The Influences of Mode of Discourse, Experiential Demand, and Gender on the Quality of Student Writing.

The influences of mode of discourse, experiential demand, and gender on quality of student writing were examined in this study of eighth-grade students who participated in statewide assessments of writing during 1989 and 1990. Eighteen writing tasks were administered, classified by mode (narrative, descriptive, and expository) and by experiential demand (direct experience, imagined experience, and outside knowledge). A multivariate analysis of variance was conducted using five dependent variables to assess writing quality (content /organization, style, sentence formation, usage, and mechanics) and three independent variables (mode of discourse, experiential demand, and gender). The results suggest that mode of discourse, experiential demand, and gender are significant predictors of writing quality. Narrative writing tasks elicited the highest ratings followed by descriptive writing tasks and expository writing tasks in that order. Writing tasks that required more personal responses (direct and imagined experiences) tended to elicit essays that received higher ratings than writing tasks that required impersonal or outside knowledge. The quality of writing was more highly rated for females than for males with effect sizes ranging from .33 for content /organization to .49 for mechanics.