Study of My Writing (2023-2024)

In this study, the author begins by citing previous research by Donald Murray on the “logic of revision” in the writing process. Next, she selects three different pieces of writing as a sample and decides to collect data from each piece in order to compare the number of comments in feedback received by the instructor, number of paragraphs in each piece, and number of places where she revised. She focuses on each piece individually, creating a series of comparative graphs and interpretation to capture her revision process. Finally, the discussion section of this study identifies what the author would do to continue to study her own writing as well as priorities for teaching students about revision in her own future classroom.https://digitalcommons.cortland.edu/rhetdragonscriticaleval/1005/thumbnail.jp

Generating Weather Forecast Texts with Case Based Reasoning

Several techniques have been used to generate weather forecast texts. In this paper, case based reasoning (CBR) is proposed for weather forecast text generation because similar weather conditions occur over time and should have similar forecast texts. CBR-METEO, a system for generating weather forecast texts was developed using a generic framework (jCOLIBRI) which provides modules for the standard components of the CBR architecture. The advantage in a CBR approach is that systems can be built in minimal time with far less human effort after initial consultation with experts. The approach depends heavily on the goodness of the retrieval and revision components of the CBR process. We evaluated CBRMETEO with NIST, an automated metric which has been shown to correlate well with human judgements for this domain. The system shows comparable performance with other NLG systems that perform the same task.Comment: 6 page

Learning from feedback: How students read, interpret and use teacher written feedback in the composition classroom

Much research on teacher written feedback has focused on the teacher\u27s role in giving the written commentary. What these studies fail to provide is a description of if and how students are reading, interpreting and using this feedback in their revisions. Some research has explored how students feel about the feedback they receive, but few studies have investigated the interplay between teacher and student in the actual process of feedback and revision. Those studies that have looked at feedback and revision in the classroom context are few in both first and second language writing research. Further, these few studies fall short of making explicit connections between student revision and student learning. This dissertation argues that the key to describing how and why students revise is determining the level of understanding with which students read and interpret teacher comments. This level of understanding is then also essential when considering what students have learned versus what they have just copied from the teacher. I conducted a qualitative case study of four first-year writing students and two writing instructors at a two-year college with a diverse population of students. Two of my participants were non-traditional students, one was a non-native speaker of English and one was a \u27traditional\u27 student. This diversity gave the study a rich look at both what about teacher feedback promotes student learning, and what may confuse students. Using Bloom\u27s Revised Taxonomy, I described the different levels of cognitive processes students experienced as they read the feedback and revised. The taxonomy helped me differentiate between students\u27 automated revisions and students\u27 metacognitive awareness of the revision strategies they employed. Also, these cases evidenced the interplay of teacher appropriation and student agency in the process of feedback interpretation and revision. These findings suggest that teachers may need to explicitly train students to read feedback, and may need to open up new avenues for feedback negotiation in the writing classroom

Cognitive Factors Contributing to Chinese EFL Learners’ L2 Writing Performance in Timed Essay Writing

This study investigated cognitive factors that might influence Chinese EFL learners’ argumentative essay writing in English. The factors that were explored included English (L2) language proficiency, Chinese (L1) writing ability, genre knowledge, use of writing strategies, and working memory capacity in L1 and L2. Data were collected from 136 university students who received a battery of tests in two sessions. The tests consisted of timed essay writing tasks in L1 and L2, post-writing questionnaires for genre knowledge and use of strategies in the writing process, a timed grammaticality judgment task for L2 grammar knowledge, a receptive vocabulary test and a controlled-production vocabulary test for L2 vocabulary knowledge, and working memory span tasks in L1 and L2. Quantitative analyses using correlations, paired-samples t-test, analysis of variance and multiple regression revealed that L2 language proficiency is the most important predictor of L2 writing, followed by genre knowledge and L2 writing strategies. L1 writing ability and working memory capacity have slight impact as explanatory variables for L2 writing performance in the timed essay writing task

The effect(s) of word processing software on the equality of the composing process, product, and attitudes of adult academic ESL (English as a second language) writers

The focus of this study was on the effect of word processing on the quality of the composing process, product, and attitudes of adult academic ESL writers. Twenty adult ESL students, comprising an ‘intact’ EAP (English for Academic Purposes) group, completed a number of written assignments as part of their ESL unit, using either word processing or conventional ‘pen and paper’ composition methods. Their handwritten and word processed work was analysed and compared through the use of an holistic/analytic scale of writing quality. In addition to this analysis of the ‘finished product’, texts were analysed in terms of the frequency, nature and extent of revisions made within the composition process. Statistical analysis of the writing quality and revision data – as well as audio-taped verbal protocols from selected subjects, interviews, and observational notes, were used to determine the effect (s) of word processing on the composing process, product and attitudes of these subjects. The data indicate that word processing does improve writing quality – and that it also influences revising behaviours and subject attitudes towards writing. There does not appear, for these subjects, to have been any significant correlation between revision and writing quality