Abstract
Language borrowing from sources is a phenomenon used by developing writers as they are learning academic language, though there is much to be learned about how younger students borrow from sources. This study explores student writing, from a sample of 166 diverse middle graders, across topics to determine patterns in borrowing from instructional source texts. Computational techniques were used to identify borrowing, defined as similarity in pairs of sentences from student texts and instructional texts. Qualitative analyses of the sentence pairs that included borrowing showed that position statements, borrowed in part or whole, represent the majority of borrowing. Students also made superficial edits to sentences from instructional text by substituting or deleting words, but rarely adding words. Quantitative analyses of the sentence pairs revealed that more difficult words (longer, less frequent) were more likely to be borrowed. We found no differences in amounts of borrowing among students with varying English fluency levels (as measured by grade, standardized English test scores, and English language designation). Lastly, we examined whether borrowing was related to writing quality and found no effect. Using a unique combination of methodological approaches, we provide information about patterns of borrowing and point toward considerations of how students integrate instructional text into writing.
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Acknowledgements
The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, US Department of Education, through Grant R305A090555 to Harvard University and Grant R305F100026 to the Strategic Education Research Partnership as part of the Reading for Understanding Research Initiative. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the US Department of Education.
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Appendices
Appendix
List of function words excluded from similarity metrics
ourselves, hers, between, yourself, but, again, there, about, once, during, out, very, having, with, they, own, an, be, some, for, do, its, yours, such, into, of, most, itself, other, off, is, am, or, who, as, from, him, each, the, themselves, until, below, are, we, these, your, his, through, nor, me, were, her, more, himself, this, down, should, our, their, while, above, both, up, to, ours, had, she, all, no, when, at, any, before, them, same, and, been, have, in, will, on, does, yourselves, then, that, because, what, over, why, so, can, did, not, now, under, he, you, herself, has, just, where, too, only, myself, which, those, I, after, few, whom, being, if, theirs, my, against, a, by, doing, it, how, further, was, here, than.
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Dobbs, C.L., Caselli, N.K., Hartzell, E. et al. Understanding middle graders’ language borrowing: how lexical and demographic characteristics predict similarity. Read Writ 35, 971–994 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-021-10210-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-021-10210-0