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Writing from Academic Sources. Critiquing Texts in Sociology: A Longitudinal Study. Project 9 (Study 2, Phase 2). Final Report.

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Bibliographic Details
Title: Writing from Academic Sources. Critiquing Texts in Sociology: A Longitudinal Study. Project 9 (Study 2, Phase 2). Final Report.
Language: English
Authors: Mathison, Maureen A., Flower, Linda, National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy, Berkeley, CA.
Peer Reviewed: N
Page Count: 61
Publication Date: 1993
Sponsoring Agency: Office of Educational Research and Improvement (ED), Washington, DC.
Document Type: Reports - Research
Descriptors: Academic Discourse, Classroom Environment, Content Area Writing, Criticism, Higher Education, Longitudinal Studies, Student Attitudes, Student Evaluation, Student Reaction, Text Structure, Writing Evaluation, Writing Research
Abstract: This report describes the second phase of a study of the transformations students make in their written texts as they write from sources in a given discipline. Phase 1 of the study examined how students performed the task of writing a critique of a scholarly article in sociology and how their efforts were evaluated by professors in the discipline. Phase 2 examined changes in students' knowledge of critique from one year to the next. Six of the 32 students involved in the first phase of the study agreed to participate in the second phase. Subjects reread the scholarly article they had read a year earlier in the first phase and constructed a second, newly written critique. As in the first phase, the configuration of topics and comments in each student's critique was mapped out to depict the flow of the total discourse. Results indicated that all but one of the students wrote critiques that focused on topics that differed from those they selected the previous year; for example, three students who originally disagreed with the source article were more supportive of it, and two of the students who had agreed with the content of the article the previous year disagreed. Overall, the students were still including proportionally more suspended judgment in their critiques than either positive or negative evaluative commentary. Analysis of interviews with the students showed that classroom environment and new knowledge contributed to some of the changes in students' texts. (Nine figures and four tables of data are included; the text template and a student critique are attached. Contains 64 references.) (RS)
Entry Date: 1994
Accession Number: ED366951
Database: ERIC
Description
Abstract:This report describes the second phase of a study of the transformations students make in their written texts as they write from sources in a given discipline. Phase 1 of the study examined how students performed the task of writing a critique of a scholarly article in sociology and how their efforts were evaluated by professors in the discipline. Phase 2 examined changes in students' knowledge of critique from one year to the next. Six of the 32 students involved in the first phase of the study agreed to participate in the second phase. Subjects reread the scholarly article they had read a year earlier in the first phase and constructed a second, newly written critique. As in the first phase, the configuration of topics and comments in each student's critique was mapped out to depict the flow of the total discourse. Results indicated that all but one of the students wrote critiques that focused on topics that differed from those they selected the previous year; for example, three students who originally disagreed with the source article were more supportive of it, and two of the students who had agreed with the content of the article the previous year disagreed. Overall, the students were still including proportionally more suspended judgment in their critiques than either positive or negative evaluative commentary. Analysis of interviews with the students showed that classroom environment and new knowledge contributed to some of the changes in students' texts. (Nine figures and four tables of data are included; the text template and a student critique are attached. Contains 64 references.) (RS)