An Investigation of the Relationship between Cohesion and Syntactic Complexity of Take-Away Writing and Advanced Content Complexity and Depth

Autor/in	Gardner, Matthew Thomas
Titel	An Investigation of the Relationship between Cohesion and Syntactic Complexity of Take-Away Writing and Advanced Content Complexity and Depth
Quelle	(2017), (335 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit Ed.D. Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Monographie
ISBN	978-1-3697-3636-6
Schlagwörter	Hochschulschrift; Dissertation; Connected Discourse; Syntax; Content Area Writing; Literary Styles; Difficulty Level; Accuracy; Prediction; Change + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Thesis; Dissertations; Academic thesis; Schriftliche Übung; Literarischer Stil; Schwierigkeitsgrad; Vorhersage; Wandel
Abstract	In secondary and post-secondary content courses, the use of writing to facilitate complex learning in advanced content areas, which is called writing to learn content, can help students to evaluate their understanding, higher order cognition, and thinking about the content to learned (Carifio, 2005; Hayes, 2006; Carifio, 2015). The primary focus of this study was a detailed analysis of dozens of artificially created exemplar data, created by the investigator to represent a broad range of possible Take-Away writing styles. These ranges of writing styles were algorithmically replicated at low, medium, and high levels of content complexity and depth to generate a total of 144 Take-Aways. The present study was a true experiment, allowing for stronger interpretations and for calibration of the cohesion indices investigated through con. The present study's analysis of exemplar Take-Aways was a necessary step to explore the ways that different Take-Away writing styles can respond to the same volume of content, while maintaining concept pairings and relationship links between content. The explorations in the present study allowed for more appropriate interpretations of results from Coh-Metrix 3.0 when investigating the cohesion of Take-Away writing. The cohesion and syntactic complexity of exemplar, investigator created Take-Away writings was evaluated using Coh-Metrix 3.0 indices for their ability to predict a writing's depth of academic content and their ability to predict the accuracy of the writing. It was predicted that measures of cohesion and syntactic complexity could relate to changes in content depth and complexity of Take-Away writing, but not to accuracy of the writing. These predictions were mostly confirmed, particularly when looking at the same writing style permutation's cohesion across two different content areas, but they did not as strongly predict general changes in content complexity and depth. Writing style variations could mask some difference in content. The cohesion indices did not predict content accuracy. The present study explored and delineates appropriate usage of CohMetrix 3.0 indices relating to cohesion and syntactic complexity that may have value in calibrating and interpreting future research in writing to learn content. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.] (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01