The Potential for Directing Study in Combined Reading and Writing Activity

Abstract

An experiment investigated the memorial effects of three different writing tasks and worksheet exercises assigned as study activities to accompany reading. High school boys and girls read and recalled a pretreatment target text and then read a sequence of topically related passages and reacted to each by paraphrasing, formulating questions, comparing and contrasting, or completing matching exercises on worksheets. Afterward, the students again recalled the target text. A comparison of information given in retelling the target text before and after performing the study tasks indicated that quality of inferences differed according to assigned writing task. Writing questions and compare-contrast statements resulted in the generation of significantly more new information, and writing questions resulted in the recall of proportionally more superordinate information. The results are explained as stemming from the organizing requirements of writing.A growing body of literature in education and psychology advocates combining writing with reading as a profitable study technique. Beach and Bridwell (1984), Flower (1979), Kintsch and van Dijk (1978), Page (1974), and others argue that, when combined with reading, writing fosters the identification of significant information in a text and encourages reflection on that information as it is organized into a coherent written response. Wittrock (1983) asserts that writing generates relations among the parts of a text and between a text and its reader's experience. Eanet and Manzo (1976) and Odell (1980) further claim that by varying the writing task in response to reading, a teacher can exercise control over the way students think about the content of a text.

A review of writing to learn in science: Implications for practice and research

“…He suggested that the permanence of the written word, the explicitness required for effective written communication, the richness of discursive tools for refining ideas, and the active nature of writing all converge to make writing an extremely powerful process for shaping thought. Hayes (1987) utilized the organizing-demands hypothesis to explain how this might work: "Writing may achieve its effects by the demands it places on learners to organize language" (p. 334). Britton et al (1975) reported that British students do more writing in content areas than in the English classroom.…”

“…Newell concluded that analytic essay writing encouraged the learners to integrate new information with relevant prior topical knowledge. Hayes (1987) investigated the effect of combining different writing tasks with reading on the hierarchical organization of information recalled later. This recall measure allowed Hayes to compare the proportion of top-level and low-level information included by students.…”

“…Some researchers have studied writing in situations that are decontextualized from regular classrooms (Langer, 1984(Langer, , 1986bLanger & Applebee, 1987). Several studies have focused on the thinking processes of very small groups of students (Durst, 1987(Durst, , 1989Newell, 1984Newell, , 1986 whereas others have involved larger samples but for very brief periods (Hayes, 1987). As such, these studies lack ecological validity.…”

Learning from Writing in College Biology

“…However, some studies suggest that writing can help students learn even without such training. More specifically, students asked to compare and contrast ideas, explain concepts, support a viewpoint, or share their thoughts with others showed greater learning gains than students who did not perform these assignments (Audet et al 1996;Fellows 1994;Hand et al 2002;Hayes 1987;Voss and Wiley 1997). One characteristic common to many of these studies was that the writing assignments asked students to use an argument format.…”

Enhancing science literacy through implementation of writing-to-learn strategies: exploratory studies in high school biology

“…The forward search hypotheses were attributed to Bruner (1966), Emig (1977), and Donald (1991) because these theorists asserted that writers transform their ideas by ongoing analyses of their texts in terms of expanding inferences, reviewing idea development, noting contradictions, and making appropriate revisions. Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987), Halliday and Martin (1993), and Hayes (1987) were among several of those identified as contributing to the genre-related hypotheses, which maintains that the use of different generic frameworks and knowledge of the micro and macro structure of texts enables students to identify the relationships between ideas and clarify understanding of content. The backward search hypotheses, which Klein attributed to Flower and Hayes (1980;, Vygotsky (1962), and Bruner (1966), among others, argue that students learn through writing by setting and addressing rhetorical and content goals.…”