Abstract
Digital tools are now an integral part of most communities across the globe. In this context, preparing beginning writers to produce paper- and computer-generated texts with similar levels of proficiency is paramount. In the current study, we examined general attitudes toward writing and specific attitudes toward writing paper- and computer-based texts of 544 Grade 2 students (295 female). We investigated the unique contributions of children's general and specific writing attitudes in predicting their writing performance (i.e., compositional quality and productivity) across modalities after controlling for students' inscription skills (i.e., handwriting automaticity and keyboarding automaticity), gender, and nesting due to classroom and schools. Results from hierarchical-linear modelling showed that general attitude toward writing made a statistically unique contribution to predicting the quality of students' paper- and computer-based texts. Specific attitudes towards writing paper-based texts made statistically unique contributions in explaining paper-based compositional quality and productivity. Contrastingly, specific attitudes towards writing computer-based texts did not make a unique and statistically significant contribution in predicting computerbased compositional quality and productivity. Following a multi-methods design, we further examined children's motivational beliefs, namely value and utility, attitudes and interest, and competence in writing paper- and computer-based texts (subsample of n = 54 students). Findings from deductive content analysis suggested that children found writing and learning how to write paper- and computer-based texts equally important but showed more negative attitudes towards writing paper-based texts. Results were also indicative that children believed they were more capable of writing paper-based texts.
