Refocusing education in writing style? Relationships between stylistic lapses and the quality of Dutch secondary school students’ argumentative writing

In Dutch L1 classrooms, style in non-fictional genres is typically taught by means of normative exercises which students are tasked to identify stylistic lapses. Not much known about the effectiveness such when teaching style. Unknown factors include  what kinds shortcomings found students’ writing, and how occurrence certain lapses relates writing quality. The current study empirically explores these scarcely investigated issues. Teachers rated 125 argumentative texts written tenth-grade pre-university comparative judgement. Additionally, were manually analyzed investigate lapses, taking into account that common text books (‘standard category’) other types related errors (‘other category’). Multilevel regression analyses revealed only one from standard category negatively influenced quality as evaluated teachers, namely use detached phrases. category, mistakes question marks predicted A final model including those two predictors explained 11.1% variance article discusses implications findings for education, suggesting it might need be refocused.