Why do students write the way they speak?
An overarching problem encountered in many classrooms is having our students write the way they speak. Why do they do this?
Language acquisition is a biologically primary skill, meaning humans will naturally learn how to speak. However, the written word is a skill that must be taught. It is not enough to have students scribing their thoughts in a stream of consciousness. With written text comes distinct language structures that must be modeled and practiced if we want students to go beyond:
‘Hi my name is Chris and I’m going to tell you about why I prefer cats to dogs.’
This leads to a winter’s morning in Australia where several hundred educators tuned in for a session with the Co-Executive Directors of The Writing Revolution (TWR), hosted by Think Forward Educators. This methodology developed by Judith Hochman has become an effective tool for any teacher searching for evidence-based writing instruction. The strategies primarily assist students with writing for learning and retention and are to be used as an overlay that works with all subject areas; easily configured to any content.
At No More Marking we have been able to use Comparative Judgement (CJ) to assist TWR with the measurement of their student writing since 2019. We know the methods are impacting growth. Dr Toni-Ann Vroom and Dr Dina Zoleo spoke of some key issues that we also see across hundreds of student scripts.
Run-ons and fragments are persistent problems for students, along with the earlier mentioned ‘writing the way they speak’. The TWR team pointed out that it is popular and useful to introduce ‘because, but, so’, however this is not enough. They advocate for practising the array of strategies multiple times across varying contexts to provide students with mastery over the sentence.
At No More Marking, we know from examining 10 years of CJ data that there is a correlation between higher-scoring scripts and students who have command over accurately formed sentences. We can see that a growth in scores can also be intuitively broken down into progress at the sentence level.
Note these samples are from different projects that use different scaled score ranges and opposing text types. However, growth over a year is as evident in the US Year 4 sample as it is in the Australian, half a world away.
Growth points to note in either sample:
- More formal voice
- Complete thoughts/accurate sentences
- Use of punctuation
- Attempted paragraphs
- Varied sentence types
- Sentence expansion
We could be even more granular and look deeply at each of the very first sentences.
Even one sentence can tell us many things about what these writers have learnt between time 1 and 2.
US Sample - CJ Scaled Score from 48 to 99
Time 1
‘I like the boock better then you because tyler stud up for his self.’
Time 2
‘Opal met Mrs Franney and became friends with Mrs Franney and was happy about it.’
Australian Sample - CJ Scaled Score from 511 to 545
Time 1
‘Once their was a boat that I was on it was not mine it was my alien friends I was on a adventure to spookily island’
Time 2
‘A dragon held me high in the air, it droped me into a cave I fainted.’
As Dr Toni-Ann Vroom and Dr Dina Zoleo noted, simply adding a conjunction does not result in the kind of difference we would be hoping for. Their studies suggest higher level strategies and examples upon examples that expose students to the language structures they will only encounter in written text. We can see immediately that both writers have a better sense of the level of formality appropriate to their text.
The high-level strategy shared by Dr Zoleo and Dr Vroom is known as Sentence Expansion. This is but one of the many tools in TWR. It was broken down for viewers succinctly.
1. Start with a sentence kernel.
(Do not use a command, ensure it is a complete thought)
2. Start with the ‘who’ and ‘what’ and build from there.
3. Model for students how to begin their sentence with the ‘when’ as this is something we commonly see in language structure.
4. It can be used across all curriculum as shown in this screenshot.
If you would like to delve into this learning more deeply I invite you to join the TFE Writing Network and watch the webinar.
It has always been difficult to determine a true score for a piece of writing given its open-ended nature and uniqueness to its author. We know that people can disagree even with their own judgements between one day and another! We also know that written language has rules and if we can help students embed these rules, language conventions become more common practice.
Assigning a numerical score to writing helps us to sort, not according to the criteria on a rubric, but one against another so we can see the gradations of quality. If we want assessment to be more than just data, if we want it to affect learning, then it needs to provide granular information about where to head next. TWR have provided a great deal of clarity for Australian teachers in this.
The Hochman Method
Note-taking
Outline – paragraph
Basic conjunctions
Appositive
Transitions
Multiple paragraph outline
Revising
The next step for Australian teachers is an understanding of where to head next with our students. Having a powerful statistical measurement of every student provides the next steps for learning and teaching. Going granular and utilising the TWR methodology is a roadmap. A scaled score using Comparative Judgement gives educators a reliable measurement of quality and progress. If you would like to hear more about the August assessment window, you can attend the next information webinar here.
If you were part of the project start of year, you will be able to measure the progress of your students. Don’t worry if you weren’t, the August window will still provide you with a valuable measure in time for end of year and give you a good sense of a cohort going forward.
