners

“…Kartawijaya (2018) found that giving students writing assignments with an outline improved their writing abilities. Brown et al (2019) discovered that scripts or paragraph frames are useful in the transition to academic language skill development, keeping in mind that scripts, even for speech, provide scaffolding.…”