Second half of the Quiz

Here's the second half of that quiz I gave my writing students. Sorry the spacing isn't quite right. Not sure why but probably due to how I set the format up for the quiz originally.

11.  I tell you that mammals bear live young. If I tell you that giraffes bear live young and you assume          this means that giraffes are mammals, you have engaged in deductive/inductive ____________              reasoning.

12.   A __________ is a false belief, a ________ is a false sensory impression, and a ________ is a         distorted perception of a real physical event.  Choose from among/between ___________                 delusion/hallucination/illusion.

13.  Be discreet/discrete ________ when talking to your professors about whether you read the             textbook or not.

14.  I hope the judge in my speeding ticket case is disinterested/uninterested _______________.

15.  In our experiment, we used a food prompt to elicit/illicit hunger.

16.  PhD students are expected to conduct exhaustive/exhausted ___________ reviews of the relevant      research in their fields and be completely familiar with the extant/extent _____________                 literature.

17.  Pharmacologically speaking, amphetamine is classified as a stimulant/stimulus ______________.

18.  That which you can call to mind rather easily when you try to is said to be in the subconscious/             unconscious ____________ mind while that which you cannot recall at all under normal               circumstances is in your unconscious/subconscious ______________ mind.

19.  Color is a qualitative/quantitative _____________ variable while height is a quantitative/qualitative       ___________ variable.

20.  The principal/principle _______________ investigator of the study is sick today.

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Fat Quiz: Not What You Think

Over the past week, I’ve been talking a lot to my nonfiction writing class about “wordiness,” and about the need to make every word count.  Today I’m giving them an in-class quiz that will ask them to rewrite wordy sentences. The majority of that quiz is copied below. These are examples taken from actual papers handed in for my classes over the years. I often refer to excess words in sentences as "fat." Thus you have the title of this post.

FAT QUIZ:  Cut the fat and/or excess words from the sentences below:

1. In our everyday lives we are always associating things with one another. For example; we study to get a better grade or we brush our teeth daily to have healthy teeth. In our daily lives we do not even realize that we are always using associative learning.

2. All this is saying is that the child may be off-putting in social surroundings, which could mean making friends for them will be harder than it is for others.

3. In many recent years, scientists have noticed a number of rare gene changes, or mutations, associated with autism.

4. In order to discover the uniformity of the human psyche I must descend into the very foundations of consciousness. 

5. In the article "Mindful Parenting Decreases Aggression, Noncompliance, and Self-Injury in Children with Autism” parents were trained on mindfulness practices and participated in the program for fifty-two weeks with their children affected by autism.

6. Watson came up with an experiment that would allow him to condition fear in little Albert by presenting a rat.

7. The reason he chose salivation was because a new method of measuring salivation using a fistula was just put in the laboratory.

8. In fact, they may live very normal lives.

9. The explanation for this is that in order to participate in lucid dreaming a person must pay close attention to the details of their dream, and therefore must live in the present moment.

Note: Other than the wordiness, most of these aren’t too bad. I could easily give examples of far worse writing from student papers. Below is what I think may be the worst sentence ever handed in to me.

“Evolution although well documented and well supported yet what one should consider is if God created everything in eternity (which one can not really fathom just like the concept of deep time) it is safe to assume that all living things even though things seem to evolve naturally over a long period of time they all was created in eternity the human mind just need time to see it transpire.”

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Today's Writing Quiz

Today, my writing students are going to get the following, non-graded quiz. All the examples here are taken from actual student papers handed in to me in the past. Although there are some outright errors below, most of the sentences are serviceable but wordy or convoluted.  

What is either wrong or weak about the following sentences?  Revise to remove those problems.

 1.  In order to analyze their results, the researchers used an ANOVA.

______________________________________________________

  

2.  The study would seem to suggest that males are more physically aggressive than females.

______________________________________________________

3.  It has been found that honey bees can detect ultraviolet radiation.

______________________________________________________

4.  The study examined the role of anxiety levels in racial stereotyping.

______________________________________________________

5.  The researchers were interested in studying the effects of temperature on test taking.

______________________________________________________

6.  The patient exhibited flattened effect.

______________________________________________________

7.  When the participant was exposed to the test stimulus they showed a strong reaction.

______________________________________________________

8.  Charles Darwin finds that there are remarkable similarities between humans and other primate species.

______________________________________________________

9.  There have been a lot of studies done to investigate the role of anger in punishment.

______________________________________________________

10.  Heroin is an elicit drug.

______________________________________________________

11.  They gathered data from 17 women; all of whom were taking birth control pills.

______________________________________________________ 

12.  Participants were asked to sign a consent form before filling out the survey.

______________________________________________________

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Sunday Roast, and Writing Quiz

David McMahon did his Sunday Roast interview with me this week. I appreciate David taking the time to run it. I enjoyed answering his questions. You can check it out on his blog if you've a mind to.

I haven't mentioned much here about the writing class I'm teaching this semester but so far it is going well and I seem to have a pretty good crew of students. Below is the first quiz I gave them. I'll bet you all get them correct. Or else you'll want to argue with me about the correct answer. ;)

Writing Quiz. Each blank = 1 point.

1. In trying to communicate specific information, the main
advantage of writing over talking is: _______________________


2. The main disadvantage of writing is: _________________________


3. (1 Pt). Which of the following is NOT one of the "good"
habits that I suggested you develop to improve your writing?
a. Schedule a time for writing and stick to it.
b. Use a dictionary to look up words that you are unsure about.
c. Write only until you get tired, then stop for the day.
d. Read a wide variety of other people's writings, from textbooks
to novels.
e. All of these are "good" habits.

4. Since your audience is not present when you are writing a
paper, you must think more carefully about what you are going
to say than when you are having a spoken conversation. Name
two things that you can do which could help you figure out the
kinds of questions readers might ask.

a. _________________________

b. _________________________


True/False (1 point each). (Please circle your answer).

5. T. F. The only reason for writing is to communicate ideas.
6. T. F. Writing skills depend upon inborn verbal abilities and
cannot be learned.
7. T. F. Once you have found a formula for writing a successful
term paper, you should stick with it so that you
will always be guaranteed to get good grades.
8. T. F. I suggested that you should just assume that the first
draft of your paper is not good enough to hand in.
9. T. F. Writing is easy.
10. T. F. There is only one way to write a good paper.

11. Name the most recent book that you have read (or are
currently reading): ____________________

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Answers: (AS I See Them)
1. You have time to consider your full argument without having anyone waiting impatiently to see what you're going to say.

2. You don't get immediate feedback about your success, or lack of it, at conveying your message to readers.

3. I think "C" is a bad habit. I urge my students not to write to exhaustion but to push themselves.

4. A. Develop your own critical reading habit.
B. Ask peers to read your work and tell you where they got confused.

For the True/False, 8 is true and all the others are false.
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