The Effect of TRALE (Technology-Rich Authentic Learning Environments) on Young Urban Learners’ Intentionality in Writing

Vol. 6 No. 4

Year: 2010

 Issue: January-March

Title	: The Effect of TRALE (Technology-Rich Authentic Learning Environments) on Young Urban Learners’ Intentionality in Writing
Author Name	: Agnes Cave, Frank R. Yekovich
Synopsis	:
The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of TRALE (Technology-Rich Authentic Learning Environments) on children’s writing development by tracing the logical sequence of how TRALE fostered goal-directed behavior and planning that resulted in initiating and maintaining cognitive components until a written product was completed. The subjects were young African-American 3rd graders in a low-performing, low SES urban public school. Student essays were analyzed using Meyer’s (1975) prose analysis method applying rhetorical predicates and role relations.The multivariate and subsequent univariate tests indicated that bey the end of the school year theTRALE students’ essays became quantitatively and qualitatively superior (syntactically and rhetorically more coherent and complex) to products whose authors were instructed in a more traditional classroom.