Date of Award
1987
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Education
First Advisor
Waterman,David
Abstract
This study investigated the influence of writing instruction on the reading comprehension and the syntactic writing development of second-grade students.Research has shown that instruction in writing summaries can increase reading comprehension and improve writing skills significantly.Thus,this study attempted to determine the effect of writing instruction on reading comprehension and syntactic writing development.This study employed two second-grade classrooms.Classrooms were randomly assigned to experimental or control groups.Within each group,subjects were divided into low,average,and high reading ability subgroups.Reading ability was determined according to scores received on the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills(CTBS),which was administered prior to treatment.The experimental treatment consisted of instruction in writing basal story summaries,while the control treatment consisted of writing short answers to questions provided in the basal workbook.All students received four weeks of writing instruction prior to the posttest,which required them to write a story and answer multiple choice items in reading comprehension,language mechanics,and language expression.An analysis of variance and covariance with repeated measures was used o compare mean scores of the experimental and control groups of low,average,and high reading ability students.No significant differences were found when the dependent reading comprehension variable was considered.However,statistically significant differences were found between the experimental and control groups post and delayed posttest scores when the dependent writing variable was considered.Specifically,there were significant differences found in language mechanic scores,the number of sentences written,the number of words per sentence,and the number of T-units per sentence.It is important to point out that the mean scores of the experimental group tended to be consistently higher than the mean scores of the control groups on post and delayed posttest trials.Thus,a tendency was established which indicated the desirable effect of summary writing instruction and the need to replicate the research over a longer period of time.
Recommended Citation
Westbrooks, Sandra, "The comparative effects of two instructional strategies on second grader's reading comprehension and writing ability." (1987). All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2193.
https://scholars.indianastate.edu/etds/2193