This paper is one outcome of the DigiHand project (2018-2022), funded by the Research Council of Norway (grant number 273422). It is divided into five sections: “Introduction,” “Method,” “Statistical Analysis,” “Results,” and “Discussion.” Each detailed section includes appropriate references, tests, and proofs.
The study looks at the impact on learning to compose text in 5.5 to 6.5 year old students who don’t have previous formal writing instruction in the Norwegian language Nynorsk. The first grade classes were divided into two groups: a group of five classes containing 90 children “who learned to compose text by handwriting on paper,” and a group of five classes containing 91 children who learned to compose text by typing on a digital tablet using software that speaks the text written by them as an additional feature. The authors conclude that the modality of writing doesn’t affect the learning in children; the students experienced advantages and disadvantages with both.
The authors “adopted a Bayesian approach to statistical inference.” The study was conducted in 2018 and 2019, and based on student samples “from state schools in Norway, with one class per school”; “class sizes ranged from 11 to 26.” In the study, the students’ compositions were assessed based on certain parameters: text length, segmentation (spacing) accuracy, sentence terminator accuracy, spelling accuracy, vocabulary sophistication, syntactic accuracy and complexity, and narrative measures. I don’t want to write anything about the results or conclusion because I want people to read this paper.
The flow of the paper is very smooth, written in a way that is both easy to read and understand. The writing style is very impressive and the study is very thorough. Nothing is left out. Any questions that may come up while reading are answered in the text. Future research directions are also clearly identified. The statistical analysis is up to the mark with a detailed explanation of the results. The conclusion is meticulously written. Overall, the paper is a must-read for educators, researchers, and professionals. Not only is the content very useful, but readers can learn an effective style of research writing from it.