Fluent Persuasive Writing With Counterarguments for Students With Emotional Disturbance
Twelve seventh- and eighth-grade students with emotional disturbance participated in a multiple probe, multiple baseline design two-phase intervention study to improve persuasive writing skills. The first phase after baseline taught students to plan and write persuasive essays including counterarguments. In the second phase, students were taught to plan and write fluently in 10 min. Students were assessed on their essay writing, the Woodcock–Johnson Fluency subtest, writing probes, and were interviewed post instruction. Findings revealed that all students mastered the components of effective persuasive essay writing, included counterarguments, and improved from baseline to postinstruction and postfluency phases in length and essay quality. Although students’ performance decreased slightly on surprise maintenance and generalization measures, results remained substantially higher than baseline. Strategy reports revealed all students enjoyed using and seeing the benefits of instruction. Findings are discussed for future research and practice for students with emotional disturbance.