To improve the writing performance of secondary school students in chemistry assessments, a set of activities was developed. First, through document analysis of written tests, five categories of frequent mistakes in answers were identified: poor punctuation (capital letters, periods), missing key answer components (omitting concepts necessary to answer the question), incomplete reasoning (logical steps are missing), unclear use of antecedents (meanings of pronouns such as “it” are difficult to discern), and poor connectives (words like “because” are lacking or used incorrectly). After this, five strategies were formulated: focus on punctuation, repeat key question components, show complete reasoning, minimize use of references, and check use of connectives. Second, a two-part intervention study was conducted. In Part A, a written prompt (arrow symbol with the word “LANGUAGE”) placed in front of context-based questions was implemented to find out if that could help students avoid making any of those mistakes. Following promising effects on the performance of 99 students, the intervention was extended with a Part B to find out if, in addition to the prompt, bonus points (for each prompt question one bonus point was awarded if the answer was formulated correctly in terms of language use) and language support (prompt card listing the five strategies, and supportive assignments) could be of extra help to students. The findings suggest that the writing performance of students can be improved by increasing students’ awareness through a simple written prompt, providing language support, and awarding bonus points for properly formulated answers to chemistry test questions.

中文翻译：

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写作提示有助于提高化学概念理解的表达

为了提高中学生在化学评估中的写作表现，开展了一系列活动。首先，通过书面测试的文档分析，确定了五类常见的答案错误：标点符号不正确（大写字母，句号），缺少关键答案成分（省略了回答问题所必需的概念），推理不完整（缺少逻辑步骤） ，先行词用法不清楚（例如“ it”等代词的含义难以辨认）和结缔词差（缺少“ because”等词或使用不正确）。此后，制定了五种策略：专注于​​标点符号，重复关键问题组成部分，显示完整的推理，最小化引用的使用以及检查连接词的使用。第二，进行了一个分为两部分的干预研究。在A部分，在基于情境的问题前面放置了一个书面提示（带有“ LANGUAGE”字样的箭头符号），以查明这是否可以帮助学生避免犯任何这些错误。在对99名学生的学习表现产生了令人鼓舞的影响之后，干预措施扩展到了B部分，以查明除提示外，是否还有加分（如果对每个提示问题的回答都按照以下方式正确制定，则每个加分都会获得一个加分语言使用）和语言支持（提示卡列出了五种策略以及支持性作业）可能会对学生有额外的帮助。研究结果表明，通过简单的书面提示，提供语言支持，