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Title:
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Individualized Writing Instruction in Southern West Virginia Colleges: A study of the acquisition of writing fluency
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Author:
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David Roberts
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Homepage:
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http://mylinguist.com
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Degree Awarded:
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Indiana University of Pennsylvania
, Rhetoric and Linguistics
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Degree Date:
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1982
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Applied Linguistics
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Director(s):
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Patrick Hartwell
James DeGray
Frank Como
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Abstract:
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Individualized writing instruction was compared with classroom writing instruction at Bluefield StateCollege and Southern West Virginia Community College, as a preliminary model of cross—institutional research. The effects of individualized writing instruction and conventional classroom writing instruction were compared at three levels: basic writing and the two semesters of the freshman composition sequence at the two colleges. The effects of the two instructional modes on writing apprehension and on the students’ concepts of the nature of the writing process were also compared. Five null hypotheses were tested for significance at the .05 level of confidence to determine significant differences in the effects of the two modes of instruction. Of the 124 students in the study, 79 received individualized instruction and 45 received conventional classroom instruction.
Three of the null hypotheses concerned writing quality as measured by holistic scoring, forced-choice scoring, and T-unit length. The other null hypotheses concerned writing apprehension and the students’ concepts of the nature of writing, as measured by a writing apprehension test and three questions to determine the level of the students’ under standing of writing. Only one null hypothesis was rejected with 95% confidence. The classroom group wrote significantly longer T-units on the posttest writing sample (p = .0 There were no other signi ficant differences between the effects of the two modes of instruction.
Findings of earlier work on the relationship of essay length to holistic scoring (Nold & Freedman, 1977; S. Freedman, 1979; Grobe, 1981) are supported by the data of the present study. The value of holistic scoring in judging writing quality is questioned. A call for future research urges an increase in the number of naturalistic studies that do not rely on holistic scoring as the primary method of assessing writing quality.
Cross-institutional writing research is found to be a workable and effective means of stydying writing and conducting surveys of writing apprehension levels across wide geographical areas, at a minimal cost. Recommendations for conducting further cross- institutional research include utilizing the six instruments developed by the CCCC Committee on Teaching and Its Evaluation in Composition (1982), a modification of the Daly and Miller writing apprehension survey (l975a), and a writing concept index.
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