WORD-PROCESSING IN REVISION STRATEGIES AND BEHAVIOURS : A WRITING PROGRAMME FOR DIPLOMA IN NURSING STUDENTS

Abstract

The principal aim of this study is to investigate the effect of word-processing on a group of Diploma in Nursing students' revision strategies and behaviours. The study also examines the relationship between writing quality and the number of types of revisions, and describes the students' attitudes towards revising on the computer and by conventional pen-and-paper methods. Twenty-two second-year Nursing students were randomly placed in an experimental or a control group for an 11-week writing programme during the first semester of the 1996/97 academic session. The experimental group of students (n = 10) completed all the in-class exercises, including the impromptu and revised Posttest drafts, on the computer using the Microsoft Word word-processing program while the control group (n = 12) completed all its exercises by pen-and-paper. Classroom content and procedures were otherwise kept as similar as possible for both groups. Besides the three writing exercises in class, both the experimental group and the control group completed an impromptu and revised Pre-test before the commencement of the programme, and an impromptu and revised Post-test at the end of the programme. The impromptu and revised Pre- and Post-test drafts were rated on a five-point multi-trait analytic scale for quality by two raters. A modified version of Faigley and Witte's Revision Classification Scheme (1981) was used to count and classify revisions made by the students. The Pearson's Product-Moment Correlation technique was employed to investigate the relationships between writing quality scores and types of revisions. A univariate analysis of variance was used to test the significance level of the change scores between the experimental and the control group of students' test drafts. Follow-up, multiple comparisons of the mean scores using Tukey's HSD was employed to test the change score differences between the experimental and the control group of students' test drafts. The correlation results, significant at, at least, 0.5 level, indicated that writing quality and types of revisions appeared to be related. There were also correlations between the types of revisions, and in particular, between formal revisions and other types of revisions. Analysis of the results suggests the following conclusions and implications: 1. Word-processing does have an effect on the students' revision strategies and behaviours. It facilitates the employment of more text-base microstructure revisions, and promotes constant revising and reviewing during the writing process. 2. Students who revised on the computer tend to have a more positive attitude towards revising and towards a writing programme that focuses on revision practices. 3. Although word-processing seems to improve the experimental group of students' writing quality, the relationship between writing quality and the types of revisions should be investigated since writing quality is positively affected by various types of revisions.