The effects of being a reader and of observing readers on fifth grade students argumentative writing.

摘要

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two peer group activities, observing readers and being readers, on fifth grade students' argumentative writing quality, revision quality and type, and ability to include argumentative elements in writing. Students were randomly assigned at the student level within each classroom to one of three groups: readers, observers, or the control group. The reader group participants read, discussed and evaluated other students' argumentative writing prior to revising their own writing. The observer group participants listened to the reader group read, discuss and evaluate other students' argumentative writing prior to revising their own writing. The control group practiced writing to another argumentative writing task prior to revising their own writing. All participants wrote an initial draft to an argumentative writing topic prior to participating in the experimental or control activities. After participation in the experimental and control activities, all participants had the opportunity to revise their initial drafts using what they learned during the experimental or control activity. A week later, all participants wrote and revised another persuasive essay written about a different topic with a similar audience. The effects of participation in the experimental and control activities on students' writing were measured immediately following participation in the learning activity as well as one week after participation in the learning activity. Several hypotheses were tested. It was believed that the reader and observer groups would produce more persuasive texts, would make higher quality revisions, and would include more text elements characteristic of argumentative texts than the control group both immediately after instruction and one-week later. The results indicate that the reader group made significantly greater gains than the control group in overall persuasive quality immediately after participation in the experimental activities. In addition, the reader group made more revisions to alternative propositions, reasons for alternative propositions, and rebuttals than the control group. Similarly, the reader group included more alternative propositions, reasons for alternative propositions, and rebuttals in their revised texts than the control group. There were no significant differences among groups on any of the dependent measures one week after instruction. Limitations and implications for future research and practice are discussed.