Abstract
This interdisciplinary research, drawing on cognitive psychology and linguistics, extended to middle childhood past research during early childhood or adulthood on thinking aloud prior to written composing. In year 5 of a longitudinal study of typical writing, when cohort 1 was in grade 5 (n = 110 ten year-olds) and cohort 2 in grade 7 (n = 97 twelve year-olds), a cross-sectional study was conducted. Children were first asked to think aloud while they generated ideas and second while they planned their essays to express and defend their opinions on a controversial topic in the region of the United States where they lived. Third, they wrote their essays. Their think-aloud protocols were audio-recorded and later transcribed into writing for analysis. The authors developed and applied rating scales for quality of idea generating and planning in the written transcriptions and quality of opinion expression, opinion defense, organization, and content in the essays children wrote after thinking aloud; total number of words in essays was also counted. Seventh graders scored significantly higher than fifth graders on quality of idea generation but not planning, and higher on all variables rated for quality in the written essays including length. Quality of expressing opinions and defending opinions were uncorrelated in grade 5, but moderately correlated in grade 7. Whether idea generating or planning quality explained unique variance in essays varied with coded written essay variables and grade. Educational applications of results for assessment, assessment-instruction links, instruction in social studies, and theory of mind in persuasive essay writing are discussed.
Highlights
The current study is one of the last in a five-year, overlapping cohort longitudinal study of typical development of writing, reading, listening comprehension, and oral expression
Grade 7 participants were rated higher than the grade 5 participants only on quality of idea generating—not quality of planning
The items identified for the rating scale for quality of idea generation showed that individuals differed in the number of ideas that flowed (Kellogg, 1994) and they differed in meta-cognitive awareness of whether the ideas were or were not relevant to opinion expression or opinion defense
Summary
The current study is one of the last in a five-year, overlapping cohort longitudinal study of typical development of writing, reading, listening comprehension, and oral expression. Because participating children were assessed annually for half a day in the first two to four months of a grade, there was opportunity to collect a rich set of data across early to middle childhood and early adolescence regarding transcription modes (Alstad et al, 2015; Berninger, Abbott, Augsburger, & Garcia, 2009; Berninger et al, 2006), levels of language in language by hand (writing) and language by eye (reading)—word, sentence, and text (Abbott, Berninger, & Fayol, 2010; Berninger & Abbott, 2010; Niedo & Berninger, 2016), integrated reading-writing (Altemeier, Jones, Abbott, & Berninger, 2006; Niedo & Berninger, 2016), and cognitive processes in writing such as idea generation (Berninger, Richards, et al, 2009; Hayes & Berninger, 2010) and planning, reviewing, and revising (Berninger, Abbott, Whitaker, Sylvester, & Nolen, 1995; Berninger, Fuller, & Whitaker, 1996; Berninger, Whitaker, Feng, Swanson, & Abbott, 1996) These studies employed nationally standardized tests with norms and experimenter-designed writing tasks with research norms or researcher-designed coding schemes. Idea generating and planning were studied in separate think-alouds to evaluate if the observed pre-writing, thinking processes in oral think-alouds for idea generation and planning did differ from one another
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