Informative and Persuasive Text Composing Strategies for Struggling Writers

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Informative and Persuasive Text Composing
Strategies for Struggling Writers

• Literacy Institute Building Nonfiction Literacy
  Today
• July 12, 2007
• National Geographic Society
• Washington, DC
• Gary A. Troia, Ph.D.
• Michigan State University

www.msularc.org
www.nationalgeographic.com
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Typical Development of Oral Persuasive Abilities

• Children ages 4-6 use emotional appeals and
  enticements nonverbal means used before this
• Students ages 6-8 use more logical appeals, but
  still primarily based on personal experience
  anticipate listener and use polite forms
• Students ages 8-12 use more sophisticated and
  formal forms of persuasion that include
  principled arguments with supporting warrants and
  data distancing from experience is evident
• Adolescents and adults use counterarguments to
  anticipate and refute potential disagreements
  other negotiation markers (e.g., degree of
  certainty, obligation and judgment, endorsement)
  are evident

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Typical Development of Written Persuasive
Abilities

• Students ages 10-12 write opinion papers that
  contain primarily emotional appeals based on
  personal experience mirror early oral persuasion
  tactics
• Students ages 12-14 write persuasive papers using
  logical appeals with some negotiation
  coordination of chaining (related statements) and
  centering (topic-focused statements) is evident
• Students ages 14-16 use principled arguments and
  supporting warrants and data in their papers
  negotiation markers like counterarguments are
  included

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Characteristics of Persuasion Attempted by
Struggling Students

• Limited use of syntactic structures (especially
  cohesive ties) important for this genre, such as
• concordant conjuncts (e.g., therefore, similarly,
  consequently) and discordant conjuncts (e.g.,
  yet, however, nevertheless)
• adverbials of concession (e.g., although, if) and
  conditionals (e.g., unless)
• Serious and numerous grammatical errors (e.g.,
  subject-verb agreement, verb tense consistency,
  anaphoric referencing)
• Poor organization
• Impoverished vocabulary and supporting data
• Redundant information
• Limited use of principled arguments
• Over-reliance on oral persuasive discourse
  structure in writing

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Implications for Teaching

• Assess students level of oral persuasive
  development to determine expectations for
  development in composition skills
• Make oral discourse structures transparent to
  students so that they can effectively incorporate
  them into their writing
• Provide explicit instruction in literate
  vocabulary and syntactic constructions to give
  students the tools to upgrade from oral discourse
  patterns
• Make instruction developmentally responsive, that
  is, design activities that help students progress
  from where they are currently in their
  development
• Use activities that simultaneously develop oral
  and written persuasive discourse skills (e.g.,
  students write argumentative papers and engage in
  debate about the same topics)
• Help students automatize text transcription
  skills (e.g., handwriting, spelling) to permit
  them to write in the genres they can speak

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Persuasive Paper Example
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Procedures for Developing Deep Genre Knowledge
for Writing Informational/Expository Text Example

• Immersion/Planting the Seed (weeks one and two)
• Teacher introduces expository text structure
• Teacher finds, sorts, and reads short expository
  touchstone texts and examines their structures
  with the class
• Students create an expert list (What I Know
  About) in their writing notebooks OR identify
  3-4 guiding questions about a few topics of
  interest about which they have limited knowledge
  and a human information source to interview
  (interview questions can be drafted and responses
  recorded in the writing notebook)
• Teacher introduce genre focusthe feature article
  (for younger students, a how-to book or all-about
  book may be a more suitable form)
• Students read exemplary feature articles from
  student-relevant materials such as Ranger Rick,
  Time for Kids, Sports Illustrated for Kids,
  Childrens Digest, and National Geographic Kids
• Class creates chart listing key elements of a
  feature article
• Planning/Growing the Seed (weeks three and four)
• Students identify a seed idea (i.e., something at
  which they are an expert or a topic for
  investigation) which would permit them to draft a
  feature article like those examined
• Students conduct partner interviews to identify
  potential readers interest and questions about
  the selected topicrecord notes in writing
  notebook
• Students create double-column entries in the
  writing notebook to record facts on one side and
  reflections, questions, and opinions about each
  fact on the other side
• Students record responses to key questions in
  writing notebook
• How did you learn about this?
• Why is this important to you?
• Why do other people need to learn about this?
• What are special things about this you want to
  share?
• Teacher introduces key vocabulary for expository
  writing (e.g., first, next, then, finally, in
  conclusion, therefore, so, however, in contrast)
• Teacher introduces, examines, and demonstrates
  how to use various leads for a feature article
  (e.g., a question, a mini-story, a quotation, an
  astonishing fact)
• Students plan the paper using a planning
  sheet/graphic organizer

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• Drafting/Growing the Seed (week five)
• Students continue to plan using the planning
  sheet
• Students flash-draft (quickly draft) each part of
  the paper separately to avoid over-investment in
  the draft and a reluctance to revise (but
  expectations for a best first draft should be
  communicated)
• Revising/Pruning Grafting (weeks six and
  seven)
• Teacher models and helps students identify and
  cut irrelevant information
• Teacher models and helps students add additional
  details to thin subtopics (using carets or
  numbered notes)
• Teacher models and helps students zoom in on a
  unique or particularly important fact and flesh
  it out
• Students incorporate basic feature article
  elements such as a title, subtitle, byline,
  subheadings, and quotations
• Students revise a minimum of three times, first
  independently, then with a peer, and then with
  the teacher
• Editing/Pruning Grafting (week eight)
• Teacher models and then students use an editing
  checklist
• Students edit a minimum of two times, first
  independently and then with a peer
• Students check spelling by reading the text aloud
  backwards
• Publishing Celebration/Garden Show (week nine)
• Teacher models and then students add additional
  feature article elements such as specialized
  fonts and colors, zoom-in boxes and flash facts,
  and photos, illustrations, graphs, or diagrams
  with captions
• Teacher models and then students use templates to
  format the article
• Teacher models and then students cut and paste
  special effects with a word processor

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Graphic Organizers for Persuasion and Exposition

• Persuasive Discourse

• Expository Discourse
• Cause-Effect
• Compare-Contrast

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Adapted from Singer Bashir, 1999
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Adapted from Ellis Friend, 1991
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Procedures for Enhancing Writing Across the
Curriculum Reading-Writing Connections

• Writing Frames

• KWLH

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• Story Impressions/ Exchange-Compare

• Jigsaw Content Learning

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• SQ3R/SQ2R

• QARs

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• The sun was setting, and as the senator gazed
  out his office window, he could see the
  silhouettes of some of the unique buildings and
  monuments of Washington, D.C. Directly in front
  of him at the other end of the National Mall, the
  stark obelisk of the Washington Monument thrust
  dramatically skyward, its red warning lights
  blinking in the approaching dusk. Although he
  couldn't quite see it, he knew that beyond the
  Washington Monument and the reflecting pool just
  past it, a huge statue of Abraham Lincoln sat
  thoughtfully in the Lincoln Memorial.
• The senator was worried. A bill was before the
  Congress, called Safe Surfing for Safer Schools,
  that would deny federal education dollars to
  states that didn't have laws against internet
  pornography on their books. He was concerned
  about kids having access to dirty pictures, and
  even more concerned about internet predators
  having access to kids. But he also believed
  strongly in the right of people to freely access
  information, even if it meant sometimes children
  might be exposed to adult materials. And it
  seemed dangerous to take money away from schools,
  where the need was desperate, if state
  legislatures balked at this federal pressure on
  them.
• His constituents had let him know in no
  uncertain terms that they supported strict
  standards of decency on the internet. He knew if
  he didn't support the bill, his next election
  opponent would paint him as pro-pornography, and
  anti-child. But he didn't want anything to get in
  the way of providing monetary support to schools
  through federal grants.
• The unique spires of the original Smithsonian
  Institution were getting harder to see, but there
  was still a faint gleam on the green dome of the
  Museum of Natural History. What was the right
  thing to do?