The effect of writing evaluation on writing performance: A study in writing proficiency levels of fifth grade students
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine if students who participated in a Writing Workshop with a focus on writing evaluation improve their own ability to produce quality writing products. A secondary purpose of this study was to examine the features that influence quality writing with a particular focus on student discourse, including oral communication, written communication, and student writing samples, during the implementation of a three-week Writing Workshop. It was concluded that students can increase their writing quality through the use of a Writing Workshop focused on evaluation techniques. Students gradually increased their own writing proficiency as measured by pre- and post-writing assessments as well as with the TCAP Writing Assessment. Overall, student attitudes did not substantially change after participating in a Writing Workshop. Student attitudes toward the sharing of their writing with their peers, seeing writing as being fun, ideas that they like to write, and getting ideas from other people's writing showed an increase in their mean scores. Students' discourse about writing became more precise and of higher quality with explicit modeling techniques performed by the teacher. Student discourse had a positive effect on students' own writing performance as well as the writing performance of their peers through cooperative grouping techniques in which students evaluated criteria for writing based on a checklist. Students who knew the criteria that were used to measure the quality of a writing sample were able to discuss their compositions using more sophisticated language than when given no direction for their input.
Subject Area
Elementary education|Rhetoric and Composition|Curriculum development
Recommended Citation
Christine Love Thompson,
"The effect of writing evaluation on writing performance: A study in writing proficiency levels of fifth grade students"
(2009).
ETD Collection for Tennessee State University.
Paper AAI3389376.
https://digitalscholarship.tnstate.edu/dissertations/AAI3389376