Effect of story mapping and story map questions on the story writing performance of students with learning disabilities

Students with learning disabilities often experience difficulties in writing fluently and using a diversity of words. Because of their inherent processing problems, they cannot process and retrieve information efficiently when completing writing assignments. Traditional writing Instruction and practice have been of limited value to students with learning disabilities. For these students, specific and effective 'writing strategies must be incorporated into Instruction and demonstrated to them through modeling. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of an Instructional strategy that used the story map technique and story map questions. The two study questions were: (a) What was the effect of story maps and story map questions on the fluency of story writing by students with learning disabilities? (b) What was the effect of this strategy on the diversity of word usage by these students?

Four students with learning disabilities in the 4th and 5th grades participated in the study. A multiple probe design was used to examine the changes in the students' writing behaviors through the phases of baseline, intervention, and maintenance. The measurement of fluency was based on counting the number of T-units contained in each story. Diversity of word usage was determined by calculating the type/token ratio. To minimize the potential biases in rating, an independent rater was used to conduct checks for inter-rater agreement. The study also used two raters to conduct procedural reliability checks.

The result of the study showed that three of the four students improved writing fluency while the fourth student, who was more fluent than the others prior to the start of the study, did not demonstrate improvement in fluency. Regarding the diversity of word usage, this study did not show significant changes in the students' writing performance. While two students demonstrated a small overall increase during intervention over the baseline condition, the diversity of word usage in the other two students' stories remained relatively unchanged. In addition to these findings, incidental observations revealed that the stories written by all four students contained more story elements during the intervention and maintenance phases than during baseline phases.