The effect of a writing center on developmental student writing apprehension and writing performance

This study investigated the relationship between students' demographic variables (age, race, gender) and writing performance and writing apprehension as well as the effect of writing center attendance on writing performance and writing apprehension. Subjects consisted of 202 developmental English students at a public, urban, northeast Louisiana university during the Fall 2002 semester. Students were distributed in 3 groups: control (n = 85), PLATO (n = 36) and one-on-one tutoring (n = 81). Students in the experimental groups received one-on-one tutoring or PLATO tutoring for at least one hour per week in the writing center. Students in the control group did not receive tutoring. At the end of the semester group means were compared on the dependent variables writing performance and writing apprehension. The Daly-Miller Writing Apprehension Test was administered, along with a grammar test (0--100 possible points) and an essay test (0--100 possible points). The combined score of grammar test and essay test made up the student's total writing score (0--200 possible points). It was noted that the writing apprehension mean score (post-test) for all groups was 82, which was well in the "not significantly apprehensive" range. With that in mind, no useful conclusions could be drawn from the relationship between age, race and gender, writing center attendance and writing apprehension. Students' race and gender were not found to have a statistically significant relationship with writing performance. Students' age had a significant effect on writing performance: age groups 3 and 4 (23--25 and 25+) had higher means (139.50 and 135.79, respectively) than age groups 1 and 2 (17--19 and 2022) whose means were 128.28 and 112.05, respectively. There was a significant difference between the means of the one-on-one tutoring (130.93) and the control group (120.16) as well as a significant difference between the means of the PLATO (136.54) and the control group. The results of this study support the research on the effectiveness of the computer-assisted and one-on-one tutorial methods for developmental English students.