Improving Writing Skills Thru Self-Regulated Learning

Self-regulated learning could help students improve their writing skills, a new research confirms.

Self-regulated learning is a cyclical process helping students plan for a task, monitor their performance, and reflect on the outcome to adjust and prepare for the next task. Most importantly...

through multiple rounds, students develop habits and become sef-directed and autonomous learners. 

In this study, researchers used an instructional approach called Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) designed to help students learn the strategies used by skilled writers. 

To test its effectiveness, they compared the performances of three groups of 6th thru 8th graders (n=829) in North Carolina. The children had been assigned by their teachers to one of three conditions: 
Traditional writing instuctions
SRSD instructions
SRSD + Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE), a system that combines automated essay scoring with automatic feedback.

After a total of 12 hours of instruction over the course of 2 months, pre- and post-intervention measures clearly showe the effectiveness of SSRD in terms of writing quality, essay length, and essay elements (such as introduction, paragraphs, arguments, transitions, etc.); and especially when implemented through AWE.

In addition, surveys indicated that both students and teachers had a positive experience with these new methods

Source: Palermo and Thomson (2018)