After a decade dominated by studies and rhetoric about school reform, a national report card released on January, 1990, indicated that children showed no improvement in writing. The purpose of this research was to determine if by using the Cumulative Writing Folder Program, a mandated Program, with the additional use of sentence combining as a revision strategy urban fifth graders would improve their writing in the six areas of topic development, organization, supporting details, sentence structure, word choice, and mechanics. This study fit in with the existing knowledge and research in the field. It focused on the writing habits of fifth grade students and examined a program that improved their writing skills. This study used concrete strategies in a well-defined writing program to improve revision processes for students which added to the current research in this area. John Collins' Cumulative Writing Folder Program was incorporated in the design of the study. Both the experimental and control groups utilized the Cumulative Writing Folder. The experimental group used sentence combining as a revision strategy. The teacher instructed this group on the techniques of sentence combining and instructed them to use this strategy to revise their writing samples. In September and June the two groups produced writing samples which were analytically scored by independent scorers. An analysis of the comparison of the pre and post scores of the experimental group with the control group in the six variables was given. Results showed that the overall writing performance of the experimental group showed improvement at a significant level. In the variable of topic development, there was a level of significance. The five variables which showed no level of significance were organization, mechanics, supporting details, sentence structure, and word choice. The study suggested that a well defined writing program with the revision strategy of sentence combining did provide overall improvement in the quality of writing over the course of the school year. The study further suggested that more research and subsequent solutions to the problem of the inferior quality of writing at the elementary level needed addressing. It indicated clear directions for further study.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-7972 |
| Date | 01 January 1990 |
| Creators | Bordonaro, Lorraine Miniutti |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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