A letter to Like: How to get good grades for writing

The Dutch Inspectorate for Education (Henkens, 2010) concluded that only a minority of schools succeeds in effectively teaching writing. Traditionally, the focus of writing instruction has been mainly product-oriented with a strong emphasis on formal aspects such as spelling, punctuation and grammar. However, research (e.g. Graham et al., 2011; Hillocks, 1986; Pullens, 2012) has shown that a process-oriented approach is more effective to improve the quality of students’ texts.
In this study we examined the relationship between students’ knowledge of the writing process and text quality. Students from the upper grades of primary school (Grade 4-6, N=329) were given an assignment in which they had to write a letter to a new student, soon to be arriving in their class after living abroad for several years. The students had to give advice to this new student on how to get good grades for writing. Subsequently, the students’ advice was divided into 4 main categories: formal advice (spelling, punctuation, grammar), process advice (e.g. pre-writing, organization), advice concerning effort (pay attention, neatness), and miscellaneous advice (e.g. read a dictionary, do not cheat), with respective means of .82, .12, .22, and 1.36.
In a small (N=89) follow-up experiment, students were taught strategies that focused on process aspects of writing, such as thinking and organizing before writing, read, evaluate, and revise after writing during three writing lessons. Subsequently, students had to complete the same writing assignment that was used in the first study. Results show that students give, on average, 2.04 formal advice, .20 effort advice, 2.00 process advice, and .74 miscellaneous advice. This means that after three lessons of specific instruction on process aspects of writing students give more than 8 times as much process advice than without this instruction (M = 2.00 vs. M = .12).
Subsequent regression analysis demonstrated that the relation between process advice and text quality is stronger than the relation between formal advice and text quality. Hence, it can be concluded that effective writing instruction should focus on the writing process, rather than on formal aspects of writing.