Abstract
Several recent national studies have shown that students in the United States perform at a remarkably low level on writing tasks (Boyer, 1983; National Assessment of Educational Progress, 1986; National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). The 1986 NAEP “Writing Report Card” surveyed the writing skills of 55,000 students from 4th to 11th grade across the country. Children in this project completed assignments that assessed their informative, persuasive, and imaginative writing skills. After reviewing the children’s work, the authors’ conclusion was that “most students… are unable to write adequately except in response to the simplest of tasks…. Performance in writing in our schools is, quite simply, bad” (NAEP, 1986, pp. 3, 9). There are clearly many factors that contribute to this situation. However; one important factor is that when children first begin to learn to write, their understanding of the requirements of the writing task is limited, and they lack many of the comprehension and memory strategies that expert writers use to cope with the cognitive demands of the writing task.
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Beal, C.R. (1989). Children’s Communication Skills: Implications for the Development of Writing Strategies. In: McCormick, C.B., Miller, G.E., Pressley, M. (eds) Cognitive Strategy Research. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-8838-8_8
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