Blog ยป Scientific Analysis of Writing
Posted on 19 Apr 2013 00:47
College writers have a varying amount of skill in their writing. A plethora of small studies have been conducted in order to study this systematic behavior of this process of writing a complete piece. Such research was carried out to address the limitations that writing can have on these students. Hence, Sandra Pearls focuses her research on this topic using the students from Hostos Community College of the City University of New York and their writing mediums would produce effective data/results. Such writing works include: individual writing products, composing tapes (for audio match purposes), and responses to interviews. Two of them would be analyzed in this research and discussed in full detail.
In her object of study, Sandra specifically discusses the various writing levels that college students possess compared to a relative standard scale. Hence, her intention of discovery is to explore the writing skills of not just any college students but of unskilled college writers. Elaborate charts with specified codes were utilized in order to provide the various factors in composing the writing piece such as: the time, strategies of composing, editing process, and others.) Such a methodology was utilized for the students and Sandra noticed a pervasive yet interesting correlation between the unskilled writing process and the syntax errors in the writing and through the recorded audio. For example, the writings would be read loudly for the comfort of the writer not taking in account how it would sound to the reader; also, a plethora of grammatical errors remained on the finalized version of the paper even after the student's continual effort in revising every sentence. Though such findings represent adverse situations for these writers, Sandra does specify that they can be more developed writers through a good English professor who can selectively work out the students' problems and resolve them fully.
Sandra's effective study of college writers' quality can be used as a beneficial tool for the type of study that I would perform. Though the data was quite elaborate in measuring the subject's every thought/motion in the experimental process, her unique methodology of coding allows the data to have a more qualitative meaning. In fact, it proves to be a very effective form of measure for a single person subject. Utilization of this technique for an extensive approach with a larger amount of subject would be my next field of interest as it can be that much more useful for my group's Engineering project.
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