Introduction
Writing has always been among those skills that bear immense importance in schools, especially at universities. Since testing students' knowledge is partly based on written works, it is highly recommended that students at the English Department of Janus Pannonius University somehow attain the skills of good writing, enabling them to submit pieces of writings which are excellent in every aspect, but at least in form and structure. As Nikolov Marianne, teacher of applied linguistics at JPU, said, "The skills of proper academic writing can be taught" (personal communication, 1997.04.17.). In many universities, there is great stress on this issue, and JPU too is no exception.
Writing courses were introduced at JPU in 1986, and the main aim of these courses was to systematically develop formal writing skills (Horváth 1996 p. 88). Through the years, the
course went through continuous changing until it reached its present-day form in 1997, and, of course, it may continue changing in the future as the needs for such courses will change. To give an outline of what the course included when it was introduced, and what it includes now in 1997, it is needed to report the course themes listed in the syllabuses of these courses. Steve Starkey’s 1 syllabus included sentence, paragraph and essay organization; punctuation; and the fundamentals of good writing (Starkey ANG 1601/2/3, 1994). In 1995, plagiarism, audience, passive versus active voice, and thesis rules were incorporated into the syllabus (Gonzalez ANG 1601, 1995). To the 1997 courses, some refinements, such as group writing, reflecting on reading styles, and essays on tapes were added (Horváth ANG 1603, 1997). Although the contents of the courses changed annually, as the teachers and the list of course themes changed, the main objective remained still: to arm students with essay writing skills.
It may seem too obvious, but it is necessary to clarify who needs the course and for what purpose. This is a complex question which can be approached from three aspects. The course is most important for students because there is much stress laid on written works at JPU, in the form of essays and research papers. Cultural studies teacher, Andrew C. Rouse said, "In Hungary, spoken language is more important than written language, and as a result, there exists a gap in students' essay writing skills" (personal communication, 1997.04.17.). Since these are not taught formally in high schools, though they should be as some teachers suggested, students must acquire essay writing skills at the university. Other beneficiaries of the course, though not directly, are the teachers. In theory, the course makes their work easier, since once students complete the course teachers do not have to spend extra time explaining the basic rules of essay writing again, since it is the task of the writing course to inform students about them. The third reason the course is needed is that different types of international exams, as well as the diploma work, require the proper use of essay writing skills. If one does not know how to put thoughts in a clearly traceable sequence so that is has style then university years may become a hard and painful struggle. Now that the course objectives and the purposes are known, it can be examined whether the course could fulfill its mission or not.
The fact that there is a separate course for writing suggests that English majors need to learn essay writing skills. The cause of this might be that they were not required to submit essays earlier in their high school years. However, every English major needs to complete the writing course because it is included in the curriculum. The majority of students take the course in the first year, and since most of them complete the course, it can be deducted that they know how to write essays or at least know it in theory. However, a survey shows that "there are problematic areas even among 3rd and 4th year students" (Szamosi Gertrud, personal communication, 1997.04.16.). This might indicate two assumptions: probably there are students who will never achieve proficiency in writing, and the other supposition may be that the writing course in itself is insufficient to satisfy all the needs for attaining essay writing skills. The basic aim of this paper is to present a brief report of the successes and failures of the course, focusing on the 1996-97 term, and to give guidelines for later development; thus contributing to the process of making it more effective and enjoyable for both students and the tutor.
Methods
Before immersing into evaluating the course, it is necessary to know how information was collected. To gather information on the course, two basic methods were used: personal interviews with teachers and students, and a group writing report written by students during the 1997 spring term. Personal interviews were made with nine teachers, based on a set of questions (Appendix A). To reach high reliability, teachers were selected according to their field of specialization. Some teachers teach in more than one area; thus, their opinions were taken into account in each of their subjects. In this framework, four teachers were asked who teach cultural subjects, three who held or hold language practice courses, two teachers from the field of applied linguistics, and one each dealing with linguistics, and literature. Concerning students, ten of them were interviewed, based on a list of questions (Appendix B). To narrow down the focus of research, generally those were asked who completed the course either in the 1996 fall or 1997 spring semesters. In addition, one student was asked who finished the course earlier. Since nine students are not many out of nearly a hundred who took the course in the 1996-97 school year, a group writing report was also used to increase reliability. In the group writing activity, three groups of students - consisting of about forty participants - took part, expressing their ideas about the writing course.
During the field research which was carried out in the end of April, 1997, the following hypothesis was formulated: although the 'Writing and research skills' course is necessary - as both students and teachers confirmed - research results show that for some reason it fails to fulfill its task properly and satisfy the expectations set against it. In the following parts of this paper, the areas and the possible reasons for failure will be identified, as well as the fields where the course was successful.
Results and Discussion
In the first round, teachers were asked about their opinions and expectations on the writing course. The interviews had a similar format to a needs analysis, trying to discover for what purposes, and how teachers utilize the results of the writing course, focusing on the elements of overriding importance. Teachers' responses to the questions varied considerably, partly because of the different fields they were concerned about, and also because their practice as teachers gave them different experiences.
All teachers found it important that students have a writing course, and the reason was to attain essay writing skills. Szabó Gábor, teacher of applied linguistics and language practice, stressed that "there is a sharp contrast between those English majors who have to take the course and those Russian retrainees who do not have such courses" (personal communication, 1997.04.16). Connected to this, five of the teachers asked said that the course made their work easier, "Teachers can concentrate more on content than on technical side" (Andrew C. Rouse, personal communication, 1997.04.17.). This is not a surprise, since most courses require at least one, but rather two, essays or research papers as a term of completing the course. Those instructors who taught first year students, and tried to link the writing course to their own courses said that generally there was visible difference between those students' essays who completed the writing course and those who did not. "Language practice courses are great for experimenting because they indicate the difference. Those who already took the writing course know at least how not to write; they do not commit mistakes like those who did not complete the course yet" (Szabó Gábor, personal communication, 1997.04.16.).
Teachers also agreed that there was improvement in students' writings through the years, although it came not only from the writing course, but with experience too. As Fodor Mónika, teacher of cultural studies, put it, "The basics are laid down in the writing course, but experience also contributes to development" (personal communication, 1997.04.17.). However, there were teachers who doubted general development. As Szamosi Gertrud, teacher of cultural studies, expressed, "There are juniors and seniors who write as bad essays as freshmen" (personal communication, 1997.04.16.).
The survey also displayed that most teachers mark the formal qualities of students' essays. Generally, these qualities can make up 25-30 % of essay grades. This means that essays which are imperfect in this regard are downgraded by one or two marks. It is only the linguists who regard as subsidiary these qualities (Martsa Sándor, personal communication, 1997.04.28.). According to eight teachers out of nine, the most serious mistake that students can commit in an essay was plagiarism. As The McGraw-Hill College Handbook defines it, "Plagiarism occurs whenever you present words or ideas taken from another person as if they were your own", it continues, "Plagiarism is the most serious offense that a writer can commit. (...) Plagiarism is almost always discovered (...) The student who plagiarizes can expect a failing grade on the paper, and in almost all schools for the whole course. In many schools, plagiarism is an honors-code violation and grounds for expulsion" (Marius & Wiener, 1985 p. 517). Teachers at JPU handle plagiarism more liberally: only one teacher who was asked gave a failing grade for the course, two teachers gave fails on the paper, and most of them only reduced marks. On the list of problematic areas plagiarism was followed by paragraph organization, structure and layout. These were not so serious mistakes as plagiarism, but could also result in losing marks.
Besides the writing course, there are ways of further improving the formal qualities of writing or to fill the gaps in students' knowledge in these qualities. Most teachers provided students with feedback through comments on marked essays, but there were possibilities of personal consultation. Many teachers said they gave guidelines about how they required essays from their students, and some teachers showed students sample essays. Altogether, half of the teachers asked were content with the quality of writings. The others had problems with it. In most of the cases, the problem was the content of the essay. However, there occurred mistakes which were related to the formal part of writings.
If these findings are contrasted with the hypothesis, the results support the hypothesis in some areas. Although most teachers agreed on the importance of the writing course, many of them found that what the students gain from the course is often dissatisfactory. As John Cunningham, teacher of media studies, indicated, "There should be more courses on writing" (personal communication, 1997.04.15.). Another probable hindering factor that reduces the course's efficiency could be that there was little or no cooperation among teachers about what they require from a writing course. Vöõ Gabriella, teacher of literature, said, "Teachers should cooperate with the teacher of the Writing and research skills course, it would be helpful" (personal communication, 1997.04.29.). The hypothesis that there was little satisfactory cooperation among teachers seems to be supported by the fact that although teachers considered plagiarism as the worst mistake students can commit, in the 1997 syllabus of the writing course, it is the last one of the topics covered (Horváth ANG 1603, 1997). Further evidence on this topic is provided when evaluating students' responses to the student interviews.
Student interviews were carried out after teachers' responses had been evaluated. This format allowed asking questions which were related to the problematic parts teachers mentioned. Students had to answer questions related to five topics: earlier studies; the writing course; opinions on the course; results; and as a special topic, found most problematic by teachers, plagiarism. After the responses had been collected, the following set of data were received:
In their earlier studies, seven out of ten students had to write essays. The number of essays changed form three to a hundred (both students who wrote a hundred came from dual language high schools), the average number of essays was 45. The length of these essays ranged from 200 words to 3000, depending on the type of the writing task, the average being 500 words. Among those who wrote essays in their earlier studies, five students knew how to write essays while the remaining two persons knew it only partly.
Due to the writing course, six students indicated that the course taught them how to write essays, two knew it earlier, while one of them said that the course did not taught him to write essays, and another one had doubts about it. Students felt improvement due to the course in the following topics: paragraph development, pronoun use, word choice and style, outline, and focus. When students were asked if the course helped them a lot or no, two students said that the course did not help them much. The others profited from it at least in some areas. The students said unanimously that the course could have been better. Three students indicated that it should have been more organized, while there were some other suggestions, like there should have been more group activities, in-class essays, reading materials, essays on tape, and more essays that are not academic. The given materials in the course were helpful to only four students, the others said that given materials helped them probably. Surprisingly enough, six students out of ten did not read the required readings and three read only some, despite the fact that five respondents said that the readings were available.
Five pupils did not enjoy the lessons at all, and another three enjoyed them only sometimes. The reason they did not enjoy them was that they were boring according to four students, three said that there were no concrete subjects, two did not like the instructor's questions, which were not relevant, and one of them said that the topics were bad. On the other hand, many students liked the 'soccer essay' (Horváth 1995), the group activities and the good explanations. Students wanted to get more information on attacking plagiarism, knowing how to write effective introductions and conclusions, and get more background information. Seven students said that it happened to them that they did not know something in their studies that the course should have taught them. Most students' expectations about the course were only partly satisfied, while three of them said that they expected something else from the course and only one student's expectations were satisfied out of ten students. As a result, all of the students asked could utilize what they learned from the course. However, four students still think they are weak at writing conclusions, two at writing introductions and one each felt weak at punctuation, academic writing, cohesion, and references.
As teachers highlighted that plagiarism was the most serious offense in students' writings, students were asked about plagiarism in detail. Seven students said that they were told very little or nothing about plagiarism, two were not told about it clearly, and only one student, who did the course earlier in the 1995-96 term, said that he was told too much about it. Nine students committed plagiarism; three before, three during, and three after the course. Four students said that it was both their fault and they were not told the instructions clearly, three said that they were not told the instructions clearly while two said that it was their own fault. The results of plagiarism varied from failing the course (one student) to undiscovered (six students).
Knowing all data, the teacher responses and the student responses can be compared to each other and at the same time contrasted with the hypothesis. Vöõ Gabriella, teacher of literature, said before the student interviews were done that "reading is a way of improvement, including the compulsory readings" (personal communication, 1997.04.29). It is conspicuous that many students complain that they still do not know how to write essays or different constituents of essay writing. On the other hand, they did not read the required readings. It is also a strange fact that it happened to seven students that they did not know something the course should have taught them. This observation seems to further support the hypothesis. There is another area where the hypothesis is supported, and this is plagiarism. It is a thought-provoking fact that seven students heard hardly anything about plagiarism and how to avoid it though teachers found it the most problematic area. Knowing this, it is not a surprise to see that nine students plagiarized, and six did it because they were not told clearly how to avoid it. In three of the cases, it was not even discovered that they plagiarized. Moreover, they received good grades on their works. Therefore, it can be stated that avoiding plagiarism was one area where the writing course, with full knowledge of the facts, failed to give students satisfying information about.
A third source of information about the writing course was the group writing report. The students mainly wrote about the tasks of the course, but some parts included their personal opinions on the course.
The introduction of the ANG 1603 Group writing report is about how the course "tried to create a friendly atmosphere in the classroom" (ANG 1603, Group writing report). The student wrote, "I come to this course cheerfully each week, (...) the teacher is always interested in our opinions about the topics" (ANG 1603, Group writing report). This piece of information seems to contradict the results of the research where many students said that the classes were boring. On the other hand, it is necessary to explain how the group writing report was written: each student could choose a topic sentence and then write a paragraph about it. After it was ready, other students could revise or add to the paragraph, but sometimes a paragraph was written by only one student.
Students also wrote about the activities of the course, such as reflecting on reading styles, writing topic sentences, paragraph organization, focus, accuracy and cohesion. Among these, two activities are worth dealing with in greater detail: The essay on tape, as a special type of revision; and the group writing. The reason they are dealt with in detail is that these activities were the most popular among students.
The essay on tape was a take home essay which, after having been written, was recorded and handed in in this format. The purpose was that "all students actually read their essays" (ANG 1602, Group writing report). Its usefulness is mirrored through what students wrote about it, "This exercise proved useful in realizing how important it is to scan the text in order to reveal mistakes and inaccuracies, such as repetitions, syntactic errors, 'fat' expressions and flaws of word choice" (ANG 1602, Group writing report). Another opinion, "It gave an excellent opportunity for us to hear the effectiveness of our words. It helped us to find the most appropriate phrases to express our own thoughts. Pleasant sounding of our language was essential to make a deep impression on the audience" (ANG 1601, Group writing report). The evidence that some students enjoyed the essay on tape comes from two other extracts, "It was funny and useful at the same time", and another saying, "it also was a new and unusual idea that gave us pleasure" (ANG 1602, Group writing report). It can be deducted that the essay on tape task was a successful innovation of the writing course.
Another activity which students enjoyed was also a group activity: group writing. It was found interesting and useful because "there might be ideas that do not come to our mind when we are writing, but probably some other students have suggestions how to continue. Group writing is good for sharing each other's ideas even if these ideas are completely different. Everybody is involved in it and it urges everybody to contribute to the whole" (ANG 1603, Group writing report). Someone else wrote, "With its help we can revise our work and add more conclusion given by other students to our personal experience. Developing another student's train of thought is an interesting task and it can be a challenge for all of us" (ANG 1601, Group writing report). These opinions and the research results confirm that this was another area where the course was successful and enjoyable.
Conclusion
After the investigation of the writing course, the following conclusion can be drawn: the course had weaknesses and parts where it was successful. Its successes include the essay on tape, the group writing activity, and the fact that the majority of students could learn something new due to the course, and this knowledge could be utilized later. However, it is just as important to know, if not even more important, the areas where the course needs further improvement. These include more consistency and focusing more on the actual subject: to teach students academic essay writing skills. Some specific areas are also worth to be summarized again. Information about, and how to attack plagiarism is one area where the course needs lots of improvement, since in its present form it rather confused students about what to indicate as their thought and what to indicate as someone else's thought, and how to indicate it. It is always worth paying attention to it, since the writing course is one of the most important courses because every other course relies upon its outcome. The research results suggest that there should be more cooperation among teachers in what to include in the writing course. If attention is not paid to this issue then the possible harmful outcome will affect both students' and teachers' work: students will not know how to write essays properly, resulting in low marks and even failing a course; while teachers will have to spend extra time explaining the formal rules of writing which draws their attention from teaching and grading content. If it is considered that with little attention, extra time and effort can be saved, then it is everybody's task to cooperate.
Showing posts with label writing course. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing course. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
W 112 M
Introduction
Some teachers find student feedback essential, or at least very helpful. Not long time ago one of my teachers asked us to fill in a questionnaire. He was interested in our opinions about his Writing and Research Skills course. He greatly trusted the objectivity of this research. I was thinking how honestly should I answer the questions. I assumed that I wasn't the only one to hesitate.
Now I'm questioning the objectivity of student feedback gained this way. Thus I decided to conduct my mandatory research on this area.
Method
The base of my research is the research paper, written by my teacher of the course I'm writing this paper for (see Horváth, 1997). He asked the students in ANG 1601, 1602 and 1603 to fill in a questionnaire of eight questions, including some about attendance and preparation for the course, and questions such as "how useful has the WRS course been for you" (Horváth, 1997). He also asked about the clarity of the sessions and the improvement of the students' writing skills. The answers were to be given on a range of 1 to 7, where 7 was the highest, or most positive answer. We received the questionnaire on October 13, at the end of the session. We took it in English. Altogether 33 students (78%) turned them in. For more data consult his report (Horváth, 1997).
I made up a questionnaire myself, and asked the students personally in four areas. I asked three of the questions my teachers has asked. Those were on usefulness, clarity, and improvement. As a fourth questions I directly asked about the honesty of their answers they gave for my teacher's questionnaire. From December 1 to 9 I managed to interview 15 students, about 46 percent of the former research participants.
Table 1: Extract the results of the classroom survey ( Horváth, 1997)
Results and Discussion
Table 1 presents the numeric figures of my teacher's questionnaire. Table 2 shows the results of my own research.
Usefulness
The question was: "how useful has the WRS course been for you?". ? The mean average is 5.45. When I asked them directly the mean average changed to 3.73. That may indicate that their opinion has changed over time.
Clear
The question "how clear has the WRS course been for you" produced a mean average of 6.09. When directly asked it changed to 4.93, that again may be a result of the time lapse.
Improved-Will improve
In the previous research there were two items concerned with improvement. One on the improvement of the writing skill till October 13, the other is the expected improvement later in during the remaining of the term. Since I conducted mine at the end of the term, to question the improvement in the future would have been senseless. The mean averages were 4 (for the first question) and 6.30 for the second. My research resulted a mean average of 3.53.
Honesty
When directly asked about their amount of honesty when answered the questions of the original research, the lowest answer was 3, the highest 7 with a mean average of 4.6.
Conclusion
Some teachers find student feedback essential, or at least very helpful. Not long time ago one of my teachers asked us to fill in a questionnaire. He was interested in our opinions about his Writing and Research Skills course. He greatly trusted the objectivity of this research. I was thinking how honestly should I answer the questions. I assumed that I wasn't the only one to hesitate.
Now I'm questioning the objectivity of student feedback gained this way. Thus I decided to conduct my mandatory research on this area.
Method
The base of my research is the research paper, written by my teacher of the course I'm writing this paper for (see Horváth, 1997). He asked the students in ANG 1601, 1602 and 1603 to fill in a questionnaire of eight questions, including some about attendance and preparation for the course, and questions such as "how useful has the WRS course been for you" (Horváth, 1997). He also asked about the clarity of the sessions and the improvement of the students' writing skills. The answers were to be given on a range of 1 to 7, where 7 was the highest, or most positive answer. We received the questionnaire on October 13, at the end of the session. We took it in English. Altogether 33 students (78%) turned them in. For more data consult his report (Horváth, 1997).
I made up a questionnaire myself, and asked the students personally in four areas. I asked three of the questions my teachers has asked. Those were on usefulness, clarity, and improvement. As a fourth questions I directly asked about the honesty of their answers they gave for my teacher's questionnaire. From December 1 to 9 I managed to interview 15 students, about 46 percent of the former research participants.
Table 1: Extract the results of the classroom survey ( Horváth, 1997)
Results and Discussion
Table 1 presents the numeric figures of my teacher's questionnaire. Table 2 shows the results of my own research.
Usefulness
The question was: "how useful has the WRS course been for you?". ? The mean average is 5.45. When I asked them directly the mean average changed to 3.73. That may indicate that their opinion has changed over time.
Clear
The question "how clear has the WRS course been for you" produced a mean average of 6.09. When directly asked it changed to 4.93, that again may be a result of the time lapse.
Improved-Will improve
In the previous research there were two items concerned with improvement. One on the improvement of the writing skill till October 13, the other is the expected improvement later in during the remaining of the term. Since I conducted mine at the end of the term, to question the improvement in the future would have been senseless. The mean averages were 4 (for the first question) and 6.30 for the second. My research resulted a mean average of 3.53.
Honesty
When directly asked about their amount of honesty when answered the questions of the original research, the lowest answer was 3, the highest 7 with a mean average of 4.6.
Conclusion
W 107 M
At Janus Pannonius University Pecs, English major students at the Faculty of Humanities are able to participate in a course called Writing and Research Skills. This course aims to get us ready to present our ideas, opinions in personal essays, in non-fiction writings. By making us read texts in this topic, and by making us write a number of smaller essays, it teaches us how to become “more proficient writer of crisp, fluent, and accurate texts” (Horvath Joe). The course teaches us tips, and gives us hints about writing, which words to choose, how to use paragraphs, how long an essay should be, how it should look like, and how we should construct them.
Research area
I was curious to know whether students liked the course or not, and whether they felt changes in themselves as writers, or not. Did their writing skills improve, can they express themselves now more easily?
Data
I put together a questionnaire of yes or no questions for the students.
From the two groups learning on the Writing and Research Skills course, I managed to ask 14 pupils randomly according to sex, and day they attend the course.
(It was necessary to divide the students into groups because there were too many applicants. The teacher held one class on Wednesday, one on Thursday.) I have also made interviews with some of the questioned students to enable them to add a bit more information to the answers they have given in the questionnaire.
The questionnaire was given to them at the end of the course, which is at the end of the first semester in December.
Method
I divided the answers the same way I divided the questions. Some are in connection with the students opinion about the course, and others about their attitude towards writing. I analyzed the answers one-by-one, then according to the two question groups; one dealing with the person’s attitude towards writing, and the other dealing with the participant’s opinion about the course. I also made an overall scan, dealing with the number of students answering, and the total number of yes, and no answers given. There is some statistic on where the biggest difference, and where the smallest occurred in connection with positive and negative answers given to one question.
The questions
1. Classes have been useful for me
2. I have learnt new writing skills here
3. I feel motivated by the course
4. I like writing more than before
5. I feel - positive / negative / no - change(s) in my writings
6. My attitude towards writing is more positive, my writings are not better yet
My attitude towards writing is more positive, my writings are as well
My attitude towards writing has not changed
7. I have become a more proficient writer of crisp, fluent and accurate texts
Students were asked to put Y if their answer was yes, and put N if their answer was no, behind the question.
Results
The first ‘research area’, dealing with the course, contained the first three questions. The second contained the next three. The 7., the last question is somewhat neutral, because it contained information about the student, and of course about the course as well, since the aim of the class was to make us become a more proficient writers.
From the 14 students I collected all together 42 answers to both question groups. In the first group, from the 42 answers 32 were positive, and 10 were negative. This means that 76% of the group was satisfied with the course, and only 24% had some problems with the classes. For the first question I got 12, for the second 11, and for the third question I got 8 YES answers. The most answers in the question area of the course were positive! This would probably mean that most of the students felt comfortable on the lessons, they thought it was worth going there. They liked this course, and most of them also benefited from it.
From the second group of answers, ( 20 positive, 22 negative answers ), it turned out that nearly half of the students were satisfied with themselves as writers, the other half thought they didn’t really improve and their attitude towards writing didn’t change.
I have to stop here for a moment. These numbers are the average of three questions. For the fourth question I got 4, for the fifth 11, and for the sixth question I got 10 positive answers. (In the sixth question, which had three parts, I considered the answer positive if the student felt some change(es) in himself/herself in connection with writing).
This means that most of the students are feeling positive changes in their writings as well as in their attitude towards writing, but only four of them said that they liked writing now more than before.
It is interesting to see what the biggest and the smallest difference between yes and no answers in one question were.
The biggest difference between the answers was in the first question. thirteen people agreed that the classes had been useful for them, and only one claimed that it was useless going to this course. It is 93% of those who liked the course, and who learned from it.
The smallest difference occurred in the case of the third question. It was 8 students saying that they were motivated by the course, and 6 saying they weren’t. It is nearly the half, like fifty-fifty. It can either be a good sign, that the course made such a good impression on the pupils that half of the group felt it was worth writing to the course, or it can also be a bad sign, because it is only the half of the party who felt the urge to grab a pen after or before a class.
Altogether there were 98 answers given by the 14 students for the seven questions. From these 98 answers 66 was a yes, 30 was a no, and 3 answers were kind of neutral. (In the fifth question three students said that they didn’t feel any changes in their writings whatsoever.)
So 67% of all the answers given by the pupils were positive, dealing with the course and themselves, and only 30% percent felt uncomfortable in a way in connection with the class. We shouldn’t forget that the negative answers came from the questions about the writers. It shows that if someone had problems, and gave negative answers, in most of the cases these were in connection with the person’s opinion about his/her writings and not with the opinion about the course itself.
Conclusion
In connection with the course I received 32 positive answers from the total of 42.In connection with the students as writers, I got 20 positive answers from 42. As a total of yes answers, from the 14 students, for the maximum of 98 questions they gave 66 yes answers.
From the interviews and from these numbers I can say that most of the students enjoyed the course, and even learnt from it.
After the conclusion let me just add one tip to make these numbers even more promising next time: students should be presented some way to make them love writing. Some way to motivate them more, to make them feel that writing down our ideas, or stories, or memories can be done a way that is enjoyable.
Research area
I was curious to know whether students liked the course or not, and whether they felt changes in themselves as writers, or not. Did their writing skills improve, can they express themselves now more easily?
Data
I put together a questionnaire of yes or no questions for the students.
From the two groups learning on the Writing and Research Skills course, I managed to ask 14 pupils randomly according to sex, and day they attend the course.
(It was necessary to divide the students into groups because there were too many applicants. The teacher held one class on Wednesday, one on Thursday.) I have also made interviews with some of the questioned students to enable them to add a bit more information to the answers they have given in the questionnaire.
The questionnaire was given to them at the end of the course, which is at the end of the first semester in December.
Method
I divided the answers the same way I divided the questions. Some are in connection with the students opinion about the course, and others about their attitude towards writing. I analyzed the answers one-by-one, then according to the two question groups; one dealing with the person’s attitude towards writing, and the other dealing with the participant’s opinion about the course. I also made an overall scan, dealing with the number of students answering, and the total number of yes, and no answers given. There is some statistic on where the biggest difference, and where the smallest occurred in connection with positive and negative answers given to one question.
The questions
1. Classes have been useful for me
2. I have learnt new writing skills here
3. I feel motivated by the course
4. I like writing more than before
5. I feel - positive / negative / no - change(s) in my writings
6. My attitude towards writing is more positive, my writings are not better yet
My attitude towards writing is more positive, my writings are as well
My attitude towards writing has not changed
7. I have become a more proficient writer of crisp, fluent and accurate texts
Students were asked to put Y if their answer was yes, and put N if their answer was no, behind the question.
Results
The first ‘research area’, dealing with the course, contained the first three questions. The second contained the next three. The 7., the last question is somewhat neutral, because it contained information about the student, and of course about the course as well, since the aim of the class was to make us become a more proficient writers.
From the 14 students I collected all together 42 answers to both question groups. In the first group, from the 42 answers 32 were positive, and 10 were negative. This means that 76% of the group was satisfied with the course, and only 24% had some problems with the classes. For the first question I got 12, for the second 11, and for the third question I got 8 YES answers. The most answers in the question area of the course were positive! This would probably mean that most of the students felt comfortable on the lessons, they thought it was worth going there. They liked this course, and most of them also benefited from it.
From the second group of answers, ( 20 positive, 22 negative answers ), it turned out that nearly half of the students were satisfied with themselves as writers, the other half thought they didn’t really improve and their attitude towards writing didn’t change.
I have to stop here for a moment. These numbers are the average of three questions. For the fourth question I got 4, for the fifth 11, and for the sixth question I got 10 positive answers. (In the sixth question, which had three parts, I considered the answer positive if the student felt some change(es) in himself/herself in connection with writing).
This means that most of the students are feeling positive changes in their writings as well as in their attitude towards writing, but only four of them said that they liked writing now more than before.
It is interesting to see what the biggest and the smallest difference between yes and no answers in one question were.
The biggest difference between the answers was in the first question. thirteen people agreed that the classes had been useful for them, and only one claimed that it was useless going to this course. It is 93% of those who liked the course, and who learned from it.
The smallest difference occurred in the case of the third question. It was 8 students saying that they were motivated by the course, and 6 saying they weren’t. It is nearly the half, like fifty-fifty. It can either be a good sign, that the course made such a good impression on the pupils that half of the group felt it was worth writing to the course, or it can also be a bad sign, because it is only the half of the party who felt the urge to grab a pen after or before a class.
Altogether there were 98 answers given by the 14 students for the seven questions. From these 98 answers 66 was a yes, 30 was a no, and 3 answers were kind of neutral. (In the fifth question three students said that they didn’t feel any changes in their writings whatsoever.)
So 67% of all the answers given by the pupils were positive, dealing with the course and themselves, and only 30% percent felt uncomfortable in a way in connection with the class. We shouldn’t forget that the negative answers came from the questions about the writers. It shows that if someone had problems, and gave negative answers, in most of the cases these were in connection with the person’s opinion about his/her writings and not with the opinion about the course itself.
Conclusion
In connection with the course I received 32 positive answers from the total of 42.In connection with the students as writers, I got 20 positive answers from 42. As a total of yes answers, from the 14 students, for the maximum of 98 questions they gave 66 yes answers.
From the interviews and from these numbers I can say that most of the students enjoyed the course, and even learnt from it.
After the conclusion let me just add one tip to make these numbers even more promising next time: students should be presented some way to make them love writing. Some way to motivate them more, to make them feel that writing down our ideas, or stories, or memories can be done a way that is enjoyable.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
W 105 F
At the beginning of the semester students had to take new courses which were very important for their later studies and examinations. One of them was Writing and Research Skills course. The aim of this course was to introduce and involve the students into different reading and writing styles and to help in studying how to write an essay and a research paper. On the first class students were given the syllabus of the course from which they could see which topics they would deal with and what they would do in the whole semester. When I had to choose a topic I would write about in my research paper assignment, I decided on the characterization and evaluation of the course and tasks students were given and they had to solve since the spring semester began. I would like to see, whether the course was useful for me and for other English majors or not.
After choosing the theme I started to work on the work methods with the help of which I could see how the tasks done in the class and at home (in-class and take-home assignments) influenced writing skills of students taking the course. I collected some Portfolios of my mates, so that I could see how they wrote about different themes, how they developed from the point of view of writing topic sentences, developing paragraphs and all the rest of it. I also made interviews with students, they told me about their ideas and thoughts about the usefullness of the course, how it helped them in improving their essay writing skills, what they found interesting and what they missed, what was not discussed in details.
I talked to many people and according to collected information the Writing and Research Skills course really did help to the majority of university students. The biggest development can be seen on the field of writing topic sentences and developing paragraphs. Students also made quite an effective progress on the level of sentences. Mainly in the last weeks of the semester they did various activities which were focusing on the sentence, as the lowest level of speech used in a written work. While practicing they seemed to understand the secrets of this field as well.
To make a classification we need to know more about each task, so that we could compare them with each other and we could evaluate them.
At the beginning students started to develop their skills in academic writing by reflecting on various reading styles. They had to read two essays from a book called ‘Seventy-five Readings’. Basically the first one written by Zinsser was the more effective one, as it spoke about the difference between two men’s style in writing. The cause of this difference was based on their professions, one of them being a writer the other one was a doctor, who writes only for the sake of fun, to entertain himself. After reading these essays students got a short extract of each. They were asked to fill in the gaps within the two paragraphs. They had to do it in order to realize how differently every person reads. It was depending on student’s character. By doing such a predicting activity students saw that in most of the cases people used different words for the same gap. That showed that everyone had different impressions while reading a text, every person understanded it in a different way to some extent. During the next class students got the opportunity to discuss the two essays in whole. The above mentioned Zinsser essay, ‘The Transaction’, introduced the students to their next topic which was writing styles.
After discussing the essays students read, they used metaphors in order to understand the structure of writing an essay. One illustration of this was the process of taking pictures. When photographing a person also needs to find a topic, to focus on it and to develop it. Landing of an aeroplane is similar to the former process as well as to essay writing.
When working on a written composition or paper you must begin with the basic elements, which are the first sentences of paragraphs. They must be effective, clearly showing the point the paragraph will be about. With the help of a worksheet students learnt how to make a topic sentence impressive, what information or data it should contain, how it should be constructed. All this was done in the class, so students could immediately discuss this problem, as it was the most important part of the paragraph students were dealing with in the following classes.
Students understood that a paragraph has to be unified, it has to focus on the problem indicated in the first sentence. They wrote short one or two paragraph essays, just to develop this skill. While doing this an other skill did improve as well. One of the tasks was quite interesting. Students received several sentences in connection with the death of the two famous American presidents: Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Students had to choose some of those sentences containing information about the two tragic events. They had to compare them and include them in a short paragraph. This task served for making the students to use already known information and to make it interesting for a reader.
Students did enough practicing exercises to learn topic sentence and paragraph development. The next theme was building of revesion skills. There were two assignments connected to this purpose; an in-class two paragraph essay and an essay on tape. The point in this activity was that all students had to read their essays after finishing them in order to see and correct their mistakes; grammatical, lexical and structural as well. They realized how important it is to scan the text to avoid inaccuracies such as repetition, flat expressions, unorganized paragraphs, misspelled words. They discussed everything in the class.
A special technique for revesion was a take-home assignment: an essay on tape. Students had to write an essay about a given topic and then they recorded it on a tape. That was good for making sure that students did really revise what they had written down. Most of them revised it more than once, because they wanted to be sure about the correct pronunciation, correct grammatical structures and things like that. Students also could have a picture of their performing skills. This activity was not only useful but funny and enjoyable at the same time. The fact that the average mark of the group in this task was really good strengthened the students in their decision that they always have to revise everything they submit for some purpose.
Activities done in the first half of the term brought the group of students to a very special task, which was group writing. They were given a sheet with ten topic sentences which included all the different themes they were doing in the class and at home by that time. Students had to choose one of the ten phrases, then they had to look for people among their mates who chose the same sentence. After that they formed small groups with two or three in some cases maybe four people, but that was the most. Their task was to think of the specific sentence and write a paragraph about it. There were groups who chose the same topic sentence, but it was all right, because then they could at least compare the two works and they realized that there were different things in them. They found different things to mention as their interest varied. While doing this writing students had to cooperate with each other, share their ideas, come up with their own thoughts in connection with the topic, which was good again, because they could speak free, not being afraid to be laughed at by anyone else. Everyone could bring valuable and important opinions.
Then students had to choose one more topic sentence and work on it individually. Afterwards they had to discuss it with each other. That meant that everyone did something on his or her own, but then he or she got the chance to correct it, to complete, to give more details to it. In the next class students could see the work of the group in total. The tutor summerized it and they discussed the whole essay. As a next take-home assignment each student got a copy of group writing activity’s result and they had to write an introduction and also a conclusion. In addition they also received as a task to complete still incomplete paragraphs and sentences, to connect paragraphs and so on.
An other method for developing reaction to other people’s work was a two-page long essay with a title ‘Why Do We Play Soccer’. It was an essay written by the tutor to reflect on certain errors. It was full of all kinds of mistakes. The main problem was lack of focus on the topic. There were sentences which did not belong to the theme at all. Students’ task was to write a reaction on this masterpiece. They had to include all their doubts about the essay. As an end of this assignment they had to submit their reactions, they changed them among each other and took home for editing. Peer editing was very effective, as the students could read other people’s essays and they could write their ideas about them.
In the last three weeks of the term, students worked with different worksheets. They were reflecting on parallelism, run-ons and comma splices, pronoun problems, sentence fragments, dangling and misplaced modifiers, semicolons, sentence logic, avoiding wordiness, writing an introduction and a conclusion and many more important issues, which can perhaps cause difficulties to students while writing an essay. All these problems were properly discussed and illustrated with various examples.
As the top of the course students had to submit their so called Portfolios. This was a mixture of different papers and worksheets, they were working on during the semester. They had to put all the drafts in it and submit them to the tutor who could take a look at everything again and write down his comments and evaluation. By doing this he was able to see if students had made any progress in their writing style, developing paragraphs, in completing topic sentences and if so in what extent they could utilize learnt and practiced skills. He also reflected on specific parts of the Portfolios such as topic sentences, paragraph development, vocabulary, appropriacy of grammer and punctuation.
The last and biggest task is this research paper assignment, where students have the opportunity to show their skills once more and to summerize everything that they have learnt from the beginning of the term.
If we want to make a conclusion about those fourteen weeks we can say that the course has almost totally meet its goal. Students could learn all the important things they will have to utilize in their future studies at the university and maybe later, after finishing all their studies as well. Now it is their task to develop their skills to an even higher level. But they can feel a little bit better when they think of the proficiency test, which will be the first real barrier they must get over with the help of their knowledge.
After choosing the theme I started to work on the work methods with the help of which I could see how the tasks done in the class and at home (in-class and take-home assignments) influenced writing skills of students taking the course. I collected some Portfolios of my mates, so that I could see how they wrote about different themes, how they developed from the point of view of writing topic sentences, developing paragraphs and all the rest of it. I also made interviews with students, they told me about their ideas and thoughts about the usefullness of the course, how it helped them in improving their essay writing skills, what they found interesting and what they missed, what was not discussed in details.
I talked to many people and according to collected information the Writing and Research Skills course really did help to the majority of university students. The biggest development can be seen on the field of writing topic sentences and developing paragraphs. Students also made quite an effective progress on the level of sentences. Mainly in the last weeks of the semester they did various activities which were focusing on the sentence, as the lowest level of speech used in a written work. While practicing they seemed to understand the secrets of this field as well.
To make a classification we need to know more about each task, so that we could compare them with each other and we could evaluate them.
At the beginning students started to develop their skills in academic writing by reflecting on various reading styles. They had to read two essays from a book called ‘Seventy-five Readings’. Basically the first one written by Zinsser was the more effective one, as it spoke about the difference between two men’s style in writing. The cause of this difference was based on their professions, one of them being a writer the other one was a doctor, who writes only for the sake of fun, to entertain himself. After reading these essays students got a short extract of each. They were asked to fill in the gaps within the two paragraphs. They had to do it in order to realize how differently every person reads. It was depending on student’s character. By doing such a predicting activity students saw that in most of the cases people used different words for the same gap. That showed that everyone had different impressions while reading a text, every person understanded it in a different way to some extent. During the next class students got the opportunity to discuss the two essays in whole. The above mentioned Zinsser essay, ‘The Transaction’, introduced the students to their next topic which was writing styles.
After discussing the essays students read, they used metaphors in order to understand the structure of writing an essay. One illustration of this was the process of taking pictures. When photographing a person also needs to find a topic, to focus on it and to develop it. Landing of an aeroplane is similar to the former process as well as to essay writing.
When working on a written composition or paper you must begin with the basic elements, which are the first sentences of paragraphs. They must be effective, clearly showing the point the paragraph will be about. With the help of a worksheet students learnt how to make a topic sentence impressive, what information or data it should contain, how it should be constructed. All this was done in the class, so students could immediately discuss this problem, as it was the most important part of the paragraph students were dealing with in the following classes.
Students understood that a paragraph has to be unified, it has to focus on the problem indicated in the first sentence. They wrote short one or two paragraph essays, just to develop this skill. While doing this an other skill did improve as well. One of the tasks was quite interesting. Students received several sentences in connection with the death of the two famous American presidents: Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Students had to choose some of those sentences containing information about the two tragic events. They had to compare them and include them in a short paragraph. This task served for making the students to use already known information and to make it interesting for a reader.
Students did enough practicing exercises to learn topic sentence and paragraph development. The next theme was building of revesion skills. There were two assignments connected to this purpose; an in-class two paragraph essay and an essay on tape. The point in this activity was that all students had to read their essays after finishing them in order to see and correct their mistakes; grammatical, lexical and structural as well. They realized how important it is to scan the text to avoid inaccuracies such as repetition, flat expressions, unorganized paragraphs, misspelled words. They discussed everything in the class.
A special technique for revesion was a take-home assignment: an essay on tape. Students had to write an essay about a given topic and then they recorded it on a tape. That was good for making sure that students did really revise what they had written down. Most of them revised it more than once, because they wanted to be sure about the correct pronunciation, correct grammatical structures and things like that. Students also could have a picture of their performing skills. This activity was not only useful but funny and enjoyable at the same time. The fact that the average mark of the group in this task was really good strengthened the students in their decision that they always have to revise everything they submit for some purpose.
Activities done in the first half of the term brought the group of students to a very special task, which was group writing. They were given a sheet with ten topic sentences which included all the different themes they were doing in the class and at home by that time. Students had to choose one of the ten phrases, then they had to look for people among their mates who chose the same sentence. After that they formed small groups with two or three in some cases maybe four people, but that was the most. Their task was to think of the specific sentence and write a paragraph about it. There were groups who chose the same topic sentence, but it was all right, because then they could at least compare the two works and they realized that there were different things in them. They found different things to mention as their interest varied. While doing this writing students had to cooperate with each other, share their ideas, come up with their own thoughts in connection with the topic, which was good again, because they could speak free, not being afraid to be laughed at by anyone else. Everyone could bring valuable and important opinions.
Then students had to choose one more topic sentence and work on it individually. Afterwards they had to discuss it with each other. That meant that everyone did something on his or her own, but then he or she got the chance to correct it, to complete, to give more details to it. In the next class students could see the work of the group in total. The tutor summerized it and they discussed the whole essay. As a next take-home assignment each student got a copy of group writing activity’s result and they had to write an introduction and also a conclusion. In addition they also received as a task to complete still incomplete paragraphs and sentences, to connect paragraphs and so on.
An other method for developing reaction to other people’s work was a two-page long essay with a title ‘Why Do We Play Soccer’. It was an essay written by the tutor to reflect on certain errors. It was full of all kinds of mistakes. The main problem was lack of focus on the topic. There were sentences which did not belong to the theme at all. Students’ task was to write a reaction on this masterpiece. They had to include all their doubts about the essay. As an end of this assignment they had to submit their reactions, they changed them among each other and took home for editing. Peer editing was very effective, as the students could read other people’s essays and they could write their ideas about them.
In the last three weeks of the term, students worked with different worksheets. They were reflecting on parallelism, run-ons and comma splices, pronoun problems, sentence fragments, dangling and misplaced modifiers, semicolons, sentence logic, avoiding wordiness, writing an introduction and a conclusion and many more important issues, which can perhaps cause difficulties to students while writing an essay. All these problems were properly discussed and illustrated with various examples.
As the top of the course students had to submit their so called Portfolios. This was a mixture of different papers and worksheets, they were working on during the semester. They had to put all the drafts in it and submit them to the tutor who could take a look at everything again and write down his comments and evaluation. By doing this he was able to see if students had made any progress in their writing style, developing paragraphs, in completing topic sentences and if so in what extent they could utilize learnt and practiced skills. He also reflected on specific parts of the Portfolios such as topic sentences, paragraph development, vocabulary, appropriacy of grammer and punctuation.
The last and biggest task is this research paper assignment, where students have the opportunity to show their skills once more and to summerize everything that they have learnt from the beginning of the term.
If we want to make a conclusion about those fourteen weeks we can say that the course has almost totally meet its goal. Students could learn all the important things they will have to utilize in their future studies at the university and maybe later, after finishing all their studies as well. Now it is their task to develop their skills to an even higher level. But they can feel a little bit better when they think of the proficiency test, which will be the first real barrier they must get over with the help of their knowledge.
W 082 F
1. Introduction and methods
The revision of assignments is a crucial part of the writing process, and in a broader sense of language learning as well. It is the re-seeing of a piece of writing with the intention of improvement. The main purpose of revision is to make the work readable and as clear for the reader as possible.
In this paper I aim to draw students’ attention to the importance of looking through their drafts before handing in the final versions , however tiring and time-consuming it is. My method is to give an analysis of the stages of revision through the description of the revising tasks that occurred in the Writing and Research Skills course (spring semester 1997) at Janus Pannonius University (JPU). My research is grouped around four tasks: the tape recording of an essay, an in-class essay about the usefulness of revising, a peer editing task and the revision of an essay written by the whole group.
2. Discussion
Revision is not a separate stage, but an integral part of the writing procedure, since "writing is 95 percent revision” (Hubbard, 1988, p 104) (1). We simply cannot go on writing without going back to the sentences already put down. This is a natural form of revision, but with patience it can be further improved to a consciously organized and effective process, which needs always less of our time and energy, since our revising skill improves with practice (Hammond, 1985) (2).
When writing the first version of an essay, we may easily make mistakes due to inattentiveness , which may be the result of our too fast flow of thoughts. Revision concerns not only the correction of errors, but it also helps in adding new ideas and perspectives to the original ones by considering the text from a different point of view.
2.1. Tape recording task
An unusual but truly interesting and challenging task of the course was the tape recording of an essay, which entailed a special form of revising. We had three options among which we could choose. These were the expanding of an earlier assignment: the learning experience, the description of a metaphor of essay writing and the designing of a freely chosen place at the university. This task would have been a usual one, had it not been about recording it on a tape. By reading out the text we reached the effect as if it were alive. We had to pay extra attention to the way we read: to the intonation and clear pronunciation, as an essay on tape makes a greater impression on the audience than a written one, which does not express that much of the author’s personality. This is because human voice is more vivid and powerful than written thoughts.
Tape recording also helped to look at our own sentences as though they were completely strange, which is an excellent technique of revision. The slight distortion of our voice caused by the tape recorder contributed to this effect. Considering our writings from an alien perspective, we were able to have a more critical eye on our essays. Had we not tried to apply this method, we would have tended to be partial to ourselves and would have ignored our weaknesses in writing. The alienating effect can be further increased by reading out the essay in a strange accent ( Hubbard, 1985 ) (3).
While composing our essays, we had to keep three main aspects in mind. First of all, we had to have a clear purpose and message to the readers, as there is no good writing without a definite aim. We also had to have a content that was relevant to the theme. The last aspect according to which the essays were evaluated concerned how well our message reached our audience. Revision helped us to improve our writings in all these fields, which are more abstract than for example the correction of grammar mistakes. Whereas grammar mistakes are obvious, the quality of coherence, focusing and questions whether the essay contains enough fresh information or is specific enough are not at all so easy to measure ( Hammond, 1985 ) (4).
Having finished our first drafts, we had to get to the first stage of conscious revising, which was the hardest. This was the admission that our work needed improvement. The correction of grammatical mistakes and the clearing up of spelling and punctuation we felt natural, but for example to admit that some parts of our essays were redundant was much more difficult. Once we had put down our thoughts on paper, we tended to feel that they closely belonged to us , since we had worked hard on them in order to be able to give them a form. But once we managed to get ourselves over the first difficult steps, we could move on to the next stage, which was the correction of surface problems: bad accuracy, which involved punctuation, spelling and grammar errors. Although bad grammar , faulty punctuation and poor spelling are surface problems, it does not mean that they are of minor importance, since they distract the reader's attention from the essay. Bad word choice may have a similar effect. As we cannot always find the appropriate word that expresses exactly what we intend to say, sometimes we are obliged to use words we are not satisfied with. But these distort our original message. Cliches and fat expressions also reduce the quality of our essays, since they are out of fashion and worn out (Hammond, 1985 ) (5).
Besides the reseeing of surface problems there is a deeper level of revision as well. This is the rethinking our paper, which includes the reconsidering of paragraph and essay organization, the coherence and logic of our thoughts and the focusedness of our theme ( Hammond, 1985 ) (6). When deeply involved in our thoughts we could easily write sentences that were logical and perfectly clear for us, but not that clear for the reader. But when listening to our own voice reading out the for us well known sentences, we could see the essay as a whole and could spot out inconsistencies.
As for coherence, we had to examine how sentences led to others, how paragraphs held together and how the whole essay was constructed. We had to take into consideration that the title as the head of the essay is of great importance, since it gives the clue what the essay is going to be about. While writing, we had to remember that always focusing on the theme is needed for a good understanding.
Besides accuracy and the organization of the essay, revision deals with some other aspects as well, which are not strictly bound to the body of the text, but which investigate how the writer managed to make an impact on her readers ( Hammond, 1985 ) (7). By recording our essays we realized how essential it is to get access to the audience and to affect it in a positive way, since an essay which has no bridge to the readers is both senseless and lifeless. While simply putting down our thoughts, we tend to forget that we have an audience. It is perhaps tape recording that puts the greatest emphasis on the importance of taking into consideration the audience.
2.2. An in-class paper about revision
The next task we did in connection with revision was the writing of an in-class paper, whose theme was the usefullness of revising and tape-recording. It was not a whole essay because we had to write only two paragraphs. We dealt with the topic not only in theory, but we applied it in practice as well. A week after we had written those two paragraphs, we got back our papers so that we could read through them again in search for mistakes. Probably all of us came across some errors which we had not realize or added some new aspects which had not occured to us a week earlier. When we finished our drafts, we were happy to be ready, and had neither enough patience nor enough time to look for mistakes. But the effectiveness of revision is not only the question of patience, it also depends on how much time takes place between finishing the drafts and revising them. Mistakes seem much more salient if we put our writings aside for a while and go back to them later. This is probably because for example in a week’s time we do not remember our original ideas and purpose perfectly and are able to regard our works more as if they were someone else’s ( Hubbard, 1988 ) (8).
The next stage of revision after refining the raw material is editing, which is „ getting a text ready for readers” (Hubbard, 1988, p 186) (9). There is no strict boundary between revision and editing, since editing includes the deeper levels of revising. There is still a major difference between the two phenomena: editing is usually done by an outsider , because corrections made by editing are over the limit of the author’s ability to realize her own weaknesses. The editing outsider should be an interested but uninformed reader because this way can she give the best pieces of advice. A writer does not always assume well what the readers’ background knowledge is. What is obvious for the author may not be that obvious for the audience, so the omission of some information may be a great obstacle of comprehension. Unless the writing provides a sufficient amount of information about the theme, the reader can easily get lost while reading the vague text (Hubbard, 1988) (10).
2.3. Peer-editing
Our editing work during the course was a peer- editing task. Every student had to exchange her essay with someone else’s and work on it. These writings were about a purposely badly-written essay. Each editor had the task to correct the mistakes occurring in the text and add some useful comments. These could be both positive or negative , but by all means had to have the intention of help for improvement. Reading our peer’s critics might have hurt us first and not all corrections and comments might have been relevant, but it was still worth it to appreciate and pay attention to them, as „nothing works as well as another mind engaged in the task” ( Hubbard, 1988, p 178 ) (11). Though our editors were students , we could still profit from their opinions, which could be as precious as the teacher’s, since getting to know other ways of thinking and points of view enriches us incredibly, even if we do not agree with them.
Although writing is mostly an individual matter, the collaboration among students is helpful (Hammond, 1988 ) (12). On the one hand, getting to know others’ experience may serve us as a salutary example. On the other hand, it may reinforce us that the way we write is not that bad, or at least better than that person’s is whose mode of writing we got to know.
2.4. Group-writing activity
Our task with the essay written by the whole group was a combination of revising and editing. As all of us wrote a separate paragraph on computer, to which only the topic sentence was given, our efforts did not result in a whole essay at once, since a heap of paragraphs does not make a coherent writing. Our task with this raw material was to make a whole essay out of it. It was not an easy assignment, since on the one hand, we wrote in different styles, which may not have coincided, and on the other hand, there was no balance among the paragraphs, since some were dense and some contained detailed description. So besides correcting errors that violated accuracy, we also had to attempt to reach a healthy balance among the many separate parts, and to construct a unified style. By adding the missing introduction and conclusion to the main body of the text, we gave a frame to the essay.
When due to our hard work we could see a whole essay emerging from the bunch of paragraphs, we tended to consider it more and more as if it were our own. Sometimes we had difficulties in deciding whether to change others’ sentences or not . They may not have been wrong, but they were not in accordance with our taste. As a result, sometimes we rewrote whole paragraphs because we felt we were able to write far better ones instead, but other times we hardly changed anything, as they met our requirements or even surpassed them. By reading others’ paragraphs we could gain new ideas , which threw a different light on our topic and enriched our perspectives.
3. Conclusion
All the colourful and interesting revision tasks of the course were of great value, since they were aimed not only to prove to students that revision is useful, but also to shape their attitude towards revising by encouraging them to consider it not a drag, but an enjoyable challenge.
The revision of assignments is a crucial part of the writing process, and in a broader sense of language learning as well. It is the re-seeing of a piece of writing with the intention of improvement. The main purpose of revision is to make the work readable and as clear for the reader as possible.
In this paper I aim to draw students’ attention to the importance of looking through their drafts before handing in the final versions , however tiring and time-consuming it is. My method is to give an analysis of the stages of revision through the description of the revising tasks that occurred in the Writing and Research Skills course (spring semester 1997) at Janus Pannonius University (JPU). My research is grouped around four tasks: the tape recording of an essay, an in-class essay about the usefulness of revising, a peer editing task and the revision of an essay written by the whole group.
2. Discussion
Revision is not a separate stage, but an integral part of the writing procedure, since "writing is 95 percent revision” (Hubbard, 1988, p 104) (1). We simply cannot go on writing without going back to the sentences already put down. This is a natural form of revision, but with patience it can be further improved to a consciously organized and effective process, which needs always less of our time and energy, since our revising skill improves with practice (Hammond, 1985) (2).
When writing the first version of an essay, we may easily make mistakes due to inattentiveness , which may be the result of our too fast flow of thoughts. Revision concerns not only the correction of errors, but it also helps in adding new ideas and perspectives to the original ones by considering the text from a different point of view.
2.1. Tape recording task
An unusual but truly interesting and challenging task of the course was the tape recording of an essay, which entailed a special form of revising. We had three options among which we could choose. These were the expanding of an earlier assignment: the learning experience, the description of a metaphor of essay writing and the designing of a freely chosen place at the university. This task would have been a usual one, had it not been about recording it on a tape. By reading out the text we reached the effect as if it were alive. We had to pay extra attention to the way we read: to the intonation and clear pronunciation, as an essay on tape makes a greater impression on the audience than a written one, which does not express that much of the author’s personality. This is because human voice is more vivid and powerful than written thoughts.
Tape recording also helped to look at our own sentences as though they were completely strange, which is an excellent technique of revision. The slight distortion of our voice caused by the tape recorder contributed to this effect. Considering our writings from an alien perspective, we were able to have a more critical eye on our essays. Had we not tried to apply this method, we would have tended to be partial to ourselves and would have ignored our weaknesses in writing. The alienating effect can be further increased by reading out the essay in a strange accent ( Hubbard, 1985 ) (3).
While composing our essays, we had to keep three main aspects in mind. First of all, we had to have a clear purpose and message to the readers, as there is no good writing without a definite aim. We also had to have a content that was relevant to the theme. The last aspect according to which the essays were evaluated concerned how well our message reached our audience. Revision helped us to improve our writings in all these fields, which are more abstract than for example the correction of grammar mistakes. Whereas grammar mistakes are obvious, the quality of coherence, focusing and questions whether the essay contains enough fresh information or is specific enough are not at all so easy to measure ( Hammond, 1985 ) (4).
Having finished our first drafts, we had to get to the first stage of conscious revising, which was the hardest. This was the admission that our work needed improvement. The correction of grammatical mistakes and the clearing up of spelling and punctuation we felt natural, but for example to admit that some parts of our essays were redundant was much more difficult. Once we had put down our thoughts on paper, we tended to feel that they closely belonged to us , since we had worked hard on them in order to be able to give them a form. But once we managed to get ourselves over the first difficult steps, we could move on to the next stage, which was the correction of surface problems: bad accuracy, which involved punctuation, spelling and grammar errors. Although bad grammar , faulty punctuation and poor spelling are surface problems, it does not mean that they are of minor importance, since they distract the reader's attention from the essay. Bad word choice may have a similar effect. As we cannot always find the appropriate word that expresses exactly what we intend to say, sometimes we are obliged to use words we are not satisfied with. But these distort our original message. Cliches and fat expressions also reduce the quality of our essays, since they are out of fashion and worn out (Hammond, 1985 ) (5).
Besides the reseeing of surface problems there is a deeper level of revision as well. This is the rethinking our paper, which includes the reconsidering of paragraph and essay organization, the coherence and logic of our thoughts and the focusedness of our theme ( Hammond, 1985 ) (6). When deeply involved in our thoughts we could easily write sentences that were logical and perfectly clear for us, but not that clear for the reader. But when listening to our own voice reading out the for us well known sentences, we could see the essay as a whole and could spot out inconsistencies.
As for coherence, we had to examine how sentences led to others, how paragraphs held together and how the whole essay was constructed. We had to take into consideration that the title as the head of the essay is of great importance, since it gives the clue what the essay is going to be about. While writing, we had to remember that always focusing on the theme is needed for a good understanding.
Besides accuracy and the organization of the essay, revision deals with some other aspects as well, which are not strictly bound to the body of the text, but which investigate how the writer managed to make an impact on her readers ( Hammond, 1985 ) (7). By recording our essays we realized how essential it is to get access to the audience and to affect it in a positive way, since an essay which has no bridge to the readers is both senseless and lifeless. While simply putting down our thoughts, we tend to forget that we have an audience. It is perhaps tape recording that puts the greatest emphasis on the importance of taking into consideration the audience.
2.2. An in-class paper about revision
The next task we did in connection with revision was the writing of an in-class paper, whose theme was the usefullness of revising and tape-recording. It was not a whole essay because we had to write only two paragraphs. We dealt with the topic not only in theory, but we applied it in practice as well. A week after we had written those two paragraphs, we got back our papers so that we could read through them again in search for mistakes. Probably all of us came across some errors which we had not realize or added some new aspects which had not occured to us a week earlier. When we finished our drafts, we were happy to be ready, and had neither enough patience nor enough time to look for mistakes. But the effectiveness of revision is not only the question of patience, it also depends on how much time takes place between finishing the drafts and revising them. Mistakes seem much more salient if we put our writings aside for a while and go back to them later. This is probably because for example in a week’s time we do not remember our original ideas and purpose perfectly and are able to regard our works more as if they were someone else’s ( Hubbard, 1988 ) (8).
The next stage of revision after refining the raw material is editing, which is „ getting a text ready for readers” (Hubbard, 1988, p 186) (9). There is no strict boundary between revision and editing, since editing includes the deeper levels of revising. There is still a major difference between the two phenomena: editing is usually done by an outsider , because corrections made by editing are over the limit of the author’s ability to realize her own weaknesses. The editing outsider should be an interested but uninformed reader because this way can she give the best pieces of advice. A writer does not always assume well what the readers’ background knowledge is. What is obvious for the author may not be that obvious for the audience, so the omission of some information may be a great obstacle of comprehension. Unless the writing provides a sufficient amount of information about the theme, the reader can easily get lost while reading the vague text (Hubbard, 1988) (10).
2.3. Peer-editing
Our editing work during the course was a peer- editing task. Every student had to exchange her essay with someone else’s and work on it. These writings were about a purposely badly-written essay. Each editor had the task to correct the mistakes occurring in the text and add some useful comments. These could be both positive or negative , but by all means had to have the intention of help for improvement. Reading our peer’s critics might have hurt us first and not all corrections and comments might have been relevant, but it was still worth it to appreciate and pay attention to them, as „nothing works as well as another mind engaged in the task” ( Hubbard, 1988, p 178 ) (11). Though our editors were students , we could still profit from their opinions, which could be as precious as the teacher’s, since getting to know other ways of thinking and points of view enriches us incredibly, even if we do not agree with them.
Although writing is mostly an individual matter, the collaboration among students is helpful (Hammond, 1988 ) (12). On the one hand, getting to know others’ experience may serve us as a salutary example. On the other hand, it may reinforce us that the way we write is not that bad, or at least better than that person’s is whose mode of writing we got to know.
2.4. Group-writing activity
Our task with the essay written by the whole group was a combination of revising and editing. As all of us wrote a separate paragraph on computer, to which only the topic sentence was given, our efforts did not result in a whole essay at once, since a heap of paragraphs does not make a coherent writing. Our task with this raw material was to make a whole essay out of it. It was not an easy assignment, since on the one hand, we wrote in different styles, which may not have coincided, and on the other hand, there was no balance among the paragraphs, since some were dense and some contained detailed description. So besides correcting errors that violated accuracy, we also had to attempt to reach a healthy balance among the many separate parts, and to construct a unified style. By adding the missing introduction and conclusion to the main body of the text, we gave a frame to the essay.
When due to our hard work we could see a whole essay emerging from the bunch of paragraphs, we tended to consider it more and more as if it were our own. Sometimes we had difficulties in deciding whether to change others’ sentences or not . They may not have been wrong, but they were not in accordance with our taste. As a result, sometimes we rewrote whole paragraphs because we felt we were able to write far better ones instead, but other times we hardly changed anything, as they met our requirements or even surpassed them. By reading others’ paragraphs we could gain new ideas , which threw a different light on our topic and enriched our perspectives.
3. Conclusion
All the colourful and interesting revision tasks of the course were of great value, since they were aimed not only to prove to students that revision is useful, but also to shape their attitude towards revising by encouraging them to consider it not a drag, but an enjoyable challenge.
W 067 F
Introduction
Taking part in any field of scientific life of modern times, the knowledge of academic writing is desperately required. This feature of the academic scene demands conscious and hard preparation works from everybody who decides to participate in any field of science. Most university students can create pieces of writings by following their language instincts and these writings are suitable for everyday reasons, but not for academic purposes. In order to become successful authors, students need to attend courses where they can acquire the techniques of academic writing with the guidance of a tutor. ANG 1603 Writing and research skills was a course for majors of English at Janus Pannonius University, Pécs in the spring semester of 1997.
The syllabus of the course states that “the course aims to help students in developing writing and research skills and strategies that will make them able to achieve success in academic discourse...The course assists students in communicating relevant ideas and research findings in various types of academic discourse, such as descriptive essays, review essays and research papers.”(Horváth, 1997) Meanwhile the course students had to submit several kinds of assignments: four take home essays and four in class papers.
Method
This research paper will examine the tasks, a reading and procedures of the course, focusing on how they help students in improving their writing skills. To approach the topic and to reach satisfactory conclusion the sources of subjective experiences, other students’ experiences and pieces of information from authentic books will be used. Own and other students’ experiences shall reflect on the emotional characteristics of the tasks and they also show how students think about the importance and the reasons of them. Authentic sources might omit the emotional features of tasks but they show the real reasons behind them.
This research paper will only mention a selection of the tasks of the course. The selection contains those procedures which seemed to aid students the most in learning academic writing.
Results and Discussion
At the beginning of 1997 JPU Writing and research skills course the first theme the students attending had to deal with was reading styles. It was not completely understandable why, because the course was called “Writing and research skills”. Soon after the reason became clear. Reading has a crucial role in the development of one’s writing skill, because “no one can write for long on the strength of inner sources alone.”(Heffernan & Lincoln, 1986, p. 196.) Students found that the task was enjoyable and useful. They enjoyed it because they had the opportunity to talk about their favorite readings and share their impressions about them with others. They learned to feel empathy towards the readers of their future writings. They realized that they are not writing only for themselves but for an audience also. The students in the ANG1603 WRS group learned that their readers will have reactions towards their texts. In order to make these reactions positive they, as writers have to make serious efforts in the future to make their writings enjoyable and intelligible. In a group writing assignment one of the students very cleverly remarked: “...reading and talking about our reading styles...paved the way for essay writing skills.”(JPU WRS Group Writing Assignment, 1997, p.1) According to the college handbook that I used for completing my research paper with authentic details reading can affect writing in different ways. Reading can awake ideas to write about in one’s mind and most importantly it can give a direction in how to write. ”Reading is to writing as hearing is to talking. One cannot learn writing without reading what others written.”(Heffernan & Lincoln, 1986, p. 196) Starting the course with discussing reading styles was a good idea. It turned students’ attention to readers’ interest and thaught them not to be selfish while writing.
The second topic the group dealt with was writing styles. The basis of this topic was an essay, titled The Transaction written by William Zinsser (Hurtt & Boylan, 1989, p. 22- 25.) . The essay is about two writers who were invited to a university where students asked them questions about how they create their writings. The main point in this essay is that there are two types of writers. They work in different kind of manners, one considers writing his hobby the other one considers it vocation. The group had a long discussion on which type of writer is more agreeable. Getting to this topic the group had to do its first home assignment, in which they had to write a topic sentence and the paragraph extending the statement of it.
Analyzing reading and writing styles were the first steps towards essay writing. They were rather theoretical steps than practical ones but the group learned a lot from them. They gave a general insight into writing. They warned us that academic writing is much more difficult than we ever imagined it and there are more rules to follow than we ever could detect.
The first task the group had to do in practice was paragraph writing. There were two options to chose from.
- There are two basic methods of writing.... was the first one and
- Women’s rights activists cannot tolerate sexist language.... was the second.
Members of the group were free to decide which topic sentence they wish to complete and on which they want to build their paragraph. Earning the knowledge of topic sentences was something completely new. The students, as the penmen of the future became aware of the importance of their essays’ first sentence. A good topic sentence raises interest in the reader with making him curious about the remaining part of the essay. An effective topic sentence can be even more empowered with a well developed paragraph. An ideal paragraph extends the meaning of the topic sentence logically. It adds thoughts one after the other to the topic sentence like pearls are applied to a piece of string to form a necklace.
“ Though a paragraph is commonly part of an essay, it can and does sometimes serve as an essay on its right, and the writing of one- paragraph essays will give you small- -scale practice in organization. One can sometimes learn a good deal about organization by writing a single sentence, and one can learn even more when writing a single paragraph.” (Heffernan & Lincoln, 1986 p.144.) Starting to create the first “academic” paragraph it became clear that it is not as easy as it first seemed. Writing a paragraph one always should care to make it look like a real one. But organizing a paragraph can be a real hardship. It often happens that one wants to crowd too many items of ideas in one paragraph, so the outline of it becomes a real mess, especially when it is hand written. (Hand written drafts seem to be more difficult to control than typed ones.)
The essay on tape assignment was a rather unusual one. Members of the WRS group had to write an essay either about designing something or comparing essay writing with something. Finishing with the essay they had to record it on a tape, and in the end they had to submit this tape. The students became not only authors but listeners, audience of their own essays.
This task was not really given to improve students’ creativity but to make them realize the importance of revising, which is the last but one stage of finishing an essay.
“Revising- the word itself means looking again. ...it should be done everytime before submitting an essay. An unrevised piece of writing is like an uninspected machine. Neither of them is likely to work well.”(Heffernan & Lincoln, 1986 p.47). University students often make mistakes on vocabulary and syntax because they write their texts in a hasty manner and they rarely concentrate on re- reading their compositions. If they revised their essays more they could realize their mistakes easier. Self correcting mistakes before evaluation would be very effective in learning how to use written language effectively. Tape recording the essay can be very helpful too. After listening to the recorded essay the student might feel the need to change some vocabulary items or to make a part of the writing more clearer.
During the course there were some other revision tasks. One of them was correcting an essay titled “Why Do We Play Soccer ?”(Horváth, 1997). This essay contained all the possible mistakes an essay can contain. In order to remember avoiding these errors students had to correct them and write a review essay about it.
The final stage of effective essay writing is the editing process. As a part of it, the author has to make sure that the sentences of the essay are rhetorically correct. For the correctness of the sentences used the author might apply different strategies.
For example the technique of subordination can be used when there are too many short sentences which cause monotony or when main points need to be emphasized. Length and the construction of the sentences varied can make the essay powerful too. An other technique is control over word choice which means that the author needs to take care about the vocabulary of the essay. The words used in the essay should fit into the level of diction. If an expression is too slanguish or overly formal it should be changed or else it will bother the reader. (Heffernan & Lincoln 1986 p.67- 70)
There is a sentence in the group writing essay in connection with evaluation: “WELL, WELL. YOU GET WHATCHA DESERVED.” (JPU WRS Group Writing 1997 p.2). This is a typical example of an expression being too low for the level of diction. It may suite the audience (the group) but it is completely different from the context of the essay, because it is too slanguish. Perhaps it would be better corrected to: “The evaluation is absolutely correct, one never gets underestimated or overestimated.”
The reader might get disturbed in grasping the meaning because the overuse of abstract and general words. “To avoid this a successful writer should be aware of using concrete and specific words whenever he can.”( Heffernan & Lincoln 1986 p. 70)
Conclusion
Dealing with reading styles, writing styles and learning how to write good paragraphs were the most crucial tasks during the course. The topics reading styles and writing styles gave perfect introduction into academic writing for students, because they turned their interest to possible ways of writing that worth following. As students have thoughts and themes to write about they desperately need to learn how to write a paragraph, because it is the basis of an essay.
Revising and editing are important processes to learn and to practice for the students who wish to produce powerful essays. Without revision and editing essays are precious but worthless looking stones, hiding the jewel inside of themselves. Students fulfilling the course shall admit and never forget this, and if they insist on practicing all that they learned, they will be effective essay writers.
Taking part in any field of scientific life of modern times, the knowledge of academic writing is desperately required. This feature of the academic scene demands conscious and hard preparation works from everybody who decides to participate in any field of science. Most university students can create pieces of writings by following their language instincts and these writings are suitable for everyday reasons, but not for academic purposes. In order to become successful authors, students need to attend courses where they can acquire the techniques of academic writing with the guidance of a tutor. ANG 1603 Writing and research skills was a course for majors of English at Janus Pannonius University, Pécs in the spring semester of 1997.
The syllabus of the course states that “the course aims to help students in developing writing and research skills and strategies that will make them able to achieve success in academic discourse...The course assists students in communicating relevant ideas and research findings in various types of academic discourse, such as descriptive essays, review essays and research papers.”(Horváth, 1997) Meanwhile the course students had to submit several kinds of assignments: four take home essays and four in class papers.
Method
This research paper will examine the tasks, a reading and procedures of the course, focusing on how they help students in improving their writing skills. To approach the topic and to reach satisfactory conclusion the sources of subjective experiences, other students’ experiences and pieces of information from authentic books will be used. Own and other students’ experiences shall reflect on the emotional characteristics of the tasks and they also show how students think about the importance and the reasons of them. Authentic sources might omit the emotional features of tasks but they show the real reasons behind them.
This research paper will only mention a selection of the tasks of the course. The selection contains those procedures which seemed to aid students the most in learning academic writing.
Results and Discussion
At the beginning of 1997 JPU Writing and research skills course the first theme the students attending had to deal with was reading styles. It was not completely understandable why, because the course was called “Writing and research skills”. Soon after the reason became clear. Reading has a crucial role in the development of one’s writing skill, because “no one can write for long on the strength of inner sources alone.”(Heffernan & Lincoln, 1986, p. 196.) Students found that the task was enjoyable and useful. They enjoyed it because they had the opportunity to talk about their favorite readings and share their impressions about them with others. They learned to feel empathy towards the readers of their future writings. They realized that they are not writing only for themselves but for an audience also. The students in the ANG1603 WRS group learned that their readers will have reactions towards their texts. In order to make these reactions positive they, as writers have to make serious efforts in the future to make their writings enjoyable and intelligible. In a group writing assignment one of the students very cleverly remarked: “...reading and talking about our reading styles...paved the way for essay writing skills.”(JPU WRS Group Writing Assignment, 1997, p.1) According to the college handbook that I used for completing my research paper with authentic details reading can affect writing in different ways. Reading can awake ideas to write about in one’s mind and most importantly it can give a direction in how to write. ”Reading is to writing as hearing is to talking. One cannot learn writing without reading what others written.”(Heffernan & Lincoln, 1986, p. 196) Starting the course with discussing reading styles was a good idea. It turned students’ attention to readers’ interest and thaught them not to be selfish while writing.
The second topic the group dealt with was writing styles. The basis of this topic was an essay, titled The Transaction written by William Zinsser (Hurtt & Boylan, 1989, p. 22- 25.) . The essay is about two writers who were invited to a university where students asked them questions about how they create their writings. The main point in this essay is that there are two types of writers. They work in different kind of manners, one considers writing his hobby the other one considers it vocation. The group had a long discussion on which type of writer is more agreeable. Getting to this topic the group had to do its first home assignment, in which they had to write a topic sentence and the paragraph extending the statement of it.
Analyzing reading and writing styles were the first steps towards essay writing. They were rather theoretical steps than practical ones but the group learned a lot from them. They gave a general insight into writing. They warned us that academic writing is much more difficult than we ever imagined it and there are more rules to follow than we ever could detect.
The first task the group had to do in practice was paragraph writing. There were two options to chose from.
- There are two basic methods of writing.... was the first one and
- Women’s rights activists cannot tolerate sexist language.... was the second.
Members of the group were free to decide which topic sentence they wish to complete and on which they want to build their paragraph. Earning the knowledge of topic sentences was something completely new. The students, as the penmen of the future became aware of the importance of their essays’ first sentence. A good topic sentence raises interest in the reader with making him curious about the remaining part of the essay. An effective topic sentence can be even more empowered with a well developed paragraph. An ideal paragraph extends the meaning of the topic sentence logically. It adds thoughts one after the other to the topic sentence like pearls are applied to a piece of string to form a necklace.
“ Though a paragraph is commonly part of an essay, it can and does sometimes serve as an essay on its right, and the writing of one- paragraph essays will give you small- -scale practice in organization. One can sometimes learn a good deal about organization by writing a single sentence, and one can learn even more when writing a single paragraph.” (Heffernan & Lincoln, 1986 p.144.) Starting to create the first “academic” paragraph it became clear that it is not as easy as it first seemed. Writing a paragraph one always should care to make it look like a real one. But organizing a paragraph can be a real hardship. It often happens that one wants to crowd too many items of ideas in one paragraph, so the outline of it becomes a real mess, especially when it is hand written. (Hand written drafts seem to be more difficult to control than typed ones.)
The essay on tape assignment was a rather unusual one. Members of the WRS group had to write an essay either about designing something or comparing essay writing with something. Finishing with the essay they had to record it on a tape, and in the end they had to submit this tape. The students became not only authors but listeners, audience of their own essays.
This task was not really given to improve students’ creativity but to make them realize the importance of revising, which is the last but one stage of finishing an essay.
“Revising- the word itself means looking again. ...it should be done everytime before submitting an essay. An unrevised piece of writing is like an uninspected machine. Neither of them is likely to work well.”(Heffernan & Lincoln, 1986 p.47). University students often make mistakes on vocabulary and syntax because they write their texts in a hasty manner and they rarely concentrate on re- reading their compositions. If they revised their essays more they could realize their mistakes easier. Self correcting mistakes before evaluation would be very effective in learning how to use written language effectively. Tape recording the essay can be very helpful too. After listening to the recorded essay the student might feel the need to change some vocabulary items or to make a part of the writing more clearer.
During the course there were some other revision tasks. One of them was correcting an essay titled “Why Do We Play Soccer ?”(Horváth, 1997). This essay contained all the possible mistakes an essay can contain. In order to remember avoiding these errors students had to correct them and write a review essay about it.
The final stage of effective essay writing is the editing process. As a part of it, the author has to make sure that the sentences of the essay are rhetorically correct. For the correctness of the sentences used the author might apply different strategies.
For example the technique of subordination can be used when there are too many short sentences which cause monotony or when main points need to be emphasized. Length and the construction of the sentences varied can make the essay powerful too. An other technique is control over word choice which means that the author needs to take care about the vocabulary of the essay. The words used in the essay should fit into the level of diction. If an expression is too slanguish or overly formal it should be changed or else it will bother the reader. (Heffernan & Lincoln 1986 p.67- 70)
There is a sentence in the group writing essay in connection with evaluation: “WELL, WELL. YOU GET WHATCHA DESERVED.” (JPU WRS Group Writing 1997 p.2). This is a typical example of an expression being too low for the level of diction. It may suite the audience (the group) but it is completely different from the context of the essay, because it is too slanguish. Perhaps it would be better corrected to: “The evaluation is absolutely correct, one never gets underestimated or overestimated.”
The reader might get disturbed in grasping the meaning because the overuse of abstract and general words. “To avoid this a successful writer should be aware of using concrete and specific words whenever he can.”( Heffernan & Lincoln 1986 p. 70)
Conclusion
Dealing with reading styles, writing styles and learning how to write good paragraphs were the most crucial tasks during the course. The topics reading styles and writing styles gave perfect introduction into academic writing for students, because they turned their interest to possible ways of writing that worth following. As students have thoughts and themes to write about they desperately need to learn how to write a paragraph, because it is the basis of an essay.
Revising and editing are important processes to learn and to practice for the students who wish to produce powerful essays. Without revision and editing essays are precious but worthless looking stones, hiding the jewel inside of themselves. Students fulfilling the course shall admit and never forget this, and if they insist on practicing all that they learned, they will be effective essay writers.
W 062 F
INTRODUCTION:
According to Harris (1993, p. 81.), a general point about writing is that it cannot be seen in isolation from other modes of language use--it requires attention to reading and to talking as well, by which it can be fostered. If it is true, we have to concede that it is not enough to learn only how to write but we should also pay attention to the other language skills, namely reading, speaking and even listening. The Writing and Research Skills Course announced by the English Department of Janus Pannonius University in Pécs, in the spring semester in 1997 has met this requirement and provided our group with a wide range of readings, discussion about different topics and writing tasks, which will be scrutinized in what follows.
Looking at the characteristics of the reading and writing tasks completed in this course, I can state that these techniques of language practice are really well- organized, detailed and thorough both in their function and structure.
METHODS:
We decided on starting to study reading styles with the aid of an excellent book under the title Seventy-five readings ( Hurtt and Boylan, 1989 ). Students interested could find fantastic essays in it. I especially liked " Why I want a wife " by Judy Syfers, " Salvation " by Langston Hughes and " What is poverty? " by Jo Goodwin Parker. They were really worth reading: they gave us not only the pleasure of reading, but had an instructional intention, too. They helped us increase our general knowledge, learn to observe and use appropriate language forms and understand the procedures of writing better.
In tandem with reading we could keep our eye on writing well by means of another essay called " Transaction " by William Zinsser in the volume introduced earlier. We had an opportunity to examine the difference between professional writing and hobby writing in detail by scrutinizing the characteristics of them and this way comparing the two. It is highly interesting to see the two sort of writers contrasted so appositely on a few pages. While observing writing styles of different kind in these essays, we could develop our own style, since we were given several chances to write something original coming from our personality. We had to learn a significant point about essay writing: it is not throwing ideas together that makes an essay but systematic expounding of consistent thoughts and chains of ideas. To achieve this, the group had to learn to develop a topic sentence and build a logical chain of thoughts up. It was important during the whole course to practise writing in reality, not only to learn something about it in theory. All the writing tasks aimed at practising writing either in group or individually.
Group writing was useful and edifying from the point of view of cooperation. We could help one another by doing our best: if someone did not have any idea, somebody else may have had one about how to go on with writing, that is why work never got stuck. One of the great benefits of this type of group work was the opportunities that it provided for encouraging positive attitudes to the process of writing--discussing choices, making changes, reading back over the text as it developed; it also set up opportunities for reflecting on both the process and the text itself. A group can achieve anything with the aid of mutual understanding and cooperation. This was proved in the lesson while writing together and getting a result to everyone's satisfaction. It proved to be most fruitful that all of us were involved in this activity and this way could contribute to the success to some extent. Cooperation could definitely enhance the efficiency of work, help us get closer to one another and teach us how to work together.
It was of key-importance to check our work after finishing it. While writing we may not have had enough time to care about all the details and may have ignored mistakes in our paper. Each time it was useful for us to go back to the beginning of the text and proof-read it in order to check spelling, style and grammar. It made us sure that our work was at least grammatically correct.
Peer editing was in connection with helping one another again. We, peers corrected the works of one another's like our teacher would have done it--we tried to help one another with criticism and correction and give useful ideas and advice about how to change something in the writing style in the future, what mistakes to pay more attention to or what structures to avoid. This technique developed not only the author of a certain work but also the one who corrected it. Peer editing was also useful because it improved our ability to recognize and correct errors, which helped us not make the same mistakes again in the future.
RESULTS:
The techniques of group writing, revision, peer editing and individual essay writing tried to involve us in more and more writing activities during the course in order to develop our ability to self-express, correct mistakes, learn the process of writing, enhance our cognition and perception of events and make us independent writers. These techniques worked well and were successful in the course if we now can write papers better than before. Everyone has to know about herself to what extent she succeded in achieving this goal. Not only writing activities played a crucial role in the course but also reading activities. Reading was connected to writing indirectly, which meant that we could utilize what we read in writing by learning plenty of words and expressions, and the notion of how to write at all, what structures to use or what style to follow in different language situations.
DISCUSSION:
According to Harris(1993, p.65.), there are four main purposes being present in a writing activity: (1) communicating and sharing experiences, (2) constructing meanings through ways of thinking not usually available through speaking, (3) discovering and clarifying thoughts, and (4) providing a record of ideas, facts and experiences in a form that allows them to be worked on, organized, referred back to and developed subsequently. Harris(1993, p. 10-11.) regards writing as a process that occurs over a period of time, particularly if we take into account the sometimes extended periods of thinking that precede creating an initial draft. Even in the stage of constructing a text writers pause, think, write, pause, think, revise and so on. This halting progress reveals the number of decisions that have to be made by the writer alone and also the extent to which reflection is an essential part of the process. These decisions and the reflection together both require and develop ways of thinking. Harris is really right here: we all could experience the feeling of having difficulties in the writing process, the halting progress, the need of reflection and decisions. All of us underwent this experience and learnt a lesson from it, which will be hopefully reflected in our writing style in the future.
Harris has another significant and interesting idea about development in writing(1993,p.78-8o.): " Writing development can be seen in part as an aspect of generally increasing knowledge and cognitive ability. Development in writing means the ability to use appropriate types of clauses to make explicit the relationships between events, and to become more and more self-reliant and independent as a writer. It needs to be related to the overall understanding of the processes of creating texts conveying meaning with clarity and economy. “Several writing techniques serve for expressing meaning plenty of which are undertaken in class. Before undertaking a writing task it must be set by the teacher. It is the initiative to create something original with the intention of conveying our feelings, attitudes or opinions. Harris writes about that classroom activity in this way (1993, p. 64., 96.): " Writing in the classroom must have a clearly perceived and explicitly formulated purpose, and should be closely integrated together with the other language skills. It is needed to see whether some area of knowledge has been understood; to practise and develop the ability to create texts of different length and to discover through the act of writing something more of our individuality and social identity."
CONCLUSION:
We always had opportunities to do this in practice and to improve our writing skill during the course. On the whole, the course was dedicated to meet this requirement and it was successful if we learnt to write just a bit better. What we needed to do by all means was practising writing, to which the course gave us all necessary help, as it realized that everything could be learnt only in a practical way.
According to Harris (1993, p. 81.), a general point about writing is that it cannot be seen in isolation from other modes of language use--it requires attention to reading and to talking as well, by which it can be fostered. If it is true, we have to concede that it is not enough to learn only how to write but we should also pay attention to the other language skills, namely reading, speaking and even listening. The Writing and Research Skills Course announced by the English Department of Janus Pannonius University in Pécs, in the spring semester in 1997 has met this requirement and provided our group with a wide range of readings, discussion about different topics and writing tasks, which will be scrutinized in what follows.
Looking at the characteristics of the reading and writing tasks completed in this course, I can state that these techniques of language practice are really well- organized, detailed and thorough both in their function and structure.
METHODS:
We decided on starting to study reading styles with the aid of an excellent book under the title Seventy-five readings ( Hurtt and Boylan, 1989 ). Students interested could find fantastic essays in it. I especially liked " Why I want a wife " by Judy Syfers, " Salvation " by Langston Hughes and " What is poverty? " by Jo Goodwin Parker. They were really worth reading: they gave us not only the pleasure of reading, but had an instructional intention, too. They helped us increase our general knowledge, learn to observe and use appropriate language forms and understand the procedures of writing better.
In tandem with reading we could keep our eye on writing well by means of another essay called " Transaction " by William Zinsser in the volume introduced earlier. We had an opportunity to examine the difference between professional writing and hobby writing in detail by scrutinizing the characteristics of them and this way comparing the two. It is highly interesting to see the two sort of writers contrasted so appositely on a few pages. While observing writing styles of different kind in these essays, we could develop our own style, since we were given several chances to write something original coming from our personality. We had to learn a significant point about essay writing: it is not throwing ideas together that makes an essay but systematic expounding of consistent thoughts and chains of ideas. To achieve this, the group had to learn to develop a topic sentence and build a logical chain of thoughts up. It was important during the whole course to practise writing in reality, not only to learn something about it in theory. All the writing tasks aimed at practising writing either in group or individually.
Group writing was useful and edifying from the point of view of cooperation. We could help one another by doing our best: if someone did not have any idea, somebody else may have had one about how to go on with writing, that is why work never got stuck. One of the great benefits of this type of group work was the opportunities that it provided for encouraging positive attitudes to the process of writing--discussing choices, making changes, reading back over the text as it developed; it also set up opportunities for reflecting on both the process and the text itself. A group can achieve anything with the aid of mutual understanding and cooperation. This was proved in the lesson while writing together and getting a result to everyone's satisfaction. It proved to be most fruitful that all of us were involved in this activity and this way could contribute to the success to some extent. Cooperation could definitely enhance the efficiency of work, help us get closer to one another and teach us how to work together.
It was of key-importance to check our work after finishing it. While writing we may not have had enough time to care about all the details and may have ignored mistakes in our paper. Each time it was useful for us to go back to the beginning of the text and proof-read it in order to check spelling, style and grammar. It made us sure that our work was at least grammatically correct.
Peer editing was in connection with helping one another again. We, peers corrected the works of one another's like our teacher would have done it--we tried to help one another with criticism and correction and give useful ideas and advice about how to change something in the writing style in the future, what mistakes to pay more attention to or what structures to avoid. This technique developed not only the author of a certain work but also the one who corrected it. Peer editing was also useful because it improved our ability to recognize and correct errors, which helped us not make the same mistakes again in the future.
RESULTS:
The techniques of group writing, revision, peer editing and individual essay writing tried to involve us in more and more writing activities during the course in order to develop our ability to self-express, correct mistakes, learn the process of writing, enhance our cognition and perception of events and make us independent writers. These techniques worked well and were successful in the course if we now can write papers better than before. Everyone has to know about herself to what extent she succeded in achieving this goal. Not only writing activities played a crucial role in the course but also reading activities. Reading was connected to writing indirectly, which meant that we could utilize what we read in writing by learning plenty of words and expressions, and the notion of how to write at all, what structures to use or what style to follow in different language situations.
DISCUSSION:
According to Harris(1993, p.65.), there are four main purposes being present in a writing activity: (1) communicating and sharing experiences, (2) constructing meanings through ways of thinking not usually available through speaking, (3) discovering and clarifying thoughts, and (4) providing a record of ideas, facts and experiences in a form that allows them to be worked on, organized, referred back to and developed subsequently. Harris(1993, p. 10-11.) regards writing as a process that occurs over a period of time, particularly if we take into account the sometimes extended periods of thinking that precede creating an initial draft. Even in the stage of constructing a text writers pause, think, write, pause, think, revise and so on. This halting progress reveals the number of decisions that have to be made by the writer alone and also the extent to which reflection is an essential part of the process. These decisions and the reflection together both require and develop ways of thinking. Harris is really right here: we all could experience the feeling of having difficulties in the writing process, the halting progress, the need of reflection and decisions. All of us underwent this experience and learnt a lesson from it, which will be hopefully reflected in our writing style in the future.
Harris has another significant and interesting idea about development in writing(1993,p.78-8o.): " Writing development can be seen in part as an aspect of generally increasing knowledge and cognitive ability. Development in writing means the ability to use appropriate types of clauses to make explicit the relationships between events, and to become more and more self-reliant and independent as a writer. It needs to be related to the overall understanding of the processes of creating texts conveying meaning with clarity and economy. “Several writing techniques serve for expressing meaning plenty of which are undertaken in class. Before undertaking a writing task it must be set by the teacher. It is the initiative to create something original with the intention of conveying our feelings, attitudes or opinions. Harris writes about that classroom activity in this way (1993, p. 64., 96.): " Writing in the classroom must have a clearly perceived and explicitly formulated purpose, and should be closely integrated together with the other language skills. It is needed to see whether some area of knowledge has been understood; to practise and develop the ability to create texts of different length and to discover through the act of writing something more of our individuality and social identity."
CONCLUSION:
We always had opportunities to do this in practice and to improve our writing skill during the course. On the whole, the course was dedicated to meet this requirement and it was successful if we learnt to write just a bit better. What we needed to do by all means was practising writing, to which the course gave us all necessary help, as it realized that everything could be learnt only in a practical way.
W 056 F
Introduction
"Essay writing courses were introduced at Janus Pannonius University in 1986" (Horváth, 1996 p.88) in order to develop English majors' writing skills. During these courses students become familiar with the stages of the writing process through several useful and interesting activities. These activities include both in-class and take-home assignments. Students are given splendid ideas and helpful pieces of advice about how to write an essay, and this way each of them can develop his or her individual methods and style.
This paper will examine what writing techniques English majors at JPU used in the academic year of 1996-1997, during in-class and take-home essays. First of all, I asked students whether they devoted time to planning the essay, and if yes, how. I also studied which component of the writing process they considered the most important. Then I made inquiries about their revising methods. Finally, I gathered information of the difficulties they faced during essay writing, and the advantages of attending a course of "Writing and Research Skills".
I made the survey on the basis of three hypotheses:
1. English majors at JPU do plan their essay, but they have different strategies for take-home and in-class essays.
2. Students do not pay attention to the same factors when writing at home as in class.
3. English majors do not revise their essays before turning them in.
Both English majors and teachers of writing skills at the English Department at JPU may benefit from this assessment. Students can compare their own methods with others', and implement some good ideas in their strategies. On the other hand, professors can gain information about students' attitudes towards essay writing, and about the difficulties they meet.
Methods
During the survey, I worked with questionnaires. First I designed the 17 questions, in April, 1997, and then I distributed the questionnaires among English majors at JPU. All of them attended the course of "Writing and Research Skills". At random, I selected representatives of all the five grades. I asked 22 students all together to answer my questions: 4 girls and 2 boys from the first, 4 girls and 1 boy from the second, 2 girls and 3 boys from the third, 3 girls from the fourth, and 1 girl and 2 boys from the fifth grade. After they had filled in the questionnaires on their own, I summarized their several replies.
Results
The evaluation of the answers in connection with planning shows that all students said they spent some time on thinking about the topic before writing the essay. The amount of this time depended on the length of the essay and the topic itself. At home, seven respondents devoted about thirty minutes to planning, another seven a few hours; and the rest spent more than a day brooding over the theme. In class they meditated for 5-10 minutes.
Fifteen of the students even wrote outlines; half of them used only words and expressions, the other half full sentences as well. They said their reasons were that they wished to remember useful ideas and to have a global view about the content. The rest did not deal with putting down any ideas, because it would take much time. As for an in-class essay, the results were very similar, but only four students constructed full sentences. There were 12 English majors who even designed the chain of the paragraphs in order to insert them logically into the context. Others wrote the essay spontaneously, letting the theme develop by itself. They should take this advice: "An outline will help you to see the relations among all your points before you start your first draft" (Heffernan & Lincoln, 1982-1986 p.29 ).
The research shows that except for three students who did not care about topic sentences at all, the majority (16) constructed them within the writing process. They did not write them into the outline, because it was enough to be aware of the content of paragraphs.
For the question, if they wrote the essay right away in English, or at first they composed it in Hungarian, 21 students answered yes. Only one out of 22 insisted on translating the Hungarian version, because gathering ideas in the mother tongue was less complicated. Another English major admitted that he was thinking in Hungarian, but then translated the ingenious thoughts in his mind. Those who drew up the essay in English said that it was more easier and quicker to compose in the foreign language than translating. They asserted that the essay would have a different meaning otherwise. As far as the in-class essay was concerned, everybody wrote it in English at once, because of lack of time.
In the second part of the questionnaire I examined which stage of the writing process English majors considered the most fundamental. First I asked them about the title. Most of the participants (15) decided on the title of the essay after having finished it. As for a take-home assignment, fewer respondents (5) invented its title before writing the text than in an in-class essay ( 9 students). Then I asked the participants to grade different elements: focus, paragraph organization, topic sentence, revision and planning, from 1 to 5, giving better marks to the most essential ones. Summing up the grades, the averages indicate that focus (4.77) was the most important when writing either a take-home or an in-class essay, because this is that holds the parts of the text together. As for the take-home essay, the next in the order of importance was revision (4.14) , then planning (4.00), paragraph organization (3.91) and at last topic sentence (3.45). As far as in-class essays were concerned, the second element was planning (4.14) which was followed by paragraph organization and revision (3.95) and the last one was topic sentence (3.54).
Then I asked students to decide which factor they laid the most emphasis upon. Eleven of them paid attention, first of all, to grammar, because this is what affects and influences the teachers. Furthermore, correctly used grammar is the most essential aspect of an academic work.
According to the survey, the style of a take-home essay was more considerable than of the in-class essay. Elegant style raises the standard of the writing. Nevertheless, in class, students are usually not allowed to consult any dictionaries, so they have less chance to express their thoughts in a well-polished manner. Under such circumstances, content is the second most important after grammar. Form was pointed out by only three students, while focus and paragraph were mentioned by merely one.
The next question was about what English majors did in the interest of a more elegant style. As it turned out, 18 of the students made a great effort to avoid using redundant expressions, repeating words or padding. During the exercise they consult a dictionary or thesaurus, if possible; furthermore, they read books, magazines, and seize every opportunity to talk to native people, so as to grow their vocabulary.
In spite of the fact that form was not mentioned among the most important factors, like grammar and style, many students endeavour to provide the essay a fine and exacting appearance. The opinions varied between handwriting and typing. The majority, 15 out of 22, preferred using word-processors, so that they could make the essay legible, re-order paragraphs easily, delete unnecessary parts. Computers even provide a spell-check module. However, three students admitted that they were averse to using PC-s; handwriting was faster and less complicated for them. Another three respondents said that they would willingly hand in a printed essay, but computers were not available for them.
Having assessed the methods of planning and writing processes, I asked participants about revising the essay. First of all I wanted to know whether they executed this final step, and if yes, why they revised, when, and how many times. Everybody except for one gave a positive answer. Each respondent claimed that revision was extremely useful to reveal mistakes and inaccuracies, to supplement the text with new ideas and to have an overall view. Nineteen participants scanned the text right after finishing it (and even during it), but 10 out of 22 checked the essay later as well. Students skimmed through their works usually once or twice, four of them more times. Almost half of the participants, 10 out of 22, asked another person - usually friends, groupmates, parents or teachers - as well, in order to check the essay, since they could notice mistakes omitted by the author. These acquaintances were generally sincere, so they could give frank advice. The other half did dot like bragging about their works, or did not want to disturb people who had their own duties. Although most students revised the essay, every second admitted that they could not always find the mistakes. The proportion was even bigger concerning the in-class essay. The participants often revealed grammatic, stylistic and spelling errors that can make the content unintelligible.
In the last but one question, English majors were interviewed about what kind of difficulties they met during essay writing. According to the answers, the respondents can be divided into three groups (although there are overlaps). One of them include those 8 students who had problems with the composition itself. They usually found it hard either to invent a topic or to construct the first and last sentence. Very often words and expressions did not spring to their mind. One participant admitted that the way of giving reference was still not clear. The second group consists of 5 respondents for whom limit of time and length caused nervousness. They frequently ran out of time, or produced the essay hastily. This problem was emphasized especially in connection with in-class essays. In the third group there are 13 students who showed very negative attitude towards essay writing. Many times they found the topic unchallenging and boring, so it caused them trouble to buckle down to work.
Finally, participants were asked to give their honest opinion about the effectiveness of the course "Writing and Research Skills". Only two students considered it absolutely unnecessary. According to the others, it was useful, for the reason that they had plenty of opportunities for practising, learned many rules of academic writing, and became aware of punctuation rules.
Discussion
The results of the assessment partly refuted my hypotheses. Regarding the answers, there were much fewer differences between the technique of writing in-class and take-home essays than I expected. The divergence I could find was the consequence of different conditions. When writing an in-class essay, students had to produce a shorter composition in a shorter time than at home. Furthermore, the title and topic of in-class essays are usually given. Under such circumstances, it was obvious that students spent less time on planning and revising an in-class essay than a take-home essay; however, the way of planning, writing and revising them was almost the same. The third hypothesis was also proved wrong, since it turned out that the respondents did revise their texts before handing them in, although they did not always recognise their mistakes.
During the evaluation, I discovered some connections. There were three students who did not care about topic sentences at all. I recognized that each of them had a negative attitude towards essay writing itself. Moreover, they were among those who declared that the course "Formal Writing" contributed to their development only in very small measure. They did not spend time on planning the order of paragraphs; and as far as revision is concerned, it had been done once at the very most, right after students had finished the essay. These respondents had never asked anybody to check their work.
According to my supposition, those who omit the process of planning do not pay much attention to revising. Regarding three students, this assumption is proved. One of them did not check their essays at all; the other two scanned the work only once. Each of them showed negative attitude towards writing essays; their aim was to get rid of them as soon as possible. However; there were four students who, although, did not plan the essay, devoted more time to revising it. They checked the text more than twice, right after writing it, and later as well. If they had the opportunity, they even asked a friend or parent to correct the mistakes.
There were five students admitting that the process of composing (including, for example, gathering of ideas and using grammar correctly) caused them difficulty. In order to facilitate essay writing, all of them except for one made a sketch of the text first, and even planned paragraph organization. It is interesting that none of them showed the essay to another person; probably, they feel ashamed of their errors.
Conclusion
Considering the data of this survey, professors can select components of writing process they should emphasize in teaching. First of all, the attitudes of students should be changed. However, according to the answers, most students tend to do their best and solve the problems, even if they do not really like writing essays. This statement is proved by the efforts they made to plan and revise the work, to grow their vocabulary and to use correct grammar and elegant style; in a word, to acquire the skills of academic writing.
"Essay writing courses were introduced at Janus Pannonius University in 1986" (Horváth, 1996 p.88) in order to develop English majors' writing skills. During these courses students become familiar with the stages of the writing process through several useful and interesting activities. These activities include both in-class and take-home assignments. Students are given splendid ideas and helpful pieces of advice about how to write an essay, and this way each of them can develop his or her individual methods and style.
This paper will examine what writing techniques English majors at JPU used in the academic year of 1996-1997, during in-class and take-home essays. First of all, I asked students whether they devoted time to planning the essay, and if yes, how. I also studied which component of the writing process they considered the most important. Then I made inquiries about their revising methods. Finally, I gathered information of the difficulties they faced during essay writing, and the advantages of attending a course of "Writing and Research Skills".
I made the survey on the basis of three hypotheses:
1. English majors at JPU do plan their essay, but they have different strategies for take-home and in-class essays.
2. Students do not pay attention to the same factors when writing at home as in class.
3. English majors do not revise their essays before turning them in.
Both English majors and teachers of writing skills at the English Department at JPU may benefit from this assessment. Students can compare their own methods with others', and implement some good ideas in their strategies. On the other hand, professors can gain information about students' attitudes towards essay writing, and about the difficulties they meet.
Methods
During the survey, I worked with questionnaires. First I designed the 17 questions, in April, 1997, and then I distributed the questionnaires among English majors at JPU. All of them attended the course of "Writing and Research Skills". At random, I selected representatives of all the five grades. I asked 22 students all together to answer my questions: 4 girls and 2 boys from the first, 4 girls and 1 boy from the second, 2 girls and 3 boys from the third, 3 girls from the fourth, and 1 girl and 2 boys from the fifth grade. After they had filled in the questionnaires on their own, I summarized their several replies.
Results
The evaluation of the answers in connection with planning shows that all students said they spent some time on thinking about the topic before writing the essay. The amount of this time depended on the length of the essay and the topic itself. At home, seven respondents devoted about thirty minutes to planning, another seven a few hours; and the rest spent more than a day brooding over the theme. In class they meditated for 5-10 minutes.
Fifteen of the students even wrote outlines; half of them used only words and expressions, the other half full sentences as well. They said their reasons were that they wished to remember useful ideas and to have a global view about the content. The rest did not deal with putting down any ideas, because it would take much time. As for an in-class essay, the results were very similar, but only four students constructed full sentences. There were 12 English majors who even designed the chain of the paragraphs in order to insert them logically into the context. Others wrote the essay spontaneously, letting the theme develop by itself. They should take this advice: "An outline will help you to see the relations among all your points before you start your first draft" (Heffernan & Lincoln, 1982-1986 p.29 ).
The research shows that except for three students who did not care about topic sentences at all, the majority (16) constructed them within the writing process. They did not write them into the outline, because it was enough to be aware of the content of paragraphs.
For the question, if they wrote the essay right away in English, or at first they composed it in Hungarian, 21 students answered yes. Only one out of 22 insisted on translating the Hungarian version, because gathering ideas in the mother tongue was less complicated. Another English major admitted that he was thinking in Hungarian, but then translated the ingenious thoughts in his mind. Those who drew up the essay in English said that it was more easier and quicker to compose in the foreign language than translating. They asserted that the essay would have a different meaning otherwise. As far as the in-class essay was concerned, everybody wrote it in English at once, because of lack of time.
In the second part of the questionnaire I examined which stage of the writing process English majors considered the most fundamental. First I asked them about the title. Most of the participants (15) decided on the title of the essay after having finished it. As for a take-home assignment, fewer respondents (5) invented its title before writing the text than in an in-class essay ( 9 students). Then I asked the participants to grade different elements: focus, paragraph organization, topic sentence, revision and planning, from 1 to 5, giving better marks to the most essential ones. Summing up the grades, the averages indicate that focus (4.77) was the most important when writing either a take-home or an in-class essay, because this is that holds the parts of the text together. As for the take-home essay, the next in the order of importance was revision (4.14) , then planning (4.00), paragraph organization (3.91) and at last topic sentence (3.45). As far as in-class essays were concerned, the second element was planning (4.14) which was followed by paragraph organization and revision (3.95) and the last one was topic sentence (3.54).
Then I asked students to decide which factor they laid the most emphasis upon. Eleven of them paid attention, first of all, to grammar, because this is what affects and influences the teachers. Furthermore, correctly used grammar is the most essential aspect of an academic work.
According to the survey, the style of a take-home essay was more considerable than of the in-class essay. Elegant style raises the standard of the writing. Nevertheless, in class, students are usually not allowed to consult any dictionaries, so they have less chance to express their thoughts in a well-polished manner. Under such circumstances, content is the second most important after grammar. Form was pointed out by only three students, while focus and paragraph were mentioned by merely one.
The next question was about what English majors did in the interest of a more elegant style. As it turned out, 18 of the students made a great effort to avoid using redundant expressions, repeating words or padding. During the exercise they consult a dictionary or thesaurus, if possible; furthermore, they read books, magazines, and seize every opportunity to talk to native people, so as to grow their vocabulary.
In spite of the fact that form was not mentioned among the most important factors, like grammar and style, many students endeavour to provide the essay a fine and exacting appearance. The opinions varied between handwriting and typing. The majority, 15 out of 22, preferred using word-processors, so that they could make the essay legible, re-order paragraphs easily, delete unnecessary parts. Computers even provide a spell-check module. However, three students admitted that they were averse to using PC-s; handwriting was faster and less complicated for them. Another three respondents said that they would willingly hand in a printed essay, but computers were not available for them.
Having assessed the methods of planning and writing processes, I asked participants about revising the essay. First of all I wanted to know whether they executed this final step, and if yes, why they revised, when, and how many times. Everybody except for one gave a positive answer. Each respondent claimed that revision was extremely useful to reveal mistakes and inaccuracies, to supplement the text with new ideas and to have an overall view. Nineteen participants scanned the text right after finishing it (and even during it), but 10 out of 22 checked the essay later as well. Students skimmed through their works usually once or twice, four of them more times. Almost half of the participants, 10 out of 22, asked another person - usually friends, groupmates, parents or teachers - as well, in order to check the essay, since they could notice mistakes omitted by the author. These acquaintances were generally sincere, so they could give frank advice. The other half did dot like bragging about their works, or did not want to disturb people who had their own duties. Although most students revised the essay, every second admitted that they could not always find the mistakes. The proportion was even bigger concerning the in-class essay. The participants often revealed grammatic, stylistic and spelling errors that can make the content unintelligible.
In the last but one question, English majors were interviewed about what kind of difficulties they met during essay writing. According to the answers, the respondents can be divided into three groups (although there are overlaps). One of them include those 8 students who had problems with the composition itself. They usually found it hard either to invent a topic or to construct the first and last sentence. Very often words and expressions did not spring to their mind. One participant admitted that the way of giving reference was still not clear. The second group consists of 5 respondents for whom limit of time and length caused nervousness. They frequently ran out of time, or produced the essay hastily. This problem was emphasized especially in connection with in-class essays. In the third group there are 13 students who showed very negative attitude towards essay writing. Many times they found the topic unchallenging and boring, so it caused them trouble to buckle down to work.
Finally, participants were asked to give their honest opinion about the effectiveness of the course "Writing and Research Skills". Only two students considered it absolutely unnecessary. According to the others, it was useful, for the reason that they had plenty of opportunities for practising, learned many rules of academic writing, and became aware of punctuation rules.
Discussion
The results of the assessment partly refuted my hypotheses. Regarding the answers, there were much fewer differences between the technique of writing in-class and take-home essays than I expected. The divergence I could find was the consequence of different conditions. When writing an in-class essay, students had to produce a shorter composition in a shorter time than at home. Furthermore, the title and topic of in-class essays are usually given. Under such circumstances, it was obvious that students spent less time on planning and revising an in-class essay than a take-home essay; however, the way of planning, writing and revising them was almost the same. The third hypothesis was also proved wrong, since it turned out that the respondents did revise their texts before handing them in, although they did not always recognise their mistakes.
During the evaluation, I discovered some connections. There were three students who did not care about topic sentences at all. I recognized that each of them had a negative attitude towards essay writing itself. Moreover, they were among those who declared that the course "Formal Writing" contributed to their development only in very small measure. They did not spend time on planning the order of paragraphs; and as far as revision is concerned, it had been done once at the very most, right after students had finished the essay. These respondents had never asked anybody to check their work.
According to my supposition, those who omit the process of planning do not pay much attention to revising. Regarding three students, this assumption is proved. One of them did not check their essays at all; the other two scanned the work only once. Each of them showed negative attitude towards writing essays; their aim was to get rid of them as soon as possible. However; there were four students who, although, did not plan the essay, devoted more time to revising it. They checked the text more than twice, right after writing it, and later as well. If they had the opportunity, they even asked a friend or parent to correct the mistakes.
There were five students admitting that the process of composing (including, for example, gathering of ideas and using grammar correctly) caused them difficulty. In order to facilitate essay writing, all of them except for one made a sketch of the text first, and even planned paragraph organization. It is interesting that none of them showed the essay to another person; probably, they feel ashamed of their errors.
Conclusion
Considering the data of this survey, professors can select components of writing process they should emphasize in teaching. First of all, the attitudes of students should be changed. However, according to the answers, most students tend to do their best and solve the problems, even if they do not really like writing essays. This statement is proved by the efforts they made to plan and revise the work, to grow their vocabulary and to use correct grammar and elegant style; in a word, to acquire the skills of academic writing.
W 023 F
Introduction
The basis of this paper is an observation of one of the Writing and Research Skills classes. The students of the English Department of Janus Pannonius University, Pécs, have the opportunity to take part in a course where they can improve their writing skills.
The main aim of these lessons, lead by Horváth József, is “to enable the students to present their ideas, opinions, and observations in personal narrative and descriptive essays, as well as to formulate a manageable research question and develop a small scale project”. Students have to “read and learn about the content, structure, and presentation requirements of academic writing”
In my research paper I will analyse that who that person is (or people) who made that lesson active I observed.
Method
I recorded one of the lessons on tape. I used this tape to make notes, then I analysed the lesson from two aspects. First I observed the utterances among students, and among the students and the teacher. As the title of this particular class was Assembling a paper, I observed how much the tutor succeeded in fulfilling his plan, and what devices he used so that the students could form an idea about the process of producing a research paper.
Results and Discussion
The class took place on the 24th of November in 1998, in one of the classrooms of the English Department of Janus Pannonius University, Pécs. The number of participants were 16, out of 17, plus the teacher.
The first aspect I analysed the lesson from was the frequency and the character of the utterances made by the students. (See Figure 1. on the last page.)
Seating arrangement in the classroom is shown on Fig. 1 which also shows the directions of speakings. Students first took place in a way which did not provide good visual contact with classmates, so the teacher initiated a better seating system. The numbers represent the people who had participated in the lesson.
It is obvious that four students made comments unasked at least four times during the class. When we compare this with the number of participants, we see that the group had only four relatively active members, which is only 25 percent. The most active person during the lesson was HJ himself. He put questions, encouraged the students to make comments, and he required answers. The evidence for this is that there were questions each member was expected to answer, and besides, six students were individually asked to answer questions.
Though students had the possibility to ask questions, only two of them (12.5%) lived with the opportunity, that two who made the most comments as well. It means that in reality these two students took part actively in the class only. I would like to call the reader’s attention to the fact that only three students made a short conversation among themselves connected the topic of the lesson.
As far the teacher, there are two things which are worth mentioning. He did not take seat at the desk but moved his chair and sat closer to the students. Even when he stood up, he remained at the same place. Thus, during the lesson he did not move a lot (there is one exception which I will deal with later on), only between his chair and the whiteboard, or between the chair and the desk. This way students could pay more attention to him.
The aim of this class was to show the students how they should work on their research paper and to give a pattern to them. The ninety minutes of the lesson was built up in such a way that by the end of the class the students could form a clear idea about their own research papers.
The methods HJ used to make the students understood how a research paper should be produced were quite simple but effective. At the beginning of the class one of the students was required to tell the others how she would build up her research paper. When the process that she described was not correct, HJ corrected it. Then he asked the group if they had already decided the topic for their research papers. Out of 16 students 11 answered ‘yes’, two said that they were still thinking and three did not answer. To make the process clearer, HJ illustrated it on the whiteboard:
find a topic research question choose method
? .
-study topic 'street'
-gather material
previous rp.
clear, answerable
Fig.2 - the process of making a research paper
The question mark represented the research question. The line before it symbolised the process of arriving at a solution. The arrow was to show what else has to be done after making up the research question. To make sure that the illustration was clear enough and the students understood it, HJ asked for their opinion about its clarity. No one said that it was confusing. Four people found it clear, and the rest (12) said that it could have been better but it was OK.
HJ’s devices to present a good and a bad introduction were more effective. As he acted out two scenes he needed to move more than before. With the first scene he represented good introductions. He acted out a man who enters a ballroom and immediately knows where he is and can follow the events. This scene was to symbolise that effective introductions should be written in a way that the reader knows what to expect. To show bad introductions, Horváth József acted out another scene which was much more shocking: he had himself pushed into the classroom by one of the participants, so he had a big fall. With this example he wanted to teach the students that introductions must not be built up in a way that the reader cannot know what to expect.
At the end of the class he handed out a sheet of paper to every student with the title: Research Paper Checklist #2. On the sheet there were nine questions about the research papers. The students had two minutes to fill them out. Answering the questions the participants got a relatively clear idea about the process of the production of their paper. To question number 8 students had to answer with 'yes' or 'no'. The question was: have you studied the department guidelines? Thirteen people gave the answer 'yes', one said 'no', and two did not answer. This means that as it was an earlier task to do, four-fifths of the group had prepared for the lesson.
In the last five minutes the task for next time was given to the students by HJ which was to write the first draft of their research paper.
Conclusion
The majority of the participants went prepared to the class, but most of them remained passive in that hour and a half. The lesson became active because of HJ’s devices, energetic teaching method and the group had two members who helped HJ with their comments and questions. As the other classes during the semester were more or less active than the one dealt with in this paper, this research paper and the results of it can be applied only to this particular class.
The basis of this paper is an observation of one of the Writing and Research Skills classes. The students of the English Department of Janus Pannonius University, Pécs, have the opportunity to take part in a course where they can improve their writing skills.
The main aim of these lessons, lead by Horváth József, is “to enable the students to present their ideas, opinions, and observations in personal narrative and descriptive essays, as well as to formulate a manageable research question and develop a small scale project”. Students have to “read and learn about the content, structure, and presentation requirements of academic writing”
In my research paper I will analyse that who that person is (or people) who made that lesson active I observed.
Method
I recorded one of the lessons on tape. I used this tape to make notes, then I analysed the lesson from two aspects. First I observed the utterances among students, and among the students and the teacher. As the title of this particular class was Assembling a paper, I observed how much the tutor succeeded in fulfilling his plan, and what devices he used so that the students could form an idea about the process of producing a research paper.
Results and Discussion
The class took place on the 24th of November in 1998, in one of the classrooms of the English Department of Janus Pannonius University, Pécs. The number of participants were 16, out of 17, plus the teacher.
The first aspect I analysed the lesson from was the frequency and the character of the utterances made by the students. (See Figure 1. on the last page.)
Seating arrangement in the classroom is shown on Fig. 1 which also shows the directions of speakings. Students first took place in a way which did not provide good visual contact with classmates, so the teacher initiated a better seating system. The numbers represent the people who had participated in the lesson.
It is obvious that four students made comments unasked at least four times during the class. When we compare this with the number of participants, we see that the group had only four relatively active members, which is only 25 percent. The most active person during the lesson was HJ himself. He put questions, encouraged the students to make comments, and he required answers. The evidence for this is that there were questions each member was expected to answer, and besides, six students were individually asked to answer questions.
Though students had the possibility to ask questions, only two of them (12.5%) lived with the opportunity, that two who made the most comments as well. It means that in reality these two students took part actively in the class only. I would like to call the reader’s attention to the fact that only three students made a short conversation among themselves connected the topic of the lesson.
As far the teacher, there are two things which are worth mentioning. He did not take seat at the desk but moved his chair and sat closer to the students. Even when he stood up, he remained at the same place. Thus, during the lesson he did not move a lot (there is one exception which I will deal with later on), only between his chair and the whiteboard, or between the chair and the desk. This way students could pay more attention to him.
The aim of this class was to show the students how they should work on their research paper and to give a pattern to them. The ninety minutes of the lesson was built up in such a way that by the end of the class the students could form a clear idea about their own research papers.
The methods HJ used to make the students understood how a research paper should be produced were quite simple but effective. At the beginning of the class one of the students was required to tell the others how she would build up her research paper. When the process that she described was not correct, HJ corrected it. Then he asked the group if they had already decided the topic for their research papers. Out of 16 students 11 answered ‘yes’, two said that they were still thinking and three did not answer. To make the process clearer, HJ illustrated it on the whiteboard:
find a topic research question choose method
? .
-study topic 'street'
-gather material
previous rp.
clear, answerable
Fig.2 - the process of making a research paper
The question mark represented the research question. The line before it symbolised the process of arriving at a solution. The arrow was to show what else has to be done after making up the research question. To make sure that the illustration was clear enough and the students understood it, HJ asked for their opinion about its clarity. No one said that it was confusing. Four people found it clear, and the rest (12) said that it could have been better but it was OK.
HJ’s devices to present a good and a bad introduction were more effective. As he acted out two scenes he needed to move more than before. With the first scene he represented good introductions. He acted out a man who enters a ballroom and immediately knows where he is and can follow the events. This scene was to symbolise that effective introductions should be written in a way that the reader knows what to expect. To show bad introductions, Horváth József acted out another scene which was much more shocking: he had himself pushed into the classroom by one of the participants, so he had a big fall. With this example he wanted to teach the students that introductions must not be built up in a way that the reader cannot know what to expect.
At the end of the class he handed out a sheet of paper to every student with the title: Research Paper Checklist #2. On the sheet there were nine questions about the research papers. The students had two minutes to fill them out. Answering the questions the participants got a relatively clear idea about the process of the production of their paper. To question number 8 students had to answer with 'yes' or 'no'. The question was: have you studied the department guidelines? Thirteen people gave the answer 'yes', one said 'no', and two did not answer. This means that as it was an earlier task to do, four-fifths of the group had prepared for the lesson.
In the last five minutes the task for next time was given to the students by HJ which was to write the first draft of their research paper.
Conclusion
The majority of the participants went prepared to the class, but most of them remained passive in that hour and a half. The lesson became active because of HJ’s devices, energetic teaching method and the group had two members who helped HJ with their comments and questions. As the other classes during the semester were more or less active than the one dealt with in this paper, this research paper and the results of it can be applied only to this particular class.
W 015 F
Introduction:
The Writing and Research Skills Course is one of the most essential courses of English Department of JPU, because it is a pre-requisite of students` further studies. Other courses of English Department of JPU require a lot of essay writing so students need to possess good academic writing skills by the time they apply for these courses. By showing the direction of how to write excellent essays and how to acquire academic writing skills, the Writing and Research Course is the basis of other courses of English Department of JPU. The aim of the course is to provide students with skills and information, which they can imply later. In this paper I will point at the parts of this course that influenced students` writing skills in a positive or negative way.
Methods:
To highlight the most important parts of the course I had to make an opinion survey in order to collect data. In the second and third week of April 1997 I looked for 22 students who already completed the Writing and Research Skills Course or as it was called earlier: Formal Writing Course. The aim of both courses was to help students acquire the skills of academic writing. Two of the 22 students were first year students, 12 of them were second year students and eight of them were third year students. So I asked 22 English majors of JPU about their essay writing attitudes. They were each given a questionnaire containing four questions and they had ten minutes to answer the following four questions briefly:
1) What was the most difficult for you when writing an essay? (at the beginning of the
Writing and Research Skills Course or the Formal Writing Course)
2) Which part of the course helped you to overcome this difficulty? Which part of the
course meant a cornerstone or landmark for you?
3) Which part of the course do you think should have been given more focus?
4) Do you still have difficulty when writing an essay? If yes, what is it?
After getting back the filled-out questionnaires, I prepared a table about the questions and answers in order to analyze and evaluate them. Finally, I grouped the answers into categories, summarized students` opinion, and drew a conclusion.
Results:
After analyzing the collected data I noticed they reflected very variable results. I evaluated the answers related to each question and divided students` opinion into categories. I looked at the answers given to the first question first and summarized them, then examined the answers for the other three questions, too.
The first question was: What was the most difficult for you at the beginning of the course when writing an essay? Only two kinds of responses were given to the first question. 18 of the 22 students claimed that they had hardship in organizing the introduction and the conclusion. They did not know how to start and finish the essay. Four students were confronted by difficulties when they wanted to use proper vocabulary but could not do so.
The second question was: Which part of the course helped you to overcome the difficulty? Which part of the course meant a cornerstone or landmark for you? 19 of 22 students answered that the solution to overcome the difficulty was to review other students` essays. The group writing activity also had a supporting role in that. Three of the students were of the opinion that the essay-on-tape activity was the most helpful for them to overcome their difficulties.
Essay-on-tape was one of the tasks of the Writing and Research Skills Course that students had to carry out. They were given three topics to select from and then they had to write and record an essay on tape about it. The total score of this task was ten points. This activity was effective because the students could hear their own voices and thus discover and correct stylistic, syntactic, and pronunciation mistakes, as a way of revision.
The third question was: Which part of the course do you think should have been given more focus? According to the answers given to this question, 17 of 22 students had the opinion, that more essay correction and practicing of the writing rules (topic sentences, paragraph organization, punctuation) could have been given more emphasis thus helping them to develop skills in academic essay writing. Five students commented that the word-selection and the use of well-chosen words could have been given more focus.
The fourth question was: Do you still have difficulties in writing an essay? If yes, what is it? 19 students said that they still had difficulties in essay writing. 14 of them claimed that they knew the rules in theory, but could not apply them in practice. Three students had almost the same problem: they could not write an introduction and a conclusion. Two students replied that they could not use appropriate vocabulary. Only three students reported that they had no further difficulties in essay writing after having completed the Writing and Research Skills or Formal Writing Courses.
Discussion:
I divided the answers into four categories according to the topics in which they appeared.
* introduction and conclusion
* vocabulary
* reviewing essays and group writing
* practice (topic sentences, punctuation, paragraph organization)
I) Introduction and conclusion:
18 of 22 students claimed that they could not write an introduction and a conclusion. When writing an essay, they should write the introduction and conclusion only after having finished the main text in order to write exquisite essays. Re-reading the main text can help them to write excellent sentences for the introduction and the conclusion.
II) Vocabulary:
Four students claimed that they were confronted by difficulties when they had to write an essay, and could not use proper vocabulary. Before starting to write the essay, they should collect words and phrases which are the most closely related to the topic and thus cannot be ignored. It is really difficult to put well-chosen words into the text, but there are some phrases and expressions that fit in most essays that have the same topic.
III) Essay correction and group writing:
``One advantage of learning in a classroom ... is that a group of people can gather much more information, and generally better information, much faster than one person can gather it.`` (Hubbard, 1988 p. 85.) Reading and correcting other students` essays is one way to show what and how students must not write in an essay. Besides looking at their own mistakes they could listen to each other’s opinions as well and get to know new information. That is why group writing activities are very useful; the students were really enthusiastic about it. By reading the essays, students could discover more and more expressions and phrases, which can be beneficial for them in their further studies later on. Studying and examining different points of view in different essays is a kind of inspiration; students realize that they can write better essays.
IV) Practice:
When I examined the table that I prepared about students` opinions about the Writing and Research Skills Course, the most frequent phrase they used was the lack of practice. Learning the writing techniques should be accompanied by constant practicing, in order to keep the balance of theory and practice. Theoretical rules are easy to memorize if they are accompanied by practicing, but learning rules in theory only, is like learning something by heart and forgetting it in a short time.
Conclusion:
Only three of the students that I interviewed, claimed that they did not have difficulties in essay writing any more after having finished the Writing and Research Skills Course. The other 19 students still had hardship either in writing the topic sentences or in paragraph organization.
„ If writing were only a skill, we could expect to master it in a short time, once and for all. Like typing and driving a car, we would expect to spend a few months at it before mastering it, and we would expect to maintain our skill with occasional practice.
But many people who write see writing as a great deal more than just a skill. For one thing, it offers many people individual rewards that are suited to them and not available any other way. In proportion to these rewards, it is harder to learn, and in fact requires an approach different from those we would employ to learn skills.” (Francis, 1988 p. 74)
The results of the survey and this citation also show that writing is not simply a skill that can be learnt or taught, it is a kind of innate talent possessed more or less. Though even people possessing this gift to a smaller extent can be successful in writing. Born with less writing skills but employing writing often because of work is a great help in developing this skill. It means that practicing or doing something regularly is a kind of self-education.
In the Writing and Research Skills Course students were happy about essay-correction and group writing activities. This fact shows that learning something visually and auditively results more success in a shorter time, than memorizing something and using it no more. The more senses are involved in learning, the deeper the learning will be.
The Writing and Research Skills Course is one of the most essential courses of English Department of JPU, because it is a pre-requisite of students` further studies. Other courses of English Department of JPU require a lot of essay writing so students need to possess good academic writing skills by the time they apply for these courses. By showing the direction of how to write excellent essays and how to acquire academic writing skills, the Writing and Research Course is the basis of other courses of English Department of JPU. The aim of the course is to provide students with skills and information, which they can imply later. In this paper I will point at the parts of this course that influenced students` writing skills in a positive or negative way.
Methods:
To highlight the most important parts of the course I had to make an opinion survey in order to collect data. In the second and third week of April 1997 I looked for 22 students who already completed the Writing and Research Skills Course or as it was called earlier: Formal Writing Course. The aim of both courses was to help students acquire the skills of academic writing. Two of the 22 students were first year students, 12 of them were second year students and eight of them were third year students. So I asked 22 English majors of JPU about their essay writing attitudes. They were each given a questionnaire containing four questions and they had ten minutes to answer the following four questions briefly:
1) What was the most difficult for you when writing an essay? (at the beginning of the
Writing and Research Skills Course or the Formal Writing Course)
2) Which part of the course helped you to overcome this difficulty? Which part of the
course meant a cornerstone or landmark for you?
3) Which part of the course do you think should have been given more focus?
4) Do you still have difficulty when writing an essay? If yes, what is it?
After getting back the filled-out questionnaires, I prepared a table about the questions and answers in order to analyze and evaluate them. Finally, I grouped the answers into categories, summarized students` opinion, and drew a conclusion.
Results:
After analyzing the collected data I noticed they reflected very variable results. I evaluated the answers related to each question and divided students` opinion into categories. I looked at the answers given to the first question first and summarized them, then examined the answers for the other three questions, too.
The first question was: What was the most difficult for you at the beginning of the course when writing an essay? Only two kinds of responses were given to the first question. 18 of the 22 students claimed that they had hardship in organizing the introduction and the conclusion. They did not know how to start and finish the essay. Four students were confronted by difficulties when they wanted to use proper vocabulary but could not do so.
The second question was: Which part of the course helped you to overcome the difficulty? Which part of the course meant a cornerstone or landmark for you? 19 of 22 students answered that the solution to overcome the difficulty was to review other students` essays. The group writing activity also had a supporting role in that. Three of the students were of the opinion that the essay-on-tape activity was the most helpful for them to overcome their difficulties.
Essay-on-tape was one of the tasks of the Writing and Research Skills Course that students had to carry out. They were given three topics to select from and then they had to write and record an essay on tape about it. The total score of this task was ten points. This activity was effective because the students could hear their own voices and thus discover and correct stylistic, syntactic, and pronunciation mistakes, as a way of revision.
The third question was: Which part of the course do you think should have been given more focus? According to the answers given to this question, 17 of 22 students had the opinion, that more essay correction and practicing of the writing rules (topic sentences, paragraph organization, punctuation) could have been given more emphasis thus helping them to develop skills in academic essay writing. Five students commented that the word-selection and the use of well-chosen words could have been given more focus.
The fourth question was: Do you still have difficulties in writing an essay? If yes, what is it? 19 students said that they still had difficulties in essay writing. 14 of them claimed that they knew the rules in theory, but could not apply them in practice. Three students had almost the same problem: they could not write an introduction and a conclusion. Two students replied that they could not use appropriate vocabulary. Only three students reported that they had no further difficulties in essay writing after having completed the Writing and Research Skills or Formal Writing Courses.
Discussion:
I divided the answers into four categories according to the topics in which they appeared.
* introduction and conclusion
* vocabulary
* reviewing essays and group writing
* practice (topic sentences, punctuation, paragraph organization)
I) Introduction and conclusion:
18 of 22 students claimed that they could not write an introduction and a conclusion. When writing an essay, they should write the introduction and conclusion only after having finished the main text in order to write exquisite essays. Re-reading the main text can help them to write excellent sentences for the introduction and the conclusion.
II) Vocabulary:
Four students claimed that they were confronted by difficulties when they had to write an essay, and could not use proper vocabulary. Before starting to write the essay, they should collect words and phrases which are the most closely related to the topic and thus cannot be ignored. It is really difficult to put well-chosen words into the text, but there are some phrases and expressions that fit in most essays that have the same topic.
III) Essay correction and group writing:
``One advantage of learning in a classroom ... is that a group of people can gather much more information, and generally better information, much faster than one person can gather it.`` (Hubbard, 1988 p. 85.) Reading and correcting other students` essays is one way to show what and how students must not write in an essay. Besides looking at their own mistakes they could listen to each other’s opinions as well and get to know new information. That is why group writing activities are very useful; the students were really enthusiastic about it. By reading the essays, students could discover more and more expressions and phrases, which can be beneficial for them in their further studies later on. Studying and examining different points of view in different essays is a kind of inspiration; students realize that they can write better essays.
IV) Practice:
When I examined the table that I prepared about students` opinions about the Writing and Research Skills Course, the most frequent phrase they used was the lack of practice. Learning the writing techniques should be accompanied by constant practicing, in order to keep the balance of theory and practice. Theoretical rules are easy to memorize if they are accompanied by practicing, but learning rules in theory only, is like learning something by heart and forgetting it in a short time.
Conclusion:
Only three of the students that I interviewed, claimed that they did not have difficulties in essay writing any more after having finished the Writing and Research Skills Course. The other 19 students still had hardship either in writing the topic sentences or in paragraph organization.
„ If writing were only a skill, we could expect to master it in a short time, once and for all. Like typing and driving a car, we would expect to spend a few months at it before mastering it, and we would expect to maintain our skill with occasional practice.
But many people who write see writing as a great deal more than just a skill. For one thing, it offers many people individual rewards that are suited to them and not available any other way. In proportion to these rewards, it is harder to learn, and in fact requires an approach different from those we would employ to learn skills.” (Francis, 1988 p. 74)
The results of the survey and this citation also show that writing is not simply a skill that can be learnt or taught, it is a kind of innate talent possessed more or less. Though even people possessing this gift to a smaller extent can be successful in writing. Born with less writing skills but employing writing often because of work is a great help in developing this skill. It means that practicing or doing something regularly is a kind of self-education.
In the Writing and Research Skills Course students were happy about essay-correction and group writing activities. This fact shows that learning something visually and auditively results more success in a shorter time, than memorizing something and using it no more. The more senses are involved in learning, the deeper the learning will be.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)