A "composing from sources" intervention teaching students to write informational reports based on content-area text was tested with 121 seventh graders attending six middle school classrooms. Composing from sources involves writing a summary based on two or more texts. Three teachers were randomly assigned to Text Structure, Self-Regulation, or Neutral Literacy conditions, all of which utilized social studies text. Both the Text Structure and Self-Regulation conditions taught strategies for composing from sources, including note-taking, organizing information, and generating text. The Text Structure condition drew explicit attention to the structure of the text and the Self-Regulation condition focused on setting and accomplishing personal writing goals. Neutral Literacy was a control condition in which students answered questions and wrote stories on social studies topics but did not receive instruction in composing from sources, text structure or self-regulation. At posttest, the composing-from-sources intervention, whether enhanced by Text Structure or Self-Regulation training, showed moderate to strong effect sizes for the number of main ideas represented in written reports, writing quality, and social studies content knowledge, compared to the control group. The intervention was particularly effective in regard to gains on content knowledge, with effect sizes of 2.66 and 1.39 for Text Structure and Self-Regulation respectively, compared to the control. Although both the Text Structure and Self-Regulation versions of the intervention were effective in comparison to the control on the posttest as well as on measures of near and far transfer, when the two versions of the treatment were compared with each other, Text Structure training showed consistent advantages over Self-Regulation with, for example, writing quality effect sizes of .58 on near transfer and .60 on far transfer. Both treatments had similar effects on students' representation of main ideas at posttest and near transfer but on far transfer, only Text Structure training was found to be effective for main ideas, with Self-Regulation producing the same results as the control. However, since numerous positive effects for both versions were obtained across the various measures and time points, combining the Text Structure and Self-Regulation strategies in a single composing-from-sources intervention may be a promising direction.
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