| This study examined two ways of teaching analytic writing to college freshmen: treatment 1, which was form-centered heuristics with a models focus of instruction, and treatment 2, which was content-centered heuristics with an inquiry focus of instruction. The purpose of the 15-week study was to determine whether there was significant interaction between (1) the treatment and the quality of analytic writing when rated both on holistic and on analytic scales; (2) the treatment and the teacher; and (3) the treatment and writing apprehension.; Quantitative measures included two pretests and two posttests of analytic writing--one in-class and one take-home essay in each category--and the writing apprehension scale administered before and after treatment. There were 87 students divided into four sections. Each of the two instructors taught one of each of the treatment groups.; On the holistic ratings, the univariate repeated measures analyses of variance indicated no statistically significant difference over time for the interaction of treatment and teacher and for treatment main effect, but significant differences for teacher main effect were found. Teacher 2's treatment 1 group showed the greatest gain as measured by the mean holistic scores. Gender differences were also measured over time (post-hoc analysis), and females in all four groups performed slightly better than males in the same groups. Comparing the mean scores of the pretests with those of the posttests, the investigator found that students improved slightly more from pretest to posttest on the take-home essays than on the in-class essays. On the analytic scale, seven reasoning operations were counted: questions, hypotheses, assumptions, schemata, metacomments, evidence, and validations. There were significant treatment differences in changes over time in the number of hypotheses, assumptions, and validations. Writing apprehension increased as writing quality decreased and vice versa. |
