Personal Experience-Based Direct Writing Activity And Elementary Students’ Descriptive Writing: A Quasi-Experimental Study

Abstract

Abstract. The urgency of this study lies in the need for personal experience-based writing activities to improve elementary students’ descriptive writing skills. This study compared the development of descriptive writing skills among students who received a personal experience-based Direct Writing Activity (DWA) and those who received Guided Writing. A quasi-experimental non-equivalent control-group pretest–posttest design was used. Thirty fifth-grade students from two intact classes were included in the analysis, with 15 students in each condition. The intervention group completed prewriting, drafting, draft exchange, revision, and sharing stages, whereas the comparison group received teacher guidance through models, keywords, and guiding questions. Writing performance was assessed using an analytic rubric covering content, organization, grammar, word and sentence choice, and writing mechanics. The intervention group’s mean score increased from 61 to 80, with a normalized gain of 0.49, whereas the comparison group’s mean increased from 55 to 67, with a normalized gain of 0.18. Posttest scores differed significantly between groups (Z = −3.206, p = .001, r = .585), and the normalized gains also differed significantly, Welch’s t(16.033) = 6.318, p < .001. Teacher and student activities were rated very good in both groups. These findings provide preliminary evidence that students in the personal experience-based DWA class demonstrated greater growth in descriptive writing performance than those in the Guided Writing class. Interpretation is limited by the use of two classes from one school, a small sample, a short intervention, and the absence of interrater reliability evidence.