Higher Level Cognitive Skills Predicting Children's Written Performance: A Four-Year Longitudinal Study

• In Event: Multimodality and Multi-Perspectives of Language/Reading Difficulties: From Pathological Intervention to Neurophysiological Optimization

Abstract

1.Objectives or purposes
The goal of the present study was to examine the longitudinal changing patterns of higher-level cognitive skills (morphological and syntactic processing skills)predicting the written performance across genres of writing (narrative, argumentative, and expository) for the same group of children across four years of their writing and reading development (Grade 3 through 6).

2.Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
What is already known about this topic:
 Both lexical knowledge (quality and quantity of words) and syntactic complexity (use of varieties of sentences) contribute to written composition performance.
 Morphological awareness and syntactic processingcould play important roles not only in reading but also in written composition performance.
 Early exposure to different genres of writing and the teaching of genres are important for writing; and cognitive effort such as planning and revision in composition decreases as grade level increases.
What this paper adds:
 Different longitudinal patterns of reading, morphology and syntax contributing to the writing performance of different genres.
 Facility in understanding and producing written genres is acquired gradually, and requires different levels of knowledge and awareness at word and sentence levels.

3. Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted using the writing performance of three genres at the fourth year as the dependent measures. By controlling for the reading abilities of each year, morphological and syntactic processing skills contributed at varied levels to different genres of writing through the four years.

4.Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
The participants in this study were from a longitudinal study on Chinese writing intervention (NSF Grant 31500915 conducted by the first author) from Grade3 through Grade 6. A total of 246 students took part in the study. The following measures of linguistic and writing tasks were group administered, including written composition in narration, exposition, argumentation; two tests of text comprehension, two tasks of syntactic processing, and two tasks of morphological awareness. All the tests/tasks were valid and test-retest reliability value is above .80.

5.Results / conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
The results suggest that the performance of different genres at each academic year from Grade 3 to Grade 6 was accounted for by the progressive change of morphology and syntax at varied levels, with morpho-syntax partitioning their variability uniquely for narration, argumentation and exposition respectively.

6.Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
For narration, writing instructions should focused on morphological-level instruction since the writing instruction begins at Grade 3, and then it should focus on the sentence-level instruction from Grade 4 on. For argumentation, it should emphasizereading instruction at Grades 3 and 4, and then draw attention to the morphological-level instruction at Grade 5, and sentence-level instruction at Grade 6. For exposition, the reading instruction should be consistently focused. Meanwhile, the morphological-level instruction should be attended at Grades 5 and 6 for the purpose of reinforcing the writing performance of exposition.

Authors

• Qun Guan, University of Science and Technology Beijing

• Feifei Ye, The RAND Corporation

• Ye Wang, Teachers College, Columbia University