RESULTS

One of the concerns mentioned in the Forum Comment July 1999 was that boys are not achieving as well as girls in the majority of (writing) tasks and their attitudes to writing are not as positive and that these gaps need to be addressed in schools and in research.’

This study reanalysed the 1998 data of student writing about ‘My Place’ with a focus on student planning, writing and editing. The finding of this report, analysing the data by gender, confirmed the results of the 1998 study that year 4 and year 8 girls performed, on average, higher than boys at both levels.

Type of Planning: Making a list dominated the planning of both genders at year 4. This was repeated at year 8 for boys and was the second most popular planning strategy, after brainstorming, used by girls. Eighty percent of year 8 boys and 70% of year 4 boys used either lists or brainstorming as their strategies of choice. Although girls also used these strategies, a higher percentage of girls than boys used their first drafts as a planning tool for their writing.

Table 18: Percentage of students using specific planning strategies by gender

Keeping to the Topic: Both genders remained well focused on their topic at year 8. At year 4, both girls (30%) and boys (27%) deviated markedly, either partially or completely, from their chosen theme.

Table 21: Percentage of students keeping to the topic by gender

Factual Content: A high percentage of students wrote true accounts of their special place. The instructions were very clear, on both Day One and Day Two, that their writing should be true not make-believe, and most followed those instructions

Table 22: Percentage of students maintaining factual content by gender

Completion of Task in the Time Available: All year 8 students nearly completed, completed or completed their writing well. The completion rate was slightly lower at year 4 with boys (91%) and girls (94%).

Table 23: Completion of the task in the time available (percent by gender)

Relationship between planning and writing themes: The table shows the movement from contemplating a number of themes during the planning stage on Day 1 (planned) to a definite writing theme (actual) on Day Two. There was evidence that more boys than girls reduced their writing to a single theme once ideas formulated.

Table 24: Relationship between planning and writing (percent by gender)

Punctuation: The evaluation of punctuation focused on four areas of basic punctuation usage – capital letters, full stops, commas and apostrophes as outlined previously. It is surprising to find that more boys at year 4 than year 8 were using appropriate punctuation; 49% compared to 26%. The writing was coded to have been punctuated ‘appropriately’, ‘satisfactorily’ or ‘poorly’ depending on the number of mistakes prior to proofing and editing on Day 3.

Table 26: Student punctuation (percent by gender)

The correct usage of compound sentences was limited at Year 4 with 53% of boys and 62% of girls demonstrating that they were capable of formulating them to an appropriate or satisfactory level. Forty-seven percent of boys and 38% of girls at year 4 were either not able to construct a compound sentence, or constructed them incorrectly. At the year 8 level, 70% of boys and 73% of girls were able to construct a compound sentence. Nevertheless, it is still concerning that 29% of boys and 27% of girls at this level recorded a poor understanding of how to write compound sentences.

Table 28: Student use of compound sentences (percent by gender)

Non-Sentences: There was a high percentage (around 70%) of ‘some’ or ‘substantial use’ of non-sentences by both genders and at both levels. At year 4, 68% of boys and 72% of girls were using inappropriate sentence structure in their writing. At year 8, 73% of boys and 71% of girls were doing this, which raises the questions of whether students recognize correct sentence structure and are proofing written work to see if it makes sense.

Table 29: Student use of non-sentences (percent by gender)

Sentence Length: The use of excessively long sentences was noted at the year 4 level; by boys (39%) and girls (34%). Fewer year 8 students used excessively long sentences, but this practice was more common in boys’ writing - 26% compared to 17% of girls writing.

Table 30: Student use of sentence length (percent by gender)

Proofing for Sense: The samples of writing were examined for evidence of overall or global proofing for spelling mistakes, missing or extra punctuation and whether or not the writing ‘made sense’. As Table 31 shows, there was little difference in the global proofing between genders at either level.

Table 31: Students proofing for sense (percent by gender)

A further analysis of the writing was done to examine how often each method of proofing was used. Overall, there was little difference in types of proofing between genders, but at year 8 girls proofed for punctuation at a higher rate than boys – 69% compared to 46%.

Table 32 Percentage of types of proofing used by gender

Both genders used some form of planning strategy for their writing. Boys showed strength in planning their writing, particularly in using lists. Once planning was completed, girls used planning strategies more consistently than the boys.

Girls wrote marginally more at year 4 (Mean 113-girls; 108-boys) but considerably more at year 8 (Mean 256 –girls; boys-188).

There was a bigger improvement from year 4 to year 8 in boys overall proofing methods during the Day Two Writing (52% to 80%) compared to girls (61% to 71%). At year 4 the boys’ level of proofing on Day 3 was higher than that of year 4 girls. However, the significant drop in appropriate use of punctuation between year 4 and year 8 boys is a concern (49% to26%).

Girls displayed a better understanding of sentence construction than boys at year 4 but the year 8 results were similar. At year 8, 20% of the boys and 18% of the girls showed little or no evidence of consistently using simple sentences in their writing. It is concerning that 29% of boys and 27% of girls at this level also recorded a poor understanding of how to write compound sentences.

There was a high percentage of non-sentence usage by both genders at both levels. (68% of boys and 72% of girls at year 4. 73% of boys and 71% of girls at year 8) indicating a lack of understanding of sentence structure and proofing for sense.