Helping students with cognitive disabilities improve social writing skills through email modeling and scaffolding |
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| Authors: | Xiao-lei Wang Dominique Eberhard Mike Voron Ronan Bernas |
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| Institution: | 1. School of Education, Pace University, Pleasantville, NY, USA;2. Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA;3. Pace University Pleasantville Lab School, Pleasantville, NY, USA;4. Department of Psychology, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL, USA |
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| Abstract: | The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of email modeling and scaffolding on the social writing quality of students with cognitive disabilities. Ten students from a university-affiliated lab school (mean age = 19.3; SD = 1.2) with an average of IQ of 55.30 (SD = 5.98) and 10 teacher candidates in a university teacher education programme participated in the study. The results suggest that all students with intellectual disabilities were able to holistically improve their social writing quality after exchanging emails with mature writers over a period of 15 weeks. Specifically, the students progressively showed various degrees of improvement in the areas of writing mechanics, lexical and syntactic complexity, writing cohesion, pragmatic propriety and writing motivation. However, the figurative use of language remained unaffected by the email modeling and scaffolding. Taken together, this study suggests that Internet-mediated formats, such as email, can reduce the anxiety of students with intellectual disabilities. Students feel more motivated to engage in writing and do so more actively in social media exchanges, thus improving their virtual social communication skills through writing. Teaching implications of this study are discussed. |
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| Keywords: | Students with cognitive disability email modeling and scaffolding social writing improvement pre-service teachers and student interaction |
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