Eckhoff, Barbara. (1983). How Reading Affects Children's Writing. Language Arts, 60 (5), 607-616.
Introduction
This study questions the influence of children's reading on their writing
development. The study's purpose was to explore the possible effects of
children's reading on their writing. The study hypothesizes that the
linguistic structure, format, and style of a basal reader would have an impact
on children's writing due to the fact that children read these texts more
often than other kinds of literature. In addition, since the two Basal reading
series were different, the researcher predicted that the elements found in one
series would predominantly occur in the children's writing when reading that
series.
Method
This study involved seventeen children reading a “Basal A” reading
series and twenty children reading a different reading series, the “Basal B”
reading series. The data
collected included stories from both the Basal A and the Basal B reading series
and the children's writing samples. The stories were categorized as
expository, narrative, or fairy tale from the Basal reading series.
Twenty to twenty-five five-sentences passages were sampled from each
Basal reading series to represent the different reading categories. Two writing
stimuli from the 1969-70 National Assessment of Educational Progress were
administered to gather the children's writing samples. Also, the t-units or
number of words were evaluated for the two Basal reading series and the
children's writing samples. To
determine if outside reading would influence the outcome of the results, the
Huck Inventory of Children's Literature, which is a multiple-choice test that
assesses information about fairy tales, was administered.
Results
In the analysis of the research data, the actual text and children's
writing samples were analyzed for style, format, and frequency of linguistic
structures. The results found that Basal A reading series text included the
style and complexity of writing found in literacy prose and Basal B reading
series text presented a simplistic style and form of writing.
In comparison of t-units, the results revealed no statistical differences
between the two texts. In the analysis of the writing samples, the
linguistic structures that the Basal A reading series readers wrote had more
elaborate and complex sentence structures compared to the simple sentence
structures written by Basal B reading series readers. Children reading Basal A
reading series wrote more words per t-unit compared to Basal B reading series
readers. The additional words
per t-unit written by the Basal A reading series children revealed the use of
more complex verb forms and structures, such as subordinate clauses, infinitive
phrases, and participial phrases that were encountered in the Basal A reading
series. The analysis of the format and style of the Basal A reading series
children's writing reflected longer written sentences and the use of
punctuation. The writing samples
from Basal B reading series readers presented shorter one-line sentences, the
use of the word “and” to begin a sentence, and overuse of the word “too”
at the end of sentence which predominately appeared in this reading series. The
results of the Huck Inventory of Children's Literature assessment scores
presented the knowledge of fairy tales were equal in both Basal A and Basal B
reading series readers. Thus,
children's outside reading did not have an influence in the differences found
in the children's writing samples.
Discussion
In conclusion, the study found a correlation between the basal text read and
the children's writing ability. The linguistic complexity of the sentence
structures were represented in the Basal A reading series readers' writing
samples compared to the Basal B reading series readers' writing samples.
Even though these findings are remarkable, future studies should be
considered to question the children's linguistic abilities, curriculum design,
and teaching of reading and writing. The
study's results reveals important implications for publishers of basal
readers. Since what children read
effect their reading development, publishers should not be oversimplifying the
basal text and/or introducing stylistic elements and text formats that are not
consistent with written English. The
basal reader should help children learn read as well as provide models of
written language.
[Return to Additional References]