Research in the Teaching of English - Volume 25, Issue 3, 1991

This article examines the kinds of instruction that foster student engagement with literature and the effects of such instruction on achievement. First, two general kinds of student engagement are distinguished: “procedural,” which concerns classroom rules and regulations, and “substantive,” which involves sustained commitment to the content and issues of academic study. The article then describes the manifestations of these two forms of engagement, explains how they relate differently to student outcomes, and offers some empirical propositions using data on literature instruction from 58 eighth-grade English classes. The results provide support for three hypotheses: (a) Disengagement adversely affects achievement; (b) Procedural engagement has an attenuated relationship to achievement because its observable indicators conflate procedural and substantive engagement; and (c) Substantive engagement has a strong, positive effect on achievement. Features of substantively engaging instruction include authentic questions, or questions which have no prespecified answers; uptake, or the incorporation of previous answers into subsequent questions; and high-level teacher evaluation, or teacher certification and incorporation of student responses into subsequent discussion. Each of these is noteworthy because they all involve reciprocal interaction and negotiation between students and teachers, which is said to be the hallmark of substantive engagement.

The study was conducted in a classroom that used a process approach to literacy. Ten case studies examined the ability of 6th grade Hispanic bilingual students to construct meaning in dialogue journals and literature logs in first and second language. Journals and literature logs were coded and analyzed for language code (L1/L2), topic, codeswitching, sensitivity to audience, writer’s voice, spelling, and grammatical structures. Findings indicate that students were more effective in constructing meaning in dialogue journals than in literature logs. Success in the journals revealed positive self-images while failure with literature logs evoked poor self-concepts. Findings also suggest that implementation of process approaches can pose its own set of instructional problems that need to be addressed, especially when effectiveness is judged in terms of the particular students involved. For example, although the students in this study were able to write in English before having complete control of the language, their development of complex ideas and the construction of meaning suffered considerably. The length and quality of the writing also degenerated when the topic was imposed, when students found no relevance in the literacy activity, and when they were not assisted in contextualizing writing tasks in their own terms. Overall, mere exposure to standard writing conventions did not improve the students’ use of them. The practice of implementing popular instructional programs without incorporating appropriate social, cultural, and linguistic adaptations appears to be ineffective with L2 learners.

This study was designed to determine (a) whether the writing of persuasive discourse can be improved by instruction and (b) the effect of reading on writing and of writing on reading within the mode of persuasion. Students in two sixth-grade classes in each of two schools (n= 110) were stratified by sex and ability and randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups: 1. instruction in a model for persuasion plus writing practice; 2. instruction in a model for persuasion plus reading practice; 3. reading novels and writing book reports plus a single lesson in the persuasion model; 4. reading novels and writing book reports (control group). Instruction was given for ten 45-minute lessons over five weeks. Pretests and posttests each consisted of writing a recall protocol of a persuasive text and writing two persuasive compositions. On the posttest, both the writing and the reading groups (groups 1 and 2) scored significantly higher than the control group on writing quality, on the organization of compositions, on the number of conclusions and text markers used, and on the degree of elaboration of reasons. There were no differences between the control group and other groups on reading recall scores.

This study used on-line protocol analysis to contrast the effects on the writing process of knowledge taught in three instructional treatments: Models (declarative knowledge of form), General Procedures (declarative knowledge of form plus general procedural knowledge related to content plus procedural knowledge related to form), and Task-Specific Procedures (declarative knowledge of form plus task-specific procedural knowledge related to content plus procedural knowledge related to form). Pretest and posttest protocols from six students in each treatment measured treatment effects on the processes of students writing essays involving extended definition. Students in the Models treatment made weak improvements in relating the elements of definition and did not think critically about the concepts being defined. Students in the General Procedures treatment made gains in linking ideas according to particular task constraints and improved their critical thinking skills. Students in the Task-Specific Procedures integrated their ideas purposefully, thought critically about the concepts being defined, and appeared to establish a conversational voice to anticipate composing needs.

This paper compares the effects of pencil-and-paper and computer-assisted versions of a process/model approach in a college writing program with the effects of a more traditional approach. Three empirical measures are used in the study: a frequency count of linguistic markers of argumentation and comparison/contrast based on previous work by Odell (1977), a measure of the number of arguments, and a measure of their logical integrity. All significant differences favored students in the experimental sections, who used more markers, made more arguments and made stronger arguments. Students in the computer-assisted (CAI) version of the experimental approach used still more markers than students in the pencil-and-paper version, suggesting that the CAI materials may enhance the efficiency of student learning of some formal aspects of reasoning in writing. These results suggest that it may be possible to attain a postprocess paradigm for teaching writing and thinking that transcends the dialectic that places process and product in opposition to each other.