What factors contribute to good examination marks?

Norton, Linda S.; Hartley, James

doi:10.1007/bf00129223

Cited by 19 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 10 publications

(9 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The findings helped to clarify why the mere presence or absence of a written plan is no guarantee that a student will write an essay of high quality (Branthwaite et al 1980;Cirino-Gerena 1981;Norton and Hartley 1986). Although most of the plans were written for the researcher during the interview, they provided insight into the students' thinking.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Essay-writing: do study manuals give relevant advice?

Mahalski

1992

High Educ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Twenty-eight geography students were questioned about how they had prepared an essay about Africa and their answers were related to their essay marks. Each essay was marked by one of 9 postgraduate tutors and the researcher. Aspects of the students' essays, such as length and number of main points, were analysed and related to the students' marks. Tutors said that, in order to qualify for a high grade, students should have: answered the question, made a readable presentation, a logical presentation, and showed evidence of wide reading. These criteria were positively correlated with the students' marks and consistent with the comments which the tutors wrote on the students' essays. In this study, the students attained higher marks if they: included more main topics in their essays, had a readable writing style, produced more drafts for their essays, and cited more references. The results are discussed in relationship to advice about essay-writing in study manuals and other ways of helping students to improve their essay-writing.Students' essay-writing has been investigated from many different points of view (Nightingale 1988) and yet there are very few studies about students' preparation strategies or which strategies lead to success. Researchers may have been discouraged by methodological difficulties, such as: classifying and defining relevant concepts, measuring these concepts, evaluating alternative strategies, and taking into account different disciplines and students; to say nothing of the fact that essay marking is subjective, rather than objective. These and other methodological difficulties have been touched upon by Humes (1983) and Entwistle and Wilson (1977). However, such difficulties must be surmounted if we are to understand students' essay-writing, and although early studies are likely to be relatively crude, they are a necessary part of progress.Pioneer research in student essay-writing was reported by Branthwaite, Trueman, and Hartley in 1980. These researchers asked 82 psychology students in their first, second or third year at Keele University, England, to complete questionnaires about their preparation of one or two essays. Answers were related to the students' essay marks, but their essays were not analysed. Questions about preparation related to: time spent on essay preparation, number of sources used, planning, revising, and what marks the students expected from their tutors. The seven tutors who marked the students' work were asked about their marking criteria. The main finding from the study was a mismatch between the assessment criteria of students and their tutors. There was no significant relationship between marks and year of study, although there was a tendency for more experienced students to gain higher marks.The second year students got higher marks if they had prepared rough drafts for their essays, and there was a tendency for all students to get higher marks if they had made written answer plans before writing their essays. The most significant relationship between strategy and ...

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Essay-writing: do study manuals give relevant advice?

Mahalski

1992

High Educ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Cognitive effort during note taking

Piolat

Olive

Kellogg

2004

Applied Cognitive Psychology

384

262

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Note taking is a complex activity that requires comprehension and selection of information and written production processes. Here we review the functions, abbreviation procedures, strategies, and working memory constraints of note taking with the aim of improving theoretical and practical understanding of the activity. The time urgency of selecting key points and recording them while comprehending new information at the same time places significant demands on the central executive and other components of working memory. Dual-and triple-task procedures allow the measurement of the momentary cognitive effort or executive attention allocated to note taking. Comparative data show that note taking demands more effort than reading or learning. However, it requires less effort than the creative written composition of an original text.

show abstract

Relations between approaches to studying and note‐taking behaviour in lectures

Wilding

Hayes

1992

Applied Cognitive Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Copies of notes taken during a lecture were obtained from first-year psychology students, and the relations examined between measures derived from these (the number of points recorded, the number of words written, and the number of words per point) and a number of variables measuring personality and approach to studying. Three variables were found to be related to the measures derived from the notes: older students, those scoring high on strategic learning (strategy component) and those scoring high on surface learning (motivational component), both measured by questions derived from Biggs (1979), produced longer notes and recorded more of the important points in the lecture. The results suggest that relations between approaches to studying and specific study behaviour are not straightforward and require more detailed investigation.Research on effective study skills has examined both self-reported individual differences in approaches to studying and some of the variables contributing to the effectiveness of components such as reading, note-taking, reviewing, and time-scheduling. However, there is no detailed research examining relations between the selfreported approaches to studying and actual behaviour in learning situations such as reading, listening to lectures, and revising. Research on note-taking, for example, has concentrated on how note-taking (usually from a lecture) may aid performance in a subsequent test of retention of material from the lecture. It has, in the main, neglected individual differences in approaches to note-taking in the normal lecture situation and how these may be related to other individual differences and to the effectiveness of the note-taking process. The present study focuses on individual differences in note-taking in a free situation, and the relation between such differences and more genera1 differences in approach to studying which are known to be related to academic performance. It is intended that subsequent work will examine more closely other components involved in the whole process of identifying information, recording it in notes, reviewing it and reproducing or using it. APPROACHES TO STUDYINGThree main approaches to studying have been distinguished in the work of several different researchers on individual differences (e.g. Marton and Saljo, 1976a;Pask,

show abstract

What factors contribute to good examination marks?

Cited by 19 publications

References 10 publications

Essay-writing: do study manuals give relevant advice?

Essay-writing: do study manuals give relevant advice?

Cognitive effort during note taking

Relations between approaches to studying and note‐taking behaviour in lectures

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About