Listening improves voice in the writing of students

The purpose of the present study was to determine if listening exercises would improve the use of voice in the writing of developmental composition students. Two comparable classes were provided with conventional instruction in the writing of paragraphs, including the use of voice. One of the classes, the experimental group, was also exposed to listening exercises that emphasized personal voice with self as audience, formal voice with an audience other than self, and the voice of one other than self with an audience other than self.

The study included two pretests and a posttest. In each case the students were required to write in each of these voices listed above. Four experienced composition teachers were instructed in and practiced the evaluation rubric specified for the experiment. Each student was also asked to complete a questionnaire about demographic and biographic matters as well as listening and reading habits and family educational background. Further, the conference required for all composition students included a discussion for the experimental groups' individual reactions to and perceived effects of the listening exercises.

A statistical analysis of the examination results indicated that the experimental (E) and the control (C) groups were completely comparable at the outset and that on the posttest the E students wrote papers that were significantly better than those of the C students in each of the three voices. (The largest p value in the iv V experimental group for the ANOVA comparison was 0.004.)

To ensure that the results were not spurious, several checks were performed. The interrater reliability was tested in two ways and was found to be consistently reliable at the 0.9 level or better. The questionnaire and conference results were analyzed qualitatively to look for effects that would alter the fundamental result of the study and none was found. The conclusion is that the use of listening exercises will significantly improve the ability of developmental students to write in a unique, individual manner, in a formal context, and to write as another person would. The conferences with the E students also elicited some pertinent comments about the advantage of the listening protocol for other aspects of writing.