| dc.description.abstract | Writing ability is crucial and fundamental to students’ learning. However, students’ writing abilities in schools are usually under their respective grade levels. Moreover, the common affliction in writing classes is that students have limited ideas to write about and get writing blocks. Regarding writing ideas, several studies indicated that reading was beneficial to improve students’ writing performance. Regarding writing block, previous studies demonstrated that freewriting could reduce students’ writing block. Accordingly, we proposed an integrated reading-freewriting model, i.e., He-Elbow Writing Model, which includes theme-based reading and association-stimulation freewriting methods to promote students’ positive reactions to writing and improve their writing performance. The He-Elbow Writing Model was implemented in a web-based environment and a game-based environment. These two environments were chosen because the former could provide a wide range of access while the latter could enhance students’ joyfulness. To this end, two empirical studies were conducted to examine how students perceived and performed in these two environments. More specifically, a Web-based He-Elbow Writing (WB-HEW) system was developed in Study One, where how the WB-HEW system affects students’ writing was investigated. On the other hand, a Game-based He-Elbow Writing (GB-HEW) system was implemented in Study Two, where how students reacted to the GB-HEW system was examined.
The results from Study One suggested that students positively perceived the WB-HEW system and they showed more positive attitudes toward writing after interacting with the WB-HEW system. Due to such positive perceptions and attitudes, students’ writing performance was improved, in terms of the quality of essays, the use of vocabulary and the production of writing idea. On the other hand, the findings from Study Two demonstrated that the GB-HEW system also had positive effects on student writing but such effects were associated with students’ abilities. More specifically, high-ability students overall showed outstanding performance outcomes but low-ability students made more improvement in sentence making. Furthermore, students generally showed positive perceptions for GB-HEW system but low-ability students demonstrated less intention of using the GB-HEW system in writing classes. It seems that some issues of the designed writing systems still exist. Therefore, four guidelines were proposed for improving future writing environments. Furthermore, two frameworks were proposed and could be applied to provide the new knowledge of how to develop effective writing environments that can accommodate the needs of diverse students. | en_US |