Abstracts - Earli

Although the ability to read literature and write creative texts seem to have common elements,little empirical research is available on the relationship between these two abilities. This studyattempts to define and to reliably measure literary reading and creative writing ability andsubsequently to determine whether a relationship exists between these two abilities. Theparticipating 19 eleventh-grade students were selected from two extreme groups: 11 were knownto be strong readers of literature, while 8 were known to be weak readers of literature. Eachparticipant wrote 2 poems and 3 narrative texts. A few days later, each participant read 4 literarytexts: 2 poems and 2 short stories. In an interview, participants responded to open-endedinterpretation questions about the poems and stories they had read. The writing products andtranscriptions of the reading responses were rated by different panels, each panel consisting of 7independent expert judges. Analysis of variance indicated that agreement among raters was highand that individual students’ performance relative to other students was fairly consistent amongtasks, both for reading and writings tasks. As expected, the students a priori selected as strongreaders outperformed the students a priori selected as weak readers both on the reading tasks andthe writing tasks. Moreover, average reading and average writing performance appeared to berelated even when accounting for the a priori selection. These results support our expectation that arelationship exists between literary reading and creative writing ability. Moreover, it shows thatboth constructs can be measured in reliable ways. These promising results justify furthersystematic research into the relation between literary reading and creative writing. Eventually,such research might result in indications how literature and writing curricula can be integrated inorder to profit from the common elements of literary production and reception.Text quality and writing processes while writing-to-learnCarien Bakker, University of Groningen, NetherlandsKees de Glopper, University of Groningen, NetherlandsIn the present paper we will report analyses of experimental data on writing-to-learn. Our studyadresses the relation between writing processes and text quality. Process data, measured boththrough think alouds and stimulated recall interviews, will be combined with measures of theconceptual content and organization in the texts that students have produced. We will analyzerelations between the conceptual qualities of the texts (e.g. use and elaboration of target concepts,relationships with other concepts, ‘newness’ of concepts when compared with textbook content)and the frequency and nature of planning and reviewing processes. We expect that our analyseswill shed more light on the assumption that knowledge construction is primarily driven by themetacognitive writing processes. Such analyses are not only of relevance for theories andeducational practices of writing-to-learn. Our writing-to-learn data also constitue a new domain foranalyses of the relationships between the temporal orchestration of writing processes and textquality. Research from this perspective has not yet dealt with writing-to-learn behaviours.Observational learning and its effect on individual and dyadic revision qualityElke Van Steendam, University of Antwerp, BelgiumGert Rijlaarsdam, University of Amsterdam, NetherlandsLies Sercu, Catholic University of Leuven, BelgiumCollaborative revision and writing is often advocated as an effective teaching method in writingeducation to help novice and inexpert writers to improve their revision and writing skills(MacArthur, Schwartz, & Graham, 1991; Rouiller, 2004). However, research has also pointed outthat to increase the probability of success, dyadic revision should be guided (MacArthur, Graham,Schwartz & Schaffer, 1995). One form of structured instructional strategy which has proven its– 714 –