THE EFFECTS OF EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT STRATEGY INSTRUCTION IN AN ACADEMIC WRITING VIDEO TUTORIAL

Innovative Methods and Practices of Academic Writing and Writing Instruction

THE EFFECTS OF EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT STRATEGY INSTRUCTION IN AN ACADEMIC WRITING VIDEO TUTORIAL

4 Mariet Raedts¹, Elke Van Steendam², Luc De Grez³, Jef Hendrickx​

¹KU Leuven, Brussels, Belgium ²KU Leuven, Brussels, Belgium ³KU Leuven, Brussels, Belgium 4​ KU Leuven, Brussels, Belgium

Observational learning through modelling has proven to be an effective instructional approach for different writing tasks and for students of different ages (see Rijlaarsdam et al. (2008) and Rijlaarsdam et al. (2011) for an overview). In order for observational learning to be successful, four constituent processes are needed (Bandura, 1986): (1) attention to the crucial elements in the displayed behaviour, (2) retention of these elements in the form of mental representations, (3) successful reproduction of the modelled behavior, and (4) the motivation to learn and perform the task. We tested Bandura’s assumptions in an introductory academic writing course with 165 first­year business students for which we developed two versions of a tutorial video.

In both videos a male peer model (motivation enhancing element) demonstrated a five­step writing strategy for writing up a synthesis of multiple research studies. In the implicit­strategy­instruction­video students saw the peer model tackling the academic writing task. In the explicit­strategy­instruction­video we added extra slides on which the model’s five­step­strategy was made explicit by a five­letter word mnemonic (attention and retention enhancing element). Post hoc tests revealed that students in the explicit­learning­condition had a more accurate representation of the new writing task compared to students in the implicit­strategy­condition.

Additionally, students in the explicit­strategy­condition wrote cognitively more complex summaries: for example, they identified and explained contradictions in the research results more often. Making the model’s writing strategy explicit thus had a positive impact on first­year students’ task knowledge and writing performances in a widely used academic genre.

References

Bandura, A. (1986) ​ Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory​ . ​ Englewood Cliffs: Prentice­Hall.

Rijlaarsdam, G.C.W., Braaksma, M.A.H., Couzijn, M.J., Janssen, T.M., Raedts, M., van Steendam, E., Toorenaar, A. and van den Bergh, H. (2008) ‘Observation of peers in learning to write: Practice and research’.

Journal of Writing Research​ , 1(1), pp. 53­83.

Rijlaarsdam, G., Van den Bergh, H., Couzijn, M., Janssen, T., Braaksma, M., Tillema, M., Van Steendam, E. and Raedts, M. (2011) Writing. In: Harris, K., Graham, S. and Urdan, T. (eds)​ , APA Educational Psychology Handbook. ​ vol. 3. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, pp. 189­227.