An Exploratory Investigation of Structured Writing Strategy Training for African-American College Students with Learning Disabilities

This exploratory study investigated the effects of a structured writing strategy on the quality of expository compositions produced by 36 African-American college undergraduates with learning disabilities. The strategy was structured to assist students in developing a topic sentence and main ideas into body paragraphs, and in using transition words throughout the composition. The strategy effects were compared for a group that received the specific, structured writing strategy training and a control group that received general strategy instruction. Students in the strategy instruction group significantly improved their use of supporting details in producing an expository essay. Although mean writing self-efficacy scores for both groups increased at the end of training, there were no significant differences between groups on a measure of writing self-efficacy.