John RamsayDifferences between experienced and inexperienced academic writers

The following extract is from a paper discussing the problems faced by Japanese students learning to write technical essays in English. Much of the original paper is irrelevant to your current needs, but you may find this particular section of use if you are interested in improving your writing and research skills:

The intelligent person young or old, meeting a new situation or problem, opens himself up to it. He tries to take it in with mind and sense, and everything he can about it. He thinks about it...he grapples with it boldly, imaginatively, resourcefully, and if not confidently, at least hopefully. If he fails to master it, he looks with shame or fear at his mistakes and learns what he can from them. This is intelligence. It is this attitude of which every writer must set his mind to. Developing intelligent thinkers, reflective thinkers, and resourceful thinkers assuredly depends on what vision the student is motivated by. Here freshman and sophomore students still need help to enlarge their vision. Often they approach the research task with a different sense of the project. The freshman writing syndrome often begins with students choosing "topic-driven" techniques that allow them to find and assemble information as quickly as possible. Freshmen students frequently go to the library and spend time in the stacks not digging into the literature as such, but spend time looking at the journals or books to find those sources that readily give information and not take so much time. Nelson and Hayes (1988) compared the strategies of college freshmen and advanced writers and found them as different as chalk and cheese. Nelson cites one student whose strategy went something like: Skim the index for your topic, if the material is spread out over several pages, then reject the book because you would have to read too much...you should try to find sources that have pockets or chunks of information that can be read and summarized easily (p. 5). It appears that some beginning writers interpret the goals of researched based writing in very limited terms and that these may limited task interpretations may lead the to an prematurely closing, and a truncated, reductionistic approach to writing.

In another report concerning freshmen at Bucknell, Reed, (1974), concluded that the conception of research on the part of students was limited and unsophisticated. Often students would check out a single book in the library and no more. Professional writers evaluate their resources critically and rhetorically. The questions these writers carry to the resources are more penetrating. They look for the content in order to extract it and their concern is not for expedience but not so with beginning writer. My class too seems to be consumed with task completion and product, and grades rather than learning to write well. This is characteristic of certain personality styles and a myopic view of the educational mission.

Much of the research literature also contrasts the difference between student and professor in their approach to the research writing project. Schwegler and Shamoon (1982) discussed a research project with students and faculty. What they wanted to ascertain was what the faculty/students' attitude towards writing research papers, and if they understood the reasoning of the teachers in assigning the research paper in the first place. The most common student response was that teachers wanted to test the ability to trace down and dig up information, and to work that information into a reasoned treatise and present that to a teacher who already is perhaps thoroughly familiar with the assigned topic and who will base their grade on the quantity of information produced and the correctness of the documentation.

References

'Bucknell, Reed (1974)' - the author did not include the reference to this text in his list of references! Sorry. perthaps some eager beaver would like to e-mail him and obtain it? J. Ramsay

Nelson, J., & Hayes, J. R. (1988). How the writing context shapes the students' strategies for writing from sources. (Tech. Rpt. No. 16). Berkeley, CA: National center for the study of writing and literacy at the University of California, and Carnegie Mellon University

Schwegler, R. A., & Shamoon, L. K. (1982). The aims and process of the research paper. College English 44 (8), 817-824].

This extract was taken from a paper written by J. DeHart who works out of the University of Aizu in Japan. I came across his work while trolling around the web on Altavista one day looking for interesting material.

I found the paper at the following address:

http://www.u-aizu.ac.jp/~dehart/AR/AR.html