Robert Mahoney Professor Wolcott ENC 1101 (11:30am-12:20pm) 28 September 2012 Summary Berkenkotter starts off her essay

with a background of the study and her subject, Donald M. Murray. She compares other studies with her own and explains how hers differs from the rest. She then goes over the methodology of the experiment and tells us how she set up the study. The first thing he was to do was to run a tape recorder wherever he went to capture all the writing he did while thinking aloud about his thoughts. Next, Berkenkotter gave Donald Murray a task which specified audience, subject, and purpose. He was to think aloud again but only for an hour while thinking about the given piece. The last stage of the study, Berkenkotter visited Donald at his house for two days where she observed him using the think aloud protocol while he did a writing task which involved revising for a journal. She then goes over the problems that occurred during the study and how they attempted to overcome them. Then she provides us with the results from the study and summarizes up the overall experiment. Lastly she gives us an introspection of the article where she looks back at her research and experiment and analyzes the work. Analysis This study was pretty interesting after reading Perls experiment because Berkenkotter studies a skilled writer instead of an unskilled one and looks at what he does good that makes him good. I think this is a better way to look at things to see what to do to be a good writer rather than what not to do. I think its easier to follow rules on how to be good rather than rules on how not to be bad. Berkenkotter had Murray do the think aloud process in different situations to get more perspectives on it. She had her and another person code the work to give more variety.