Monica Bomengen, Ed.D.
Director of Education Services, East Coast/Area 3
SIATech

In the effort to improve student achievement, schools have taken a variety of approaches. In many cases, "instruction in response to high-stakes assessment tends to become formulaic and non-critical" (National Council of Teachers of English Task Force, 2005). Many schools and districts have turned to test preparation activities, frequent "benchmark" testing, and even scripted programs in the quest to raise test scores. Others have incorporated writing programs in an attempt to increase student achievement outcomes. This paper explores research on the effects of writing practice on standardized test results in an effort to discern what types of writing practice contribute to increased measurable learning outcomes. This paper examines different types of writing programs that have been incorporated in high school classrooms. 

The writing process is a well-established system of teaching composition. It includes four basic steps: prewriting, writing, revising, and editing. Some proponents, including the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), add a fifth element, publishing. The philosophy behind this system of instruction is that students should be encouraged to treat writing as a process, not as a single activity, in order for them to produce the highest quality written work. Before they put pen to paper, students are taught to use prewriting strategies, such as brainstorming, mapping, and diagramming. This step in the writing process helps students to organize their thoughts before actually constructing a composition. The next step, writing, is when they create a rough draft of the composition. Revising is usually done in a peer editing group, and/or with input from the teacher during a writing conference. Editing is the final step in the writing process, whereby the student incorporates the comments, corrections, and suggestions gained during the revision step, as well as reviewing the draft in order to gain perspective and perhaps do some additional revision.

On first blush, it makes sense to posit that writing practice would help students to learn more. It is difficult to distinguish writing and learning, although "many instances of learning do not depend on writing, and instances of writing do not always lead to learning" (Bangert-Drowns, Hurley, & Wilkinson, 2004). Numerous teachers believe that writing and learning share several characteristics. This belief arose because of the identification of the process called writing to learn. This conviction, that writing enhances learning, is widespread among English teachers in particular. NCTE explicitly states in its policy research that "writing is a tool for thinking":

When writers actually write, they think of things that they did not have in mind before they began writing. The act of writing generates ideas. This is different from the way we often think of writers -- as getting ideas fixed in their heads before they write them down. The notion that writing is a medium for thought is important in several ways. It suggests a number of important uses for writing: to solve problems, to identify issues, to construct questions, to reconsider something one had already figured out, to try out a half-baked idea. This insight that writing is a tool for thinking helps us to understand the process of drafting and revision as one of exploration and discovery, and is nothing like transcribing from pre-recorded tape. The writing process is not one of simply fixing up the mistakes in an early draft, but of finding more and more wrinkles and implications in what one is talking about. (2004)

Writing-to-learn activities are "short, impromptu or otherwise informal writing tasks that help students think through key concepts or ideas presented in a course" (Kiefer, 2007). Often, these writing tasks are "limited to less than five minutes of class time or are assigned as brief, out-of-class assignments" (2007). Examples of strategies that employ writing to learn include the reading journal, generic and focused summaries, annotations, response papers, synthesis papers, the learning log, pre-test warm-ups, using cases, letters analysis of events, project notebooks, and the writing journal. Prompts help stimulate reflection through writing to learn; for example, in the "What Counts as a Fact?" activity, students are directed to choose two or more written treatments of the same issue, problem, or research. Students are asked to write about what constitutes proof or facts in each article and explain why the articles draw on different kinds of evidence, as well as the amount of evidence that supports stated conclusions (Kiefer, 2007).

Accomplished teachers understand that students who comprehend their own process of learning can use this comprehension to increase their learning. Langer (2001) found that high school English teachers who went about teaching students specific strategies to engage in writing activities and to reflect on and monitor their performance posted increased student achievement outcomes on high-stakes reading and writing assessments. In some of the classrooms Langer observed, students were "overtly taught strategies for thinking and doing; in [less successful classrooms], the focus was on new content or skills, without overtly teaching the overarching strategies for planning, organizing, completing, or reflecting on the content or activity" (2001). There were pronounced distinctions in the manner in which teachers approached the teaching of strategies. All of the more successful teachers in Langer's study explicitly instructed their students in "strategies for organizing their thoughts and completing tasks" (2001). Of the more typical teachers, 83% left such strategies for the students to discern on their own. This study offers evidence that the use of writing to learn can increase student achievement outcomes. It was not writing per se that increased students’ performance on standardized tests; it was the overt teaching of writing to learn.

Although studies such as Langer's appear to show a correlation between writing practice in classrooms and higher student achievement as measured by standardized test scores, results in other studies are mixed on whether the improvement is due more to the difficulty of the course content or to the quality of instructional strategies employed. Carbonaro and Gamoran (2002) examined whether lack of access to high quality instruction in English class accounted for differences in reading achievement growth between advantaged and disadvantaged students. They found that high school "students who are encouraged to show understanding of course materials and who attend classes with heavy emphasis on analytical writing have higher rates of achievement growth than those who do not" (2002). The study controlled for a variety of factors to ensure that it did not simply beg the question whether highly motivated students who take more difficult classes tend to achieve more than those who take easier courses. They examined studies such as analyses of the NAEP results and found that such investigation "help identify instructional practices that are associated with higher levels of reading and writing achievement in grades 4, 8, and 12" (2002). However, they found that content of the English courses taken appeared to have "stronger and more consistent effects" than the instructional practices of the teachers. In other words, students who took more rigorous courses seem to have been exposed to analytical writing assignments that helped them develop advanced reading skills, rather than experiencing teaching practices that produced the increase in skills.

In addition to Carbonaro and Gamoran's findings, Bangert-Drowns, Hurley, and Wilkinson’s 2004 meta-analysis of 48 school-based writing-to-learn programs showed evidence that writing can have a "small, positive impact on conventional measures of academic achievement." Two factors were correlated with enhanced effects: (1) the use of metacognitive prompts and (2) increased treatment length. Interestingly, longer writing assignments predicted reduced effects in the Bangert-Drowns, Hurley, and Wilkinson findings, in contrast to Carbonaro and Gamoran’s conclusion that heavy emphasis on analytical writing seemed to improve student achievement outcomes. Bangert-Drowns, Hurley, and Wilkinson speculated that "longer writing tasks might be unmotivating or distracting for students" (2004).

There is a strong resemblance between the activities engaged in metacognition (also known as self-regulated learning) and the writing process. In order to write, one must actively organize one’s personal understandings. Metacognition requires the same active organization. In both the writing and the self-regulated learning models, students are "active agents who construct personal knowledge, strategic capabilities, and products simultaneously through employment of cognitive and metacognitive strategies" (Bangert-Drowns, Hurley, & Wilkinson, 2004). Both models require that students engage in dialogue with the teacher to facilitate the process of inquiry and reflection that is necessary to determine what it is that one wants to say (in writing) and how it is that one actually learns (in metacognition). Examples of metacognitive strategies include awareness activities, planning, and monitoring and reflection (Halter, 2007). In awareness activities, the student consciously identifies what is already known about a subject, defines the learning goal, considers the personal resources available, such as textbooks, access to the library, access to a computer work station or a quiet study area, considers the task requirements, determines how performance will be evaluated, considers his or her motivation level, and determines his or her level of anxiety. Planning activities include estimating the time required to complete the task, planning study time into the student's schedule and setting priorities, making a checklist of what needs to happen when, and organizing materials. Monitoring and reflection includes keeping track of what works and what doesn't work, questioning, self-testing, and providing one’s own feedback.

Although writing "does appear to facilitate learning to some degree under some conditions, the research on writing's effects on learning is ambiguous" (Bangert-Drowns, Hurley, & Wilkinson, 2004). The important thing to note about writing instruction is that "simple incorporation of writing in regular classroom instruction does not automatically yield large dividends in learning" (2004). It is foolhardy for administrators to issue simple, blanket directives to increase writing assignments across the curriculum in the misguided belief that having students write more will raise test scores. It is possible to think of instances where assigning writing would even be detrimental. Writing should not be used for punishment, for example. Requiring lengthy writing assignments with no opportunity for teacher conferencing and no regard for the process needed in order to complete such assignments in the most productive way would be detrimental.

From my own classroom practice teaching public high school and junior high school English, it is my opinion that permitting students to select topics that interest them when they are faced with a longer assignment is an appropriate way to achieve the motivation necessary for students to complete such assignments. Such assignments also require provision of opportunities for teacher conferencing in order to achieve maximum effectiveness. The I-Search paper is an excellent mechanism for this kind of assignment. The term "I-Search" was coined by Ken Macrorie (1988). The overall goal of the I-Search is "to actively engage students in the research process as they pursue questions of importance that they care about" (Education Development Center, 2007). Regardless of the format, it is the quality of the assignments, including teacher interaction with the student to analyze the process of writing that leads to increased student achievement outcomes.

References

Bangert-Drowns, R., Hurley, M., Wilkinson, B. (2004, Spring). The effects of school-based writing-to-learn interventions on academic achievement: A meta-analysis. Review of educational research. 74(1), 29-58.

Carbonaro, W., Gamoran, A. (2002, Winter). The production of achievement inequality in high school English. American educational research journal. 39(4), 801-827.

Education Development Center, Inc. (2007). The I-Search curriculum unit. Literacy matters. Retrieved September 9, 2007, from http://www.literacymatters.org/content/isearch/intro.htm

Halter, J. Metacognition. San Diego State University. Retrieved September 9, 2007, from http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/Articles/metacognition/start.htm

Kiefer, K. (2007). What is writing to learn? The Writing Across the Curriculum Clearinghouse. Colorado State University. Retrieved September 9, 2007, from http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/pop2d.cfm

Langer, J. (2001, Winter). Beating the odds: Teaching middle and high school students to read and write well. American educational research journal. 38(4), 837- 880.

Macrorie, K. (1988). The I-Search Paper. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann.

NCTE Task Force on SAT and Act Writing Tests (2005, April). The impact of the Act and SAT timed writing tests. National Council of Teachers of English. Retrieved August 12, 2007, from http://www.ncte.org/library/files/About_NCTE/Press_Center/SAT/SAT-ACT-tf-report.pdf

Writing Study Group of the NCTE Executive Committee. (2004, November). Beliefs about the teaching of writing. National Council of Teachers of English. Retrieved August 12, 2007, from http://www.ncte.org/about/over/positions/category/write/118876.htm