The Introduction:
Over the years, researches have tried to pin point the differences between unskilled and experienced writers writing process though designed studies. The significant thing that stands out the most is the fact that almost all of the researches touch base with the effect of audience in the writing process, specifically the planning and revising portion. But they don’t seem to thoroughly analyze the effects in depth. For instance, Sondra Perl concluded that unskilled writers often fail to “make [the] connection among their ideas apparent,” (Perl 209) which is often the reason on why students have difficulty while trying to revise and edit their paper, but Perl does not fully explain why it seems that way. Meanwhile, Carol Berkenkotter’s experiment reveals that skilled writers do seem to care about their audience’s perspective, which is why their paper comes out to be outstanding. In order for me to better understand this behavior and also add on to Berkenkotter’s research I took the opportunity to rectify things out by conducting a self experiment and analyze my results in compare with previous researches.
Methodology:
This research took place in the fall semester of 2011 at the University of Central Florida, more specifically, a desired natural environment, my bedroom. To make the case study more precise and accurate, I have selected three different writing tasks, which could also be known as the dependent variable. Unlike Perl’s study, this case did not have predetermined timed sessions, but each of the three tasks had to take approximately thirty or more minutes to complete. Furthermore, the tasks were consisted of a revised paper for my English 1101 class, a physics lab write-up (similarly known as lab summary) and lastly, a blog thread for my website. Just like some of the previous researches, I’ve decided to use a camera to film myself, for the time being I used the think-aloud method to reveal my thoughts while writing. Though the think-aloud method might appear as if it’s more of a distraction, there’s no better method to understand the writer’s thoughts while writing. After the completion of each task, I referred back to the recording and jotted down all of details, which includes my thoughts and actions during that time period. Some examples are listed below:
- “Alright, where was I?”
- “Wait, does that make any sense.”
- “Oh wait that does sound clever!”
Once the taking note process was completed, then I developed a color coding system, which categorized my notes into four major groups (planning, editing and revising, distractions and the actual writing) each with a dissimilar color, pink, green, blue and yellow, so that it helps me figure out how much time and effort was put into each category the fastest way possible. Just like Berkenkotter, I broke some of the major groups into smaller sub-groups as follows:
- Writing main idea (Wm)
- Writing separate sentences (Ws)
- Re-Reading text (RRT)
- Adding or removing phrases (AOR)
- Checking Grammar (GC)
The whole idea of this method was to fix the issues Perl faced in her design and contemplate the success that Berkenkotter had in her experiment. But one thing to point out is the fact that unlike Berkenkotter, Perl’s study was based upon unskilled writers, and that it’s reasonable to see the outcome of her research to come out the way it did. Overall, there are flaws in most experiments, including mine, and I think the best way to really recognize the consequences of knowing your audience can be corrected by designing a research which includes both skilled and unskilled writer with the given specifications above.
Results and Discussions:
Going through the coding process and the note taking portion of the research, it seems as if planning and revising for the most part depends on the type of writing, basically it has to the with the familiarity of audience and their expectations. The three tasks that I have done each have a separate audience, my English and Physics professors, as well as my blog viewers. Let’s begin by discussing the first tasks, which was the revision for my English class. After going to class and absorbing my professor’s expectations throughout the semester, I have noted that just like every other English professor, my instructor seems to have a lot of expectations from her students, including myself, and that the revision is more formal, meaning that the paper has to be supportive. With that being said, I knew that this was going to be a challenge and that I needed to put more effort in planning as well as revising. Based on my data, it’s clear for me to state that I have spent more than half of time revising and planning for this revision, not so much on writing, simply due to the fact that I have planned well enough that writing the actual paper seemed easier.
Furthermore, the results were almost the same for my second task, the blog thread. The audience includes high school students who are seeking help for the Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT). Knowing the fact that I have scored a high grade on the SAT inspired me to make a blog to give others my tips and tricks so that it would benefit them. Having said that, viewers expect my posts to be supportive and have clear explanation. In order to do so, once again I put most of my effort in planning and especially revising. The reason that planning didn’t take as long as it did in the first task was because I had a close relationship to the topic and not much planning was needed. Contrariwise, revising the paper was the most tedious part; I kept referring back to my argument and tried to provide a perfect example for each of the different claims that I had to make so that it would tie back to the bigger picture. To be more specific, the revising portion included the grammar and spelling check, which was really important because my topic was mostly about the writing portion of the SAT which includes grammatical problems, so if the reader sees that I have a grammatical error in my blog then it weakens my reputations in their perspective.
Lastly, focusing on the third task, my physics lab summary, this was less of a challenge for me, simply because I was aware of my professor’s expectations. Since he grades the lab summary on completion rather than perfectness, I’ve spent a great amount of time on the writing segment, not so much on planning and revising. Based on the given results, it’s obvious that audience play a major role in the writing process, more specifically on how much planning and revising is needed in order to make the paper to exceed the reader’s expectations. Adding on to Berkenkotter’s conclusion that each “writer has his or her own idiosyncrasies,” (Berkenkotter 228) I believe that my audience played a major role throughout and that I can define it as the unique part of my writing process.