Abstracts - Earli

of the cognitive activities investigated. In addition, text quality varies both within and betweenwriters. The relation between text quality and writing processes varies between assignments aswell, although the correlation between processes and text quality does not vary to the same extent.For instance, reading the assignment is only positively related to text quality at the start of thewriting process. But the magnitude of the correlation varies between assignments.Learning writing by reviewingKwangsu Cho, University of Missouri, USAChristian Schunn, University of Pittsburgh, USAWe examine a theoretical perspective on reciprocal peer reviewing of writing that could be a morecommon form of peer collaboration for writing. The traditional approach, called Learning Writingby Writing, focuses on opportunities for practicing writing with feedback. The alternativeapproach, called Learning Writing by Reviewing, considers reviewing as an important method forlearning writing skills, because reviewing is a problem solving activity that engages problemdetection, diagnosis, and solution generation. We empirically evaluated the Learning Writing byReviewing hypothesis with 87 students in three physics courses that were using SWoRD (Cho &Schunn, 2003, 2005, 2007), a reciprocal peer review system. In support of the hypothesis, thereviewers’ own writing skills improved according to the helpfulness of their review commentgivingwork.Improving text coherence: effects of collaborative revision conditions on writing quality in EFLElke Van Steendam, Universiteit Antwerpen, BelgiumGert Rijlaarsdam, University of Amsterdam, NetherlandsLies Sercu, University of Leuven, BelgiumExercises in which students have to analyse and revise other people’s writings are often used inwriting education and incorporated in writing syllabus design. Few experimental studies, however,have been published showing that revising other people’s texts has a beneficial effect on revisingand writing one’s own texts. This transfer effect is explored in more detail in this paper byanalysing writing assignments from 350 first-year Bachelor students of Applied Economics at aBelgian university. These EFL learners have been assigned to five different learning conditionswhich vary as to the degree of instruction and guidance in collaborative (dyadic) revision. In fourof the five conditions, dyads have to revise text fragments for coherence and structure(collaborative revision). In one experimental condition, the so-called comparison group, studentsrevise the fragments individually (individual revision) without any instruction. None of therevisers have written the text fragments themselves. In this paper we investigate which of the fiveexperimental conditions is more effective to teach novice revisers how to write a well-structuredand convincing letter of application. Multilevel analyses show statistically significant differencesbetween the various conditions suggesting that some instructional strategies are more successfulthan others to guarantee transfer from revising other people’s texts to writing and revising one’sown texts. Analyses also suggest that certain forms of guided collaborative revision instruction aremore effective for specific student characteristics such as level of reading and writing and revisionskills. Rijlaarsdam, G., Couzijn, M., & Van den Bergh, H. (2004). The Study of Revision. In Allal,L, Chanquoy, L., & Largy, P. (Vol. Eds), Studies in Writing: Vol. 13, Revision. Cognitive andInstructional Processes. (p. 189-207). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.– 354 –