The Nature and Quality of Compensatory Oral Expression and Its Effect on Writing in Students of College Composition. Final Report, September 1982-September 1983 / George E. Kennedy.

One hundred college remedial writing students participated in a study designed to (1) demonstrate some of the differences between speaking and writing in a controlled situation; (2) test the hypothesis that the writing of subjects who have spoken about a particular topic will be qualitatively superior to the writing of those who have not; and (3) determine the degree of semantic transfer from prior speaking to subsequent writing on the same topic. Divided evenly into experimental (speak/write) and control (write only) groups, all subjects watched a film as stimulus for writing. The experimental subjects were interviewed individually on the subject of the film, the conversations were tape recorded, and students were asked to write a 30-minute essay on a general topic generated by the film. The control subjects were given the same instruction but were asked only to write the 30-minute essay. Essays were evaluated for quantifiable variables (words, T-units, subordinate clauses, and propositions) and judged holistically. Results indicated that the speak/write technique proved beneficial to the writing of the experimental subjects. Not only did their fluency in the use of certain quantifiable variables prove to be greater than that of the control group, but judged holistically their essays were of higher quality in terms of sophistication and number of ideas expressed, development, and organization. In addition, the prior oral exposition stimulated thinking and facilitated organization. (Appendixes contain instructions for evaluators and extensive excerpts from oral transcripts and corresponding essays.) (HOD)

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