2012 Reports

A Contextualized Intervention for Community College Developmental Reading and Writing Students

Perin, Dolores; Bork, Rachel Julia Hare; Peverly, Stephen T.; Mason, Linda H.; Vaselewski, Megan

This paper provides evidence on the potential efficacy of an approach to helping students develop an important academic skill, written summarization. In two experiments, a contextualized intervention was administered to developmental reading and writing students in two community colleges. The intervention was a 10-week curricular supplement that emphasized written summarization, as well as vocabulary knowledge, question generation, reading comprehension, and persuasive writing. The findings of this study suggest that the intervention had utility for academically underprepared postsecondary students.