Date of Award
5-24-2021
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science in Education (MSEd)
Department
Communication Disorders
First Advisor
Whitney Schneider-Cline
Committee Members
Michelle McKelvey, Megan Adkins, Philip Lai
Keywords
Adolescent;Expository;Homeschool;Self-Regulated Strategy Development;Telepractice;Writing
Abstract
Writing development is an area of concern in adolescents across education platforms, including parents who homeschool their children. The current study evaluated the effect of providing an online writing workshop for adolescents who are homeschooled. The participants of the study were students who were homeschooled and their parent(s) who were recruited via social media. After receiving child assent and parental consent, nine adolescents (5 females; 4 males), ages ten to twelve years old, participated in a five-week online writing workshop. The workshop consisted of one pre-test week, three weeks of treatment, and one post-test week. At pre- and post-test, the participants were evaluated through a modified use of the Test of Written Language-4th Edition (TOWLS-4) subtests, an expository writing sample, and the Writing Self-Efficacy Survey (adapted from Eggleston, 2017). During the treatment phase of the study, the clinicians implemented the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (Harris et al., 1996) approach to assist students in developing knowledge about writing, while promoting positive self-efficacy of themselves as writers. This approach consisted of six stages that aimed to gradually increase participants’ independence in producing more syntactically complex sentences in their writing. To analyze the results of the study, t-test analyses were conducted to compare the means of the participants’ pre- and post-test measures. In addition, the responses given from the self-efficacy survey were compared and ranked across each writing skill. The results indicated a significant difference from participants’ pre- to post-test measures in the areas of sentence combining, vocabulary, logical sentences, and expository writing conventions. The findings demonstrated that the online writing workshop improved adolescents’ syntactic complexity, self-efficacy, independence, and overall writing abilities.
Recommended Citation
Hinrichs, Shelby Ann, "Addressing Adolescents’ Syntactic Complexity and Overall Writing Skills through an Online Writing Workshop: A Pilot Study with the Homeschool Population" (2021). Communication Disorders Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity. 1.
https://openspaces.unk.edu/com-dis-etd/1