Revision with the Word Processor

Annotated Research

Question: What actions do writers with word processors use when revising?

Answer: “The main revision operation was substitution followed by addition and deletion.” EP Gaunder. 1988. P. 213.

Comment: I’ve always defined revision with a word processor as addition, deletion  and substitution. But not necessarily in that order. Or any order. RayS.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” Ed. JD Marshall and RK Durst. Research in the Teaching of English (May 1989), 208-222.

Writers of Fiction and Nonfiction

Annotated Research

Question: How do fiction writers differ from nonfiction writers?

Answer: “For a professional writer, fiction writing required imagistic as well as verbal thinking, while nonfiction writing required mainly verbal thinking.” KA Carlton. 1987. P. 213.

Comment: Makes sense. Fiction requires images through words. Nonfiction requires mainly ideas through words. RayS.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” Ed. JD Marshall and RK Durst. Research in the Teaching of English (May 1989), 208-222.

Revision

Annotated Research

Question: Why do writers make changes during revision?

Answer: “Writers made changes primarily for clarity, secondly for the reader, and thirdly for style.”” RE Betza. 1988. P. 213.

Comment: I’m not sure what changes “for the reader” means. For reader comfort? Size of paragraphs? RayS.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” Ed. JD Marshall and RK Durst. Research in the Teaching of English (May 1989), 208-222.

Revision

Annotated Research

Question: Does time allowed for revision affect the quality of student writing?

Answer: “Results suggest that time for revision may result in more powerful demonstrations of students’ writing ability.”SA Bernhardt. 1988. P. 213.

Comment: “Results suggest….” If true, the 25-minute  writing sample for the SAT does not provide it. RayS.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” Ed. JD Marshall and RK Durst. Research in the Teaching of English (May 1989), 208-222.

Word Processing

Annotated Research

Question: Does the use of a word processor in writing assignments improve the quality of writing?

Answer: “ Use of word processor improved quantity but not quality of student writing.” MR Zurn. 1987. P. 213.

Comment: Much of the research I have read seems to repeat this finding. RayS.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” Ed. JD Marshall and RK Durst. Research in the Teaching of English (May 1989), 208-222.

Writing Apprehension

Annotated Research

Question: Does the length of writing assignments reduce writing apprehension?

 Answer: “Among seventh graders, short writing assignments reduced writing apprehension.” JF Kaywell. 1988. P. 211.

Comment: Might be a way to begin writing instruction. RayS.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” Ed. JD Marshall and RK Durst. Research in the Teaching of English (May 1989), 208-222.

A Note on Grammar to Improve Writing

"Rewriting…is a constant attempt on my part to make the finished version smooth, to make it seem effortless." James Thurber in Cowley, ed., Writers at Work.

Yesterday’s blog reported on yet another research study on teaching grammar to improve writing. It found that those who had been subjected to a consistent course in grammar improved on grammar tests, but not in quality of writing.

 Of course. Writing involves paragraphs, unity, coherence, organization of whole compositions. Grammar deals with the sentence and is noticeable only when the students violate certain obvious conventions in sentence structure, punctuation and usage.

Grammar is only one-fifth of any rating scale, which could include organization, unity, coherence, style and, lastly, grammar. Judging composition means judging whole documents. Only one-fifth of a composition rating involves grammar, again, noticeable when it involves obvious mistakes.

In my judgment, grammar improves the composition as a whole through polishing. In most rating systems of composition, the raters are not looking for polish. The compositions are timed and, as in the 25-minute SAT writing sample, offer very little time for pre-writing or for attention to polish unless the polish is there when the students write it right the first time.

So let’s stop trying to expect a knowledge of grammar to “improve” writing, in which attention to grammar is only one-fifth of the judgment, notable when there are mistakes. Rating compositions deals with the whole composition. Let’s see work with grammar for what it contributes to writing, smoothing, polish of the finished composition  during editing. Most rating systems of composition do not include polishing the prose and raters do not look for it. RayS.

Grammar

Annotated Research

Question: Does instruction in grammar improve writing?

Answer: “Students who were taught systematic grammar scored better on grammar tests but did not score better on essays.” JJ Heiman. 1988. P. 211.

Comment: Teachers can rather easily replicate this research. Maybe they should. RayS.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” Ed. JD Marshall and RK Durst. Research in the Teaching of English (May 1989), 208-222.

Writing Process and Revision

Annotated Research

Question: Does teaching the writing process increase the number of fourth-graders’ revisions in their writing?

Answer: “Found differences in total number of revisions students made, but not in writing quality.” PJ Austin, 1987. P. 209.

Comment: Seems to suggest that just because students revise more frequently, the quality of writing does not necessarily also increase. RayS.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” Ed. JD Marshall and RK Durst. Research in the Teaching of English (May 1989), 208-222.

Teacher-Student Writing Conferences

Annotated Research

Question: Is there equal give-and-take in teacher-student writing conferences?

Answer: “Two-way communication occurred only about 40% of the time, as teachers often mistakenly adopted the position of experts over all knowledge domains, cutting off an exchange of information.” DJ McLaughlin. 1988. P. 209.

Comment: I think 40% is higher than I expected. RayS.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” Ed. JD Marshall and RK Durst. Research in the Teaching of English (May 1989), 208-222.

Planning and Writing

Research

Question: Who plans better? Those who use pencil and paper or those who use a word processor?

Assumption: “Most theories of writing have acknowledged the importance of planning and planning continues to be of interest to composition researchers. One reason for this interest may be that better writers plan more.” P. 181.

Answer: “When writers were using word processing alone, there was significantly less planning; significantly less planning before beginning to write; significantly less conceptual or high-level planning….” P. 181.

Comment: When composing memos, I used the word processor because the memos did not require much planning. When composing articles, books, or anything that required careful thought, I began with paper and pencil. RayS.

Title: “How the Writing Medium Shapes the Writing Process: Effects of Word Processing on Planning.” C Haas. Research in the Teaching of English (May 1989), 181-207.

Writing Assignments

Research

Question: Do students understand what is expected of them in writing assignments?

Answer: Good question. Unfortunately the article raises more questions than it answers—according to its author.

Comment: However, I include it in this blog because it is a good question and my readers might want to explore with their students what is expected in completing the assignment. RayS.

Title: “Models of Competence: Responses to a Scenario Writing Assignment.” M Scharton. Research in the Teaching of English (May 1989), 163-180.

Student Ownership of Writing

Research

Question: Do students who take ownership of writing assignments become more engaged in writing?

Answer: You would think so. But this research says taking ownership of writing assignments is more complicated than it would seem: “Clearly, the relationship between opportunities for students to take ownership of their written work and their subsequent engagement with that work is not as simple and straightforward as some have suggested.” P. 159.

Comment: In other words, instructional support in the areas of writing process or content is necessary for student ownership to occur. RayS.

 Title: “The Effects of Ownership Opportunities and Instructional Support on High School Students’ Writing Task Engagement.” CL Spaulding. Research in the Teaching of English (May 1989), 139-162.

Positions on School Reform VI

Note: A review of published positions on school reform: a speech from Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan; Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System; Frederick Hess’s The Same Thing Over and Over; Charles Payne’s So Much Reform, So Little Change; Anthony Byrk ad others’ Organizing School for Improvement; and Valerie Kinloch’s Harlem On Our Minds. I will review each position in several consecutive blogs. RayS.

 Quote: “[Valerie Kinloch] is an associate professor of education at Ohio State University and a recipient of the 2010 Scholars of Color Early Career Award from the American Educational Research Association.”

Quote: “…speak to the ways in which I define literacy, which has moved from a quite narrow to a much more expansive conception: as acts of, practices in, and activities around reading, writing, and speaking…and a variety of media.” From: Harlem On Our Minds.

Comment: Well, there you have six perspectives on how to improve education. Much of it is criticism. Some of it consists of  theories for suggested improvement. Rarely do these critics discuss the social problems with which teachers must deal in every aspect and level of American society. Are schools truly failing? Or do they exist in conditions that almost guarantee failure? I can hear the critics now saying, “Never mind that. You as a teacher must make children successful regardless of the conditions under which they and their teachers work.” A daunting task. RayS.

Title: “School Reform in the United States: Frames and Representations.” Books and Statements reviewed by Patrick Shannon. Reading Research Quarterly (January/February/ March 2012), 109-118.

Positions on School Reform V

Note: A review of published positions on school reform: a speech from Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan; Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System; Frederick Hess’s The Same Thing Over and Over; Charles Payne’s So Much Reform, So Little Change; Anthony Byrk ad others’ Organizing School for Improvement; and Valerie Kinloch’s Harlem On Our Minds. I will review each position in several consecutive blogs. RayS.

Quote: “Anthony Bryk is currently the president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.”

Quote: “We strive to understand the internal workings and external conditions that distinguish improving elementary schools from those that fail to do so. In so doing, we aim to establish a comprehensive, empirically grounded theory of practice—in this instance, the practice of organizing schools for improvement—that teachers, parents, principals, superintendents, and civic leaders can draw on as they work to improve children’s learning in thousands of other schools all across this land.”

Quote: Improving student achievement uses quality professional development as a key instrument for change. Maximum leverage is achieved when these opportunities for teacher learning occur within a supportive professional work environment where teaching is grounded within a common, coherent, and aligned instructional system. Finally, undergirding all of this is a solid base of parent and community ties with the school and its professional staff.”

Quote: “We know that children are more engaged in schooling when they feel in control of their own learning, are actively participating in the learning process, are interested in the topic being studied, and are able to respond to the challenge before them.” From: Organizing School for Improvement.

Comment: The assumption that seems to underlie all of this criticism is that teachers are dummies who need to be taught how to do their jobs. Having worked as a supervisor in a K-12 school district, I can confidently say that this is not true. Build on the strengths of the teachers and what they are doing right and successfully. Stop labeling them as stars and failures. They are human beings doing professional work in conditions that work against them. Many, if not most, do that job well. Start there. But please don’t take away the sharing and togetherness  by using merit pay. RayS.

Title: “School Reform in the United States: Frames and Representations.” Books and Statements reviewed by Patrick Shannon. Reading Research Quarterly (January/February/ March 2012), 109-118.

Positions on School Reform IV

Note: A review of published positions on school reform: a speech from Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan; Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System; Frederick Hess’s The Same Thing Over and Over; Charles Payne’s So Much Reform, So Little Change; Anthony Byrk ad others’ Organizing School for Improvement; and Valerie Kinloch’s Harlem On Our Minds. I will review each position in several consecutive blogs. RayS.

Quote: “Charles Payne is the Frank P. Hixon professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago and an affiliate of its Urban Education Institute. Although he admires much about American schools, he focuses his consideration of school reform within the lowest tier of urban high schools. He does not mince words about the current state of that subject.”

Quote: “We have said that the problems of urban schools are multidimensional, intertwined, irrational, and overdetermined. The worst schools suffer from deeply rooted cultures of failure and distrust, are politically conflicted, personality driven, and racially tense; have difficulty learning from their own experience or that of others; have difficulty communicating internally; have difficulty following through even when they achieve consensus about what to do; tend to retreat from success even when it is within reach; have shallow pools of relevant professional skills, weak professional cultures, unstable staffs, and exist in a larger institutional environment that is itself unstable and unhelpful, at best and ordinarily, dysfunctional and corrupt.” From: So Much Reform, So Little Change.

Comment: I think it helps to state clearly the problems. However, what we need is resolution of those problems. It’s awfully easy to criticize and to do it eloquently. RayS.

Title: “School Reform in the United States: Frames and Representations.” Books and Statements reviewed by Patrick Shannon. Reading Research Quarterly (January/February/ March 2012), 109-118.

Positions on School Reform III

Note: A review of published positions on school reform: a speech from Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan; Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System; Frederick Hess’s The Same Thing Over and Over; Charles Payne’s So Much Reform, So Little Change; Anthony Byrk ad others’ Organizing School for Improvement; and Valerie Kinloch’s Harlem On Our Minds. I will review each position in several consecutive blogs. RayS.

Quote: “Frederick Hess is a resident scholar and the director of education policy initiatives at the American Enterprise Institute, the executive editor of the conservative magazine Education Next, and the Straight Up columnist for Education Week.”

Quote: Frederick Hess:” I generally favor structured reforms such as merit pay, school vouchers, charter schooling, alternative teacher licensure, and educational accountability. I endorse these ideas not because there is anything magical about the measures or because they are ‘proven’ to work, but because it makes good sense to pay good employees more than mediocre ones, to allow a variety of schools to serve children, to tap a larger pool of instructional talent, and to emphasize results rather than paperwork.” From: The Same Thing Over and Over.

Comment: Similar to Duncan’s ideas. Common sense rather than solid evidence that these ideas work. Plenty of evidence that charter schools do not necessarily work or vouchers or merit pay. However, theories need to be tried. RayS.

Title: “School Reform in the United States: Frames and Representations.” Books and Statements reviewed by Patrick Shannon. Reading Research Quarterly (January/February/ March 2012), 109-118.

Positions on School Reform II

Note: A review of published positions on school reform: a speech from Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan; Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System; Frederick Hess’s The Same Thing Over and Over; Charles Payne’s So Much Reform, So Little Change; Anthony Byrk ad others’ Organizing School for Improvement; and Valerie Kinloch’s Harlem On Our Minds. I will review each position in several consecutive blogs. RayS.

Quote: Diane Ravitch:

“NCLB was a punitive law based on erroneous assumptions about how to improve schools. It assumed that reporting test scores to the public would be an effective lever for school reform. It assumed that changes in governance would lead to school improvement. It assumed that shaming schools that were unable to lift test scores every year—and the people who work in them—would lead to higher scores. It assumed that low scores are caused by lazy teachers and lazy principals, who need to be threatened with the loss of their jobs. Perhaps most naively, it assumed that higher test scores on standardized tests of basic skills are synonymous with good education. Its assumptions were wrong.” P. 110. From: The Death and Life of the Great American School System.

Comment: The No Child Left Behind law was designed to punish as a way of motivating teachers and principals to improve their performance and, therefore, to improve their students’ performance. As we in education learned long ago, punishment is not an effective motivator. RayS.

Title: “School Reform in the United States: Frames and Representations.” Books and Statements reviewed by Patrick Shannon. Reading Research Quarterly (January/February/ March 2012), 109-118.

Positions on School Reform I

Research

Note: A review of published positions on school reform: a speech from Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan; Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System; Frederick Hess’s The Same Thing Over and Over; Charles Payne’s So Much Reform, So Little Change; Anthony Byrk ad others’ Organizing School for Improvement; and Valerie Kinloch’s Harlem On Our Minds. I will review each position in several consecutive blogs. RayS.

 Quote: Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education: “At Princeton University, Duncan (2011) represented the need for public education reform as ‘real and desperately urgent.’ Seeking to position the entire audience as his allies, Duncan drew three frames around his remarks, ‘Whether you look at it as a civil rights issue, as an economic imperative, or as a matter of national security, we have to get better faster than ever before at education;.’…. He placed the agrarian calendar, collective bargaining, and small class sizes outside these boundaries because they hinder desired changes, and he promoted healthy competition, ‘game changer’ technology, and common standards and assessments because they are ‘a radical investment, not in the status quo but in transformation.’ The Federal government’s Race to the Top competition provides government funding as an incentive for state governments to choose that transformation.” P. 109.

Comment: “Healthy competition” in education is the Secretary’s suggestion for reform.  Keep reading in the next several blogs for other experts’ views of reform in education. RayS.

 Title: “School Reform in the United States: Frames and Representations.” Books and Statements reviewed by Patrick Shannon. Reading Research Quarterly (January/February/ March 2012), 109-118.

Academic Language

Research

Note: There is an increasing interest in academic language, not only with students’ whose native language is not English (vs. conversational skills) but also with students whose native language is English. Academic language requires attention to its complexity. RayS.

Question: How define academic language?

Answer/Quote: Snow (2010) noted: “There is no exact boundary when defining academic language; it falls toward one end of a continuum (defined by formality of tone, complexity of content, and degree of impersonality of stance), with informal, casual, conversational language at the other extreme).” P. 450.

Question: What are some questions that cause students to think about the nature of academic vocabulary?

Academic language domain

Interpersonal stance: .Does the way this is written tell us anything about who the author is or what he or she believed? Why or why not?

Information Load: .How many pieces or chunks of information are in this sentence?

.Why is there so much information packed into this paragraph?

Organization of Information: .What clue words and pieces of information did the author give us so we can follow where this paragraph is going?

.Are there some clue words that tell us about relationships? For example, can we tell if there are smaller ideas/things that are part of bigger or overarching ideas/things?

Lexical Choices: .Do we see some phrases that we don’t often use when we speak? Why are they here? Are there many different words in this passage? Why do you think that is necessary? Some of these words are challenging—what do they tell us that easier words might not be able to tell us?

Representational Congruence: .Do you see any words that represent a process or something happening? Why would the author use just one word to say that and not explain the whole process?

.It doesn’t look like we can tell who was doing the action in this sentence (e.g., ‘the telephone was invented’); why would that be the case?

Comment: The authors encourage teachers to model with their students how they would answer these questions. RayS.

Title: “Words as Tools: Learning Academic Vocabulary as Language Acquisition.” W Nagy and D Townsend. Reading Research Quarterly (January/February/March 2012), 91-108.

Teachers' Comments on Writing

Question: Do students understand teachers’ comments on their writing?

Answer: “Finds that the teachers’ comments were fully understood only about half the time. Inclusion of a reason or explicit instructions helped students understand the comments.”

Comment: Quite a few research studies indicate that students do not understand teacher’s comments on their writing. RayS.

Source: Taylor, S.S. (2011). “I really don’t know what he meant by that”: How well do engineering students

understand teachers’ comments on their writing? Technical Communication Quarterly,
20(2), 139–166.

 Title:  “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” Richard Beach, et al. Research in the Teaching of English (November 2011), Internet. http://www.ncte.org/journals/rte/issues/v46-2.