Modelling the Development of Written Composition

Transcription

Modelling the Development
of Written Composition
Denis Alamargot* & Michel Fayol**
*Laboratory CeRCA-CNRS - University of Poitiers - France
**Laboratory LAPSCO-CNRS - University Blaise Pascal - Clermont-Ferrand - France
Alamargot, D. & Fayol, M. (2009). Modelling the development of written composition. In R. Beard, D.
Myhill, M.Nystrand & J. Riley (Eds). Handbook of Writing Development (pp. 23-47). Sage. United Kingdom.
WRITING DEVELOPMENT: MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES
Thursday 2nd – Friday 3rd July 2009
Jeffery Hall, Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H OAL
1
vendredi 21 août 2009
Introduction
2
1 Introduction
•
« A developmental model of written production should predict both the course
of the writing processes (ie the processing strategies) and the characteristics
of the end product (ie the textual quality and quantity), in the light of the
writer’s general development, his/her specific writing expertise and the
learning context.»
•
•
Such a model does not yet exist...
Nevertheless major advances :
- in experimental studies (Berninger et al., 2002; Bourdin and Fayol, 1994;
Chanquoy, Foulin and Fayol, 1990; Graham, 2006; Swanson and Berninger, 1996);
- in theoretical models (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1987; Berninger and Swanson,
1994; De La Paz and Graham, 2002; Graham, Harris and Mason, 2005;
McCutchen, 1996; McCutchen, 2000; Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1991)
3
1 Introduction
•
Models are not detailed: conceptions of writing research have been
based on two different and, until now, relatively independent approaches
to verbal production (Fayol, 2002).
‣
The first one:
‣
The second one:
•
- research of a largely fundamental nature,
- inspired mainly by generativist-type linguistic models,
- establishing an integrative psycholinguistic theory of verbal production,
- focus almost exclusively on the production of words and sentences, the
basic units of formal linguistics.
- initially more reliant on social demand,
- several production models in order to improve the way in which
- utterances or texts are organized,
- they are processed by those who are called upon to perceive and
understand them.
Opposition between the two categories of units: sentence / discourse
4
1 Introduction
•
The first approach - Sentence - Psycholinguistic approach
‣
Lexical and syntactic processing has therefore been studied from a
psycholinguistic perspective that is strongly inspired by models of oral
verbal production.
‣
Initially based mainly on Levelt’s model (Levelt, 1989, 1999; Levelt, Roelofs
and Meyer, 1999), derived from the research carried out by Garrett (1980)
and closely associated with the analysis of production errors.
‣
Subsequently, systematic use has been made of the classic paradigms of
experimental psychology reaction time measures, often associated with a
priming task.
‣
These studies have paid very little attention to the question of
development, even though Levelt (1998) himself points out that this was a
central issue for early psycholinguistics research.
5
1 Introduction
•
The second approach - Text composition - Cognitive approach
‣
Involves processes that go beyond isolated words and sentences,
‣
Cognitive perspective:
- information processing, rhetoric and communication,
- problem-solving activity, where a communicative goal has to be reached
by managing a set of varied constraints, including the characteristics of the
recipient, the type of text and the availability of domain knowledge and
linguistic knowledge.
‣
Hayes and Flower’s initial model (1980) is a perfect illustration:
- emphasis on the planning, formulation and revision components,
- as well as on the management of constraints in the course of the activity
and the dynamics of the resulting processes (Flower and Hayes, 1980).
‣
The methods, think-aloud protocols (Hayes and Flower, 1983) and double
and triple tasks – (Kellogg, 1987, 1988; Levy and Ransdell, 1996a), are
therefore intended to define the time course of processes and/or
attentional demands.
6
1 Introduction
•
The first approach - Sentence - Psycholinguistic approach
‣
the aim is to identify the units involved in writing (semantic,
orthographic, phonological and graphemic units, motor
programmes),
‣
together with the various processes and their time course in a
system of modular processing, organized according to a precise
architecture.
‣
Researchers have to reduce the field of possibilities and generally focus
on the production of isolated units (word, letter and sentence
production), sacrificing the ecological validity of the tasks they
administer and the role of superordinate dimensions.
7
1 Introduction
•
The second approach - Text composition - Cognitive approach
‣
identifying
- the larger processing components (planning, formulation, revision,
execution),
- the strategies for their implementation,
- the effect of their use on the resulting text quantity and quality.
‣
Researchers regard the activity as a single, complex whole, and this
sometimes leads them to adopt a global viewpoint, thus neglecting
the more fine-grained analysis of individual processes.
•
Models remain relatively imprecise insofar as the nature of the linguistic
and orthographic processes involved in formulation are concerned. This
is all the more paradoxical given that these processes lie at the heart of
the writing development and impose certain constraints (Fayol, 1999)
8
1 Introduction
•
Formulation...
‣
Neglected by writing models in particular and by the cognitive
approach to writing in general - Adult-Expert centered...
‣
Experts are supposed to:
‣
Formulation processes are generally regarded as relatively accessible
and free of constraints for expert writers
- have acquired their language’s orthographic rules and proceduralized the
motor programmes ;
- transcribe and execute a message without incurring any of the costs
associated with these processes.
- even in adults, the written modality has a higher implementation cost that the
oral one (Bourdin and Fayol, 2002).
•
For beginning writers, for whom graphomotor skills and spelling are still
in the process of being acquired and structured, formulation represents
the bulk of the processes, constraints and difficulties.
9
1 Introduction
•
In our opinion no developmental approach to written composition can
be complete without analyzing:
‣
the acquisition (construction of processes and representations) of
the formulation component in all its dimensions, including spelling
which, up to now, has mainly been tackled within the framework of
classic psycholinguistics,
‣
the functional development of this component, in terms of learning,
the automation of certain processes and strategic control,
‣
the realtime management of the implementation of the different
components, whose interactiveness depends on their respective
efficiency at a given level of expertise.
10
From a general to
a developmental model
of written production
11
From a general to a developmental
model of written production
•
Several publications have described and discussed existing models of
written production and their successive updates (for summaries, see Alamargot
and Chanquoy, 2001; Butterfield, 1994; Fayol, 1997a, 2002; Levy and Ransdell, 1996b; MacArthur,
Graham and Fitzgerald, 2006; Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1991; Zesiger, 1995).
•
All these authors agree that the activity of written composition draws
on:
- two types of knowledge: content being evoked (theme of the text) and linguistic
knowledge (lexical, syntactic and rhetorical features),
- temporary memory (generally referred to as working memory) to maintain and
handle information,
- a dynamic situation, where the text being produced depends on the goals that
have been set, the recipient, the production conditions and the text produced so far,
- the existence of three components – planning, formulation and revision,
- they must also be coordinated and managed in order to ensure their seamless
implementation and the fluency of the production.
12
•
Four critics to the general framework of text composition
1. Based on data yielded by studies of adults. It cannot, therefore, be
immediately transposed to children, nor is it necessarily adapted to
learning issues.
2. The formulation component and its constituent processes have never
been properly defined and subjected to detailed investigation.
3. Varying degrees of importance given to the different components during
realtime production. Despite the data reported by Kellogg (1987, 1988), we only
have very general information about the dynamics of composition, which encompasses
all the dimensions involved, from planning to graphic execution.
4. The precise effects of processing overload on the various components
that have been implemented (e.g. do orthographic difficulties have an
impact in real time on the planning of ideas?).
13
•
Despite these limitations, this framework has nonetheless been the
driving force behind numerous studies of the evolution of performances
over the 6- to 20-year age range and on the factors thought to
influence this evolution.
•
It has also led to the construction of two developmental models:
•
Bereiter and Scardamalia’s (1987) model,
•
Berninger and Swanson’s (1994) model.
14
•
Bereiter and Scardamalia’s (1987) model:
•
Two categories of strategies: the knowledge-telling strategy and the knowledgetransforming strategy.
•
Written composition initially takes the form of the straightforward transcription of
knowledge (knowledge-telling strategy). The text is composed by formulating ideas as
and when they are retrieved from long-term memory, without any reorganization of the
text’s conceptual content or linguistic form.
- This composition mode, which is exclusive to beginning writers, may result in a good-quality
production, as in the case of narratives, for example.
•
Knowledge-transforming strategy is more elaborate, more frequently observed in
adolescents (from the age of 14 years onwards) and adults. Reorganizing domain
knowledge in line with rhetorical and linguistic constraints (and vice-versa), and the
state of the text produced so far (Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1991).
- This problem requires the writer to constantly monitor the gap between production (the text
underway) and intention, and to reduce this gap by creating new contents (under the influence
of pragmatic/rhetorical constraints) or new rhetorical/pragmatic goals (under the influence of
domain constraints).
15
•
Berninger and Swanson’s (1994) model.
•
A developmental version of Hayes and Flower’s model (1980) and a
more in-depth definition of formulation:
- text generation: involves the transformation of ideas into linguistic representations processing of words, sentences, paragraphs and texts);
- transcription: translation of representations into written symbols. This allows
phonological and orthographic coding (spelling and grammar), text segmentation
(punctuation, cohesion) and fine motor skill (graphomotor execution) operations to
take place.
•
One of the characteristics of this model is that it sets a specific
timetable for :
- the emergence and complexification of the three components : Formulation,
Revision and Planning,
- their progressive interaction in WM.
16
•
Two key points arise:
•
the problems raised by formulation have been neglected.
•
the factors likely to affect the improvement of written composition,
have only been broached elusively.
This component, which is only vaguely defined in Hayes and Flower’s model (1980),
is only partially studied in Levelt’s model (1989), which restricts itself to lexical and
syntactic production. When it comes to development, Bereiter and Scardamalia’s
model does not even mention formulation, as though it were not a problem.
Berninger and Swanson’s model, on the other hand, gives it pride of place and raises
the problem of its development and its gradual coordination with the other
components.
Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) indicate that the adoption of the knowledgetransforming strategy depends on an increase in planning abilities (making it
possible to construct increasingly complex goals) and in short-term memory
span (for the active maintenance of the constraints inherent to the problemsolving activity). They do not, however, cite any empirical data to support this
conception. Nor do they mention the possible impact of instruction and its
relationship with increased abilities.
17
•
Better defined by Berninger et al.,:
•
It accounts for the effects of the proceduralization of processes as a
result of practice and conscious strategies of process implementation.
- the functioning of these three components is constrained by the writer’s working
memory span and metacognitive knowledge,
- these two dimensions are responsible for writing development and inter-individual
differences,
- twofold control of processes via the automation of ‘low-level’ components, which
frees up resources and allows a greater number of processes to be engaged, and
metacognition, which permits the management of production according to goals and
products, is particularly interesting.
18
Experimental example:
assessing the development
of expertise
19
Using eye and pen movements to trace the development
of writing expertise: case studies of a 7th, 9th and
12th grader, graduate student, and professional writer
Alamargot, D.*, Plane, S.**, Lambert, E.* & Chesnet, D.***
*Laboratory CeRCA, GDR 2657, CNRS - University of Poitiers
**Laboratory MoDyCo, GDR 2657, CNRS, IUFM de Paris - University of Paris-Sorbonne
*** MSHS, CNRS - University of Poitiers
(in press) Reading and Writing
Objectives
Aim
‣
To enhance our understanding of the development of writing expertise
and associated processing strategies, actually in author, regarded here as
a ‘super-expert’.
‣
to clarify our understanding of the relationship between low- and high-level
processing, the way it evolves, and the impact it has on the characteristics of
the resulting text.
‣
to conduct a more fine-grained description of processing strategies, and
their temporal course, a “case study” approach was adopted, whereby a
comprehensive range of measures was used to assess processes within four
writers with different levels of expertise (from grade 7 to graduate
student), compared with an author (super-expert).
Theoretical Framework
Development of text composition
‣
Written production relies on learning. For this very reason, it can always be
improved upon, even in adults.
‣
Berninger and Swanson (1994):
‣
‣
-
elaboration and articulation in WM of cognitive processes of writing
(planning, translating, and reviewing and revising) - (from grade 1 to 9),
-
capacity theory: low level vs high level processing
Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987):
-
beginning writers and older immature writers use the so-called “knowledgetelling” strategy.
-
from 12 years (grade 7) onwards, a more complex and costly strategy
gradually emerges, so-called “Knowledge Transforming”, becoming fully
operational at around the age of 16 years (high school grades 11-12).
Kellogg (2008):
-
in adults: “Knowledge crafting”: articulation between text, audience and
knowledge (between 22 and 42 years).
The role of the text-produced-so-far
‣
Adjustment between intention and realization,
‣
Reading and modifying the text, creativity based on the previous text.
We believe that the reading of the previous text passes through three successive
developmental phases.
1. Knowledge-telling strategy (Grades 5 to 7): to compose texts step-by-step, articulating
the different idea units locally as the composition advances. The rereading of the previous text
is restricted to the most immediate segments.
2. Knowledge-transforming strategy (Grade 9 to 12, graduate students): to compose a
more highly-structured text, with greater overall coherence and therefore a greater element
of creativeness. To reread the previous text more frequently, involving large sections of text
each time, enable him or her to grasp the content in its entirety.
3. Knowledge crafting strategy (Author and professional writers), can be expected to
compose equally creative texts but with less recourse to the previous text. High-level
strategies and procedures acquired through practice and experience enable them to
memorize ever larger chunks of the previous text (e.g. drawing on long-term working
memory) and elaborate coherent, creative, and original texts, relying on rhetorical processes
stored in long-term memory.
-> Expected developmental effect (bell curve) for pauses and flows ;
reading the text produced so far.
Method
Participants
‣
an author (author and journalist, regarded as a super expert),
‣
a graduate student (22-year-old psychology MA student, regarded as an expert),
‣
a 12th grader (17-years-old, with intermediate expertise),
‣
a 9th grader (14-years-old, an advanced novice),
‣
a 7th grader (12-years-old, a beginning novice),
‣
All were left-handed females following an ordinary curriculum in school
or at university (with the exception of the author).
Task
‣
‣
Participants were asked to compose a text by extending a narrative text
(Incipit: excerpt taken from «Belle du Seigneur» - A. Cohen).
Neither the duration of composition nor the length of the finished text
were imposed. Crossings-out and rewrites were allowed.
!
Information displayed on the screen during the composition task.
As she walked past the library, Aude told herself that only a door
stood between her and the man she absolutely needed to have it
out with. How she longed to get it over and done with! She had
had enough – enough of being persecuted by that smile. He had
definitely followed her that morning. She would make it quite clear
to him that he had to leave, that it was simply appalling to toy with
Jacques and Adrienne in that fashion. With mounting trepidation
and the uneasy feeling that she was making a mistake, she pushed
the door open. As she crossed the threshold, she experienced an
intoxicating thrill and perhaps, too, the dreadful joy of following the
wrong path as she had always been destined to do.
- ‘I’m disturbing you.’
- ‘What?’ he asked, with a mixture of spite, stupefaction, absentmindedness and consummate cleverness.
- ‘I’m disturbing you.’
- ‘Yes, yes, please do.’
She went up to the shelves and made a pile of books, which
promptly collapsed.
- ‘You’ve finished your bibliographic research?’ he inquired gravely,
giving a mutinous tug to the cord of his moiré dressing gown.
She cast around in vain for an insolent rejoinder and moved
forward, with absolutely no idea of what she was going to say.
Experimental situation
‣
a Cintiq 18SX LCD tablet (Wacom Company Ltd) synchronized with an Eye
Link II eyetracker (SR Research). The Eye and Pen software controlled the
apparatus and recorded the flow of eye and pen movements.
!
‘Eye and Pen’ data
The author composing her text.
Measures
‣
Temporal characteristics of the written trace:
‣
‣
Time on task (min),
Flow of composition (time taken to write a word, including all
writing pauses - s/word),
‣ Execution speed (physical distance covered by the pen - when the
pen tip was in contact with the tablet and moving across it – divided
by the writing time - excluding all writing pause),
‣ Pause duration (≥ 15 ms - three successive samples) - the tip of the
pen is not in contact with the tablet (no pressure),
‣ Eye parameters: fixation (≥ 100 ms - low fixation in reading):
- frequency per word (fixpw)
- fixation duration per word (mspw).
Measures
‣
Linguistic-Semantic analysis
‣
‣
Number of ideas per word and number of new ideas per word,
Identification of enunciative modalities: absence of presence of:
- narrative plane (narrative in 3rd-person singular past tense),
- dialogue between protagonists (direct discourse anchored in
present),
- protagonists’ interior discourse, in the narrative past tense.
‣ Introductory mode: The beginning of each text was classified
according to the type of compositional process used for this mode
(e.g. dialogue).
‣ LSA analysis (latent semantic analysis): assess incipit-script similarity,
the LSA distance was computed by means of pairwise comparisons
(document-to-document space), using the “Français Total” database.
The similarity between the two semantic spaces was rated on a scale
of -1 to +1 (Foltz, Kintsch & Landauer, 1998).
Results
Temporal parameters
‣ Overall parameters
Number of words
Total time on task (min)
Prewriting duration (min)
Composition duration (min)
Postwriting duration (min)
Flow of composition (s/word)
Execution speed (cm/s)
Grade 7
Grade 9
Grade 12
Graduate
Author
13.00
22.06
1.02
13.78
7.27
63.60
2.89
155.00
19.25
2.29
16.78
0.17
6.50
4.78
95.00
14.04
4.49
9.41
0.14
5.95
4.64
171.00
11.43
2.10
9.27
0,06
3.25
5.20
145.00
6.49
0.96
5.51
0.02
2.28
5.71
Temporal parameters
‣ Distribution of pauses (≥ 15 ms)
Composition pause duration and location in the 7th grader’s script - (Eye and Pen© preview function: the diameter of the circle is
proportional to the duration of the pause and the centre of the circle represents the precise point at which the pause occurred.
Composition pause duration and location in the 9th grader’s script.
Temporal parameters
Composition pause duration and location in the author’s script.
Temporal parameters
Grade 7
Grade 9
Grade 12
Graduate
Author
6220
(29687)
4.23
0.41
515
125
180939
189
(40)
1856
(5069)
2.54
0.72
471
32
47086
106
(26)
1156
(4016)
3.77
0.73
210
16
43615
102
(39)
604
(2396)
3.01
0.56
167
20
33970
81
(16)
276
(417)
2.57
0.31
158
23
4294
78
(17)
Q2 mean duration
(S.D.)
416
(93)
277
(96)
172
(16)
130
(19)
129
(17)
Q3 mean duration
(S.D.)
624
(60)
648
(111)
409
(142)
296
(80)
194
(25)
Q4 mean duration
(S.D.)
23248
(56938)
6350
(8679)
3922
(7368)
1908
(4584)
695
(669)
Mean duration
(S.D.)
Pause frequency per word (ppw)
Pause/composition duration %
Median
Minimum
Maximum
Q1 mean duration
(S.D.)
Temporal parameters
‣ Fixation (≥ 100 ms) frequency per word for the source and text, according
to level of expertise and writing period.
Prewriting
Composition
Postwriting
Grade 7
Grade 9
Grade 12
Graduate
Author
All
Incipit
Incipit
0.46
1.35
1.67
3.22
2.53
1.29
1.46
1.50
1.00
1.11
1.424
1.694
Text
20.92
5.66
4.40
1.35
1.57
6.78
Incipit
Text
2.53
19.54
0.01
0.09
0.02
0.11
0.02
0.02
0.00
0.01
0.516
3.954
8.96
2.13
1.67
0.87
0.74
All
‣ Fixation (≥ 100 ms) duration per word (ms) for the source and text,
according to level of expertise and writing period.
Prewriting
Composition
Postwriting
All
Grade 7
Grade 9
Grade 12
Graduate
Author
All
Incipit
Incipit
206
219
732
991
1371
513
618
648
294
268
644
528
Text
14688
3859
4237
2161
1695
5328
Incipit
Text
1341
8656
2
16
12
27
8
8
--6
341
1743
5022
1120
1232
689
566
Temporal parameters
‣ Distribution of fixations (percentage) during compositional pauses (pen
raised), according to pause distribution (quartiles), zone (incipit, text,
outside) and level of expertise (fixations ≥ 100 ms).
Grade 7
Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4
All
Grade 9
Grade 12
Graduate
Author
All
Incipit
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.38
5.45
1.166
Text
0.00
0.46
0.74
5.15
9.09
3.088
Averting
0.00
0.00
0.15
0.76
0.00
0.182
Incipit
0.00
0.07
0.00
0.57
3.94
0.916
Text
0.36
0.91
1.03
4.01
8.18
2.898
Averting
0.00
0.59
0.00
0.00
0.3
0.178
Incipit
0.00
0.00
0.15
0.76
3.33
0.848
Text
0.53
3.19
2.79
5.73
11.21
4.69
Averting
0.00
0.78
0.74
0.38
0.61
0.502
Incipit
41.89
36.11
32.65
48.28
12.42
34.27
Text
46.7
49.12
54.71
29.2
40.61
44.068
Averting
10.52
8.78
7.06
4.77
4.85
7.196
Incipit
41.89
36.18
32.8
49.99
25.14
37.2
Text
47.59
53.68
59.27
44.09
69.09
54.744
Averting
10.52
10.15
7.95
5.91
5.76
8.058
Parallel processing
The author composing her text.
Linguistic-semantic analysis
‣ Analysis of script characteristics (including Latent Semantic Analysis - LSA).
Grade 7
Grade 9
Grade 12
Graduate
Author
No. ideas
3
29
20
32
28
No. original ideas
2
24
15
20
23
66%
83%
75%
62%
82%
.55
.68
.70
.69
.76
% original ideas
LSA similarity between
incipit and text
Enunciative modalities
Introductory mode
Narrative
Narrative
Dialogue
Direct
Direct
dialogue
dialogue
Narrative
Dialogue
Interior discourse
Narrative
Interior discourse
Reformulated
Reformulated
borrowing then
borrowing then
dialogue
dialogue
Narrative
Dialogue
Interior discourse
Dialogue with topic
change
Interpretation
Developmental ‘bell’ curve
The expected developmental effect (bell curve) on:
- the reading of the previous text, and
- the production time course (pauses and flows)
turned out to concern solely:
- the incipit, and
- the reading density (fixations: frequency and duration).
As a result,
- only fixation frequency and duration for the incipit displayed an initial rise (in students)
and subsequent fall (in adults).
- the 12th grader proved to occupy a pivotal position in this developmental trend. Her overall
planning of the text, based on a particularly dense reading of the incipit during the prewriting period, allowed her
subsequently to compose the text by adopting the same incipit reading mode as the adults.
- the latter read the incipit rather more scantily, and partly during graphomotor execution,
this being especially true of the author.
Regarding pauses and flows indicators, and the text-produced-so-far, there was a steady:
- acceleration in the time course of both low-level processes (short pauses, writing speed)
and high-level ones (long pauses),
- reduction in reading density for the text produced so far (expertise-related decrease in
fixation frequency and duration).
Temporal
Performance
Complexification
of High-Level processes
Proceduralization
of High-Level processes
Parallel processes
High level
(incipit reading)
Automatization
of Low-Level processes
Grade 7
Grade 9
Low level
Grade 12
Graduate
Author
From Grade 7 to 12
With practice and as they move first through junior high, then high school, writers are gradually
able to automate the set of low-level processes involved in text production.
- This automatization is reflected in their ability to engage in different processes in
parallel, thereby reducing the dispersion of pause durations with expertise.
Furthermore, the gradual acquisition of composition skills allows them to:
- undertake more overall planning, reflected in the present study in longer incipit reading
times.
Reading the incipit allows writers not only to familiarize themselves with it but also to
elaborate their own text, but this dual task can only be performed once they have attained a
certain level of expertise.
For the author (super expert; knowledge-crafting strategy)
A comparison of her performances with those of the graduate student revealed:
- a considerable acceleration in the high-level processes: the production flow was particularly fast, the
longest pauses (Q4) particularly short and the reading of the previous text (incipit/text produced so far) particularly
scant, frequently performed in parallel with the formulation and graphomotor processes.
- in terms of content, the author’s script was clearly the most coherent as well as the most
creative. The author treated the incipit as though it were her own and constructed a text that was based on it but
also carried it further.
The speed of these processes suggests that, as a result of practice, they had undergone a
considerable degree of proceduralization = reducing the cost of processing by allowing the
author to retrieve procedures from long-term memory and to implement several different
processes simultaneously.
Two consequences: it allows the author:
- to quickly elaborate the text’s overall plan, retain the product of this overall planning in
memory and therefore consult the incipit less both before and during composition.
- to read the incipit and the text produced so far whilst writing. She did this more
frequently than the graduate student, despite the fact that both adults displayed the same
levels of graphomotor automatization and formulation (similar writing speeds and shorter
pauses).
Discussion
Case studies: limitation and perspective
While the results paint an interesting and coherent landscape, they cannot be regarded as
anything other than a case study-based description.
Nevertheless, understanding the behavior of individual writers, characterized by a degree
of uniqueness (notably authors, i.e. super experts), is a legitimate research topic, providing
an opportunity to pinpoint specific expert strategies.
Observing an individual is a standard method in cognitive psychology, especially when it
comes to modeling complex mental processes (cf. seminal study by Newell & Simon, 1972).
It was this method that gave rise to the developmental approach to text production, as the
heuristic model developed by Hayes and Flower (1980) was based on the verbalizations of
a single writer while producing an argumentative text.
Factors in the development
of written composition:
maturation and practice
49
Factors in the development of written
composition: maturation and practice
•
The maturation effect. Increases in working memory and metacognitive
capacities
•
The learning of written production occurs at a relatively late stage (at
around the age of 5-6 years for academic learning) and is spread over time
(approximately 10 years for the basic acquisition of composition)
•
This learning is reliant on the child’s general abilities, notably the
development of working memory processing and storage, and the
development of metacognitive and metalinguistic abilities (Kellogg, 2008).
•
Here, once more, in line with the maturation hypothesis of working
memory development, relations between metacognition and writing
processes in writers aged 14-15 years and above has remained largely
unexplored until now.
50
Factors in the development of written
composition: maturation and practice
•
The practice effect. Supports and training.
•
In developmental models, the question of instruction and the hopefully inevitable effects
it has on production processes and performances is generally left to one side, as though
the evolution that is observed had a ‘natural and predetermined’ character.
•
Instructed and related practice play a central role in the learning and development of
written production. It can be regarded as a second factor for development, interacting
with – or at the very least acting alongside – maturation.
•
These varied interventions may involve different processing levels (graphomotor skills,
spelling, text), different processes (planning, formulation, revision) or even the overall
management of the activity (self-regulation: Graham and Harris, 1996).
•
Two categories: support and training.
- They should be further defined, according to whether they are intended to improve a
particular writing process (planning, translating, revision, graphomotor execution) or the
way in which all the writing processes are managed (control and monitoring).
- Supports are generally used to make controlled processes easier (high-level
processes: planning, revision), whereas training is intended to bring about the
automation or proceduralization of lower-level processes (spelling, graphomotor
execution).
51
General conclusion
52
General conclusion
•
•
•
Studying written formulation
•
Understanding the impact of the activity itself: the epistemic effect of
monitoring
Teaching formulation
Understanding the impact of other types of acquisition and knowledge:
the notion of pacemaker
53

Modelling the Development of Written Composition

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