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Abstract
The object of this exploratory study was to test two hypotheses. The first was that a student's preferential cognitive style, sequential or simultaneous, can negatively affect the imaginative fiction texts that he or she produces. The second hypothesis was that students possessing a sequential or simultaneous preferential cognitive style would produce better texts if they were exposed to the teaching of nine explicit writing strategies (Cavanagh, M. (2007). Stratégies pour écrire un récit imaginaire. Montréal, Canada: Chenelière Éducation). To test these hypotheses, we determined the preferential (sequential/simultaneous) cognitive style of 45 Franco-Albertan subjects, 33 boys and 12 girls, 9 and 10 years old, by means of the Verbal Cognitive Aptitudes Test (Flessas, J., & Lussier, F. (2003). L’épreuve verbale d'aptitudes cognitives (EVAC). Paris: ECPA). In a pretest, the subjects were divided into two groups (experimental and control), both of which were asked to write fictional texts. Then, over a period of 12 weeks, only the experimental group subjects were taught the writing strategies. Lastly (in the post-test), the members of both groups were asked to compose a second fictional text. The results provided no significant evidence for the two hypotheses. Finally, we propose some promising avenues for future research in this area that would avoid certain methodological pitfalls that we encountered in this exploratory study.