Children’s writing of argumentative texts: Effects of indirect instruction

AbstractThis study reports on grade 4 children’s (Ss) knowledge of constraints and characteristics of persuasive written requests (RQ). i)All Ss wrote a first RQ asking money to improve their computer lab.ii)Experimental (E) and control (C) Ss evaluated 4 different RQ.iii)selected and ordered, out of 30 scrambled sentences, those appropriate for a “good” RQ.iv)A week later, E Ss had a collective “training discussion” on requests.v)A week later, E and C Ss wrote a second RQ asking money for their science lab. Results pertaining to different aspects of the produced RQ showed that the training did have some effects but both groups improved in their II RQ. The results were interpreted as suggesting that both groups actually learned what an appropriate request is by carefully evaluating the 4 requests and by constructing a request from a sentence list.