Effects of a Computerized STOP & LIST Intervention to Foster Text Production Skills in Students Who Struggle with Composition Writing

Most students who struggle with writing have particular trouble with planning a text. They do not find themselves sufficiently able to generate content and organize the ideas they wish to address into a coherent order. STOP & LIST is a well-proven strategy that has the potential to help students mold an internal representation of the text in their minds before composing it. However, teaching such a technique in diverse classroom environments is challenging. We thus developed a computerized version of a STOP & LIST intervention geared toward providing each student with sufficient practice opportunities and individualized feedback to acquire ample text-planning skills. In our randomized experiment, we involved 30 fourth graders with severe difficulties in expressive writing. We provided 15 students with seven 90-minute training sessions using our software, and the other 15 continued to participate in regular classroom activities. Our results speak to the high effectiveness of the intervention. The children obviously benefitted greatly from the treatment. Our program produced an effect size of about one and three quarters standard deviations. We end the paper with a critical discussion of the results and some practical implications of the findings.