Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing - Current Issue

Taking notes with pen or laptop; effects of medium and test preparation on learning

Ever since Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014), the use of laptops in the classroom has been subject of discussion. Do students learn more when they write with a pen? Follow up studies have led to inconclusive results. To move the discussion forward, we designed an experiment in which students worked on a relevant task in their natural environment. The main independent factors were note-taking medium (typing on laptop vs. writing with pen) and test preparation (reading notes vs. actively reworking them). Participants were 303 fourth-grade students in Dutch secondary education (on average 16.5 years old). They watched a video lecture of about 15 minutes in their usual classroom setting, prepared for a multiple-choice comprehension test for 10 minutes, and then took the test and filled in a questionnaire. A few days later this immediate post-test was followed by a delayed one. Crucial dependent variables were correctness and certainty on the test. Several control variables were included such as grade point average, vocabulary, writing fluency, and typing speed. Writing with pen proved to be beneficial. In the immediate post-test, medium significantly affected scores for correctness and certainty. In the delayed post-test, all test scores decreased and the effect of medium faded out. Reworking one’s notes proved to be detrimental: test preparation affected both correctness and certainty in the immediate post-test and these effects became even more pronounced in the delayed post-test. Further analyses showed that through their more active processing students forgot factual details without gaining a deeper conceptual understanding. Therefore, we advocate to make taking notes and reworking them a regular task in the curriculum.

A genre-based interconnected reading and writing instruction: effects on writing skills

Given the beneficial effects of combining reading and writing instruction, this study focuses on genre as the connecting element between reading and writing, because knowledge of genre characteristics helps to develop reading and writing skills. Moreover, genre is a social interplay between readers and writers. For our quasi-experimental study, we developed a genre-based interconnected reading and writing intervention in which both skills were given equal attention, while explicitly addressing relationships between them.

Two lesson series focusing on news articles and columns respectively were implemented in three Dutch secondary schools. Eight participating teachers and their grade 10 classes were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. The column and news article group functioned as each other’s control group. We expected students from the column group to outperform students from the news article group on genre-specific posttest writing assignments and vice versa. Pretest measures of writing and reading proficiency were used as covariates. Writing assignments were rated using a benchmark procedure and genre characteristics were analytically rated. Multilevel analyses showed significant effects of pretest measures of writing and reading proficiency on genre-specific posttest writing scores. However, condition did not explain differences in genre-specific writing.