Journal of Writing Research

Book review | Conceptualizing, designing, implementing, and evaluating writing interventions

Wren Bouwman — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Conceptualizing, Designing, Implementing, and Evaluating Writing Interventions, edited by Fien De Smedt, Renske Bouwer, Teresa Limpo, and Steve Graham, emerges as a comprehensive guide for researchers navigating the many steps to developing a writing intervention. Writing interventions are changes to a writer’s traditional approach which are meant to improve a writer’s cognitive processes in order to become a more skilled writer. These interventions are often implemented in classrooms, from primary schools to post-secondary education. This volume offers a start-to-finish overview of the intervention research process. The structure mirrors its title, dividing its contents into four crucial stages of intervention research. These stages are grounded in previous volumes on writing intervention research in the Brill Studies in Writing Series, which provide insight into how writing interventions have changed over the years and demonstrate a pattern of research design. Additionally, the need for a shared framework is emphasized through both reports from the National Commission on Writing (2004) and influential writing models by Graham (2018a, 2018b) and Hayes (2012), which recognize the significance of motivational factors in writing.

Familiarity effect in the perception of handwriting: Evaluating in-group/out-group effect among readers of the Latin script

Hector Mangas Afonso, Anouk Keizer, Peter Biľak, Sofie Beier — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

There is much evidence that familiarity can affect perception of stimuli, with items that are familiar to the individual being preferred and better remembered. Previous research has also shown that familiarity with a typeface increases preference for it, but no studies have evaluated the impact of familiarity in relation to the affect towards handwritten text. For the present study, a two-part experiment (N = 422) was designed to measure how contemporary users of the Latin script perceive handwritten text. The first section was designed to collect specimens of the participants’ handwriting. The second, which was adapted to each participant’s handwriting style, measured implicit judgments of certain familiar letter shapes against unfamiliar ones. Results show that familiarity positively influences the extent to which one judges the friendliness and trustworthiness of handwritten text. Furthermore, the greater the similarity to how one writes a letterform, the greater the observed effect in terms of perceived friendliness. These findings suggest that people have an implicit bias towards handwriting that looks like their own.

Effects of expressive writing and self-distancing on electrodermal activity during writing

Setareh Fadaei, Teresa Jacques, Rui Alexander Alves — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Writing about traumas can influence mood and bodily changes. In three studies we researched the influence of writing on affective and physiological changes by measuring electrodermal activity (EDA) during expressive writing sessions and manipulating self-distancing. In Study 1, we randomly assigned 57 participants to write about control or expressive topics using a first-person perspective (I). In Study 2, we assigned 55 participants to write about control or expressive topics using a third-person perspective (She/He). And in Study 3, we compared the effects of perspective (first or third-person) in the data collected in the preceding studies. Across Study 1 and 2 results showed that EDA consistently rose at the beginning of the writing session, reached a plateau, and then rose again upon completing the writing task, irrespective of the writing topic or perspective. While the initial EDA increase seems related to the start of a demanding task, the post-writing increase might signal reward-seeking behavior upon task completion. Results of Study 3 confirmed that EDA increases in the beginning and upon writing completion are magnified by adopting a third-person perspective. These results show that expressive writing and self-distancing have measurable impacts on writers’ electrodermal activity.

Readers’ awareness in the use of intertextual strategies when writing from multiple texts

Christian Tarchi, Lidia Casado Ledesma — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Metacognitive reading awareness, involving cognitive process control and reading strategies, is linked to better comprehension and performance, but its relationship with intertextual integration strategies and the quality of argumentative essays remains unexplored. This study aimed to investigate the role of metacognition in employing integration strategies when reading conflicting texts. 69 undergraduate students participated in an online reading-writing activity, where they wrote argumentative essays based on conflicting texts about red meat consumption. We examined the students' use of intertextual integration strategies (refutation, weighing, synthesizing) and assessed their metacognitive awareness through their reflections on these strategies. The quality of the argumentative essays served as a measure of multiple text comprehension. The results indicated a lack of metacognitive awareness regarding integration strategies, with students overestimating their ability to employ these strategies. However, they demonstrated better understanding of refutational strategies based on the examples provided in their essays. Interestingly, students who were aware of and utilized these strategies in their essays performed better in the multiple-text comprehension task.

The impact of written corrective feedback on students’ writing performance, self-efficacy, and anxiety

Mohammad Hasan Razmi, Mohammad Hossein Ghane — Sun, 12 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This paper investigated the impact of direct unfocused written corrective feedback (WCF) on EFL students’ writing improvement, self-efficacy, and anxiety. To this aim, 52 Iranian male learners were selected as participants by using the Oxford Placement Test and randomly placed in an experimental and a control group. The participants completed a pre-test that included a writing task, the writing self-efficacy questionnaire (WSEQ), and the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI) to assess their writing skill, writing self-efficacy, and writing anxiety, respectively. Having attended 15 sessions of writing instruction in which only the experimental group received WCF, the participants again completed a writing task, the WSEQ, and the SLWAI in the posttest procedure. The results showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in all three constructs, indicating that WCF has a positive impact on EFL students’ writing performance, self-efficacy, and anxiety. Implications of the study are presented.

“With a little help from my friends”: Effects of a self-reflection tool and social interaction on orthographic performance

Cristina Silva, Francisco Peixoto, Liliana Salvador — Tue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This study investigates the impact of peer orthographic revision using a self-reflection tool on orthographic performance in order to improve the understanding and applying of phonological, contextual and morphological rules in third-grade students. Children were assigned to one of three groups: two experimental groups (individual group, dyadic interaction group) and a control group. In the experimental training programme, a self-correction orthographic rubric was used, but while children in the individual group self-corrected the words, children in the dyadic interaction group did it in pairs and interacted in a way such that they should always reach an agreement on the correct spelling. The results showed that although both experimental groups decreased the number of misspellings in the post-test, the dyadic interaction group had the best results, differing significantly from the others, suggesting that self-correction strategies based on rubrics that explicitly display orthographical rules along with collaborative peer learning have a very positive impact on orthographic.