EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT INSTRUCTIONAL TASKS ON STUDENTS NARRATIVE WRITING

A field experiment was conducted in which children in Grades 3 and 5 were instructed in writing with one of four instructional tasks. The four tasks were (a) writing in response to two pictures in one frame, (b) writing in response to one picture in one frame, (c) writing in response to a story ending, and (d) writing after reading model pieces of narrative writing. Students' narrative writing performance was assessed before and immediately after treatment. There was no significant main effect for treatment. There was a significant main effect for time. The results are discussed in terms of the interaction and overload hypotheses. For both grade levels, the results provide moderately strong support for the interaction hypothesis because all four tasks produced narratives of similar quality.