The purpose of the experimental study was to determine whether the university student in an experimental group which does teacher-guided revision and rewriting of an essay achieves greater skill in later composition performance than the student in a control group which corrects an essay's mechanical and grammatical errors with the aid of a handbook and does not revise nor rewrite.This research was designed to answer the following questions:1. To what extent will students who are taught to revise and rewrite become editors?2. To what extent will students who are taught to revise and rewrite become accurate proofreaders?3. To what extent will students who are taught to revise and rewrite improve their composition skills in both the areas of editing and proofreading?The subjects of this research experiment were students enrolled in freshman composition at a state university. The twenty-six students in the control group and the twenty-five students in the experimental group were found to be comparable in educational background, age, race, sex, class standing, future career choices, and English ability.The control and experimental groups were taught alike with the exception of the lessons dealing with revision and rewriting. During these lessons members of the experimental group did teacher-guided revision of their corrected themes and were taught to makerevision a process of editing rather than just proofreading. In contrast, members of the. control group were asked to make an out-of-class correction sheet of only the mechanical and grammatical errors in each of their themes; they were not asked to revise themes 1, 3, 5, and 7, but rather wrote themes 2, 4, a process of proofreading. Both groups discussed revision, even though only the experimental group did an actual revision.In order to measure the results of this experiment, compositions written by the experimental and control classes at the beginning and end of the experiment were analyzed. The compositions were coded, mixed, and scored by four evaluators using an eight-category essay evaluation form and working independently of each other.After individual gains were tabulated for each student, the mean of each groups' gains was found for each of the three sections of the essay evaluation form: proofreading, editing, and total composition. The t-test was then applied to the three sets of means to determine the significance of the difference between them. It was found that there was no significant difference. However, since both groups had made gains between their beginning and end-of-term essays, the t-test for the hypothesized value of a single mean was then applied to the three sets of means. The gains made by both groups in each of the areas were significant at the .001 level.The main conclusion of this study was that there is no assurance that a student who writes four themes and revises and rewrites each into a new theme will improve his composition6, and 8 on four new topics. They were taught to make revision skills any more than one who writes eight themes on eight different topics and makes a correction sheet for each -- at least if each group is taught to revise and rewrite. Another conclusion of the study was that editing skills evidently are learned in some way other than through revising and rewriting.The conclusions implied that after teaching the steps necessary for revision, a teacher can assign an out-of-class correction sheet rather than have students do a complete revision in class. Another implication was that if students discuss revision techniques, and then either make a correction sheet or do a complete revision, rewriting is not necessary. It seemed possible that further research might show that if students discuss revision techniques and perceive their problems, they may not need to make a correction sheet or an actual revision. If comprehension of revision is achieved, the actual writing out of what they have comprehended may be irrelevant.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/176595 |
| Date | January 1971 |
| Creators | Hansen, Barbara Louise |
| Contributors | Morsey, Royal J. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | vi, 108 leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
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