more on the NALUSCG survey
The NALUSCG survey is, as feared, pretty terrible. It's terrible on several levels, actually. In terms of methodology, it's quite poorly constructed. In terms of what it's designed to elicit, it's also pretty terrible. It leads with this:
Good writing can have a number of different characteristics. In your personal view, how important are the characteristics listed below?
Only characteristics listed:
Accuracy, clarity, conciseness, scientific precision, visual appeal, logic, well documented and supported, solid spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
Not there: complexity of analysis, reflection, relevance to the writer and audience... I could go on.
The next question asks, "In your experience, approximately what proportion of current students possess the skills checked as "important" or "extremely important" above?"
Another question: "Compared to students ten years ago, how would you characterize the difference in writing skills of undergraduate students?" (Possible responses, from left[dominant] to right: Much poorer, Poorer, Better, Much Better.
Those of us in composition know what's likely to come out of a survey like this - we hear the "aren't you aghast that your students don't know anything?" (or some variation) non-question pretty frequently. I could go on, too, about what's not included in the survey... a whole host of things. The real problem, though, is that the questions that are listed here are just flat-out wrong. We don't talk about the "characteristics that good writing has"; we talk about the strategies that good writers bring to writing (or rhetorical situations) that help them to produce good writing. But I'm guessing that the NALUSCG didn't consult a lot of compositionists/rhetoricians when they built their survey. And that's leaving the methodological issues here aside.
Fortunately, CCCC has come up with a strategy to work with this ... more on that as it unfolds!
On a related note, I've just come from the Jewish Cultural Society, where I am a member, and where today there was a talk (or a schmooze, as we call them) on dealing with stress. I wasn't in the schmooze because I was working on an assessment tool for our big First-Year Writing Program assessment that's coming up, but I heard about it when I was going to my 11:00 administrative meeting. Apparently the speaker's key suggestion to decreasing stress was to stop worrying about things over which you/one/I has/have no control. Sage wisdom. :-)
Good writing can have a number of different characteristics. In your personal view, how important are the characteristics listed below?
Only characteristics listed:
Accuracy, clarity, conciseness, scientific precision, visual appeal, logic, well documented and supported, solid spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
Not there: complexity of analysis, reflection, relevance to the writer and audience... I could go on.
The next question asks, "In your experience, approximately what proportion of current students possess the skills checked as "important" or "extremely important" above?"
Another question: "Compared to students ten years ago, how would you characterize the difference in writing skills of undergraduate students?" (Possible responses, from left[dominant] to right: Much poorer, Poorer, Better, Much Better.
Those of us in composition know what's likely to come out of a survey like this - we hear the "aren't you aghast that your students don't know anything?" (or some variation) non-question pretty frequently. I could go on, too, about what's not included in the survey... a whole host of things. The real problem, though, is that the questions that are listed here are just flat-out wrong. We don't talk about the "characteristics that good writing has"; we talk about the strategies that good writers bring to writing (or rhetorical situations) that help them to produce good writing. But I'm guessing that the NALUSCG didn't consult a lot of compositionists/rhetoricians when they built their survey. And that's leaving the methodological issues here aside.
Fortunately, CCCC has come up with a strategy to work with this ... more on that as it unfolds!
On a related note, I've just come from the Jewish Cultural Society, where I am a member, and where today there was a talk (or a schmooze, as we call them) on dealing with stress. I wasn't in the schmooze because I was working on an assessment tool for our big First-Year Writing Program assessment that's coming up, but I heard about it when I was going to my 11:00 administrative meeting. Apparently the speaker's key suggestion to decreasing stress was to stop worrying about things over which you/one/I has/have no control. Sage wisdom. :-)
posted by Linda Adler-Kassner at 6:29 AM
1 Comments:
Two things:
* What's "NALUSCG?" You say that like I should know. Maybe I should....
* If you're going to let everyone post to your blog, you should set up the security part of things as a way of cutting down on blog spam. My people and your people can talk...
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