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In the spring semester of 1997 three "Writing and Research Skills" courses were taught at the English Department of Janus Pannonius University. These were coded as ANG 1601, ANG 1602, ANG 1603. Each of them aimed at developing students' writing abilities, giving useful advice on how to produce individually well-constructed academic essays. To achieve progress, students of the writing courses were given various kinds of tasks to examine the essay as a whole and as something which consists of several and seperate parts. One of the tasks covering both aspect was the essay on tape. As a student of ANG 1602, I decided to do some research on it.

All the participants of the courses had to write a text and then record it so that we could hand it in on tape. It rose my interest because it was an unusual way of evaluating a home assignment.

There were three possible choices to write about. The first one was the expansion of an already written essay in which we wrote about something that we learnt outside school. The second title could be completed with a freely chosen word: "Designing a University..." The third option was "Comparing Essay Writing with a Metaphor". I wanted to know which of the three choices was the most popular among students. I also aimed to research what methods students applied, what kinds of strategies they had and what attitudes they settled towards the whole task.

Method

I listened to thirteen essays of the ANG 1602 course and to five of the ANG 1603. The most popular option was the expanded learning process. The second was designing something interesting and new for the University or for their students. Only one person decided to compare essay writing with a metaphor, probably because it needed an abstract way of thinking. To find out about students attitudes and further details connected to the tape essay, I prepared questions and asked students to answer me orally. I interviewed students one by one due to my belief in originality. I was sure that this way no student will be influenced by the others' opinion. Following this method I also made sure that I obtain clear information, when I did not understand something I immediately asked for explanation.

Results and discussion

From the first topic many interesting essays came out. Students wrote and spoke about how they learnt to swim, to answer the phone proficiently in another country and in another language, to glide or play football. (See Horvath, J. Geresdi, A. Pónya, K. Bogdán, L.). I could also listen to someone's experience of learning to play the piano, another person's skiing rituals and even about "csuhéfonás". (See Salekovics, A. Kôberl, K. Magyarfalvi, D.)

I asked students why they chose their own specific topic. Those who wrote about the learning process said that they found it easier to give some more data of the topic which they already had discussed. It only needed restructuring and expressing ideas a bit more widely.

I also listened to nine designing essays. It is characteristic of good writers to try to plan something that makes University years more memorable and pleasent in many ways. Thus the designers planned the perfect tutor, a potential University course, a University café, a useful dictionary for English majors and an assembly hall. (See Wollent, I. Bagi, Á. Nagy, Á. Csongor, Cs. Zsiborás, E.) The designers said that by the help of this topic they could imagine something and execute that.

From the third type I only listened to one work which compared essay writing with the process of film making. (Pétersz, T.) The student choosing this topic demonstrated many possible similarities between the two concepts and provided a convincing tape essay.

This type was not too popular among students, which was most probably due to the fact that the other two topics could be approached easier by many.

The tape essay had to be a five-minute long text. All speakers approximetely kept themselves to the time limitation and spent that time at their disposal properly. Students said that at first they were not sure if they would be able to fill five minutes with speech which maintains attention. It seems that fear had no concrete basis. However, anxiety while recording was obvious. It manifested itself in faltered voices, sometimes in the repetition of the first syllables. Eleven people reported that they felt embarrassed for quite a while when hearing their own voices being recorded. It resulted in false starts and stuttering so that students had to record those parts again after each mistake. After some time everybody got used to their voices. Following that they could speak much more confidently. The rhythm of the speech was close to natural with little deviations. Speed of the talk varied, too. It was, however, influenced by the natural speaking features of the particular speaker. Sometimes it was obvious that the student was speaking as fast as possible in order to get over the task as soon as he or she could. Others turned their attention very carefully and it resulted in somewhat slower speed than normal.

It is rather difficult to evaluate every tape essay with the same validity because most of them were rather bad quality pieces as students had no proficient equipment. There usually was a constant background noise and students' leaning towards and backwards also influenced audiobility in a positive or negative way.

I also wanted to do some research on results. I asked for the statistics provided by our teacher, Horváth József. In the ANG 1601 course ten people did the essay on tape. The minimum points were four and the maximum was ten. The mean came out to 7.6 here. In ANG 1602 out of the sixteen students attending the course two people received extra bonus points, that is their points were twelve. The minimum point was six, the mean was 8.56. In the third group, ANG 1603, those who scored minimum points had only five and those of scoring the maximum had ten. The mean here was 7.2. To sum up the results of the three writing courses, one student scored four points, two scored five points, three had six points, nine had seven and another nine got eight points. Six got nine and four got ten points. There was one person who had zero point but he did not hand in anything to be evaluated.

We can see that results were quite nice and it was possible to get the highest points, what is more, even bonus ones.

I wondered whether students' positive attitudes contributed to good results and what feelings they had when fulfilling the task. I constructed several questions and twenty people answered them. The first one was intended to investigate whether students enjoyed doing the tape essay. Half of them liked the task but the other half reported that it was a nuisance for them to look for a satisfactory tape recorder and to spend so much time on recording.

My second question was constructed to get to know whether students spent more or less time on the tape essay than they usually spend on an average one. Sixteen of them said that from this aspect the tape essay was much better as there was no need to type it which would have taken hours. It eliminated all the difficulties which occur when the essay has to be submitted in print. Students said that they took plenty of time to revise the essay, which was the whole aim of the task, indeed. Only one person said that she spent much longer time on this process than on a usual one. All of them agreed that hearing their essays made them revise, correct mistakes and even change some parts.

I also wanted to know if they were satisfied with their results and thought that the evaluation of such an essay can be objective enough. Mainly those who had high points were satisfied but surprisingly some of the low-scorers claimed that they did not expect more. To the second part of my question everybody answered that there are many psychological effects originating from the tone of the voice. Everybody shared the opinion that the extent of pleasure coming from listening to one's speech is decisive and probably even personal relation influences the teacher,too.

Eighteen students gave a positive answer to my last question: "Would you apply this technique as a teacher?" It was strange after that students claimed that it was not an objective essay type. They all said that probably they themselves would be affected by different factors, still it would be great fun to produce something in a completely different, refreshing way. Two persons told me that they would apply the method but would not mark it. There were two persons who said that they would rather make students hand in written works because then they could mark a wider range of writing skills, for instance spelling. Here I must add that the aim of the tape essay was not to check spelling but to make writers revise.

Conclusion

When I evaluated my research, I had to state that the idea of taping the essay evoked mixed feelings at the first hearing. Later everyone considered it to be a useful procedure to revise and correct. Most students found it funny to listen to their own voices. Students regretted that they had no chance to listen to all the other essays as well. However, it gave an occasion to realize how we speak English and what area needs practice and development. It seems from the clear evident that after the soccer essay (See Horváth József, 1995) it was the second most popular task completed in the course.