The purposes of this study were to examine (1) the extent to which taking notes about text and writing an extended response about text would enhance reading comprehension for fourth grade students, (2) whether note taking was more effective than extended writing for improving reading comprehension across three measures, and (3) whether the effects of the writing tasks were moderated by student writing ability. Students were randomly assigned to a note taking condition which they took notes about an expository text, an extended writing condition in which they compared and contrasted ideas from the text with their own experiences, or a read and study control condition in which they studied the important ideas from the text. Minimal instruction was provided to the students in each treatment group during a single 45 minute session, primarily to ensure they understood their assigned task. The students then met for another 45 minute session, during which they were asked to read an expository passage and complete their assigned task. Students reading comprehension was tested using three measures. Students in the two writing groups made significantly greater gains than students in the read and study condition on the multiple choice inference measure. However, the results are tempered by low internal consistency found for the measure. No other statistically significant differences were found between the treatment groups, and no significant moderator effects were found. Implications for future research are framed in terms of the limitations of the study.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-10232012-154554 |
| Date | 29 October 2012 |
| Creators | Hebert, Michael Armand |
| Contributors | Karen Harris, Bridget Dalton, Don Compton, Steve Graham |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-10232012-154554/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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