Scaffolding appraisal and reader awareness to enhance participatory writing in the Swedish middle-school classroom

In this paper, we explore how participation and participatory writing can be enhanced through Appraisal theory and reader awareness. Democratic participation by the means of writing is a crucial and powerful tool. Through an intensive writing intervention, we explore the effects of scaffolding on two key aspects of participatory writing, expressing interpersonal meaning (one’s own thoughts) and awareness of readers (by argumentation and interaction in rhetorical structures) and how this can enhance participatory writing. We focus on middle-school pupils and thusly address a critical developmental stage where foundational writing skills can be significantly enhanced. Results show that the intervention based on scaffolding techniques had an impact on some aspects of the pupils’ writing. For example, some pupils responded more to counter arguments, thereby including more discussion in their texts. Also, even though the intervention did not include the rhetorical structure of a letter, pupils did include more leave-taking after the intervention. Further, the intervention had an impact on pupils’ attitude and graduation; they used more of both after the writing intervention than before.