Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively

Study Eligibility Criteria

For more information, see  

the review protocol.

Time frame:

 Published between January 

1995 and March 2015; earlier or later work 

was reviewed if recommended by the panel 

Location:

 Study could have been conducted 

in any country 

Sample requirements: 

Students in second-

ary schools in grades 6–12

While the great majority of reviewed studies 

were conducted within the United States and 

with English speaking students, three studies 

were conducted outside the United States, 

with non-English speaking students. The panel 

believes that the locations of the studies (Ger-

many and Portugal) have educational systems 

and contexts similar to the United States, and 

that writing strategies in German and Portu-

guese in these settings are similar to those 

used in English in the United States. The panel 

believes that conclusions from these studies 

may be relevant to U.S. schools and students.

Studies supporting the recommendations exam-

ined writing knowledge and skill outcomes  

in the following nine domains: (1) audience,  

(2) genre elements, (3) organization, (4) sen-

tence structure, (5) use of evidence, (6) word 

choice, (7) writing output, (8) writing processes, 

and (9) overall writing quality. (For more informa-

tion about the domains and how outcomes were 

classified into the domains, see Appendix D.)

Studies showed that practices in all three 

recommendations improved outcomes in 

the overall writing quality domain. The 

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Introduction 

(continued)

supporting studies also found that practices 

in each of the recommendations improved 

outcomes in other writing domains. Practices 

in Recommendation 1 improved outcomes 

in the genre elements, organization, word 

choice, writing processes, and writing output 

domains. The evidence supporting Recom-

mendation 2 included positive effects in the 

genre elements and word choice domains. 

One study that supported Recommendation 

1 found indeterminate effects for an outcome 

in the audience domain,

7

 and one study that 

supported both Recommendations 1 and 2 

found inconclusive evidence for an outcome 

in the sentence structure domain.

8

 Practices 

in Recommendation 3 improved outcomes in 

three additional domains: audience, organiza-

tion, and use of evidence. 

The