Effects of Collaborative Revision on Children’s Ability to Write Understandable Narrative Texts

Abstract

The chapter focuses on elementary and middle school children’s revision of written narrative texts in an interactive situation. The study had two closely-related objectives. The first was to analyze the effects of collaborative revision on children’s ability to anticipate their readers’ need for comprehension, as well as to check comprehensibility when revising texts written by others. The second objective was to analyze the role of children’s verbal interaction and discussion while revising. Children’s ideas were investigated in a concrete writing-reading situation: that is, a child wrote a text, a classmate gave feedback on its comprehensibility, both discussed the suggested corrections. The hypothesis was that through collaborative revision children might improve their writing skills. A total of 122 students from an elementary and a middle school in Padova (Italy) participated in the study. For each grade level (4, 6, and 8), there was an experimental and a control group. The results showed improvement for the experimental group children both in writing and revising after the collaborative revision sessions. The participants’ attitudes towards revision emerging from peer interaction are presented and discussed.