Effectiveness of a comprehensive game-based intervention for writing skills

Abstract

This study explores the effectiveness of a comprehensive intervention program for improving writing skills in Spanish. Participants were 167 Spanish children (3rd to 6th Grades) with reading and writing difficulties and typical development. Children exhibited problems in writing, reading, and related skills, like phonological and prosodic skills. The intervention targeted the reinforcement of orthographic patterns, decoding activities based on meta-analytical strategies; meta-phonological, morphological, and prosodic activities; visual vocabulary; sentence building, and reading, considering the reciprocity between both skills in literacy development. It was a paper-and-pencil program, considering the main approaches of writing intervention (cognitive and multisensorial), the relevance of frequent and direct feedback, the use of explicit instructions, the recommended levels of intervention (sub-lexical, lexical, and sentence levels), and the use of motivating activities through a game-based design. Sixteen individualized sessions of direct, systematic, and explicit training were conducted with the support of a trainer who provided immediate and continuous feedback. A quasi-experimental non-equivalent waiting control group pre-post intervention design, with three groups (intervention group; waiting-control group; and typical development group), was applied. Results showed that the intervention had a positive impact on writing-related skills. Specifically, children who received the intervention performed close to peers without difficulties in several tasks after the intervention program, especially those involving phonological and prosodic processing. These findings support that phonological and prosodic training is related to writing performance and its development. Furthermore, this study presents psychoeducational implications because it supports that explicit and supplemental meta-phonological strategies could play an important role in teaching writing to children with reading and writing difficulties.