3/22/2023 0 Comments Wordor sentenceLevels of language, an analytic tool, is used to understand the complexity of oral and written language ( Berninger and Garvey, 1982) based on the analysis of words, sentences, and discourse. These grades were chosen as they represent critical transitions for Portuguese students, from the first cycle of basic education (Grades 1–4) to the second one (Grades 5–6), and from the second cycle to the third cycle (Grades 7–9). This was the goal of the present study in which we examined the development of different levels of written language and their contribution to writing performance in two cohorts of Portuguese students (from Grades 4 to 7 and 6 to 9). These may help to better gauge the development of writing, given its long learning curve. Much of extant research provides cross-sectional comparisons ( Lerkkanen et al., 2004), and a few studies provide a longitudinal analysis of writing development ( Berninger et al., 2010 Jagaiah et al., 2020), mainly with long gaps between the measurement points. Given the complexity of writing, research into the development of this ability throughout schooling is particularly relevant to understand the trajectories of learning and, based on these, to provide educational guidelines to foster writing skills. It requires the production of legible letters following conventional spellings, to produce words that are organized into sentences and form a coherent written text, expressing the writer's ideas ( Abbott et al., 2010). Writing is a complex skill ( Dockrell et al., 2014). Overall, despite indicating a generalized growth in writing skills throughout schooling, this study also highlighted the areas that may need additional attention from teachers, mainly in terms of the descriptive features. Regression analyses showed that writing performance was predicted by word and sentence levels in the younger cohort only, and by discourse-level variables in both cohorts. Moreover, the older cohort performed better than the younger cohort in terms of spelling, syntactic complexity, and text quality, but not in terms of syntactic correctness, one dimension of the descriptive discourse, and text length. The main results showed that there were improvements from Grades 4 to 7 and 6 to 9 in word- and sentence-level skills, along with increases in some dimensions of the descriptive discourse. The produced texts were used to assess spelling, syntactic correctness and complexity, and descriptive discourse as well as text length and quality. About 95 Portuguese students from two cohorts-Grades 4–7 ( n = 47) 6–9 ( n = 48)-were asked to produce a descriptive text two times, with a 3-year interval. This study analyzed the development of different levels of written language (word, sentence, and discourse) and explored the relationship between these levels and writing performance. Writing is a foundational skill throughout school grades.
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