Research: Pre-writing, Revision and Quality of Timed Essays

Question: How do pre-writing and revision affect scores of timed essays?

Source: Worden, D. L. (2009). Finding process in product: Prewriting and revision in timed essay responses. Assessing Writing, 14(3), 157–177.

Answer: Examines the occurrence of prewriting and revision in 890 timed essays of university students, and the impact of prewriting and revision on student scores. Finds that prewriting and revision do occur in timed essay responses. Also finds that prewriting is associated with higher scores, while revision is associated with lower scores.

Comment: I’d be interested in how the researchers were able to determine that pre-writing and revision occurred in these timed writing samples. I’m not sure what to think about the conclusion that pre-writing affected writing quality positively, but that revision affected writing quality negatively. RayS.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” Richard Beach et al. Research in the Teaching of English (November 2010), Internet. Note: The editors of RTE said that so much research was available they did not want to burden the paper edition of the journal with it, so they relegated their annotated reports on research to the Internet.