Introduction
The success of the lectures depends both on the students and teachers; therefore lecturers have to pay considerable attention on the effectiveness of the teaching. Writers of the English Department are to submit many essays to the different courses where they have to fulfil certain requirements. The basis of the essays' style is academic writing therefore the fitness centre, the "Writing and Research Skills course", is very important for university students studying English.
In this research paper I intend to investigate a part of the training process applied by Horváth József, a tutor of the English Department at Janus Pannonius University: how beneficial the system of using portfolios for improving academic writing is. This is one of the major reasons for my choosing Content Analysis of at Least Five Portfolios from the options of themes offered by the tutor. The other was to demonstrate the most frequent mistakes made by students so that the writers could improve their style of writing, and the teacher could see how remunerative and practical his procedure is. By analysing the essays in each portfolio I wish to discover whether it would perform a function for other lecturers to adopt the method analysed, or whether there is a need for modification in the portfolio process.
Method
There were six portfolios at my disposal including mine as well: one from ANG 1601, three from ANG 1602, and two from ANG 1603- Ang 1601, ANG 1602, and ANG 1603 are the courses for improving academic writing at JPU. Altogether, I found 36 essays in the dedicated notebooks which I investigated according to content analysis.
Content analysis is an objective way of finding generalities, results and conclusions in research based on the system of classification which requires the researcher to read each work thoroughly; I read every portfolio three times. I categorized each essay according to ten aspects: did the essay have a title; was the title underlined; was there a date referring to the creation of the piece; was the comment of teacher positive; were the comments suggested by teacher accepted and adopted; mistakes corrected; mistakes not corrected; number of paragraphs in each essay; was there a smiling face ( :) ); was there a sad face ( :( ).
Having graded each essay according to the items, I compared the same aspects of each portfolio. Thus I was able to see whether there were any similarities or features allowing me to draw concrete conclusions. So my personal opinion does not influence the results of the research which is the proof for justifying the objectivity of content analysis.
Results and Discussion
The first step of my investigation, that is reading and filling blanks of tables, is presented in the following evaluation figures. If there is an "x" in the table it means that the essay had a title; the title was underlined; there was a date indicating the piece' s day of creation; the teacher gave positive comments on the essay; the student adopted the instructions; mistakes were corrected; one mistake was not corrected; there was a drawing.
Titles
In the comparison of the six tables it turned out that most of the students did not give a title- though they were asked to do so. The tutor, Horváth József, wrote the following advice to Úz Márk' s portfolio, who is a student in ANG 1601:
"I suggest you give a title to all your subsequent essays in this portfolio. This would be useful for you when you look for one, and me when I begin reading a new piece. And it would be useful to other students who may read the portfolio." The same was proposed to Harmath Virág, who is a student in ANG 1602: "P.S. And please remember to give a title to each of your writings in this portfolio." Altogether, there were two instructions that implied giving a title in the collections of writings. According to the tables showing the statistics, there were more notebooks without titles of essays than with titles.
Horváth indicated that the dating of writings is beneficial both for the teacher and the student or for other scholars reading (or analysing) the portfolios. Only two writers out of six dated and underlined the titles of the writings and the rest of the students did not follow the example. Not only did Úz and Harmath forget to date the essays, but they did not adopt the tutor' s first negative comment, that is the portfolio used as a source of communication was not successful in this respect, which suggests that a greater emphasis should have been put on the correction in order to make student realise the significance of the comment. Of course there were examples of asking the student for adopting the pieces of pieces of advice and for revision of the text as well.
Comments and correction
Juxtaposing the quantity of positive comments and the number of mistakes detected and corrected by teacher, I drew the conclusion that there were more corrections than positive comments. This means in general that there was a lot to be improved in the style of academic writing of the six students.
I found the following comments praising the style of essays: detailed introduction, coherent paragraph, good description, and adequate style. Horváth was thankful for giving source of the Three in One piece, for a personal account and for accepting pieces of pieces of advice. Comments about revisions seemed to be especially approving.
I collected all the mistakes found in the portfolios of the six students and made a list where I put them in order of frequency (see Table 7 below). There were various cases when the mistake corrected in the previous essay was repeated in the following one, which signifies lack of revision, but opposed to this the teaching was remunerative when considering the comment approving of review of essay. Horváth asked for simplification and clarification for more occasions and due to this in most of the instances students- such as Csontos Zsuzsanna who rewrote "How to Apply Make-up" or Makra Melinda, who simplified the "How a See-saw is made" essay- accomplished the task.
Analysing the portfolios, I found a few mistakes which were not corrected. Most of them were rather spelling mistakes, for example in the notebook of Schlõgl Krisztián: "Each and every piece of work of this collection shows the peculiarity and uniqueness o Irish English"; "Do business only with well known and reliable craftmen so as to avoid your home from collapsing two or three years later". Úz Márk wrote oppinion instead of opinion in his essay, "The Lyrics of a rap song".
Number of Paragraphs
As we can see from Table 7 most of the students have serious problems with coherence of the text, that is they are uncertain about the usage of paragraphs. For example, Csontos Zsuzsanna does not finish a thought started but goes to another different theme included in the same paragraph. Although the tutor emphasises by telling and showing the students the significance of coherence, most of the students do not apply the method suggested by teacher.
The infrequency of drawings in the portfolios is depressing for the writers. It is indicated in Table 1 that there was a sad face drawn in the fifth essay next to the comment correcting the most serious mistake. Due to this, the comment was adopted in the sixth writing. Smiling faces inspire students for writing again. Table 1 shows that the tutor drew a smiling face next to the fifth, sixth, and seventh essays. Dates indicated that there was only a few days difference between the writing of essays.
Conclusion
The evaluation of the six portfolios confirms some of my perceptions. According to the results of the research paper the system of using portfolios for improving academic writing of students studying English is essential and indispensable. Students have to write an enormous amount of essays during the five years spent in the university and writing is a fundamental basis of the realisation of the wish of everyone: the best mark for the essay ("5"). As Table 7 shows the frequency of mistakes is another factor contributing to the significance of teaching "Writing and Research Skills". There might have been some mistakes which have not been corrected, but this could have been because the teacher gave the opportunity for writers to revise the essay, and it would be the student who recognises his or her own mistake and not the tutor.
I hope that every student will find some pieces of useful information in my research paper instigating them to change their way of writing if necessary. In the process of making content analysis I had the opportunity to know other students from a different point of view and in addition to this my vocabulary expanded as well.
Showing posts with label portfolio analysis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label portfolio analysis. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
W 121 M
Introduction
As an English major student of Janus Pannonius University of Pécs I attended Horváth József’s Writing and research skills class. In this course the students aim to improve their abilities of writing essays and research papers. They collect and edit their essays in a portfolio at the middle of the semester. Besides making my own I have read some of the portfolios of my classmates as well as works from former classes. The question I would like to discuss with the help of one of the writers is what was the process that lead to the finished collection.
Method
The collection I chose was Portfooliyo written by Baditz Mihály, first year English major of JPU. This portfolio contains five essays of various length. They are based on personal experience or ideas, so the collection itself provides an authentic insight to the life of Mihály
Generally, a student’s essay collection hides some interesting and exciting information about the person who worked on it. In the case of personal essays like the ones I read in Portfooliyo this secret is even more greater. However, I wanted to explore further elements which I think cannot be disclosed by the very reading of the writings. To put the subject in different new light I decided to meet the author and ask my questions. I made two interviews with Baditz Mihály (November 20, and December 2, 1998) and I read the portfolio (which was finished by November 13). between the meetings. Mihály came to my apartment in Pécs where we had the conversations. He did not receive any questions in advance as most of my questions were formed during the interviews. I asked the first questions only with a general knowledge about the circumstances and without knowing either the essays or the evaluation of Horváth József’s. During the interviews I made hand-written notes. After reading the collection and the evaluation we had another conversation. Both interviews helped a great deal understanding the process of making Portfooliyo.
Results and Discussion
First I asked questions about the method of writing and working with the finished pieces. The general process was the same for all of Mihály’s writings. He typed on his computer without a sketch or former plan. Word processing and using the automatic spelling correction option was more common than handwriting. “Bogus”, in a different way from all the other essays had an ending paragraph before the first part.
After this we discussed the question of choosing the topic for an essay. All five writings in his collection discuss personal topics. The reason for this as Mihály said was that he knew these things the best (“My table from my point of view”) or these things happened to him (“My arrival”, about his first day in London), so the ideas were obvious. He said that he did not find it hard to express his personal experiences or to describe the environment he lives in. He found the idea that another person might feel similar or saw the same situations motivating. He thought that the reader of these essays might experience a strong connection towards him as the writer because of this. ”Often we as the readers have the sense that we are in a casual conversation with the essayist who is just now, with us, thinking through his or her ideas. But do not be deceived. To create the sense of casual intimacy may take much planning and revising, for the good writer knows that few people want to read random and carelessly organized thoughts.” (Seyler 26.) I think Mihály sometimes managed to make the reader feel like being in a “conversation” with him what for me he reached with “Studying”. This essay I loved the best not only for this but because Mihály discussed a problem (wasting the time instead of concentrating on the hard work of studying) which is one of my biggest problems, too. He used a personal and clear voice quoting typical thoughts during the time wasted.
After finishing an essay the works themselves remained unchanged except “My table from my point of view”, which had a first title: My room. The reason for the change was that Mihály started the essay with the description of his table and did not continue with the rest of the room.
Working with a personal computer’s word processor Mihály used the automatic spell–check. Finishing the editing work he read through the collection before printing and corrected remaining grammar errors in the text.
After the first interview I read the collection and the attached evaluation by Horváth József’s. He mentioned his favorites (“Bogus” as “an excellent bad essay” and “My table from my point of view”), and also gave some tips for revising, an evaluation of language and other remarks on the portfolio.
Longer than two weeks after finishing his portfolio I asked Mihály for a second meeting. In this second interview I decided to discuss the questions of finishing and changing the collection.
Talking about the portfolio as an organic whole Mihály said that the essay “Have you ever...” does not fit to the collection totally. The reason for this, as he stated, was that he did not really feel like managing to make the reader conscious of the experience that inspired the essay.
To the question whether he thought the portfolio was full and finished when it was submitted he answered that he did not feel the need for finishing it at all. The essays can exist together or apart, the portfolio does not have to be complete.
We discussed the problem of selecting the proper pieces for a following collection . Mihály would not select now for a new portfolio, the same way he did when making the first one. That time he liked those five the most, for another collection he might pick some other essays in a random way.
As a finishing we discussed his thoughts and remarks on writing in general. He said that since starting the course his whole relation to writing changed. First he felt that he was forced to write and did not find any pleasure in that. After a number of essays he realized that he liked what he was doing, and since that time he has been sitting down to write regularly.
Conclusion
The two conversations with Mihály helped me not only to understand the essays in his portfolio but to evaluate them for myself and for this research. I felt interesting to experience how this student prepared his collection, which I think I introduced well enough as a process.
Some questions could be cleared only by investigating other students’ work in writing and collecting their essays. I experienced a number of interesting phenomena during this research and preparing my collection too. One of these is the evaluation given by the tutor, Horváth József. The official evaluation is not a real part of the portfolio still I tried to handle it together with the writings it was referring to. After finishing the portfolio, beginner writers appreciate a formal and clear evaluation of their work. For example Mihály found this critique rather encouraging and motivating to continue writing even after finishing the course.
As an English major student of Janus Pannonius University of Pécs I attended Horváth József’s Writing and research skills class. In this course the students aim to improve their abilities of writing essays and research papers. They collect and edit their essays in a portfolio at the middle of the semester. Besides making my own I have read some of the portfolios of my classmates as well as works from former classes. The question I would like to discuss with the help of one of the writers is what was the process that lead to the finished collection.
Method
The collection I chose was Portfooliyo written by Baditz Mihály, first year English major of JPU. This portfolio contains five essays of various length. They are based on personal experience or ideas, so the collection itself provides an authentic insight to the life of Mihály
Generally, a student’s essay collection hides some interesting and exciting information about the person who worked on it. In the case of personal essays like the ones I read in Portfooliyo this secret is even more greater. However, I wanted to explore further elements which I think cannot be disclosed by the very reading of the writings. To put the subject in different new light I decided to meet the author and ask my questions. I made two interviews with Baditz Mihály (November 20, and December 2, 1998) and I read the portfolio (which was finished by November 13). between the meetings. Mihály came to my apartment in Pécs where we had the conversations. He did not receive any questions in advance as most of my questions were formed during the interviews. I asked the first questions only with a general knowledge about the circumstances and without knowing either the essays or the evaluation of Horváth József’s. During the interviews I made hand-written notes. After reading the collection and the evaluation we had another conversation. Both interviews helped a great deal understanding the process of making Portfooliyo.
Results and Discussion
First I asked questions about the method of writing and working with the finished pieces. The general process was the same for all of Mihály’s writings. He typed on his computer without a sketch or former plan. Word processing and using the automatic spelling correction option was more common than handwriting. “Bogus”, in a different way from all the other essays had an ending paragraph before the first part.
After this we discussed the question of choosing the topic for an essay. All five writings in his collection discuss personal topics. The reason for this as Mihály said was that he knew these things the best (“My table from my point of view”) or these things happened to him (“My arrival”, about his first day in London), so the ideas were obvious. He said that he did not find it hard to express his personal experiences or to describe the environment he lives in. He found the idea that another person might feel similar or saw the same situations motivating. He thought that the reader of these essays might experience a strong connection towards him as the writer because of this. ”Often we as the readers have the sense that we are in a casual conversation with the essayist who is just now, with us, thinking through his or her ideas. But do not be deceived. To create the sense of casual intimacy may take much planning and revising, for the good writer knows that few people want to read random and carelessly organized thoughts.” (Seyler 26.) I think Mihály sometimes managed to make the reader feel like being in a “conversation” with him what for me he reached with “Studying”. This essay I loved the best not only for this but because Mihály discussed a problem (wasting the time instead of concentrating on the hard work of studying) which is one of my biggest problems, too. He used a personal and clear voice quoting typical thoughts during the time wasted.
After finishing an essay the works themselves remained unchanged except “My table from my point of view”, which had a first title: My room. The reason for the change was that Mihály started the essay with the description of his table and did not continue with the rest of the room.
Working with a personal computer’s word processor Mihály used the automatic spell–check. Finishing the editing work he read through the collection before printing and corrected remaining grammar errors in the text.
After the first interview I read the collection and the attached evaluation by Horváth József’s. He mentioned his favorites (“Bogus” as “an excellent bad essay” and “My table from my point of view”), and also gave some tips for revising, an evaluation of language and other remarks on the portfolio.
Longer than two weeks after finishing his portfolio I asked Mihály for a second meeting. In this second interview I decided to discuss the questions of finishing and changing the collection.
Talking about the portfolio as an organic whole Mihály said that the essay “Have you ever...” does not fit to the collection totally. The reason for this, as he stated, was that he did not really feel like managing to make the reader conscious of the experience that inspired the essay.
To the question whether he thought the portfolio was full and finished when it was submitted he answered that he did not feel the need for finishing it at all. The essays can exist together or apart, the portfolio does not have to be complete.
We discussed the problem of selecting the proper pieces for a following collection . Mihály would not select now for a new portfolio, the same way he did when making the first one. That time he liked those five the most, for another collection he might pick some other essays in a random way.
As a finishing we discussed his thoughts and remarks on writing in general. He said that since starting the course his whole relation to writing changed. First he felt that he was forced to write and did not find any pleasure in that. After a number of essays he realized that he liked what he was doing, and since that time he has been sitting down to write regularly.
Conclusion
The two conversations with Mihály helped me not only to understand the essays in his portfolio but to evaluate them for myself and for this research. I felt interesting to experience how this student prepared his collection, which I think I introduced well enough as a process.
Some questions could be cleared only by investigating other students’ work in writing and collecting their essays. I experienced a number of interesting phenomena during this research and preparing my collection too. One of these is the evaluation given by the tutor, Horváth József. The official evaluation is not a real part of the portfolio still I tried to handle it together with the writings it was referring to. After finishing the portfolio, beginner writers appreciate a formal and clear evaluation of their work. For example Mihály found this critique rather encouraging and motivating to continue writing even after finishing the course.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
W 041 F
Introduction
University students have always had to face the difficulties of writing essays for their classes. As this may be a source of problem for many of them, courses aimed at improving their academic skills in writing are started every semester in the English department of Janus Pannonius University (later referred to as JPU). These Writing and Research Skills courses, with Horváth József as a tutor, were announced at three different times under the codes ANG 1601, ANG 1602, ANG 1603.
One condition to complete the course was to write at least eight essays. Also, the tutor of the course asked participants to "keep a record" of their writings in a "dedicated notebook" (1). These collections were called portfolios.
Another task was to complete a research paper. Several possibilities were offered as the topics of these papers. One of these was the content analyses of at least five portfolios.
My purpose in completing this survey was to find out more of the contents of course participants' portfolios and to provide information concerning their main characteristics.
Method
Five students participated in this survey, all of whom were attending Writing and Research Skills courses at JPU in the fall semester of 1997. All of them were at their first year at the English Department, four were English majors and one was a 9th semester Italian major. I made no special distinction between students when I asked them to take part in this survey; they were chosen on the basis of our relationship. Students involved in the study will later be referred to as Student A, Student B, Student C, Student D and Student E.
I asked these students to share their portfolios with me to enable me to examine these collections closely and draw conclusions from them.
On the first WRS course students were offered several titles for their writing. These were the following:
* The lyrics of a rap song
* An introduction to a favourite novel, poem, short story, play or other text
* An afterword for the same text
* Three in one
* A high school graduation ceremony speech
* A travel guide to your home town
* A travel guide to JPU campus
* A travel guide to a Pécs site
* A travel guide to any place you've been to
* Profile of a person, based on interview
* A description of how a house, a bridge, a television set, a book, a pen, a pullover or some other object or construction is made
* The revised news story
* Truncate it: make each word longer than two syllables one syllable shorter in any text you choose
* A learning experience: personal essay on tape
Students had to choose at least eight options of these but were encouraged to "feel free to add pieces of their "own devising" (Horváth 1).
Later, during the semester the tutor offered twelve further subjects for the portfolios:
* A description of an unpleasant experience I have had (in four paragraphs maximum)
* A significant experience (or day or event) in my life
* A hobby that annoys me
* Why I don't like something that otherwise I would like to do
* Change the end (or the beginning and the end) of a short descriptive essay
* JPU by night (to be published in the university yearbook)
* A personal account of one of my holidays at Lake Balaton
* An essay about any subject with a narrative in it
* My pet (or domestic animal)
* My experiences with a royal family
* A description of environmental problems in the place (street, village or town where I live)
* A description of the interior of a shop
Results and discussion
To gain sufficient data of the portfolios I set up certain categories to fit essays in. My findings can be classified in three groups. The first aspect concerned the look of the notebooks, their size and what was written on their labels. The second viewpoint involved the essays: their number, topics, length measured in paragraphs and sentences, their method of distinguishing paragraphs, and whether the title and the content of the essays were in contact. The third aspect concerned tutorial remarks on, in and beside texts, and the numbers of J and L signs.(The tutor used these symbols to indicate his opinion of a part of the text or the whole writing.)
Notebooks and labels
There were three kinds of notebooks serving as portfolios: one spirally bound notebook of Student B, a middle-size one of Student C and three small-size ones of Students A, D and E.
As for the labels of the portfolios, three students included exact data: their names and the code and name of the course. Two participants had put only their names on the front.
Features of essays
Their number
Student B wrote the most essays, nine. Students A and D handed in eight writings and Students C and E had written four essays by the time of the completion of this paper.
Topics chosen
There were ten items among the subjects offered that none of the participants wrote about. Among the chosen ones Three in one was the most popular–all the five participants included it in their portfolios–and four students wrote a description of how he or she made coffee (one of the participants described how she made tea, but as this option could be chosen as well, I included her writing in those four).
Students wrote about the following topics:
Student A: 1. An afterword for Muriel Spark: The Driver's seat
2. An introduction to William Shakespeare: Twelfth Night
3. Three in one
4. A description of how to make coffee
5. The lyrics of a rap song
6. A quiz: How territorial are you?
7. A travel guide to a Pécs site
8. Revised news stories
Student B: Table of Contents
1. Make a cup of tea and relax!
2. Why are American students late for class? –based on a one year research at VVS High School Verona, NY
3. Three in one
4. A revised news story
5. Tapsi – a rabbit in our flat (my pet)
6. Drinking tea with Winnie the Pooh – revision of writing number 1
7. Truncate it!
8. A description of an unpleasant experience I have had
9. Surprise!
Student C: 1. Three in on
2. Description of a skipping-rope (a description of how an object or other construction is made)
3. Truncate it!
4. An unpleasant experience
Student D: 1. Three in one: Canada's Northward Expansion
2. The lyrics of a rap song
3. How to make a perfect coffee
4. A travel guide to my hometown
5. An introduction to my favourite book
6. An afterword for the book "44 Irish short stories"
7. Building a house by yourself is not as easy as you think (how an object or construction is made)
8. Playing hide-and-seek in a forest during a pitch-black night is real fun (a significant experience or day or event in my life)
Student E: 1. A travel guide to a Pécs site
2. Three in one
3. A travel guide to any place...
4. How I make coffee
1 Student B devoted two essays to the topic
2 Student C didn't choose this option
Table 1 and 2 shows the features of the two most popular topics
Table 3 – Student A
1 the text consists of one paragraph
version as well. First numbers show the number of sentences according to the tutor's writing. Second numbers show the data of the student's version.
2 The writing consists of only one paragraph
version as well. First numbers show the characteristics of the tutor's version. Second numbers show the data of the student's writing.
Table 1 and 2 show the features of the two most popular topics
Table 3,4,5 and 6 show the main features of essays
Length of essays
The number of paragraphs varied between nine and fifty-two per portfolio and between one and sixteen per essay. The number of sentences changed between 44 and 164 per portfolios and between six and forty-four per essays. As Table 3 shows, there was a correlation between the number of essays included in the portfolios and the number of sentences and paragraphs per portfolio.
Method of distinguishing paragraphs
In each portfolio paragraphs were clearly separated from each other either by blocking them or indenting the first line of each new section. Students C, D and E used only the method of indenting lines. Students A and B combined the two different techniques.
Title-content relationship
At five essays the reader couldn't guess to the content of the writing from its title, which is 15.1% of the whole.
Two introductions
During the semester students were offered the possibility to hand in essays without an introduction that the tutor would write for them. Yet they were asked to write an introduction of their own and then compare the two versions. This task was pointed at showing the students that there can be several different ways to introduce a composition. Three of the five participants—Students B, C and E—took this possibility.
Dates
Only one of these five students included the dates of writing of the essays in the portfolio, Student D. But even this table was not complete, as he offered the dates only for seven essays of the eight included in the portfolio.
Table of contents
Only Student B set up a Table of Contents at the beginning of her portfolio. This proved to be a useful idea and gained the tutor's approval. ("J Table of Contents! Useful. Good idea!" (1))
Tutor's remarks
Altogether 19 :) and 2 :( were in the texts. Their number showed correlation with the number of essays, but this was not significant because students who wrote 8 or 9 essays offered more chance to the tutor to express his opinion than those who wrote only four.
In one case the tutor used both signs at the same time to reflect a part of the 6th essay in Student D's portfolio: "You have written about many aspects of Irish literature. :)"
"But :( there is not much detail you go into."
The tutor put his remarks and corrections down in three ways. At the beginning of the course he asked students to write only on one side of their notebooks so that he could write his notes on the facing page. Secondly, he used stick–in notes that he put either to the writing or beside it. In addition, he corrected mistakes by putting marks in the texts.
By–text and stick–in notes had several functions:
–Some places the tutor asked students to consult him about their writing: "Please come to se me if you want to know more about what makes a narrative essay."(Student B 8)
–Wrote encouraging notes after the first essay: "Good start. Now, I'm looking forward to more."(Student C 8)
–Asked questions of various purposes: "Have you been reading a lot of Hegel, Freud and Jung recently?"(Student A 1); "Is there anything you've discovered about this text in its verbal layer?"(Student E 8);
–Commented on errors to help students to avoid similar mistakes in their further writing: "Never hide specific words in parentheses"(Student B 3); "Underline (or italicise in printing) titles of novels and plays."(Student A 2)
–Corrected comma splices and run-ons
Conclusion
When I started the project I had only one major expectation concerning the outcome of the survey. I hypothesised that the most popular essay topics would be those that seemed to be the easiest. These were Three in one; A description of how you make coffee, shave or apply make-up and any of the Travel guide options. Three in one seemed to be easy because—as university students are long familiar with parts of speech—their only task was to find a text, write it down and select nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. The other two suggestions offered subjects students must be also familiar with.
My presumptions proved to be true. All participants selected Three in one, and four compositions were written about the Description... and Travel guide... subjects.
As for the other characteristics of the portfolios the only significant finding I can report is that they were a pleasure to read and that I was delighted to invent students' willingness in sharing their writing with others.
The main idea of collecting students' writings in notebooks was to keep the essays together and enable the tutor of the course to give constant feedback on them, so students had the possibility to develop the quality of their writing according to the tutor's suggestions.
Yet the real benefit of the portfolio approach cannot be proved now and not even at the end of the course. Its main advantage will come up in the 9 remaining semesters during which students will have to hand in many essays. And after completing the course they can do it with full confidence.
University students have always had to face the difficulties of writing essays for their classes. As this may be a source of problem for many of them, courses aimed at improving their academic skills in writing are started every semester in the English department of Janus Pannonius University (later referred to as JPU). These Writing and Research Skills courses, with Horváth József as a tutor, were announced at three different times under the codes ANG 1601, ANG 1602, ANG 1603.
One condition to complete the course was to write at least eight essays. Also, the tutor of the course asked participants to "keep a record" of their writings in a "dedicated notebook" (1). These collections were called portfolios.
Another task was to complete a research paper. Several possibilities were offered as the topics of these papers. One of these was the content analyses of at least five portfolios.
My purpose in completing this survey was to find out more of the contents of course participants' portfolios and to provide information concerning their main characteristics.
Method
Five students participated in this survey, all of whom were attending Writing and Research Skills courses at JPU in the fall semester of 1997. All of them were at their first year at the English Department, four were English majors and one was a 9th semester Italian major. I made no special distinction between students when I asked them to take part in this survey; they were chosen on the basis of our relationship. Students involved in the study will later be referred to as Student A, Student B, Student C, Student D and Student E.
I asked these students to share their portfolios with me to enable me to examine these collections closely and draw conclusions from them.
On the first WRS course students were offered several titles for their writing. These were the following:
* The lyrics of a rap song
* An introduction to a favourite novel, poem, short story, play or other text
* An afterword for the same text
* Three in one
* A high school graduation ceremony speech
* A travel guide to your home town
* A travel guide to JPU campus
* A travel guide to a Pécs site
* A travel guide to any place you've been to
* Profile of a person, based on interview
* A description of how a house, a bridge, a television set, a book, a pen, a pullover or some other object or construction is made
* The revised news story
* Truncate it: make each word longer than two syllables one syllable shorter in any text you choose
* A learning experience: personal essay on tape
Students had to choose at least eight options of these but were encouraged to "feel free to add pieces of their "own devising" (Horváth 1).
Later, during the semester the tutor offered twelve further subjects for the portfolios:
* A description of an unpleasant experience I have had (in four paragraphs maximum)
* A significant experience (or day or event) in my life
* A hobby that annoys me
* Why I don't like something that otherwise I would like to do
* Change the end (or the beginning and the end) of a short descriptive essay
* JPU by night (to be published in the university yearbook)
* A personal account of one of my holidays at Lake Balaton
* An essay about any subject with a narrative in it
* My pet (or domestic animal)
* My experiences with a royal family
* A description of environmental problems in the place (street, village or town where I live)
* A description of the interior of a shop
Results and discussion
To gain sufficient data of the portfolios I set up certain categories to fit essays in. My findings can be classified in three groups. The first aspect concerned the look of the notebooks, their size and what was written on their labels. The second viewpoint involved the essays: their number, topics, length measured in paragraphs and sentences, their method of distinguishing paragraphs, and whether the title and the content of the essays were in contact. The third aspect concerned tutorial remarks on, in and beside texts, and the numbers of J and L signs.(The tutor used these symbols to indicate his opinion of a part of the text or the whole writing.)
Notebooks and labels
There were three kinds of notebooks serving as portfolios: one spirally bound notebook of Student B, a middle-size one of Student C and three small-size ones of Students A, D and E.
As for the labels of the portfolios, three students included exact data: their names and the code and name of the course. Two participants had put only their names on the front.
Features of essays
Their number
Student B wrote the most essays, nine. Students A and D handed in eight writings and Students C and E had written four essays by the time of the completion of this paper.
Topics chosen
There were ten items among the subjects offered that none of the participants wrote about. Among the chosen ones Three in one was the most popular–all the five participants included it in their portfolios–and four students wrote a description of how he or she made coffee (one of the participants described how she made tea, but as this option could be chosen as well, I included her writing in those four).
Students wrote about the following topics:
Student A: 1. An afterword for Muriel Spark: The Driver's seat
2. An introduction to William Shakespeare: Twelfth Night
3. Three in one
4. A description of how to make coffee
5. The lyrics of a rap song
6. A quiz: How territorial are you?
7. A travel guide to a Pécs site
8. Revised news stories
Student B: Table of Contents
1. Make a cup of tea and relax!
2. Why are American students late for class? –based on a one year research at VVS High School Verona, NY
3. Three in one
4. A revised news story
5. Tapsi – a rabbit in our flat (my pet)
6. Drinking tea with Winnie the Pooh – revision of writing number 1
7. Truncate it!
8. A description of an unpleasant experience I have had
9. Surprise!
Student C: 1. Three in on
2. Description of a skipping-rope (a description of how an object or other construction is made)
3. Truncate it!
4. An unpleasant experience
Student D: 1. Three in one: Canada's Northward Expansion
2. The lyrics of a rap song
3. How to make a perfect coffee
4. A travel guide to my hometown
5. An introduction to my favourite book
6. An afterword for the book "44 Irish short stories"
7. Building a house by yourself is not as easy as you think (how an object or construction is made)
8. Playing hide-and-seek in a forest during a pitch-black night is real fun (a significant experience or day or event in my life)
Student E: 1. A travel guide to a Pécs site
2. Three in one
3. A travel guide to any place...
4. How I make coffee
1 Student B devoted two essays to the topic
2 Student C didn't choose this option
Table 1 and 2 shows the features of the two most popular topics
Table 3 – Student A
1 the text consists of one paragraph
version as well. First numbers show the number of sentences according to the tutor's writing. Second numbers show the data of the student's version.
2 The writing consists of only one paragraph
version as well. First numbers show the characteristics of the tutor's version. Second numbers show the data of the student's writing.
Table 1 and 2 show the features of the two most popular topics
Table 3,4,5 and 6 show the main features of essays
Length of essays
The number of paragraphs varied between nine and fifty-two per portfolio and between one and sixteen per essay. The number of sentences changed between 44 and 164 per portfolios and between six and forty-four per essays. As Table 3 shows, there was a correlation between the number of essays included in the portfolios and the number of sentences and paragraphs per portfolio.
Method of distinguishing paragraphs
In each portfolio paragraphs were clearly separated from each other either by blocking them or indenting the first line of each new section. Students C, D and E used only the method of indenting lines. Students A and B combined the two different techniques.
Title-content relationship
At five essays the reader couldn't guess to the content of the writing from its title, which is 15.1% of the whole.
Two introductions
During the semester students were offered the possibility to hand in essays without an introduction that the tutor would write for them. Yet they were asked to write an introduction of their own and then compare the two versions. This task was pointed at showing the students that there can be several different ways to introduce a composition. Three of the five participants—Students B, C and E—took this possibility.
Dates
Only one of these five students included the dates of writing of the essays in the portfolio, Student D. But even this table was not complete, as he offered the dates only for seven essays of the eight included in the portfolio.
Table of contents
Only Student B set up a Table of Contents at the beginning of her portfolio. This proved to be a useful idea and gained the tutor's approval. ("J Table of Contents! Useful. Good idea!" (1))
Tutor's remarks
Altogether 19 :) and 2 :( were in the texts. Their number showed correlation with the number of essays, but this was not significant because students who wrote 8 or 9 essays offered more chance to the tutor to express his opinion than those who wrote only four.
In one case the tutor used both signs at the same time to reflect a part of the 6th essay in Student D's portfolio: "You have written about many aspects of Irish literature. :)"
"But :( there is not much detail you go into."
The tutor put his remarks and corrections down in three ways. At the beginning of the course he asked students to write only on one side of their notebooks so that he could write his notes on the facing page. Secondly, he used stick–in notes that he put either to the writing or beside it. In addition, he corrected mistakes by putting marks in the texts.
By–text and stick–in notes had several functions:
–Some places the tutor asked students to consult him about their writing: "Please come to se me if you want to know more about what makes a narrative essay."(Student B 8)
–Wrote encouraging notes after the first essay: "Good start. Now, I'm looking forward to more."(Student C 8)
–Asked questions of various purposes: "Have you been reading a lot of Hegel, Freud and Jung recently?"(Student A 1); "Is there anything you've discovered about this text in its verbal layer?"(Student E 8);
–Commented on errors to help students to avoid similar mistakes in their further writing: "Never hide specific words in parentheses"(Student B 3); "Underline (or italicise in printing) titles of novels and plays."(Student A 2)
–Corrected comma splices and run-ons
Conclusion
When I started the project I had only one major expectation concerning the outcome of the survey. I hypothesised that the most popular essay topics would be those that seemed to be the easiest. These were Three in one; A description of how you make coffee, shave or apply make-up and any of the Travel guide options. Three in one seemed to be easy because—as university students are long familiar with parts of speech—their only task was to find a text, write it down and select nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. The other two suggestions offered subjects students must be also familiar with.
My presumptions proved to be true. All participants selected Three in one, and four compositions were written about the Description... and Travel guide... subjects.
As for the other characteristics of the portfolios the only significant finding I can report is that they were a pleasure to read and that I was delighted to invent students' willingness in sharing their writing with others.
The main idea of collecting students' writings in notebooks was to keep the essays together and enable the tutor of the course to give constant feedback on them, so students had the possibility to develop the quality of their writing according to the tutor's suggestions.
Yet the real benefit of the portfolio approach cannot be proved now and not even at the end of the course. Its main advantage will come up in the 9 remaining semesters during which students will have to hand in many essays. And after completing the course they can do it with full confidence.
W 033 F
Introduction
What is exactly a portfolio? I am sure that almost everybody has an image in their mind about this word, but I would take it granted that those who belong to the English Department of Janus Pannonius University at Pécs have a specific object in their mind.
To remind the ' insiders ' and to inform the ' outsiders ': a portfolio is a simple note book. Each student who attends to the Writing and Research Skills (WRS) course has to have one. In the timetable there are three WRS courses. Basically, they are the same. They are held by the same tutor, only their code number, date and the number of students in them are different. The WRS course with the code 1601 is from 9 to 10.30 a.m. , the 1602 is from 11 to 12.30 p.m. and the 1603 course is from 1 to 2.30 p.m. on Mondays. In the first group there are 10 students, in the second one there are 8 and in the third one there are 21. Students have the whole semester to write compositions in these portfolios. They hand them in from time to time with some new pieces, and they get them back corrected.
The tutor, Horváth József conceived this method at this department. He gave the students 15 topics from which they had to select at least 8.
The lyrics of a rap song
An introduction to a favourite novel, poem, short story, play or other text
An afterword for the same text
Three in one
A high school graduation ceremony speech
A travel guide to your home town
A travel guide to JPU campus
A travel guide to a Pécs site
A travel guide to any place you 've been to
Profile of a person, based on interview
A description of how you make coffee, shave, or apply make-up
A description of how a house, a bridge, a television set, a book, a pen, a pullover, or some other or construction is made
The revised news story
Truncate it: make each word longer than two syllables one syllable shorter in any text you choose
A learning experience: personal essay on tape
Later 12 more topics were introduced, based on the students suggestions.
A description of an unpleasant experience I have had (in four paragraphs maximum)
A significant experience (or day or event) in my life
A hobby that annoys me
Why I don 't like doing something that otherwise I would like to do
Change the end (or the beginning and the end) of a short descriptive essay
JPU by night (to be published in the university yearbook)
A personal account of one of my holidays at Lake Balaton
An essay about any subject with a narrative in it
My pet (or domestic animal)
My experiences with a royal family
A description of environmental problems in the place (street, village, or town) where I live
A description of the interior of a shop
Besides these topics, students can write about other issues, as well. The length, the form and the style of these compositions were not regulated. Horváth offered a task: students could leave out the introductory paragraph of one of their compositions which he completed, using the different types of introductions.
Method
First, I asked five people for their portfolios on the 27th of November, so I am going to analyse compositions written until this date. I chose a female student, Hegedûs Éva, and a male student, Úz Márk, from the group 1601. From the group 1602 I have only one girl 's, Harmath Virág 's, portfolio because the number of students here was the lowest. From the group 1603 I selected again a woman student, Makra Melinda, and a man student, Schlõgl Krisztián. My choice fell on this division because I wanted to analyse and show whether there were similarities or differences between the topic selection, the number and the length of compositions, and between the type and the length of the tutor 's comments of the different groups and different genders.
I am going to analyse the number of compositions in each portfolio, the number of paragraphs and words in each composition. I will take the mean and will indicate the extremes.
I try to find similarities and differences between the topics selected by the students.
I am also going to analyse Horváth 's introductions. I will analyse his comments: the number of comments, the number of words in them, and whether those comments are positive or negative. Positive means that he liked words, ideas or the punctuation in the compositions. Negative can also mean corrections, suggestions or questions; usually they overlap one another. The number of smiling faces ( ) is also important: Horváth uses this sign when he especially likes something in the text.
Statistically my selection is not a good choice. I chose people at random; I did not consider how much they had written in their portfolios and how much the tutor had already corrected. That is why those comments are my conclusions according only to these portfolios. If I took a look at all the portfolios, the results might would be different.
Results and Discussion
Number of compositions
I read 37 compositions in those five portfolios. Figure 1 shows the distribution among the groups and the students.
Figure 1. Statistics on compositions
Hegedûs wrote the smallest number of composition, Úz has the most pieces of writing. They are in the same group, so the biggest difference between the number of compositions is here.
An average number of compositions for the WRS courses is 8. Female and male students wrote approximately the same number of compositions so there is no point in making differentiation between them. There is not much difference between the groups, either.
Number of paragraphs
I found 216 paragraphs, written by the students. The group 1601 has 66, Harmath in the second group has 48, and the group 1603 wrote 102 paragraphs. Figure 2 indicates the distribution of paragraphs.
Figure 2. Statistics on paragraphs
The highest figure among the average number of paragraphs in one composition is Harmath 's, 7. The biggest difference between the two extremes is in Schlogl 's paragraphs, 2 and 15. An average number of paragraphs in one composition is 6.
According to these facts about the number of paragraphs, it seems that the most balanced group is the 1603.
Number of words
I counted 12.372 words, written by the students. The group 1601 produced 3.920 , Harmath in the second group 2.215 words and the group 1603 wrote 6.237 words. Figure 3 represents the distribution among the groups and the students.
Figure 3. Statistics on words
Hegedus 's shortest composition is also the shortest and Makra 's longest writing is also the longest among the compositions analyzed. The most words were written by Makra, so it can confirm the statement that women have a lot to say. The members of group 1603 have the most words; it confirms the balance.
Topic selection
The most popular topic was ' Three in one '; four people chose it. The members of group 1603 selected it as their first writing in their portfolios. This composition was in the third place in the two other females' portfolios.
Both members of the group 1601 wrote extra compositions. Hegedûs wrote 1, Úz wrote 3. Nobody from the other groups wrote extra essays.
Only the two male students wrote the lyrics of a rap song.
The title 'A description of how you make coffee ' inspired all the groups; one in each group wrote about it.
Two chose to describe house building. A female and a male student wrote about it, and which is intriguing about them is that among the girl 's composition it is the shortest, among the boy 's composition it is the longest.
Only one male student did not write a guide to a place he has been to, while a female student wrote about it twice. Three wrote about in on the fifth place.
One male student chose to describe how to shave, and one female student wrote about how to apply make-up.
A male and a female student wrote high school graduation ceremony speech.
The female students in the groups 1602 and 1603 chose to write the profile of a person.
Three wrote introduction to their favourite books. Both members of group 1603 wrote about it on the fifth place.
Only one male student wrote afterword for the same book, only the members of group 1601 did not write about their hometown and only one male student selected a topic from the new list.
The tutor 's introduction
The female students in group 1601 and 1602 took the advantage of writing a composition without the first paragraph. Horváth wrote it for them. One of the introductions contains 60 , the other 47 words.
The tutor 's comments
Horváth wrote 141 comments, containing 1538 words. From these 47 were positive, 94 were negative comments. The tutor used editorial marks. He indicated mistakes such as run-ons, comma splices, clichés, pronoun shifts, spelling mistakes or clutter. There were two times more negative comments than positive ones.
Horváth drew 38 smiling faces and 3 sad faces.
Conclusion
My aim was to give an overall view about the contents of portfolios, giving details about the compositions, mentioning some similarities and differences between them. Although I had thought that there would be bigger difference between the portfolios of different groups and of the male and female students, I was able to present the colourfulness of portfolio materials.
What is exactly a portfolio? I am sure that almost everybody has an image in their mind about this word, but I would take it granted that those who belong to the English Department of Janus Pannonius University at Pécs have a specific object in their mind.
To remind the ' insiders ' and to inform the ' outsiders ': a portfolio is a simple note book. Each student who attends to the Writing and Research Skills (WRS) course has to have one. In the timetable there are three WRS courses. Basically, they are the same. They are held by the same tutor, only their code number, date and the number of students in them are different. The WRS course with the code 1601 is from 9 to 10.30 a.m. , the 1602 is from 11 to 12.30 p.m. and the 1603 course is from 1 to 2.30 p.m. on Mondays. In the first group there are 10 students, in the second one there are 8 and in the third one there are 21. Students have the whole semester to write compositions in these portfolios. They hand them in from time to time with some new pieces, and they get them back corrected.
The tutor, Horváth József conceived this method at this department. He gave the students 15 topics from which they had to select at least 8.
The lyrics of a rap song
An introduction to a favourite novel, poem, short story, play or other text
An afterword for the same text
Three in one
A high school graduation ceremony speech
A travel guide to your home town
A travel guide to JPU campus
A travel guide to a Pécs site
A travel guide to any place you 've been to
Profile of a person, based on interview
A description of how you make coffee, shave, or apply make-up
A description of how a house, a bridge, a television set, a book, a pen, a pullover, or some other or construction is made
The revised news story
Truncate it: make each word longer than two syllables one syllable shorter in any text you choose
A learning experience: personal essay on tape
Later 12 more topics were introduced, based on the students suggestions.
A description of an unpleasant experience I have had (in four paragraphs maximum)
A significant experience (or day or event) in my life
A hobby that annoys me
Why I don 't like doing something that otherwise I would like to do
Change the end (or the beginning and the end) of a short descriptive essay
JPU by night (to be published in the university yearbook)
A personal account of one of my holidays at Lake Balaton
An essay about any subject with a narrative in it
My pet (or domestic animal)
My experiences with a royal family
A description of environmental problems in the place (street, village, or town) where I live
A description of the interior of a shop
Besides these topics, students can write about other issues, as well. The length, the form and the style of these compositions were not regulated. Horváth offered a task: students could leave out the introductory paragraph of one of their compositions which he completed, using the different types of introductions.
Method
First, I asked five people for their portfolios on the 27th of November, so I am going to analyse compositions written until this date. I chose a female student, Hegedûs Éva, and a male student, Úz Márk, from the group 1601. From the group 1602 I have only one girl 's, Harmath Virág 's, portfolio because the number of students here was the lowest. From the group 1603 I selected again a woman student, Makra Melinda, and a man student, Schlõgl Krisztián. My choice fell on this division because I wanted to analyse and show whether there were similarities or differences between the topic selection, the number and the length of compositions, and between the type and the length of the tutor 's comments of the different groups and different genders.
I am going to analyse the number of compositions in each portfolio, the number of paragraphs and words in each composition. I will take the mean and will indicate the extremes.
I try to find similarities and differences between the topics selected by the students.
I am also going to analyse Horváth 's introductions. I will analyse his comments: the number of comments, the number of words in them, and whether those comments are positive or negative. Positive means that he liked words, ideas or the punctuation in the compositions. Negative can also mean corrections, suggestions or questions; usually they overlap one another. The number of smiling faces ( ) is also important: Horváth uses this sign when he especially likes something in the text.
Statistically my selection is not a good choice. I chose people at random; I did not consider how much they had written in their portfolios and how much the tutor had already corrected. That is why those comments are my conclusions according only to these portfolios. If I took a look at all the portfolios, the results might would be different.
Results and Discussion
Number of compositions
I read 37 compositions in those five portfolios. Figure 1 shows the distribution among the groups and the students.
Figure 1. Statistics on compositions
Hegedûs wrote the smallest number of composition, Úz has the most pieces of writing. They are in the same group, so the biggest difference between the number of compositions is here.
An average number of compositions for the WRS courses is 8. Female and male students wrote approximately the same number of compositions so there is no point in making differentiation between them. There is not much difference between the groups, either.
Number of paragraphs
I found 216 paragraphs, written by the students. The group 1601 has 66, Harmath in the second group has 48, and the group 1603 wrote 102 paragraphs. Figure 2 indicates the distribution of paragraphs.
Figure 2. Statistics on paragraphs
The highest figure among the average number of paragraphs in one composition is Harmath 's, 7. The biggest difference between the two extremes is in Schlogl 's paragraphs, 2 and 15. An average number of paragraphs in one composition is 6.
According to these facts about the number of paragraphs, it seems that the most balanced group is the 1603.
Number of words
I counted 12.372 words, written by the students. The group 1601 produced 3.920 , Harmath in the second group 2.215 words and the group 1603 wrote 6.237 words. Figure 3 represents the distribution among the groups and the students.
Figure 3. Statistics on words
Hegedus 's shortest composition is also the shortest and Makra 's longest writing is also the longest among the compositions analyzed. The most words were written by Makra, so it can confirm the statement that women have a lot to say. The members of group 1603 have the most words; it confirms the balance.
Topic selection
The most popular topic was ' Three in one '; four people chose it. The members of group 1603 selected it as their first writing in their portfolios. This composition was in the third place in the two other females' portfolios.
Both members of the group 1601 wrote extra compositions. Hegedûs wrote 1, Úz wrote 3. Nobody from the other groups wrote extra essays.
Only the two male students wrote the lyrics of a rap song.
The title 'A description of how you make coffee ' inspired all the groups; one in each group wrote about it.
Two chose to describe house building. A female and a male student wrote about it, and which is intriguing about them is that among the girl 's composition it is the shortest, among the boy 's composition it is the longest.
Only one male student did not write a guide to a place he has been to, while a female student wrote about it twice. Three wrote about in on the fifth place.
One male student chose to describe how to shave, and one female student wrote about how to apply make-up.
A male and a female student wrote high school graduation ceremony speech.
The female students in the groups 1602 and 1603 chose to write the profile of a person.
Three wrote introduction to their favourite books. Both members of group 1603 wrote about it on the fifth place.
Only one male student wrote afterword for the same book, only the members of group 1601 did not write about their hometown and only one male student selected a topic from the new list.
The tutor 's introduction
The female students in group 1601 and 1602 took the advantage of writing a composition without the first paragraph. Horváth wrote it for them. One of the introductions contains 60 , the other 47 words.
The tutor 's comments
Horváth wrote 141 comments, containing 1538 words. From these 47 were positive, 94 were negative comments. The tutor used editorial marks. He indicated mistakes such as run-ons, comma splices, clichés, pronoun shifts, spelling mistakes or clutter. There were two times more negative comments than positive ones.
Horváth drew 38 smiling faces and 3 sad faces.
Conclusion
My aim was to give an overall view about the contents of portfolios, giving details about the compositions, mentioning some similarities and differences between them. Although I had thought that there would be bigger difference between the portfolios of different groups and of the male and female students, I was able to present the colourfulness of portfolio materials.
W 031 F
Introduction
At Janus Pannonius University (JPU) in Pécs, Hungary a tutor called Horváth Joe has got a course this term. It is called 'Writing and Research Skills' for those obvious reasons that it aims to develop these skills in the twenty students attending this class. I am one of these students. Earlier in the term one of our assignement was to put together a collection of our esseys, a so-called 'portfolio'.
In this Research Paper I was eager to discover to what extent my writing in the Portfolio follows the guidelines which Zinsser had laid down. I was interested in how concrete the language is in my esseys and how much clutter is in them. I was also interested whether every single word is doing a useful job. Whether my sentences are expressing what I wanted to say? Am I saying everything as concretely and as simply, thus understandable as possible?
According to Zinsser clutter is when our writing is full of unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon in order to inflate what we say and thereby sound important. For example: the laborious phrase which has pushed out the short word that means the same thing, the adverb that carries the same meaning that is already in the verb, or the passive construction instead of using the active one.
I wanted to go over my esseys again and find out how many passive verbs are in them instead of active ones. How many long verbs are there instead of short ones? And how many adverbs and adjectives I used and how many of them are redundant?
Method
For answering these questions I chose four esseys to study from my own Portfolio. All four of them are descriptions, but they deal with different subjects. One, ’How I write’ is describing how I write generally - what my writing habits had been before the beginning of the course in September. The second one, ’Insights into British Life-script 1.’ is about my insights into British life, the third, ’The Sad Story of Szalag’ is an emotional essey reporting a sad story and the fourth, ’Stancomb Farm’ is a place description.
In my study I used the chapters from Zinsser's book, which are called: Simplicity, Clutter, Style and Bits and Pieces.
First I counted the total number of words in these four esseys, then I counted the verbs, adverbs, adjectives and little qualifiers. After these I examined the verbs, the adverbs and the adjectives according to different aspects. I also made charts about my findings not only in numbers but in percentage as well. Finally I analyzed the collected data by looking at every single adverb and adjective whether they are doing any useful job or not. I also counted the verbs according to different aspects: long or short ones, active or passive ones and 'to be'. I made charts about these data too, in order to be able to spot the facts in numbers.
Results and Discussions
’How I write’
Number %
All words 297 100
Verbs 37 12,5
Adverbs 9 3
Adjectives 14 4,7
Little qualifiers 2 0,7
'Insights into British Life - script 1.'
Number %
All words 437 100
Verbs 37 12,5
Adverbs 9 3
Adjectives 14 4,7
Little qualifiers 2 0,7
'The Sad Story of Szalag'
Number %
All words 367 100
Verbs 61 16,6
Adverbs 10 2,7
Adjectives 20 5,4
Little qualifiers 2 0,5
'Stancomb Farm'
Number %
All words 329 100
Verbs 29 8,8
Adverbs 4 1,2
Adjectives 26 7,9
Little qualifiers 2 0.6
The numbers and the percentage in these charts show that in the first two esseys the proportion of the parts of speech are similar, especially those of the verbs and the adverbs. It is because they are both description of the same sort and have about the same amount of action in them. In the essey ’Insights into British Life’ there are much more adjectives, because it’s aim is to introduce British life to the reader and adjectives are more needed for this than for example in the essey ’How I write’. The essey ’The Sad Story of Szalag’ has the most verbs, because lot of action takes place in it. There are not much adverbs, because most of the time the verbs are expressing what had happened. The adjectives are for describing thoughts and feelings. The lowest percentage of verbs can be found in the essey ’Stancomb Farm’ compared to the other three esseys, because it aims to be an objective description of a place, where hardly any action is taking place, only a few in the reader’s imagination. Most of the verbs are forms of ’to be’. But there are even more adjectives than in the essey ’Insights into British Life’, because of it being a vivid description.
I also examined the adverbs and the adjectives from the point of view, that how many of them were used and how many of them are redundant. The results are shown in the following chart.
Adverbs:
Total number Redundant number Redundant %
’How I write’ 9 2 22,2
’Insights into British Life – script 1.’ 15 2 13,3
’The Sad Story of Szalag’ 10 2 20
’Stancomb Farm’ 4 0 0
Adjectives:
Total number Redundant number Redundant %
’How I write’ 14 3 21,4
’Insights into British Life – script 1.’ 32 1 3,1
’The Sad Story of Szalag’ 20 2 10
’Stancomb Farm’ 26 4 15,4
It was difficult to decide which ones are not needed, since I was the writer of the esseys and thus it is hard to be objective, but I have found some examples: In the essey ’How I write’ ’enough’ in the second paragraph, ’extremely’ in the fourth and ’only’ in the last one. In the essey ’Insights into British Life-script 1’ I have found that ’definetely’ in the fifth paragraph and ’really’ in the sixth one are redundant. In the essey ’The Sad Story of Szalag’ I have found that ’heavily’ in the sixth paragraph is not needed, ’terribly wrong’ in the seventh one could be replaced by one word and ’wrong’ in the eightth one is unnecessary. In the essey ’Stancomb Farm’ I have found that ’tired’ and ’long’ in the first paragraph and ’necessary’ in the fifth one are not needed.
With the verbs I examined how many of them are active or passive, long or short and what the proportion of ’to be’ is.
Verbs:
'How I write'
Numbers 'How I write'
% 'Insights
into
British Life'
Numbers 'Insights
into
British Life'
% 'The Sad
Story
of
Szalag'
Numbers 'The Sad Story
of Szalag'
% 'Stancomb
Farm'
Number Stancom
Farm
%
All verbs 37 100 60 100 61 100 29 100
Active verbs 35 94,6 55 91,7 60 98,4 24 82,8
Passive verbs 2 5,4 5 8,3 1 1,6 5 17,2
Short verbs 27 72,9 27 45 32 52,5 13 44,8
Long verbs 2 5,4 5 8,3 10 16,4 3 10,3
'to be' 6 16 23 38,3 18 29,5 11 37,9
Zinsser says in his book that passive verbs weaken our writing, so if we can, we should always use active ones and thus make sure that the reader knows who is doing what to whom.
According to the chart I made my writing in these four esseys satisfy this provisio almost fully.
Zinsser also states, that short verbs are much better, much more expressive than long ones, so if we have short verbs to say what we want to, we should use those instead of the long ones.
According to the chart I fulfilled this condition too in the four esseys studied. Various forms of ’to be’ can be found in all four esseys, but in different proportion. In the essey ’How I write’ the number of the verb ’to be’ in different forms is the less compared to the other three esseys, because here lots of action is described: How I write, what I do while I prepare, plan, write etc. There are more forms of ’to be’ in the essey ’The Sad Story of Szalag’, because although there is action in it, it is not done by everyone. The esseys ’Insights into British Life – script 1.’ and ’Stancomb Farm’ have almost the same amount of forms of ’to be’ in them, because they are both descriptions of the same kind.
The proportion of the little qualifiers is not bad at all. Of course, they can be left out.
Horváth József has reflected on my Portfolio in his comments the same way I did now. Among syntactic errors he has also found the redundant adjectives and adverbs like ’really’, ’necessary’, ’extremely’ etc.
Conclusion
As shown in these four esseys my writing follows Zinsser’s guidelines, although it is not perfect and never will be as Zinsser said it, that no writing exists which couldn’t be changed to a more concrete and clutter-free one than it is.
As shown in the charts the language is on average 73% concrete with regards to the verbs and there are 13,2% redundant adverbs and adjectives in the examined four esseys.
At Janus Pannonius University (JPU) in Pécs, Hungary a tutor called Horváth Joe has got a course this term. It is called 'Writing and Research Skills' for those obvious reasons that it aims to develop these skills in the twenty students attending this class. I am one of these students. Earlier in the term one of our assignement was to put together a collection of our esseys, a so-called 'portfolio'.
In this Research Paper I was eager to discover to what extent my writing in the Portfolio follows the guidelines which Zinsser had laid down. I was interested in how concrete the language is in my esseys and how much clutter is in them. I was also interested whether every single word is doing a useful job. Whether my sentences are expressing what I wanted to say? Am I saying everything as concretely and as simply, thus understandable as possible?
According to Zinsser clutter is when our writing is full of unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon in order to inflate what we say and thereby sound important. For example: the laborious phrase which has pushed out the short word that means the same thing, the adverb that carries the same meaning that is already in the verb, or the passive construction instead of using the active one.
I wanted to go over my esseys again and find out how many passive verbs are in them instead of active ones. How many long verbs are there instead of short ones? And how many adverbs and adjectives I used and how many of them are redundant?
Method
For answering these questions I chose four esseys to study from my own Portfolio. All four of them are descriptions, but they deal with different subjects. One, ’How I write’ is describing how I write generally - what my writing habits had been before the beginning of the course in September. The second one, ’Insights into British Life-script 1.’ is about my insights into British life, the third, ’The Sad Story of Szalag’ is an emotional essey reporting a sad story and the fourth, ’Stancomb Farm’ is a place description.
In my study I used the chapters from Zinsser's book, which are called: Simplicity, Clutter, Style and Bits and Pieces.
First I counted the total number of words in these four esseys, then I counted the verbs, adverbs, adjectives and little qualifiers. After these I examined the verbs, the adverbs and the adjectives according to different aspects. I also made charts about my findings not only in numbers but in percentage as well. Finally I analyzed the collected data by looking at every single adverb and adjective whether they are doing any useful job or not. I also counted the verbs according to different aspects: long or short ones, active or passive ones and 'to be'. I made charts about these data too, in order to be able to spot the facts in numbers.
Results and Discussions
’How I write’
Number %
All words 297 100
Verbs 37 12,5
Adverbs 9 3
Adjectives 14 4,7
Little qualifiers 2 0,7
'Insights into British Life - script 1.'
Number %
All words 437 100
Verbs 37 12,5
Adverbs 9 3
Adjectives 14 4,7
Little qualifiers 2 0,7
'The Sad Story of Szalag'
Number %
All words 367 100
Verbs 61 16,6
Adverbs 10 2,7
Adjectives 20 5,4
Little qualifiers 2 0,5
'Stancomb Farm'
Number %
All words 329 100
Verbs 29 8,8
Adverbs 4 1,2
Adjectives 26 7,9
Little qualifiers 2 0.6
The numbers and the percentage in these charts show that in the first two esseys the proportion of the parts of speech are similar, especially those of the verbs and the adverbs. It is because they are both description of the same sort and have about the same amount of action in them. In the essey ’Insights into British Life’ there are much more adjectives, because it’s aim is to introduce British life to the reader and adjectives are more needed for this than for example in the essey ’How I write’. The essey ’The Sad Story of Szalag’ has the most verbs, because lot of action takes place in it. There are not much adverbs, because most of the time the verbs are expressing what had happened. The adjectives are for describing thoughts and feelings. The lowest percentage of verbs can be found in the essey ’Stancomb Farm’ compared to the other three esseys, because it aims to be an objective description of a place, where hardly any action is taking place, only a few in the reader’s imagination. Most of the verbs are forms of ’to be’. But there are even more adjectives than in the essey ’Insights into British Life’, because of it being a vivid description.
I also examined the adverbs and the adjectives from the point of view, that how many of them were used and how many of them are redundant. The results are shown in the following chart.
Adverbs:
Total number Redundant number Redundant %
’How I write’ 9 2 22,2
’Insights into British Life – script 1.’ 15 2 13,3
’The Sad Story of Szalag’ 10 2 20
’Stancomb Farm’ 4 0 0
Adjectives:
Total number Redundant number Redundant %
’How I write’ 14 3 21,4
’Insights into British Life – script 1.’ 32 1 3,1
’The Sad Story of Szalag’ 20 2 10
’Stancomb Farm’ 26 4 15,4
It was difficult to decide which ones are not needed, since I was the writer of the esseys and thus it is hard to be objective, but I have found some examples: In the essey ’How I write’ ’enough’ in the second paragraph, ’extremely’ in the fourth and ’only’ in the last one. In the essey ’Insights into British Life-script 1’ I have found that ’definetely’ in the fifth paragraph and ’really’ in the sixth one are redundant. In the essey ’The Sad Story of Szalag’ I have found that ’heavily’ in the sixth paragraph is not needed, ’terribly wrong’ in the seventh one could be replaced by one word and ’wrong’ in the eightth one is unnecessary. In the essey ’Stancomb Farm’ I have found that ’tired’ and ’long’ in the first paragraph and ’necessary’ in the fifth one are not needed.
With the verbs I examined how many of them are active or passive, long or short and what the proportion of ’to be’ is.
Verbs:
'How I write'
Numbers 'How I write'
% 'Insights
into
British Life'
Numbers 'Insights
into
British Life'
% 'The Sad
Story
of
Szalag'
Numbers 'The Sad Story
of Szalag'
% 'Stancomb
Farm'
Number Stancom
Farm
%
All verbs 37 100 60 100 61 100 29 100
Active verbs 35 94,6 55 91,7 60 98,4 24 82,8
Passive verbs 2 5,4 5 8,3 1 1,6 5 17,2
Short verbs 27 72,9 27 45 32 52,5 13 44,8
Long verbs 2 5,4 5 8,3 10 16,4 3 10,3
'to be' 6 16 23 38,3 18 29,5 11 37,9
Zinsser says in his book that passive verbs weaken our writing, so if we can, we should always use active ones and thus make sure that the reader knows who is doing what to whom.
According to the chart I made my writing in these four esseys satisfy this provisio almost fully.
Zinsser also states, that short verbs are much better, much more expressive than long ones, so if we have short verbs to say what we want to, we should use those instead of the long ones.
According to the chart I fulfilled this condition too in the four esseys studied. Various forms of ’to be’ can be found in all four esseys, but in different proportion. In the essey ’How I write’ the number of the verb ’to be’ in different forms is the less compared to the other three esseys, because here lots of action is described: How I write, what I do while I prepare, plan, write etc. There are more forms of ’to be’ in the essey ’The Sad Story of Szalag’, because although there is action in it, it is not done by everyone. The esseys ’Insights into British Life – script 1.’ and ’Stancomb Farm’ have almost the same amount of forms of ’to be’ in them, because they are both descriptions of the same kind.
The proportion of the little qualifiers is not bad at all. Of course, they can be left out.
Horváth József has reflected on my Portfolio in his comments the same way I did now. Among syntactic errors he has also found the redundant adjectives and adverbs like ’really’, ’necessary’, ’extremely’ etc.
Conclusion
As shown in these four esseys my writing follows Zinsser’s guidelines, although it is not perfect and never will be as Zinsser said it, that no writing exists which couldn’t be changed to a more concrete and clutter-free one than it is.
As shown in the charts the language is on average 73% concrete with regards to the verbs and there are 13,2% redundant adverbs and adjectives in the examined four esseys.
W 021 F
Introduction
The task to examine students' portfolios made me curious because these writings represent the inner thoughts of their writers, as well as tell a lot about their opinions on different topics. To write portfolios was not a task only to develop students' writing skills, but to live with the opportunity and get to know each other more. I was always interested in other persons' point of views, way of thinking because I could profit from them, draw conclusions for myself; so I had no problem selecting from the topics.
I will analyze four student's portfolios focusing on their contents, and present their main features.
Method
The three students who made their portfolios available for me (Student A, Student B, Student C) took the Writing and Research Skills coarse in the spring semester of 1998, and all of them were first year students at SPU.
The fourth portfolio belonged to me; the reason for why I chose me, too, was to find out how objective I can be about my own work. In order to be able to analyze it so, I tried to rely on the teacher's remarks and comments.
There were no special conceptions by which I chose the three persons; I asked a number of students to help me with my research by handing their portfolios over to me, and I took the first three.
I wanted to follow a logic in the analyzing of the portfolios, so I decided to concentrate first on the outsides of the portfolios, the first aspect was their getups. Then I was interested in the insides of the portfolios, so secondly I wanted to focus on their contents: the topics chosen by the students, number of essays the collections contained, their length.
Thirdly I chose two from the Zinsserian "bits and pieces”: verbs and mood changers in order to find out whether students are aware that it is useful to "alert the reader as early as possible in a sentence" (Zinsser 115) or that "active verbs push hard, passive verbs tug fitfully" (Zinsser 111).
The fourth aspect was teacher, Horvath József 'S comments, remarks: how found attached to the essays, how many of them were corrections, pieces of advice or how many times he indicated that he liked the works.
Results and Discussion
The outlook of the portfolios
I received two portfolios without cover, they were not the original writings, but photocopied versions stapled together. The third one was placed in a plastic slipcase, but the pages were not stapled, the essays were also photocopied. The fourth one had a paper slipcase with original essays.
The topics chosen by the students:
Students could choose from several different topics, among them were quoted essays, essays with two introductions and two conclusions. They wrote about one of their physical experiences, could choose topics from previous proficiency tests. The tutor asked them to write a miniature essay and to share with the others how they use their dictionaries.
The number of essays varied between three to seven. Their length varied between two to eleven paragraphs. On average, Student A wrote five paragraphs, Student C and Student D four paragraphs, and Student B wrote the most of six paragraphs.
Passive constructions in the essays
The number of Passive constructions varied between zero and ten. Student A used ten altogether in three essays. Student B used thirty passive verbs in seven essays. There were fourteen passive verbs in Student C's six essays and Student D used ten passive constructions in seven essays. Students did not prefer the passive constructions, they used active verbs more often. I found these numbers acceptable, it showed that students were aware of the difference between active and passive verbs and knew which of the two constructions is more valuable.
Mood changers
I chose the following mood changers, which I looked for in the essays: "but", "yet", "however", "thus", "instead". The number of mood changers varied from zero to five per essays. Student A included three mood changers in three essays. Student B used five in seven essays. Student C had nine mood changers in six essays, and Student D wrote eighteen mood changers in seven. Altogether, there were thirty-five mood changers in twenty-three essays. Twenty-seven of them were the word "but". Also, students used the words: "however", "instead" and "yet".
Students did not use mood changers frequently and the one they applied often was 'but", which is the most common one among all the mood changers.
Teacher’s comments and mistakes
There was no comment at all in Student B' s portfolio as the essays were photocopied before submitting them to the teacher. In Student A's portfolio there were altogether forty-eight remarks and comments, Two of them were "smiling Joe’s" indicating that the tutor liked the essays, the others were pieces of advice concerning vocabulary and grammatical corrections. In Student C’s portfolio I found fifteen remarks from the teacher. Joe smiled six times; the other comments were advice and corrections. In Student D's portfolio there were sixty-three different comments, four "smiling Joe’s", the others were different pieces of advice and corrections.
The essays were not perfect, they contained mistakes, spelling errors, had style problems and the students did not always follow the five T-tips. The corrections and advice were in connection with these problems, while the ‘smiling Joe’s’ indicated good vocabulary usage, sentence constructions or nice style. There were more corrections in number than appreciations, but no major mistakes.
Conclusion
My first result was in connection with the usage of passive verbs. I observed that the students do not use passive constructions frequently; they are aware that active verbs are more useful and valuable. My second result concerned the mood changers and the outcome was that students do not use them as often as they should he, however they play significant roles in sentences. My final conclusion was that the teacher devoted a lot of attention to the portfolios: he showed concern towards the writings, which was definitely a great help for all students.
The task to examine students' portfolios made me curious because these writings represent the inner thoughts of their writers, as well as tell a lot about their opinions on different topics. To write portfolios was not a task only to develop students' writing skills, but to live with the opportunity and get to know each other more. I was always interested in other persons' point of views, way of thinking because I could profit from them, draw conclusions for myself; so I had no problem selecting from the topics.
I will analyze four student's portfolios focusing on their contents, and present their main features.
Method
The three students who made their portfolios available for me (Student A, Student B, Student C) took the Writing and Research Skills coarse in the spring semester of 1998, and all of them were first year students at SPU.
The fourth portfolio belonged to me; the reason for why I chose me, too, was to find out how objective I can be about my own work. In order to be able to analyze it so, I tried to rely on the teacher's remarks and comments.
There were no special conceptions by which I chose the three persons; I asked a number of students to help me with my research by handing their portfolios over to me, and I took the first three.
I wanted to follow a logic in the analyzing of the portfolios, so I decided to concentrate first on the outsides of the portfolios, the first aspect was their getups. Then I was interested in the insides of the portfolios, so secondly I wanted to focus on their contents: the topics chosen by the students, number of essays the collections contained, their length.
Thirdly I chose two from the Zinsserian "bits and pieces”: verbs and mood changers in order to find out whether students are aware that it is useful to "alert the reader as early as possible in a sentence" (Zinsser 115) or that "active verbs push hard, passive verbs tug fitfully" (Zinsser 111).
The fourth aspect was teacher, Horvath József 'S comments, remarks: how found attached to the essays, how many of them were corrections, pieces of advice or how many times he indicated that he liked the works.
Results and Discussion
The outlook of the portfolios
I received two portfolios without cover, they were not the original writings, but photocopied versions stapled together. The third one was placed in a plastic slipcase, but the pages were not stapled, the essays were also photocopied. The fourth one had a paper slipcase with original essays.
The topics chosen by the students:
Students could choose from several different topics, among them were quoted essays, essays with two introductions and two conclusions. They wrote about one of their physical experiences, could choose topics from previous proficiency tests. The tutor asked them to write a miniature essay and to share with the others how they use their dictionaries.
The number of essays varied between three to seven. Their length varied between two to eleven paragraphs. On average, Student A wrote five paragraphs, Student C and Student D four paragraphs, and Student B wrote the most of six paragraphs.
Passive constructions in the essays
The number of Passive constructions varied between zero and ten. Student A used ten altogether in three essays. Student B used thirty passive verbs in seven essays. There were fourteen passive verbs in Student C's six essays and Student D used ten passive constructions in seven essays. Students did not prefer the passive constructions, they used active verbs more often. I found these numbers acceptable, it showed that students were aware of the difference between active and passive verbs and knew which of the two constructions is more valuable.
Mood changers
I chose the following mood changers, which I looked for in the essays: "but", "yet", "however", "thus", "instead". The number of mood changers varied from zero to five per essays. Student A included three mood changers in three essays. Student B used five in seven essays. Student C had nine mood changers in six essays, and Student D wrote eighteen mood changers in seven. Altogether, there were thirty-five mood changers in twenty-three essays. Twenty-seven of them were the word "but". Also, students used the words: "however", "instead" and "yet".
Students did not use mood changers frequently and the one they applied often was 'but", which is the most common one among all the mood changers.
Teacher’s comments and mistakes
There was no comment at all in Student B' s portfolio as the essays were photocopied before submitting them to the teacher. In Student A's portfolio there were altogether forty-eight remarks and comments, Two of them were "smiling Joe’s" indicating that the tutor liked the essays, the others were pieces of advice concerning vocabulary and grammatical corrections. In Student C’s portfolio I found fifteen remarks from the teacher. Joe smiled six times; the other comments were advice and corrections. In Student D's portfolio there were sixty-three different comments, four "smiling Joe’s", the others were different pieces of advice and corrections.
The essays were not perfect, they contained mistakes, spelling errors, had style problems and the students did not always follow the five T-tips. The corrections and advice were in connection with these problems, while the ‘smiling Joe’s’ indicated good vocabulary usage, sentence constructions or nice style. There were more corrections in number than appreciations, but no major mistakes.
Conclusion
My first result was in connection with the usage of passive verbs. I observed that the students do not use passive constructions frequently; they are aware that active verbs are more useful and valuable. My second result concerned the mood changers and the outcome was that students do not use them as often as they should he, however they play significant roles in sentences. My final conclusion was that the teacher devoted a lot of attention to the portfolios: he showed concern towards the writings, which was definitely a great help for all students.
W 007 F
Introduction
The basis of investigation and research at the Faculty of Humanities is the acquisition of writing and research skills. English major students at Janus Pannonius University, Pécs have the opportunity to attend a course planned to improve these specific skills.
The course requires the students to keep a writing diary, a so called portfolio, in which they collect all the scripts they write during the course. The tutor defines some of the topics, the rest are optional. Besides writing take-home essays, there are regular in-class writing exercises based on reading assignments: the works of Umberto Eco, William Zinsser and the portfolio scripts of other students. To attain research skills students submit a research paper in which they investigate one specific area related to the course.
What drew my attention to conclusions was the fact that this final part of the scripts is the one to hold together the structure of the essay, to present the last thought-provoking ideas, determining the overall impression of the paper on the reader. Nine portfolio scripts constitute the basis of my research on conclusions. I aim to present the contents, structures and methods of writing conclusions.
Method
I analysed the conclusions of these portfolio scripts from eleven aspects. I counted the words of the essays, those of the conclusions and of the last sentences. I defined what parts of speech the first and the last words were, also counting the active and passive verbs, the long concept nouns and the short specific nouns, and indicating the relevance of the contents of the conclusions to the rest of the essays as well. I labelled the data in a chart (see Table 1). To get comparable data I calculated proportions of numbers of specific words to the length of conclusions and the length of conclusions to the length of the essays. According to similarities I grouped the scripts into categories and the drew the conclusions on the basis of possible relations.
Results
According to the length of the essays I grouped the scripts into three categories: the essays which were of a word number of less than 300 made up the first category. Those of a word number of about 400-450 belonged to the second one and the scripts which had more than 800 words belonged to the third one. The essays in the third group tended to have relatively short conclusions (the average proportion of conclusions to the length of the essays was 5.5 %). The essays in the first group had relatively long conclusions (the average proportion was 14.14 % here) and the essays of a length between 400-450 words had the average proportion of 7.7 %, meaning that the length of conclusions were in inverse relation to the length of the essays.
These ratios allowed for creating further categories. I grouped with roughly equal proportion and, examining the data further, I found additional similarities. Essay Nr. 1 and Nr. 7 showed likeness in the use of active verbs and short specific nouns, both occurring with relatively big frequency. The last words in both essays was a noun.
In all but one essays the use of active verbs dominated as opposed to long concept nouns and short specific nouns. It was remarkable that the use of long concept nouns and short specific nouns showed equal proportions, compared to which the use of active verbs was more frequent (except for one work, essay Nr. 7, in which there were balance in the occurrence of the three types of words).
Students did not use passive verbs typically.
In terms of the tendencies in choosing the parts of speech of the first and the last words I noted that four first words out of nine were personal pronouns and seven last words out of nine were nouns.
During the course students were required to read chapters from handbooks that gave guidelines for writing. They were encouraged to apply the tips they found useful in these readings when writing their essays. On the basis of the data I examined the frequency of application of the suggestions in these scripts. “Active verbs push hard, passive verbs tug fitfully” (Zinsser 111). Those essay with high active verb proportion showed dynamics in the flow of the text. Since the ratio of active verbs was bigger than that of long concept nouns, students seemed to have applied the tips effectively. They avoided the use of long concept nouns so that the sentences did not lack people and motion, but became active by the use of verbs. It was not only the verbs that gave more speed to the text, but also the short sentences towards the ending. Four essays had fewer than six words in the last sentence and two had twenty or more words. I also examined the scripts from the point of view of essay organisation. None of the conclusions had no relevance to the topic of the essays, although one seemed to have no logical relation with the rest of the script. One of the writers used quotation in the last paragraph. Four of them came up with new ideas, also four conclusions contained the summaries of the thoughts discussed previously in the course of the essay.
Conclusion
The results of this study show that the structures, contents and methods of writing conclusions reach different levels of complexity and comprehensibility according to the use of long or short sentences, the diction and organisation with relation to the length of the essay. The main findings of my research are the changes in the length of the conclusions according to the length of the essays, the typical use of verbs and nouns and the fact, that in the nine papers I examined it was the last paragraph that the conclusions formed.
In some essays I found the individual meticulous exactness reflecting; therefore, I give some information about the topics these essays were written about. One of the topics chosen by two of the students was assigned by the tutor with the title “My Dictionary”. Two of the scripts were proficiency essays where were numerous options to write about, the rest was free choice of the students. I noticed more endeavour to write a thought-provoking conclusion in the optional essays, where the personal interest of the writers inspired them to express their message with greater subtlety than in the compulsory ones.
This research has widen my view of the opportunities in compiling an essay with firm structure. Since I have investigated the contents of conclusions, I got a detailed insight into the constructing elements of the final parts of the essays. The research has given me an impetus to weigh the significance of the last sentence and its context. It has made me use the proper types of words consciously, and also made me aware of the decisive role of the length of the sentences.
I recommend to read this research paper to English major students, especially to beginner writers. Students wrote the scripts constituting the basis of my research. The results wait for them to be examined.
The basis of investigation and research at the Faculty of Humanities is the acquisition of writing and research skills. English major students at Janus Pannonius University, Pécs have the opportunity to attend a course planned to improve these specific skills.
The course requires the students to keep a writing diary, a so called portfolio, in which they collect all the scripts they write during the course. The tutor defines some of the topics, the rest are optional. Besides writing take-home essays, there are regular in-class writing exercises based on reading assignments: the works of Umberto Eco, William Zinsser and the portfolio scripts of other students. To attain research skills students submit a research paper in which they investigate one specific area related to the course.
What drew my attention to conclusions was the fact that this final part of the scripts is the one to hold together the structure of the essay, to present the last thought-provoking ideas, determining the overall impression of the paper on the reader. Nine portfolio scripts constitute the basis of my research on conclusions. I aim to present the contents, structures and methods of writing conclusions.
Method
I analysed the conclusions of these portfolio scripts from eleven aspects. I counted the words of the essays, those of the conclusions and of the last sentences. I defined what parts of speech the first and the last words were, also counting the active and passive verbs, the long concept nouns and the short specific nouns, and indicating the relevance of the contents of the conclusions to the rest of the essays as well. I labelled the data in a chart (see Table 1). To get comparable data I calculated proportions of numbers of specific words to the length of conclusions and the length of conclusions to the length of the essays. According to similarities I grouped the scripts into categories and the drew the conclusions on the basis of possible relations.
Results
According to the length of the essays I grouped the scripts into three categories: the essays which were of a word number of less than 300 made up the first category. Those of a word number of about 400-450 belonged to the second one and the scripts which had more than 800 words belonged to the third one. The essays in the third group tended to have relatively short conclusions (the average proportion of conclusions to the length of the essays was 5.5 %). The essays in the first group had relatively long conclusions (the average proportion was 14.14 % here) and the essays of a length between 400-450 words had the average proportion of 7.7 %, meaning that the length of conclusions were in inverse relation to the length of the essays.
These ratios allowed for creating further categories. I grouped with roughly equal proportion and, examining the data further, I found additional similarities. Essay Nr. 1 and Nr. 7 showed likeness in the use of active verbs and short specific nouns, both occurring with relatively big frequency. The last words in both essays was a noun.
In all but one essays the use of active verbs dominated as opposed to long concept nouns and short specific nouns. It was remarkable that the use of long concept nouns and short specific nouns showed equal proportions, compared to which the use of active verbs was more frequent (except for one work, essay Nr. 7, in which there were balance in the occurrence of the three types of words).
Students did not use passive verbs typically.
In terms of the tendencies in choosing the parts of speech of the first and the last words I noted that four first words out of nine were personal pronouns and seven last words out of nine were nouns.
During the course students were required to read chapters from handbooks that gave guidelines for writing. They were encouraged to apply the tips they found useful in these readings when writing their essays. On the basis of the data I examined the frequency of application of the suggestions in these scripts. “Active verbs push hard, passive verbs tug fitfully” (Zinsser 111). Those essay with high active verb proportion showed dynamics in the flow of the text. Since the ratio of active verbs was bigger than that of long concept nouns, students seemed to have applied the tips effectively. They avoided the use of long concept nouns so that the sentences did not lack people and motion, but became active by the use of verbs. It was not only the verbs that gave more speed to the text, but also the short sentences towards the ending. Four essays had fewer than six words in the last sentence and two had twenty or more words. I also examined the scripts from the point of view of essay organisation. None of the conclusions had no relevance to the topic of the essays, although one seemed to have no logical relation with the rest of the script. One of the writers used quotation in the last paragraph. Four of them came up with new ideas, also four conclusions contained the summaries of the thoughts discussed previously in the course of the essay.
Conclusion
The results of this study show that the structures, contents and methods of writing conclusions reach different levels of complexity and comprehensibility according to the use of long or short sentences, the diction and organisation with relation to the length of the essay. The main findings of my research are the changes in the length of the conclusions according to the length of the essays, the typical use of verbs and nouns and the fact, that in the nine papers I examined it was the last paragraph that the conclusions formed.
In some essays I found the individual meticulous exactness reflecting; therefore, I give some information about the topics these essays were written about. One of the topics chosen by two of the students was assigned by the tutor with the title “My Dictionary”. Two of the scripts were proficiency essays where were numerous options to write about, the rest was free choice of the students. I noticed more endeavour to write a thought-provoking conclusion in the optional essays, where the personal interest of the writers inspired them to express their message with greater subtlety than in the compulsory ones.
This research has widen my view of the opportunities in compiling an essay with firm structure. Since I have investigated the contents of conclusions, I got a detailed insight into the constructing elements of the final parts of the essays. The research has given me an impetus to weigh the significance of the last sentence and its context. It has made me use the proper types of words consciously, and also made me aware of the decisive role of the length of the sentences.
I recommend to read this research paper to English major students, especially to beginner writers. Students wrote the scripts constituting the basis of my research. The results wait for them to be examined.
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