Written Communication Jul 1996

Writing the Critique, a Text about a Text

MAUREEN A. MATHISON

Abstract

The research reported investigated how 32 undergraduate students in an upper-level sociology course wrote critiques and how their texts were evaluated by 4 professors in the discipline. Students represented different majors and education levels. Features associated with critique were tested for their relationship to the professors' summed holistic quality scores. Student's status as major and their educational level were also tested for their relationship to the summed scores. Results indicate that (a) students were more likely to receive higher scores if they found weaknesses in the source article, basing their judgments on disciplinary knowledge and employing an integrated text configuration, and (b) neither major nor educational level was a strong predictor of quality. Findings suggest that current pedagogy that promotes personal evaluation of texts may not lead to the type of writing valued in particular disciplinary communities, where evaluative commentary may be more linked to unique disciplinary standards.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
1996-07-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088396013003002
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
writing pedagogy graduate education assessment
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (2)

  1. HAYES et al. (1999)
    Issues in Measuring Reliability: Correlation Versus Percentage of Agreement
    Written Communication
  2. HASWELL et al. (1999)
    Context and Rhetorical Reading Strategies: Haas and Flower (1988) Revisited
    Written Communication

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CrossRef global citation count: 12 View in citation network → Build reading path →

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