Intervention to improve writing in Primary students

A journey towards the written word

Abstract

Data from regional and national reports suggest that text writing is a less studied problem, although very clearly reported by teachers as an area of deep difficulty for students. The objective of this study is to explore the results of the intervention of the comprehensive development and literacy program “QA” in the writing of words and texts of a group of first and second year primary school students in Argentina, and to compare the results with a group from the same school that has received a type of teaching based on the Whole Language approach.

For this purpose, an exploratory and longitudinal design was carried out in which the writing of words and texts was evaluated pre intervention (at the beginning of first grade) and post intervention (before the end of that year and in the middle of second grade). Among the differences found among the groups, in favor of the intervention group, the following findings stand out: an improvement in basic transcription processes (writing words with syllabic complexity, greater length and low frequency), an increase in the number of words used in textual production, better legibility, punctuation and the presence of temporal markers. In the narrative process, events are related in a cohesive way and are composed, in most cases, of a scene, an orientation, a complication and a resolution. From these results it is clear that, in order to achieve adequate performance in students' written production, systematic intervention in the teaching of writing that addresses all the aspects included in the program presented, starting with teacher training and planned teaching, is essential.