Evaluating effects of different forms of revision instruction in upper-primary students

Abstract

This study aimed to establish (a) whether teaching students revision skills provides beneft over and above teaching strategies for setting explicit goals for the communicative efect of their text, and (b) whether teaching students to adopt specifc revision strategies provides benefts over revision instruction that focusses on increasing students’ awareness of audience needs. Six classes of Spanish sixth-grade students (N=107, 11–12 years) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. In all three conditions students were taught to set communicative goals. Students in the Strategy Focused condition were then taught a 6-step revision strategy. Students in the Reader Focused condition observed a reader trying to comprehend a text and suggesting ways in which it might be improved. Students in a control condition continued with goal-setting practice. Students’ writing performance was assessed through composition and revision tasks before and immediately after intervention, 2 months post-intervention, and for transfer to an untaught genre. Writing performance and revision skills improved more in the two revision-instruction conditions than for students in the control condition. The improvements were large, persistent and transferred to a diferent type of text. We found no statistically signifcant diferences between the two revision conditions. Findings suggest that specifc revision instruction benefts sixth-grade students’ writing performance and revision skills, but that strategy-focused and reader-focused approaches are similarly efective