Writing and Revising

1. Writing and Revising Didactic and Methodological Implications of Keystroke Logging Eva Lindgren Umeå 28 may 2005

2. The place to be “Umeå is for example one of Swedens most café…” p. 156

3. Contributions • Linguistics: • To the definition and taxonomy of Revisions in text • To the research techniques: • Visualisation of writing processes (GIS) • To L1/FL pedagogy: • Effects of cued replay of writing and revision processes

4. Methodology: variation • Experimentation • Case study • Text sample study; corpus linguistics

5. Book • 8 chapters • Theory (33 pages) • one introductive chapter • Research methodology (37 pages): • two visualization chapters • Theory (53 pages): • one chapter on a taxonomy of ‘revisions’ • Pedagogy (64 pages): • two multiple case studies • two experiments

6. This thesis argues and demonstrates that watching a text unfold can provide useful insights into writing development and that it can be used didactically to assist writers in developing their writing and language skills (p. 9)

7. General overview of issues • Given: • Complexity of writing process • interaction of various cognitive processes • many qualities of text to ensure • therefore: cognitive load • especially when writing in foreign language • Pedagogy: • How can we assist writers in reducing cognitive load during writing, and hence, promote writing development? • Solution: • split writing and reflection (‘doing’ and ‘learning’) • replay writing session, discuss what is going on

8. Part 1: papers 1-2: keylogging

9. Writing: climbing a mountain

10. Part 2: Revision: the instrument

11. What doesn’t work

12. What does work: Main categories

13. What does work: contextual revisions

14. Focusing on pre-contextual revisions Example (p. 103) That should make almost everyone happy, at least make people <2.5> feel more at h 4 → comfortable in the classrooms…¶ I think it’s something to invest in.

15. Conceptual revisions: backward and/or forward? Page 118: “At the point of revision, it would be impossible to infer the writer’s global intentions with the entire text” Therefore… …revisions affect the text written thus far…

16. Study: are pre-cont. revisions affected by Language and Text type? Table 2: Noticing

17. Table 3

18. Table 4

19. Figure table 4

20. Figure table 4 (2)

21. Figure table 4 (comb.)

22. Table 1-2, page 27-28: contextual revisions

23. Part III • Two multiple case studies • A: four adult (F) • B: two 13-years olds (F) • Two experiments • A: L1 (Swedish); 13 y • B: FL (English); 13 y • Note: Data experiments and one case study from one and the same data collection

24. General method • Writing text (individual) • Reflection activity (duo) • present: peer, teacher • playing back text • pausing play back, discussion “what happens here” • Revising text (individual) • NB (1): at least two texts, genres descriptive, argumentative; • NB (2): in experiments: writing in two conditions (with/without Reflection phase).

25. Example discussion

26. Results case studies • Keystroke logging as a prime for a stimulated recall peer discussion can trigger an increase in noticing and language awareness that leads to more text revisions (p. 159)

27. Two Experiments • Same type of intervention: • writing, reflection/stimulated recall (“PBI”), revision • Measuring • Genre effect (Descriptive, Argumentative) (more cognitive demanding) • Stimulated recall effect (reflection) • Within design: • two texts in experimental condition, two texts in control condition (no reflection phase • Measurements: • Text Quality (Content, Language + for L1: audience adaptation, vocabulary • Revisions (in writing, in revision): Surface, Text based, Balance

28. Results • L1 study: • No effect on Text quality, but for low L1-abilty, on descriptive task only • Effect of PBI for Low-L1ability on Balance revisions • EF study • No effect on Text quality, but for descriptive task only (writing task). No effect on Revision task • Complex pattern of effect for revisions • Effect on Text based revision in writing task (Argumentative text)

29. Four themes for discussion • Validity of Dependent variables • What is revision? • Relation with Text Quality • Validity of intervention • Validity of research design (experiments) • For instance: genre effect • Validity of results

30. Pre-contextual revisions: what are they? 94: point of inscription: shaping in all cases? Start/end of phrase relevant? when is context ‘completed’? what about a contextual revision preceded by a pre-contextual revision? p. 73; 86; 91; 94; 96; 97 (“being transcribed”), 110, 109 (at the point of inscription, and yet not pre-contextual) Theme 1: Taxonomy

31. Theme 1: Taxonomy (2) • “Pre-contextual” • Revision or part of translating • Are revision in a writing task the same as in revision tasks?

32. “I didn’t know what to write, so I tried different things.” (p.101) Is this ‘trying’ a revision process? Why are revisions classified in some cases (text effect) in effects, and in other cases (processes) not? Theme 1: Taxonomy (2)

33. Theme 1: Revisions (3) 95: reliability of coding. Need: per category? P. 99 98: 237 texts (p. 95) becomes 80 texts (p.98), then 36 texts were selected. how? which criteria? Checks for representation, validity? Were texts chosen or students (delivering four texts?) 99: argumentative & descriptive task: confounded by audience? 99: 66% lost…why? 2769 becomes: 2418 becomes: 811 (coder reliability of this set?)

34. Theme 2: Intervention (1) • What is the effective ingredient? • The writing task • Replay-observation own process • Replay-observation peer’s process • Deciding when to stop the replay • Talk about the stop • Asking a question, raising an issue • Answering a question • Teacher role • Peer role • p. 36; p. 156

35. Theme 2: Intervention (2) • P 154: insight in stimulated recall session. • In none of the instances, the peer student was involved • Is this still stimulated recall or teaching? • P 158: what is added value to have these sessions with a peer student involved? May we call this Peer based interventions?

36. Theme 2: Intervention (3) • Possible weakness • Text process: • linear, step by step, no overall effect of text or revision (context, aim of revision) • Careful chosen prompts (p. 14): what is a good stop? • Replay could be stopped if the writer, the peer or the teacher needed time to talk about a specific writing or language event (p .16) • Would it make a difference when you stop at writing events, not at language events? • Writer does not meet the reader (his own representation of the text hinders to read the text as a reader instead of a writer) • Labeling: • Peer based interaction? Or: Writing Conference pedagogy

37. Theme 3: Research design Effects of PBI (L1) Five pairs of children were involved; they wrote individually. 4 texts; 2 genres. 2 texts in PBI-condition, 2 texts in ‘normal’ conditions. PBI: after writing: stimulated recall with peer and teacher involved.

38. Theme 3: Research design • Genre effect: • confounded with audience • wouldn’t you need at least two tasks per genre to assess the genre effect? • Intra-writer variaility • P. 82; • Procedure: how controlled are the stops in both conditions? Checked for differences?

39. Theme 3: Research design; dependent variables • Revisions • Surface changes • Text based changes • Balance changes (=pre-contextual; point of inscription) • Text Quality, two raters

40. Theme 3: Research design; dependent variables: Q revision • Revisions: to which degree one or three constructs? • Is a revision in Text Writing the same as a revision in Revising session?

41. Theme 3: Research design; dependent variables: Q Text Quality • Text Quality, two raters, four aspects; • Raters had difficulties with rating language and audience adaptation, vocabulary (low correlations), p. 170, note 4 • Four aspects are summed into one score: why? • Relation with types of revision is gone • No information about the correlation between aspects? • If aspects were totalized, why not generalized about text genres? Did you had different hypotheses for the two genres? • What to think about the strong but negative correlation between TQ and Revisions? The less revisions, the better text? • Why are balance revisions not related to other revisions or TQ? Because of the diffuse category (precontext and context mixed up?

42. Theme 4: Results Unit of observation: individuals or pairs? (n=10 or n=5) “pairs were randomly assigned…” p. 168 Global result: “PBI” affects text quality, text quality does not improve because of revision frequency Table 4, p. 173 Group 2 is stronger from start than group 1 (compare day 1 des for both groups)

43. Results Exp 1 (L1)

44. Results Exp 2 (L2) • Same methodology • Same questions: • Is it allowed to combine TQ scores content and language? • What are correlations between revisions categories (one or three constructs?) and TQ? • Definition of Balance/Precontextual? • New question: • Why are the two groups collapsed (table 1) into one group?