Before my brains dry up completely and blow away, let me briefly discuss some Lauer and Asher. Maybe it's just me, but the first thing that struck me was the question of privacy in Study 2, Odell and Goswami. If a study could be done looking at the various written products of administrators and caseworkers at a social service agency, where else are studies being conducted? And, isn't a study supposed to be beneficial to others? Perhaps I need to read the study itself, but I don't see what benefit it is to society or to anyone really what "the extent to which non-academic writers were sensitive to rhetorical issues such as the relationship to audience and the ethos conveyed in their writing" (83). So I get to the variables of the studies and stop short at Diederich's; what the heck is "flavor"? Is that style using a pseudonym? Then what is "wording"? Again, maybe it's the English teacher in me, but what about focus? As I move further into this chapter, all that English education gets shoved aside, and I'm desperately trying to recall the stats class I had back in the day. A few terms I was vaguely familiar with, but the rest was all Greek to me (pun intended). And just when I thought I had the independent and dependent variables figured out, I stumble across nominal and interval variables. Is a nominal variable a non-number and an interval variable a number? I would love some help here. Lastly, I noticed in the INTERACTIONS section that Odell and Goswami add a moderator variable. Wouldn't this be something they would have to "label" up front? Or did they have to go back and examine the memos, letters, etc. with an eye on the sex of the writer? Yeah, I probably could have worded that question better (albeit less ambiguous), but I'm not going to change it now--you all know what I mean. And it now seems I wasn't as brief as I thought I would be!
After a large glass of water, I readied myself for the Beach in K and S. Can I just say "Amen" here? More examples than a girl could ask for! And not just examples to explain his point; they actually were--and this is where it gets exciting--informative and beneficial. He lives in the real world, a world where hard-core quantitative statistics don't rule! He, too, sees the problem with writing assessment as "differences in writers' knowledge about an assignment topic or interest in the topic may influence their performance," stirring up questions of validity of the PSSAs or any standardized testing (232). His last line really sums it up: "By adopting a self-reflexive mode and making these assumptions explicit, researchers can move away from letting rigid adherence to technical procedures govern their understanding of writing" (239). What teacher wouldn't love this man?
I came across the word tagmemic again--even after looking it up on OED online, I can't put it into context as when Beach mentions, "tagmemic heuristics" (234). Oh, and what are cohesion ties? I came across that one in L & A and Beach and couldn't figure it out. Any help here would be appreciated.
Okay, now I have a confession to make: I came across an article about a study, "Why Bosses Tend to Be Blowhards," in the March 2, 2009 edition of TIME Magazine. Not only was it fascinating because it connects to most of us in the work world, but I could understand the researchers' need to have quantitative data and, after the few weeks I have spent in this class, better appreciated the work that went into the study. I'll bring it along on Thursday in case anyone is interested. I feel so much better now....
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1 comment:
I get Time too. That was a cool article. People fell for fools, what was it? 94% of the time?
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