At Janus Pannonius University Pecs, English major students at the Faculty of Humanities are able to participate in a course called Writing and Research Skills. This course aims to get us ready to present our ideas, opinions in personal essays, in non-fiction writings. By making us read texts in this topic, and by making us write a number of smaller essays, it teaches us how to become “more proficient writer of crisp, fluent, and accurate texts” (Horvath Joe). The course teaches us tips, and gives us hints about writing, which words to choose, how to use paragraphs, how long an essay should be, how it should look like, and how we should construct them.
Research area
I was curious to know whether students liked the course or not, and whether they felt changes in themselves as writers, or not. Did their writing skills improve, can they express themselves now more easily?
Data
I put together a questionnaire of yes or no questions for the students.
From the two groups learning on the Writing and Research Skills course, I managed to ask 14 pupils randomly according to sex, and day they attend the course.
(It was necessary to divide the students into groups because there were too many applicants. The teacher held one class on Wednesday, one on Thursday.) I have also made interviews with some of the questioned students to enable them to add a bit more information to the answers they have given in the questionnaire.
The questionnaire was given to them at the end of the course, which is at the end of the first semester in December.
Method
I divided the answers the same way I divided the questions. Some are in connection with the students opinion about the course, and others about their attitude towards writing. I analyzed the answers one-by-one, then according to the two question groups; one dealing with the person’s attitude towards writing, and the other dealing with the participant’s opinion about the course. I also made an overall scan, dealing with the number of students answering, and the total number of yes, and no answers given. There is some statistic on where the biggest difference, and where the smallest occurred in connection with positive and negative answers given to one question.
The questions
1. Classes have been useful for me
2. I have learnt new writing skills here
3. I feel motivated by the course
4. I like writing more than before
5. I feel - positive / negative / no - change(s) in my writings
6. My attitude towards writing is more positive, my writings are not better yet
My attitude towards writing is more positive, my writings are as well
My attitude towards writing has not changed
7. I have become a more proficient writer of crisp, fluent and accurate texts
Students were asked to put Y if their answer was yes, and put N if their answer was no, behind the question.
Results
The first ‘research area’, dealing with the course, contained the first three questions. The second contained the next three. The 7., the last question is somewhat neutral, because it contained information about the student, and of course about the course as well, since the aim of the class was to make us become a more proficient writers.
From the 14 students I collected all together 42 answers to both question groups. In the first group, from the 42 answers 32 were positive, and 10 were negative. This means that 76% of the group was satisfied with the course, and only 24% had some problems with the classes. For the first question I got 12, for the second 11, and for the third question I got 8 YES answers. The most answers in the question area of the course were positive! This would probably mean that most of the students felt comfortable on the lessons, they thought it was worth going there. They liked this course, and most of them also benefited from it.
From the second group of answers, ( 20 positive, 22 negative answers ), it turned out that nearly half of the students were satisfied with themselves as writers, the other half thought they didn’t really improve and their attitude towards writing didn’t change.
I have to stop here for a moment. These numbers are the average of three questions. For the fourth question I got 4, for the fifth 11, and for the sixth question I got 10 positive answers. (In the sixth question, which had three parts, I considered the answer positive if the student felt some change(es) in himself/herself in connection with writing).
This means that most of the students are feeling positive changes in their writings as well as in their attitude towards writing, but only four of them said that they liked writing now more than before.
It is interesting to see what the biggest and the smallest difference between yes and no answers in one question were.
The biggest difference between the answers was in the first question. thirteen people agreed that the classes had been useful for them, and only one claimed that it was useless going to this course. It is 93% of those who liked the course, and who learned from it.
The smallest difference occurred in the case of the third question. It was 8 students saying that they were motivated by the course, and 6 saying they weren’t. It is nearly the half, like fifty-fifty. It can either be a good sign, that the course made such a good impression on the pupils that half of the group felt it was worth writing to the course, or it can also be a bad sign, because it is only the half of the party who felt the urge to grab a pen after or before a class.
Altogether there were 98 answers given by the 14 students for the seven questions. From these 98 answers 66 was a yes, 30 was a no, and 3 answers were kind of neutral. (In the fifth question three students said that they didn’t feel any changes in their writings whatsoever.)
So 67% of all the answers given by the pupils were positive, dealing with the course and themselves, and only 30% percent felt uncomfortable in a way in connection with the class. We shouldn’t forget that the negative answers came from the questions about the writers. It shows that if someone had problems, and gave negative answers, in most of the cases these were in connection with the person’s opinion about his/her writings and not with the opinion about the course itself.
Conclusion
In connection with the course I received 32 positive answers from the total of 42.In connection with the students as writers, I got 20 positive answers from 42. As a total of yes answers, from the 14 students, for the maximum of 98 questions they gave 66 yes answers.
From the interviews and from these numbers I can say that most of the students enjoyed the course, and even learnt from it.
After the conclusion let me just add one tip to make these numbers even more promising next time: students should be presented some way to make them love writing. Some way to motivate them more, to make them feel that writing down our ideas, or stories, or memories can be done a way that is enjoyable.
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