Effects of Instructional Strategies, Grade, and Sex on Students’ Persuasive Writing

Abstract

Children come to school with an idea of narrative structure, but their knowledge of persuasive writing is less developed. Results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate that students perform poorly on persuasive writing tasks. To what extent this is a result of a lack of logical thinking skills and to what extent it is a result of problems with instruction are not known. The present experiment was designed to identify the effects of instruction, grade level, and sex on students’ persuasive writing. Children in grades 4, 6, and 8 were instructed in writing with one of four instructional strategies. Their performance was then evaluated through analytic scoring of their efforts with standard writing prompts administered immediately after treatment and again 2 weeks later. The results showed that older children wrote better than younger ones; that girls wrote better than boys immediately after the study but not 2 weeks later; and that treatment effects approached statistical significance.