**Attitudes**

110 Learning Disabilities

Relational coherence: structural and meta-discursive (structuring,

Relevant ideas. Correct link between the ideas. Coherent and well

purpose and theme, signs of structure, organized and structured development, paragraph coherence and unity and conclusion.

such as identification and presentation of the topic without digressing, presence of a context to guide the reader, organization of details in a

sentences/paragraphs, flow at the conclusion of speech and sense of

organization, vocabulary, variety of details, correct sentence structure,

ASPECT ASSESSMENT

Productivity Total no. of words: content, functional and determinants. Coherence Referential coherence: referential and lexical indicators

defined paragraphs. Coherent storyline.

connectors, reformulated and argumentative).

Structure On a scale of 1 to 4, we assessed the presence in the text of: introduction,

Coherence On a scale of 1 to 4, we assessed compliance of the text with parameters

plan, distinguishable presence of links connecting

Quality On a scale of 1 to 6, we evaluated: clear sequence of ideas, good idea

To measure the activation and deployment of cognitive processes involved in writing tasks we used a variation on Kellogg's triple task (Olive, Kellogg, & Piolat, 2002) that had been used previously by the research team in several research projects (García & Fidalgo, 2006; Torrance, Fidalgo, & García, 2007). This technique works as follows: as students are writing their texts, they hear an audible signal (beep) distributed randomly over time (with a mean onset interval of forty-five seconds), when they must make a direct and immediate retrospection on their thoughts and actions and choose between seven response categories that assess the major cognitive processes involved in writing. For planning, the categories used were: read about the subject, think about the content and develop an outline. As for the editing process, the category included was writing a text. Finally, to assess the review process we considered categories of reading and changing text. Finally, we added a seventh

Prior to the self-reports, students were trained through example to identify and memorize the seven categories. After this, in order to verify the reliability of the process, we presented them with a case study with a total of 25 possible items that Luis, our example of a student,

Text-based measures Title Presence or absence of a title, yes or no.

Structure Introduction, body and conclusion. Reader-based measures

purpose.

category called "not related to the task".

punctuation and spelling. Table 3. Textual measures based on the text and on the reader

Other coherence measures

**Process Measures** 

The survey of attitudes toward writing, included in the test evaluation of planning and writing psychological factors (EPP and FPE, Garcia, Marbán, & de Caso, 2001), allows us to evaluate students' attitudes toward writing tasks. It consists of ten items - statements to which children have to respond "yes", "no" or "neither agree nor disagree" depending on how well each claim applies their own real attitudes.

#### **Attributions**

The questionnaire Motivation to Write II (MOES II, Garcia, Marbán, & de Caso, 2001), examines the actions performed by students in essay writing tasks. It allows us to see whether students attribute their success/failure to their own work, effort, ability or luck. It consists of thirty-two claims in eight scales based on the attribution component considered. Children must respond according to their degree of agreement with each statement on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

#### **Self-Efficacy**

The Self-Efficacy in Written Composition Questionnaire (developed by the research team) considered all the high and low cognitive level factors that are involved and influence the writing of texts and over which a person can exert voluntary control. It consists of twenty items evenly distributed among low and high cognitive level processes. Ten items measured mechanical processes such as calligraphy, layout, spelling and grammar and the remaining ten covered substantive processes categorized into information generation, prior knowledge, organization, monitoring, and draft review. The scale asks the student to what extent s/he thinks s/he can achieve/include each item in a text (e.g.: To what extent can I write my text with correct spelling? To what extent can I include many ideas in the text?). Each response is graded on a scale of 0-100, where 0 means "very sure not to" and 100 means "very sure to". The questionnaire was explained and applied immediately before the start of the writing assignment.
