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Henrietta Rema Sawyerr December 2nd 2015

ECED 702 Annotated Bibliography

Akdal, D. & Sahin, A. (2014). The effects of intertextual reading approach on the development

of creative writing skills. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, 54, 171-186.

Summary of the argument or thesis, the results, and the conclusions

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of an

intertextual reading approach on the improvement of writing skills among elementary school

fifth grade students. According to this article intertextuality is the sharing of text with others.

Intertextuality is based on three factors. The writer of the text, the reader of the text, and the

content. A pre-test post-test experimental research design was used in this study. Forty two

students took part in this study. A creative writing rubric was designed to collect data. The

creative writing rubric had eight sub-dimensions. These include originality of ideas, fluency of

thoughts, flexibility of thoughts, vocabulary richness, organization, writing style and grammar.

The students were divided into two groups, a control group and a treatment group. The first

group was instructed using the intertextual approach. Students in this group used an intertextual

approach and were able to make connections with other written texts about the same subjects.

Students in the second group also received the same instruction and read the same text. After

completing each text students were instructed to write a narrative essay about the subject of the

text. The results showed that originality of ideas and the vocabulary richness scores of the

students from the test group to whom the intertextual reading approach had been applied, had

higher scores than students in the control group. Results also indicate that by using activities

during the creative writing skill development process original idea generation was established

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and also there was a significant difference in terms of word selection. Thus students learned new

words and could use them with different meanings as well. The results indicated that using the

intertextual reading approach created a significant difference in the vocabulary richness

especially in relation to richness of word meanings, and appropriate usage of words (Akdal &

Sahin, 2014).

An analysis of the relevance, accuracy and quality of the article

This study is relevant because the intertextual reading approach was used to enhance

vocabulary knowledge. The authors provided a detailed description of what writing entails and

also explained the creative writing process and the intertextuality reading approach. This study

utilized the intertextual reading approach as a strategy for creative writing. Even though the

authors defined and explained the intertextual reading approach, I wonder how this process

actually works when teaching students. I also wondered what assessments were used in

measuring the skills developed through the use of the intertextual reading approach and how the

authors analyzed the result in this study. I also thought that the authors should have provided

more information regarding this approach and should have also given an example of how this

approach was used in this study.

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Babayigit, S. (2014). Contributions of word-level and verbal skills to written expression:

Comparison of learners who speak English as a first language (L1) and second language

(L2). Reading and Writing, 27(7), 1207-1229. doi: 10.1007/s11145-013-9482-z


The purpose of this study was to examine the role of word level and verbal skills to

written expression between students who spoke English as their first language and those that

spoke English as their second language. The author mentions that there has be an increase in the

number of English language learners in our classrooms. As a result of this increase, there is a

gap in the writing development of minority language learners who have to learn how to write in a

majority language at schools. Research on school children focus on transcription (spelling and

handwriting), verbal working memory, and vocabulary skills. As a result there is a relationship

between word recognition, spelling and writing skills (Babayigit, 2014). The author identified

the various components of the simple view of writing which entails text generation, transcription

and executive function and noted that often times, children do not engage in executive

functioning skills which entails planning and revising written text. The study focused on text

generation which involved the generation of ideas, verbal skills and word level skills. A total of

one hundred and sixty eight students participated in this study (Babayigit, 2014). The students

who took part in this study were from cultural and linguistically diverse backgrounds and spoke

different languages including Swahili, Somali, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese and Punjabi.

Students were tested on their vocabulary skills, working memory, semantic fluency, word

reading, spelling and writing. The results indicated that students who spoke English as their first

language had an advantage and did perform better in writing than students who spoke English as

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their second language The results also indicated that vocabulary was the strongest correlate of

writing quality and children who do not speak English as their first language may not have

literacy experiences at homes that focus on vocabulary development as their peers who speak

English as their first language. The results also indicate that spelling was related to the writing

performance of both groups. (Babayigit, 2014).


This study was a quantitative study. The author did not provide a detailed description of

the measures and assessment tools that was used in this study, especially since this study took

place in England. The author did not describe the assessment tools and the procedures where not

that clear. For example the author did not inform readers what the British Picture Vocabulary

Scale was and could have provided some information on what this assessment was and how it

was administered. In general, even though the author provided some information about the

assessments, the information provided was not enough and so I ended up going online to get

some information about these assessments in order to fully understand what they entailed.

Secondly, the results section for very confusing. The author did provide tables and figures to

illustrate the findings. However the information in the tables were not that clear and was more of

a combination of results instead of separating data for those students who spoke English as their

first language and then for the other students who spoke English as their second language. Even

though the simple view of writing entails handwriting skills, handwriting was not part of the

study. Selling was part of the study but I assumed that when students have good vocabulary

skills, often times when they are asked to spell words they could do that orally or actually write

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that so it was difficult to tell whether the spelling assessment required students to write the words

out and if it did then was that considered as the handwriting portion of it or not.

Kim, Y. S., Otaiba, S. A. Puranik, C., Folsom, J. S., & Gruelich, L. (2014). The contributions of

vocabulary and letter writing automaticity to word reading and spelling for

kindergarteners. Reading and Writing, 27, 237-253. doi: 1007/s11145-013-9440-9


According to Kim (2014), the purpose of this study was to examine the contributions of

letter writing automaticity to early literacy acquisition and also to examine the relation of

semantic knowledge with word reading and spelling in relation to phonological awareness and

alphabet knowledge. Two hundred and forty two students took part in this study. The

participants were tested using the Woodcock Johnson third edition, the sight word efficiency and

phoneme decoding efficiency assessments. The participants also had to complete a spelling

assessment. The spelling task included five real decodable words including dog, man, plug,

limp, and tree. The task also included sight words such as one, said, blue, come, and went. The

children’s vocabulary knowledge was assessed by expressive and receptive task and the

participants also completed a test on phonological awareness. The children did complete a task

in which they had to identify the letters of the alphabet as well as writing the letters of the

alphabet in the correct order. The results indicated that letter writing automaticity was

moderately related to alphabetic knowledge fluency and vocabulary was positively related to

word reading and spelling (Kim et al., 2014).

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This article provided detailed information on the role of letter writing automaticity in

early literacy acquisition as well as the role of semantic knowledge in early literacy acquisition.

Students were assessed using various assessment instruments. Some of the assessment

instruments such as the Picture Vocabulary Test of the Kaufman brief IQ test were not familiar

to me and I think that the author should have provided detailed descriptions of the assessment

tools that was used for the study for readers to understand the assessment procedures better.

Writing samples should have included. Writing samples were not provided in the study and so it

was difficult to understand children’s achievement based on the measures used. I think that this

article is relevant because it focuses on the role of vocabulary instruction in improving writing.

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Lee, S. H. (2003). ESL learners’ vocabulary use in writing and the effects of explicit vocabulary

instruction, System 31(4), 537-561. doi: 10.1016/j.system.2003.02.004


According to Lee (2003), research has shown that lack of vocabulary contributes to

writing difficulty for foreign language learners and that vocabulary is one of the most important

features that determine writing quality. According to this article, there are different ways in

which lexical competence has been categorized and these include receptive vocabulary and

productive vocabulary. This articles points out that receptive vocabulary which is also known as

recognition vocabulary is classified as passive whereas productive vocabulary is classified as

active. According to this article, students L2 receptive vocabulary developed to a higher extent

than their productive vocabulary and this is attributed to lack of production tasks that elicits and

provides practice for using recognized or new vocabulary and emphasizes the importance of

converting learner’s receptive vocabulary into productive vocabulary by getting learners to

actively use recognized and new words. Emphasis is placed on providing explicit vocabulary

instruction. According to this article, previous research has indicated that there is no empirical

evidence to show the possible relationship between explicit vocabulary teaching and

improvement in the lexical quality of writing. Secondly, while the role of systematic vocabulary

instruction in reading has been emphasized in the literature, what compromises systematic

vocabulary instruction has not been clearly defined. Lee (2003) notes that various teaching

strategies such as word method, listening, repeating aloud of new words, mnemonics, learning

stems and affixes, and semantic fields have been proposed in isolation, without clear indication

of how strategies may be used together to promote more effective word learning. Sixty five

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middle school children participated in this study. The students were assessed in target

recognition vocabulary. Students were asked to write a composition after reading a story about

bull fighting. The title of the essays was “A Cruel Sport.” The results indicated that writing

after reading instruction and comprehension exercise and before target vocabulary instruction

showed that 13.19% of recognized target vocabulary were productive. This increased

significantly to 63.62% after target vocabulary instruction and productive use of newly learned

vocabulary was impressive. Delayed writing showed no significant loss in recognized and

productive target vocabulary but newly learned and productive vocabulary was significantly

reduced. Systematic vocabulary instruction based on teacher directed interaction and negotiation

of psycholinguistic principles of word learning were proposed (Lee, 2003).


This study is relevant because the focus of this study was on vocabulary and its

importance in writing. The authors provided a detailed description of the assessment they used

in this study and also provided a sample of the vocabulary test that was actually used in this

study. This made me understand the study better and also gave me an in-depth perspective on

what the students in this study had to do in terms of the vocabulary portion of the test. The

vocabulary test was in a fill in the blank test and required the students to choose a word to fill the

blanks spaces which had been left out. The authors did a good job providing the list of words

used for this study as well. In addition to this, a reading passage was also included in the study

and this was the passage that the students had to read prior to responding to some questions in

which they had to write the correct answers after reading a sentence.

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Lee, S. H. & Munice, J. (2006). From receptive to productive: improving ESL learners’ use of

vocabulary in a post reading composition task. TESOL Quarterly, 40(2), 295-320.


According to Lee & Munice (2006), vocabulary size is an important indicator of reading

comprehension and quality of writing since using vocabulary effectively is an important

indicator of the quality of composition. This article stresses the need for an intensive vocabulary

instruction as a prewriting technique to improve writing quality and notes that when vocabulary

is focused on prior to writing, there is an improvement in the production of higher level

recognition vocabulary. The purpose of this study was to investigate vocabulary use in

composition. Forty eight students took part in this study. The students watched an 80 minute

film on Titanic and were later on were assessed using a vocabulary test. The test consisted of

forty two target items, with thirty four single words and eight lexical phrases. Students were

asked to complete a passage choosing the best word or the best phrase and to use each item only

once. After the vocabulary test, the students read a passage on the titanic. Important vocabulary

words were explained to the students using an interactive negotiation technique to explain or

elicit meaning from the students. The results indicated that even though teaching strategies that

promote vocabulary learning improve writing quality of English language learners, encountering

new or advanced vocabulary in reading and teacher explanation of vocabulary was not enough

for it to become productive (Lee & Munice, 2006).

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This study is relevant because the focus of this study was on the use of vocabulary in

improving writing quality. The authors provided a detailed information regarding the method

and procedures used in this study. In conducting this study, the Gates McGinitie Reading test

was used. It would have been helpful if the authors had explained or provided a description of

what this assessment entails. The study involved collecting writing samples from students.

However, a sample of the writing samples was not included in this article. This study is

quantitative. It seems like all the students were assessed using the same intervention. In terms

of methodology, I expected to see information regarding a control group and an experimental

group. However, this was not the case and so I wonder how the researchers determined whether

there was an improvement in performance or not based on the method they used.

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Olinghouse, N. G., & Leaird, J. T. (2009). The relationship between measures of vocabulary and

narrative writing in second and fourth grade students. Reading and Writing, 22(5), 545-

565. doi:10.1007/s11145-008-9124-z


The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between measures of written

vocabulary and writing quality. This study talked about the complex nature of the writing

process and how writers must generate, organize ideas, develop and act on a plan to produce a

quality written narrative. The authors note that the narrative writing process involves

understanding story components, language skills, vocabulary mechanics, conventions of print,

attention to audience perspectives, and the ability to focus on abstract topics. According to

Olinghouse & Leaird (2009) frequently researched topics regarding predictors of writing quality

include writing length and spelling. Thus there is a relationship between writing length and

writing quality and between spelling ability and writing quality indicating that students who

write longer compositions and possesses better spelling skills tend to receive higher quality

ratings (Olinghouse & Leaird, 2009).

The authors note that while compositional length and spelling research have provided a

foundation for understanding writing development in elementary students, many questions about

writing have been left unexplored. This study expands on previous research by examining the

characteristics of vocabulary in narrative writing composition. Olinghouse & Leaird (2009)

indicated that selection of vocabulary is considered an important part of the writing process and

defined vocabulary as the originality and maturity of a student’s choice of words, and identifies it

as one of the five components that emerge from every major theory of written language. Thus

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the development of a rich and varied vocabulary is considered an essential step in becoming an

efficient writer. According to this article, words remain the most important tool the writer has to

work with. A rich vocabulary allows a writer to get a richness of thought onto paper. However,

the writer’s real pleasure comes not from using an exotic word but from using the right word.

Studies of vocabulary are dependent upon the definition of a word. Most studies involving

vocabulary in written expression have defined a word in the traditional sense that is a word is a

letter or combination of letters that has a specific and unique meaning. However, when

examining vocabulary characteristics of written vocabulary, the exact definition of a word

becomes important. This study takes the stance that each word has a distinct and precise

meaning that determines not only the overall meaning of the conveyed ideas, but also establishes

relationships between sentences and ideas within the larger context of the written text

(Olinghouse & Leaird, 2009).

Four vocabulary measures were chosen to represent different characteristics of

vocabulary hypothesized to be important to narrative writing quality: vocabulary diversity, less

frequent vocabulary, average syllable length, and number of polysyllabic words. Ninety two

second grade and one hundred and one fourth grade students took part in this study. As part of

the procedures for collecting data, writing samples were collected. Students were assigned a

picture prompt. The prompt depicted simple line drawings of children involved in an activity.

For example a child watching a giant egg hatch, a child swinging through a jungle, three children

sledding. The students were given five minutes of planning time to plan their stories based on

the picture prompt. The students were informed that planning meant writing down any words or

ideas that would help a story. After the planning time, the students were given fifteen minutes to

write their stories. Students were also assessed on the standard test of written language and the

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standard assessment of narrative writing. Analytic scales were used to score the writing quality

and were developed to reflect essential features of narrative composition such as organization,

development of plot, characters and setting and creativity of ideation and vocabulary. The

results indicated that vocabulary diversity and less frequent vocabulary showed developmental

differences across the two writing task. In addition, the results indicated that vocabulary

diversity was the only variable to remain stable across the two writing task (Olinghouse &

Leaird, 2009).


This study was very relevant because it focused on the relationship between measures of

vocabulary and narrative writing. I think that there were too many research questions that the

authors wanted to focus on. One or two research questions were enough. However, for this

study there were three research questions. The authors did mention that past reading studies had

identified vocabulary characteristics such as diversity, maturity of word size. I wonder what the

author meant by vocabulary characteristics and wished the authors had provided more

information about these vocabulary characteristics and explained these characteristics as well.

The authors stated that three analytic scales were used for this study. It would have been better if

they had included the scales in this article for readers to refer to in order to gain a deeper

understanding of the scales that were used for this study.

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Roessingh, H. & Elgie, S. (2014). From thought to words, to print: Early Literacy Development

in grade 2. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 60(3), 576-597.

Summary of the argument or thesis, the results and conclusions

Research suggest that vocabulary size is an indicator in early childhood development.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of printing, spelling and vocabulary

choices and its influence on writing. Children in second grade are shifting from emergent

literacy which includes drawing, and beginning printing to early literacy. Early literacy involves

transcription and text generation. Roessingh & Elgie (2014) indicated that when children reach

the concrete operations stage as noted by Piaget, they begin to think critically and are able to

transform and manipulate concept information. Writing samples were collected from four

second grade classrooms. Eighty five second grade students took part in this study. The writing

samples were scored using the trait based rubric. Children were asked to provide suggestions to

make the Calgary Zoo the best in the world. In scoring the writing samples the authors checked

for spelling accuracy and legibility of printing. The findings revealed the need for explicit

instruction in printing and spelling and vocabulary as well. In conclusion, the early years of

schooling are very critical for developing the foundational skills in literacy. For students who

are English language learners, more emphasis should be on vocabulary instruction (Roessingh &

Elgie, 2014).

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This study is relevant because it focuses on emergent literacy as well as early literacy

which forms the foundation for cognitive development. This study focused on the importance of

productive vocabulary to the quality of writing of young children. This study is also important

because it focuses on student’s use of vocabulary in writing or authoring. The authors provided

writing samples which to me is important in understanding what the participants actually wrote

and one thing I liked was that the authors did comment on the writing sample using the rubric

since this sort of feedback is important. The authors also provided visual representations. The

graphs focused on the distribution of quality ratings from the four classes. This visual

representation was helpful in understanding the number of samples collected per class. It was

difficult to tell whether this study was a qualitative study or a quantitative study.

Sparrow, W. (2014). Unconventional Word Segmentation in emerging bilingual students writing:

A Longitudinal Analysis. Applied Linguistics, 35(3), 263-282.


The purpose of this study was to explore instances of hyposegmentation and

hypersegmentation in children’s Spanish and English writing over a three year period from first

to third grade and also to investigate the similarities and differences between such patterns in

Spanish and English. Hyposegmentation occurs when at least two graphic words are written

without conventional spaces. Hypersegmentation occurs when blank spaces are put within one

graphic word. Twenty five students participated in this study. The participants were bilingual

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Latino students who had been receiving both Spanish and English instruction for at least three

years. Data on writing development was collected annually and the participants for this study

were asked to write to a prompt for thirty minutes. The children who took part in this study had

the opportunity to draw a picture before writing a response to the prompt (Sparrow, 2014).

Writing samples were first collected in Spanish and then two weeks later the teachers

collected writing samples in English. Each grade level had a different writing prompt.

Examples of writing prompts included participants drawing a picture of their favorite animal and

then writing about why it is their favorite animal. Another example of a writing prompt is “what

is your favorite television program? Write a summary of what it is about.” The writing samples

were then analyzed by examining instances of hyposegmentation and hypersegmentation. The

results indicated that students had more instances of hypersegmentation in their Spanish writing.

The results also indicate unconventional segmentation in students Spanish and English writing is

more often a result of hyposegmentation than hypersegmentation since sixty one percent of all

the English instances were a result of hyposegmentation. Students who had high

hyposegmentation had lower vocabulary and verbal abilities. The results also show that

hyposegmentation was more common than hypersegmentation, indicating that children tend to

leave blank spaces in their writing than required by typical writing conventions (Sparrow, 2014).


This study is very relevant because it focuses on word segmentation in emerging

bilingual students writing. The study involved collecting writing samples. It would have been

better providing samples of the children’s writing for readers to better understand what

hyposegmentation and hypersegmentation entails. This study also focused on teaching

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vocabulary skills with meaningful context which helps children to understand morphological

words. The author stated the research questions and also addressed all four research questions in

the article by providing more information as to how she went about analyzing the data in relation

to the research questions. The author suggested that Bilingual students have linguistic repertoire

and that there is the need to look at student’s writing in both languages in order to have a better

perspective and gain a fuller understanding and provide instruction that meet the needs of

students. This to me is very critical and important.

Sun, L. & Nippold, M. A. (2012). Narrative writing in children and adolescents: Examining the

literate lexicon. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 43, 2-13.

Summary of the argument or thesis, the results and the conclusions

The purpose of this study was primarily to examine the use literate words in the narrative

writing of school aged children and adolescents. The focus was on narrative writing because

students in public schools are required to retell stories in the classroom and they are evaluated on

their ability to express themselves using vocabulary and grammatically appropriate sentences.

However many children with language disorders struggle to do this. The study focused on two

types of words, abstract nouns and metacognitive verbs. Three groups of students took part in

this study. There were forty students in each group. The students spoke American English as

their primary language and none of the students had individualized education plans and therefore

did not need special education services. Participants were given twenty minutes to write an

essay. The title of the essay was “What happened on day” and children were requested to write

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something funny, sad or scary that happened to them and a friend. The outline prompted them to

address some key elements of story grammar such as setting, characters and plot. The results

indicated that age related growth in narrative writing was documented for both types of words.

In addition, the use of abstract nouns and metacognitive verbs was associated with the

production of complex syntax. It was concluded that narrative writing task employed in this

study was effective in eliciting literate words and complex syntax in school aged children (Sun &

Nippold, 2012).


This study is relevant in that it focused on using vocabulary in narrative writing. The

authors provided detailed information on the methodology. However, even though this study

was a quantitative study, writing samples were not included in this study. It would have been

better if the authors had provided writing samples in the study. I wondered how the authors

graded the essays because there were no rubrics. It was also difficult to understand the analysis

section of the study. The authors stated that the words were coded but the information provided

was not too clear for easy understanding of text.

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Wang, Y., McBride-Chang, C., & Chan, S. F. (2014). Correlates of Chinese kindergarteners’

word reading and writing: the unique role of copying skills? Reading and Writing, 27,

1281-1302.


The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between word reading and

dictation or writing among Chinese kindergarteners. Ninety four Chinese kindergarteners

participated in this study. The kindergarteners were tested using the Raven’s Standard

Progressive Matrices, which is a non-verbal multiple choice measure of children’s reasoning

ability. Children were asked to identify the missing element that completed a pattern from

among six choices. The kindergarteners were also tested on the Pinyin letter naming knowledge

in which children were asked to name or identify twelve Pinyin letters (k, m, a, h, p, f, u, c, t, i, g,

and s). In addition to this, the researchers measured invented Pinyin spelling using three one

syllable Chinese words (Wang et al., 2014).

A vocabulary definitions task was used to measure children’s vocabulary

knowledge. This expressive vocabulary test was similar to the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale

vocabulary subtest. The kindergarteners were asked to provide oral definitions of the Chinese

words presented to them by the researcher. There were thirty two vocabulary words for this

subtest. The kindergarteners also had to complete a task on syllable deletion, and morphological

awareness as well as complete a task that required them to copy unfamiliar scripts including

Korean words, Hebrew words and Vietnamese diacritics to test children’s basic copying skills.

The kindergarteners were also required to read fifty Chinese single character words as well as

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write ten words. The results indicate that the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices were

significantly associated with word reading and writing. The results also show that all three

copying tasks were significantly associated with dictation in Chinese. Both the invented Pinyin

and Pinyin letter name knowledge were significantly associated with word reading (Wang et al.,

2014).


This study focused on the relationship between Chinese kindergarteners’ word reading

and writing and is very relevant. The authors assessed students using different measures such as

the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices which I wasn’t familiar with. I think that the authors

should have provided some more information on the assessment instruments used in this study. I

also wondered whether if the study had involved other students apart from Chinese students

whether the results would have been the same. For example what will the correlation be if

students from other cultures had taken part in the study in relation to word reading and writing.

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sawyerrportfolio1.weebly.comsawyerrportfolio1.weebly.com/.../eced_702_annotated_… · Web viewand also there was a significant difference in terms of word selection. Thus students