SLAT6827 Second Language Literacy

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SLAT6827 Second Language Literacy

• Lecture slides and notes
• Week 6
• Writing as process and product

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Aims of the lecture

• Examine writing as a product that can be
  measured and assessed.
• Examine writing as a complex process that
  relies on a range of resources.
• Identify characteristics of a successful
  writer.

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The act of writing

• Writing can be described as a process and as a
  product.

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Basic phases in the writing process

• Collecting ideas and knowledge (content)
• Planning how to present the content
• Translating ideas to written language
• Reviewing and where necessary revising written
  language

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What does a writer need to know to do this?

• How to generate script (handwriting, keyboarding)
• Mastery of sentence level lexis and grammar
• Mastery of discourse structure
• Understanding of register
• Understanding of genre

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Cognitive resources that must be managed in
writing

• Like any kind of performance, writing relies on
  intellectual and emotional resources. Kellogg
  describes these as
• Knowledge must be available, accessible and
  creatively applied
• Personality affects motivation to write and
  attention to the task
• Method the way in which the writing process is
  managed.

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Three dimensions of intellectual resources

• Intelligence as content domain-specific
  knowledge
• Intelligence as methods strategies in retrieving
  and applying knowledge
• Intelligence as power speed of information
  processing

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Domain knowledge in writing

• Conceptual knowledge embodied in concepts,
  frames and scripts
• Sociocultural knowledge of the sociocultural
  context against which we discuss and think about
  conceptual knowledge
• Metacognitive knowledge about knowledge,
  regulates the learning task

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Types of knowledge

• Tacit Exists outside of the individuals
  conscious knowledge
• Explicit conscious recollection of knowledge
  representations
• (Implicit unconscious priming of knowledge)

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Writing to understand

• What emerges on the paper reflects the authors
  unconscious as well as conscious knowledge and
  intentions. p50

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Method

• strategies, tools, work scheduling, environment
  and rituals used by a writer to retrieve and
  manipulate knowledge.
• Many tools are available to put thought into
  language (handwriting, typing, word processing,
  dictating). Does it matter which tool is used?

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Personality

• Individual differences in the way writing is
  carried out have a great effect on writing
  outcomes.
• Intelligence, motivation, cognitive style, anxiety

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Writing as a product

• The writing process usually results in a product
  that can be measured.
• Measures of writing performance
• Quality
• Fluency
• Productivity

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Quality

• Refers to judgments about how well a document
  communicates or achieves its purpose with its
  intended audience.
• Values of the reader are crucial.
• High degree of rate agreement possible if raters
  share the same background.

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Direct assessment of writing

• Attempt to directly assess a writing sample.
  Growing preference for direct assessment over
  indirect approaches such as multiple choice
  grammar and usage.
• Assessment of writing must take into account
• purpose of the text persuade, entertain,
  educate, etc.
• audience generalist, specialist, etc.
• genre expository prose, creative writing, etc.

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Direct assessment measures

• Subjective measures
• Ratings
• Behavioral index
• Objective analysis of text properties

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Subjective measures

• Reliability is a major concern
• Superior to objective measures in that they
  involve a real audience.

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Types of subjective measures

• Primary trait text rated on specific to the
  writing task
• Analytic scoring quality judgement on selected
  properties. These include content, organisation,
  punctuation, etc.
• Holistic scoring based on raters general
  impression of sample. Can be a Likert rating
  scale (e.g. 1 Poor, 5 Excellent). Several
  dimensions can be specified

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Behavioral measures

• The degree to which the text meets objectives of
  communicative acts. Measured objectively.
• Comprehensibility
• Memorability
• Enticingness
• Persuasiveness

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Objective measures

• Lexical grammatical analysis
• Text structure Idea units
• Cohesive ties
• Feature analysis

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Objective measures

• Lexical grammatical analysis number of words,
  types of grammatical structures
• Text structure idea units propositional
  content
• Cohesive ties local and remote
• Feature analysis word and phrase, clause and
  sentence, text section

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Flesch reading ease score

• Rates text on a 100-point scale the higher the
  score, the easier it is to understand the
  document. For most standard documents, aim for a
  score of approximately 60 to 70.
• The formula for the Flesch Reading Ease score is
• 206.835 (1.015 x ASL) (84.6 x ASW)
• where
• ASL average sentence length (the number of
  words divided by the number of sentences)
• ASW average number of syllables per word (the
  number of syllables divided by the number of
  words)

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Flesch-Kincaid Grade level score

• Rates text on a U.S. grade-school level. For
  example, a score of 8.0 means that an eighth
  grader can understand the document. For most
  standard documents, aim for a score of
  approximately 7.0 to 8.0.
• The formula for the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
  score is
• (.39 x ASL) (11.8 x ASW) 15.59
• where
• ASL average sentence length (the number of
  words divided by the number of sentences)
• ASW average number of syllables per word (the
  number of syllables divided by the number of
  words)

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Relationship between subjective and objective
measures

• The various measures tend to correlate, but not
  always.
• The various features are characteristic rather
  than defining properties of quality.

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Fluency

• The rate at which words are generated in
  constructing sentences.
• It is a measure of writing ability distinct from
  quality producing language rapidly does not
  necessarily mean that it is of high quality

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Productivity

• The number of finished documents that a writer
  produces over a long time frame.
• Writing well and writing rapidly does guarantee a
  high rate of productivity.

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The writing process

• Writing as a process
• How does writing come about?
• How can it be improved?
• The problem is the writing process is so complex
  and variedthat discussions of the process seem
  to exhibit the zeal, but also face the futility
  of the medieval alchemist Gorell 1983 in Kellog
  p. 67

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Allocation of attention automatisation

• All the phases in the writing process
  (collecting, planning, translating and reviewing)
  require attention, but the writer is a limited
  capacity of processor.
• Success depends on effectively allocating
  resources.
• These resources are defined by the knowledge and
  motivation available to the writer

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Improving writing

• Writing involves a range of subtasks. Some can be
  automatized to free up resources for other tasks.
• Change how much time you spend on specific
  subtasks (quantitative restructuring)
• Change how you perform the tasks

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Economy of effort

• Satisficing performance ceasing effort when a
  satisfactory level of performance is reached.
  Minimizes load on performance
• Enough is enough

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Creative flow and effect Being in the zone.

• Flow state fully investing processing time and
  cognitive effort becoming totally engrossed in
  the task at hand.
• Occurs only when task demands and knowledge and
  skill levels match.
• Positive affect is central.

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Automatization and performance amplification
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Negative affects

• Mismatches between task demands and skill levels
  can result in two negative affective states
• When the task is too easy, boredom results.
• When the task is too difficult, anxiety and
  frustration result.

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Knowledge usage and writing performance

• Knowledge usage is the key to understanding the
  skill level of the writer.
• The use of knowledge requires four conditions
• 1. The knowledge is available
• 2. The knowledge is accessible
• 3. The knowledge is applied inventively
• 4. The writer is motivated

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Retrieval and application of knowledge.

• Concentration. The need to allocate attentional
  resources wisely
• Organisational strategies. Organisation improves
  amount of knowledge retained and retrieval of
  that knowledge
• Encoding specificity. For optimal retrieval,
  conditions at retrieval should match those at
  encoding

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Motivation

• Intrinsic. Based on the writers own need for
  psychological fulfilment
• Extrinsic. Based on external rewards and
  punishments
• Intrinsic motivation is usually stronger than
  extrinsic motivation

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SLAT6827 Week 6 last slide
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Discussion questions

• 1. What was your best writing experience? Did you
  experience the creative flow that Kellog
  discusses?
• 2. What do you find most difficult about academic
  writing?
• 3. Has you approach to academic writing changed
  over time?