The Impact of Revision and Feedback on the Quality of Children´s Written Compositions
Keywords:
Quality of Textual Production, Revision, Metacognition, WritingAbstract
: Revision is a very important process in promoting evolution in children’s narrative texts, although by the end of primary school students are not self-regulated writers. This is an experimental study in which 45 children in the 4th grade were given a pre-test and a post-test intended to evaluate the quality of their compositions. Between the two tests, 2 experimental groups underwent a training programme designed to improve the quality of their texts using revision processes, in the course of which they wrote 15 compositions. Experimental Group 1 had to revise their compositions according to the guidelines laid down in three different tables (one for misspellings, another for punctuation and cohesion and another for coherence). Experimental Group 2 had the same intervention programme but was also given feedback on the initial version of their compositions. The Control Group wrote the same number of compositions, but was not involved in the revision process. Children from Experimental Groups 1 and 2 improved in the quality of their spelling and the cohesion of their texts when compared with the Control Group. Only children from Experimental Group 2 evolved in the coherence of their texts. There were no differences between the performance of Experimental Group 1 and the Control Group at this level.
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