True and Abnormal

I know that we all don't typically have really stellar things to say about LA's readings, and normally I want to defend them. Sure I poke a hole here and there and ask some fairly obvious question, but this chapter in particular I found it really hard to understand what I was even supposed to do when it came to true experiments. It seemed like just as I got my footing on what true experiments were, they threw a list of things to make sure that I didn't manage to do during the course of the experiment. I especially loved the Type I and Type II errors. But all these errors made me wonder how many research projects can really manage to fit into this research model without there being speculation as to the validity of the findings.

As for the Mortensen article, I was pleasantly surprised with how interesting I thought that his research question was. I liked that he was curious as to the talk that surrounded writing and the various contexts involved. As one of the few people in this class who are not in an occupation that involves the current education system, I probably read this article significantly differently. When Mortensen wrote about the "triplet," meaning "the teacher initiates, the student responds, and the teacher evaluates" I only have experience as the student. On the same token I also have experience in another kind of evaluating, which would come from selecting text for publication or editing a mailer or postcard for a client. I saw this article as having a much larger scope than just the classroom, which was something that I would have really liked to see. The language of talking about writing is not only limited to the classroom. While it would be much easier to study discussion regarding the language of writing evaluation in an education setting, I couldn't help but think how often talking about writing comes into play in my daily life. Perhaps this makes me an abnormality?