Abstract
The study reported here analyzed Hebrew texts written by 37 7th graders from middle-high SES and 28 7th graders from a low-SES background in order to determine their abilities in writing personal-experience narratives and expository texts on the theme of success and failure. Measures, designed to be age-appropriate as well as genre- and theme-sensitive, related to four textual properties: text size, text content, text structure, and text cohesion. Our findings indicate that Israeli 7th graders of both SES backgrounds are able to produce appropriate personal-experience narratives in terms of text quality and structure. While expositions have not yet caught up with narrative abilities in terms of content quality and conceptual density in this age group, they host richer, denser linguistic expression and their structure predicts good narrative content. The ability to produce a well-proportioned expository was found to predict narrative content. However, 7th graders from low SES background were found to lag behind their high SES peers in gaining command of expository text production. Specifically, better text proportions were found to predict text quality more in high SES than in low SES texts, while better demarcation in one genre predicted better content in the other genre, but only in the high-SES texts. These findings call for special focus on expository reading and writing in educational programs targeting students from deprived backgrounds.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Project Funded by Yad Hanadiv Foundation in Israel.
References
Berman, R. A., & Nir-Sagiv, B. (2007). Comparing narrative and expository text construction across adolescence: A developmental paradox. Discourse Processes, 43, 79–120.
Berman, R. A., & Nir-Sagiv, B. (2009a). The language of expository texts: Developmental perspectives. In M. Nippold & C. Scott (Eds.), Expository discourse in children, adolescents, and adults: Development and disorders (pp. 101–23). New York: Taylor and Francis.
Berman, R. A., & Nir-Sagiv, B. (2009b). Cognitive and linguistic factors in evaluating expository text quality: Global versus local? In V. Evans & S. Pourcel (Eds.), New directions in cognitive linguistics (pp. 421–440). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Berman, R. A., & Ravid, D. (2008). Becoming a literate language user: Oral and written text construction across adolescence. In D. R. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of literacy (pp. 92–111). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Berman, R. A. & Verhoeven L. (Eds.). (2002). Cross-linguistic perspectives on the development of text production abilities in speech and writing. Special issue, Written Language and Literacy, 5, (Special issue), Parts 1 and 2.
Berman, R. A., Nayditz, R., & Ravid, D. (2011). Linguistic diagnostics of written texts in two school-age populations. Written Language and Literacy, 14, 161–187.
Card, N. A., Selig, J. P., & Little, T. D. (Eds.). (2008). Modeling dyadic and interdependent data in the developmental and behavioral sciences. New York: Routledge.
Chafe, W. L. (1994). Discourse, consciousness and time: The flow of language in speech and writing. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Director General Decree. (2007). The Strauss measure for gradeschool resource allocation. Jerusalem: Ministry of Education.
Flower, L., & Hayes, J. (1981). A cognitive process theory of writing. College Composition and Communication, 32, 365–387.
Kenny, D. A., & Ledermann, T. (2010). Detecting, measuring, and testing dyadic patterns in the actor-partner interdependence model. Journal of Family Psychology, 24, 359–366.
Kenny, D. A., Kashy, D. A., & Cook, W. L. (2006). Dyadic data analysis. New York: The Guildford Press.
Levie, R. (2012). Morpho-lexical development in the shadow of language impairment and environmental deprivation. Doctoral dissertation, Tel Aviv University [in Hebrew]
McNamara, D. S., Crossley, S. A., & McCarthy, P. M. (2010). Linguistic features of writing quality. Written Communication, 27, 57–86.
Mourshed, M., Chijioke, C., & Barber, M. (2010). How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better. London: McKinsey and Company.
Murray, D. (2004). Writing to learn. Boston: Wadsworth.
Murray, D. (2012). The craft of revision. Boston: Wadsworth.
Olson, D. (1994). The world on paper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Olson, D. (2006). The documentary tradition in mind and society. In D. R. Olson & M. Cole (Eds.), Technology, literacy, and the evolution of society. Mahwah: Erlbaum.
Ravid, D. (1995). Language change in child and adult Hebrew: A psycholinguistic perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ravid, D. (2005). Emergence of linguistic complexity in written expository texts: Evidence from later language acquisition. In D. Ravid & H. Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot (Eds.), Perspectives on language and language development (pp. 337–355). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Ravid, D. (2006). Semantic development in textual contexts during the school years: Noun scale analyses. Journal of Child Language, 33, 791–821.
Ravid, D. (2012). Spelling morphology: The psycholinguistics of Hebrew spelling. New York: Springer.
Ravid, D., & Berman, R. A. (2006). Information density in the development of spoken and written narratives in English and Hebrew. Discourse Processes, 41, 117–149.
Ravid, D., & Berman, R. A. (2009). Developing linguistic register across text types: The case of Modern Hebrew. Pragmatics and Cognition, 17, 108–145.
Ravid, D., & Berman, R. (2010). Developing noun phrase complexity at school-age: A text-embedded cross-linguistic analysis. First Language, 30, 3–26.
Ravid, D., & Levie, R. (2010). Adjectives in the development of text production: Lexical, morphological and syntactic analyses. First Language, 30, 27–55.
Ravid, D., & Schiff, R. (2006). Morphological abilities in Hebrew-speaking gradeschoolers from two socio-economic backgrounds: An analogy task. First Language, 26, 381–402.
Ravid, D. & Shalom T. (2012). The standards project: Report. Tel Aviv University.
Ravid, D. & Shalom T. (2013). The research study: Report. Tel Aviv University.
Ravid, D., & Tolchinsky, L. (2002). Developing linguistic literacy: A comprehensive model. Journal of Child Language, 29, 419–448.
Ravid, D., Dromi, E., & Kotler, P. (2009). Linguistic complexity in school-age text production: Expository vs. mathematical discourse. In M. A. Nippold & C. M. Scott (Eds.), Expository discourse in children, adolescents, and adults: Development and disorders (pp. 125–156). New York: Psychology Press.
Schiff, D., & Ravid, D. (2012). Linguistic processing in Hebrew-speaking children from low and high SES backgrounds. Reading and Writing, 25, 1427–1448.
Scott, C., & Balthazar, C. (2010). The grammar of information: Challenges for older students with language impairments. Topics in Language Disorders, 30, 288–307.
Scott, C. M., & Windsor, J. (2000). General language performance measures in spoken and written narrative and expository discourse of school-age children with language learning disabilities. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 43, 324–339.
Tolchinsky, L. (2007). Writing and written numbers as source of knowledge. In E. Teubal, J. Dockrell, & L. Tolchinsky (Eds.), Notational knowledge: Developmental and historical perspectives (pp. 135–158). Rotterdam: Sense.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ravid, D., Shalom, T., Dattner, E., Katzenberger, I., Sha’shoua, G. (2016). Top-down Measures in 7th Grade Writing: The Effects of Genre and SES. In: Perera, J., Aparici, M., Rosado, E., Salas, N. (eds) Written and Spoken Language Development across the Lifespan. Literacy Studies, vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21136-7_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21136-7_20
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-21135-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-21136-7
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)