Ways of Writing: Linguistic Analysis of Self-Assessment and Traditional Assignments

Abstract

Scholars of teaching and learning have endorsed self-assessment assignments as a way to encourage greater reflection by students. However, no studies to date have compared writing in self-assessment with traditional academic assignments. We performed a quantitative text analysis of students' language in self-assessment versus traditional assignments from 3 courses. Self-assessment assignments included more references to cognitive words (i.e., words related to insight) than traditional academic assignments. In addition, self-assessments included more emotion words and pronouns and were linguistically simpler than traditional academic assignments. We conclude that self-assessment assignments encourage students to become more reflective, a goal of the American Psychological Association (2007) curricular guidelines.

Analytics of the effects of video use and instruction to support reflective learning

“…Similarly, tense variables and common verbs were also included in the analysis as patterns emerging in prior studies have shown that reflective writing focuses on actions through verb use and, in particular, future behaviour derived from present observations [20]. In addition, words related to cognitive processes, including insight and exclusive terms, are commonly observed terms in self-reflections [30], and hence, were also included in the study. Words with greater than six letters were also analyzed as their use indicates the use of complex language [35].…”

“…While prior studies have used LIWC to analyze various forms of students' written assignments, such as critical thinking essays [4], self-introductions [33], and career-related narratives [23], only a few have investigated the linguistic and psychometric terms most commonly present in reflective writing [20,30]. Although LIWC can process word counts associated with 74 linguistic and psychological variables, we incorporate only a subset of these in our textual analysis.…”

“…Although LIWC can process word counts associated with 74 linguistic and psychological variables, we incorporate only a subset of these in our textual analysis. The selected subset is based on the findings of research using LIWC to analyse reflective writing [20,30], research on students' emotions in different learning contexts [31], and those most relevant to the context of our case study. Table 1 lists the 31 variables and their abbreviations used in this study.…”

“…First person singular and plural were selected due to research reporting that they were more frequently used in self-reflection writing than third person pronouns [30]. Similarly, tense variables and common verbs were also included in the analysis as patterns emerging in prior studies have shown that reflective writing focuses on actions through verb use and, in particular, future behaviour derived from present observations [20].…”

Counterfactual Thinking in the History of Psychology Course

“…Peden and Carroll (2008) found that the linguistic analyses distinguished between the words used in different academic assignments. When writing papers that required self-assessment, students used more cognitive words (e.g., 'think', 'consider'), emotion words (e.g., 'happy', 'anxious'), and first-person pronouns (e.g., 'I', 'me') than when writing more traditional term papers.…”