Effects of Cooperative and Individual Rewriting on an Instruction Writing Task

Abstract

The performance of students who rewrote an experimenter-provided set of instructions in dyads or individually was compared with that of individuals who wrote without access to those instructions. A total of 49 students participated in the experiment. The rewriting groups were provided with sample instructions and were asked to improve them; the writing group simply wrote instructions. All students then wrote a second set of instructions individually. The results showed that on the first task both the dyadic rewriting group and the individual writing group significantly outperformed the individual rewriting group on a communication score. Significant differences were also found on the completeness score. The ordering of means on this measure from highest to lowest was individual rewriters, dyadic rewriters, and the writing individuals.