Effects of newspaper reading, free writing, and guided writing on overall writing quality of seventh grade students

The purpose of this study was to determine if the overall quality of writing of seventh grade students improved as a consequence of the treatments of newspaper reading, free writing followed by newspaper reading, and newspaper reading in conjunction with guided writing. In addition to type of treatment, this study examined the contributions of gender, interaction between treatment and gender, reading attitude, and reading ability on overall quality of writing. The subjects were from a predominantly white middle-class suburban school district. Procedures. Experimental and control groups were pre-assessed for reading attitude using a semantic differential technique and for reading ability using the Comprehension subtest of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests, Survey E, Form 1. Writing samples in the descriptive and expository modes were scored holistically to give an overall writing quality score. [...]