The Effectiveness of an Integrated Oral Language-Writing Program, Using Grouping, on the Composing Ability and Writing Attitudes of Ninth Grade Students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of an integrated oral language-writing program, using grouping, on ability to compose and on writing attitude. A secondary purpose was to see if there were a relationship between ability to compose and writing attitude. A pretest, posttest design with a control group was used for the study. The treatment group consisted of twenty-seven students from a heterogeneously grouped rural-suburban school. The control group consisted of twenty-seven students, heterogeneously grouped, from a suburban-rural school. Students in the treatment group were divided into groups of three, meeting twice a week, for a nine week period for the purpose of discussion and writing. A communication spiral, involving students in the three stages of the process of writing, was used as a guide. Researcher-devised writing-oral language activities were used. The control group received no treatment, but rather, writing activities consisted of being assigned a topic to write on or writing an essay based on a story or play they had read in literature. Students in both groups were administered the Writing Apprehension Scale devised by Daly and Miller (1975) before and after the nine week treatment program. A writing sample was taken before and after the nine week treatment period. After establishing group equivalency, t tests for small independent samples were used to determine if there were a significant difference in composing ability and writing attitude between the treatment and control group after the treatment program. In order to determine if there were significant gains from pretest to posttest for both groups in writing attitude and composing ability, t tests for dependent samples were used. Correlation coefficients were obtained to see if there were a significant relationship between ability to compose and writing attitude. The results indicated that there was a significant improvement in attitude toward writing for the students in the integrated oral language-writing program. There was also a significant gain in composing ability from pretest to posttest for students in the treatment program. The correlation study failed to find a significant relationship between writing attitude and composing ability. Recommendations for classroom application as well as suggestions for future research were given