Essay 1: Assessing Body Paragraphs Group Work

As mentioned in class, we learn how to write by reading and evaluating others work. Below are
sections of previous students writing. First, identify which section you think you have been given
(Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion). Then, give the writer feedback based
on what you know each section should contain (Refer to previous in class assignment about
sections of a peer review article and or notes).

Group 1:
This experiment was conducted in a small rural town in southern Texas for one school

week, meaning Monday through Friday. The high school enrolled 168 students total as of this

year, with 28 freshman, 47 sophomores, 44 juniors, and 49 seniors. One male and one female

were chosen from each grade to participate in this study. One female student, who was a

freshman, was involved in the dual credit early college program, so she was enrolled in a

college-level communication class. One male sophomore and one female junior were a part of

the medical academy program. Both seniors and the male freshman participated in sports. All

eight students were taking a high school-level English course for two or three days out of the

week (this is due to a block schedule). None of the participants were involved in tutoring or

additional help of any kind. All participants were averaged as A- or B-scoring students prior to

the experiment. All English assignments were given and completed in the classroom. The

participants were given the same fictional chapter book to read for twenty-five minutes a day

starting at 6:15, when they all had free time. They were advised to find a quiet, distraction-free

area to read, although both freshman and the female sophomore had younger or older siblings

that made it difficult. With the permission of the students, their parents, and their English

teachers, their daily English grades were gathered from five days prior to the experiment and the

five days during. Before the experiment, the participants’ daily English grades were documented

by taking the average of both students in a grade level for five days as follows:
 Grade Level Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5

Assignment Assignment Assignment Assignment Assignment

Grade Grade Grade Grade Grade

Freshmen 82 87 84 89 85

Sophomores 85 91 89 87 92

Juniors 94 92 96 90 97

Seniors 90 88 94 89 90

The average score across the five days was 85.4% for the freshmen, 88.8% for the sophomores,

93.8% for the juniors, and 90.2% for the seniors. The purpose of this experiment was to

determine if reading daily had an increase on these averages.

Questions
1. What section of the essay do you think this excerpt is from? (Introduction, Methods,
Results, Discussion, Conclusion)
This is the methods section.
2. What is the student writer lacking in this section?
Elaboration??
3. What is the student writer excelling at in this section?
The student is doing a good job at elaborating on the process of the experiment, the selection
process.
4. What can the student do to improve this section?
Remove the mention of the chart, and of the specific differences between the participants not
related to how the study was conducted. Remove everything after the chart is introduced.
Group 2:

There are many theories about the effects of music on memory, and as a result,

many studies have been conducted to determine whether listening to a specific type of

music while reading has an effect on working memory. Working memory is defined as

“The small amount of information that can be held in mind and used in the execution of

cognitive tasks” (Cowan 1). Using this definition, scholars have concluded that listening to

classical music does not have an impact on working memory. For example, according to

Steele et al’s experiment, when the participants listened to Mozart for ten minutes and then

were asked to fold a paper in a sequence after being shown a video for one minute directly

after listening to the music, they found that “classical music did not have an effect on

cognitive task performance” (367-368). Furthermore, according to Ferreri et al. when

participants were asked to memorize words with and without classical music, “There was

no significant difference in source memory between music and silence conditions” (4).

From these studies it can be determined that classical music does not have an impact on

working memory. While these scholars have reached a conclusion, the purpose of this

experiment was to determine what effect listening to classical music has on working

memory when the participant reads an article then answers questions relating to the

information they read.

Questions
 1. What section of the essay do you think this excerpt is from? (Introduction, Methods,
Results, Discussion, Conclusion)
This is the introduction.
2. What is the student writer lacking in this section?
The writer lacks a thesis statement for the introduction.
3. What is the student writer excelling at in this section?
The writer has a solid grasp on what they should be doing aside of the lack of a thesis statement.
4. What can the student do to improve this section?
The writer should include a thesis statement for their introduction.
Group 3:

The positive relationship between reading quantity and academic achievement is

explained in “What Reading Does for the Mind” by Anne E. Cunningham and Keith E.

Stanovich, where they performed several studies to determine if there was a correlation between

time spent reading and various skills attributed to English classrooms (143). As they concluded,

“reading volume made a significant contribution to multiple measures of vocabulary, general

knowledge, spelling, and verbal fluency, even after reading comprehension ability and nonverbal

ability had been partialed out” (Cunningham and Stanovich 143). In other words, students who

read more often displayed greater academic ability when exposed to new literacy knowledge

frequently.

A large part of the increase in academic understanding, however, comes from the students’

outlook on the activity of reading; students who naturally display more literacy skills are more

likely to read more while students who struggle tend to avoid reading if they don’t have to. This

circumstance is referred to by Cunningham and Stanovich as the “Matthew Effect,” the

definition being “the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer” (137). Reading often is a large

contributor to students’ understanding of English, yet students who already struggle or find the
activity uninteresting will read less, resulting in a stagnant level of reading capability. On the

contrary, students who are adept at reading find the process more enjoyable and are more likely

to participate. Kırmızı supports this statement in her article as well, stating “The participants who

devote more time to reading per day and those who enjoy reading, naturally exert more effort to

understand what they are reading… These findings indicate that these two variables affect one

another in a positive direction” (Kırmızı 4755). To summarize, the amount of time spent reading

and the students’ outlook on the action of reading work together to improve reading proficiency

Questions
1. What section of the essay do you think this excerpt is from? (Introduction, Methods,
Results, Discussion, Conclusion)
This section is the Discussion.
2. What is the student writer lacking in this section?
The student could probably have a few more citations just to be sure.
3. What is the student writer excelling at in this section?
The discussion and explanation of concepts is done very well in this section.
4. What can the student do to improve this section?
For a the discussion and mentioning of other people’s work, there could probably be more ways
to include their work and citations, but aside from that, the discussion should probably be a lot
longer that what it is here.
Group 4:
A three-day experiment was conducted to determine if listening to classical music had

an effect on working memory. This experiment started on a Thursday and lasted until the

following Saturday. The experiment consisted of a total of twelve participants. Six participants

acted as the control group and the other six were part of the treatment group (those who listened

to classical music). In order to ensure that gender or age did not affect the results, both the

control and treatment group consisted of three women and three men, all from the same age

group. Each participant was given ten minutes to read a specific text and then asked to answer

eight questions about the text once the time was finished. The text chosen consisted of two

pages and detailed the history of bananas. This text was chosen because it was neither too
difficult nor too easy for both of the groups to understand. While both groups read the same text

and responded to the same questions, the treatment group also listened to a mix of classical

music while reading the text. In this experiment, the dependent variable is the difference in

correct answers from both groups and the independent variable is the group that will listen to

classical music while reading. The dependent variable will be measured by the number of

correct and incorrect answers from both groups. In order to ensure no distractions, both groups

read the text in a quiet environment and the treatment group listened to the music through

headphones. Furthermore, both the text and the questions were printed out on paper rather than

read on a computer to eliminate distractions from the device.

Questions
1. What section of the essay do you think this excerpt is from? (Introduction, Methods,
Results, Discussion, Conclusion)
This is the Methods section.
2. What is the student writer lacking in this section?
This section lacks more details about how the experiment was conducted, such as environment,
and the selection process for participants.
3. What is the student writer excelling at in this section?
This section describes the relevant information about the participants, measures taken to limit
interference with the experiment, as well as the process of the experiment.
4. What can the student do to improve this section?
Add more details such as the environment the experiment was conducted in and if possible to
add information regarding the participants, if there is still more that needs to be known.
Group 5:
The data collected from this study suggests that there is no significant difference between

the amount of information retained from those who listened to classical music and those who did

not. The results from the experiment have a 2.1% difference with a one correct answer
difference. However, there are outside factors that could have contributed to this discrepancy in

the results. The results may differ because according to Barrett et al. “Individual differences in

the ability to control attention are a major contributor to individual differences in working

memory capacity” (1). Thus, while attempts were made to ensure that each of the participants

were similar in age and background, mental factors such as attention span could have contributed

to slight differences in the results of the experiment. However, while there are slight

discrepancies between the number of correct answers from both groups, the changes are small

enough to not have an impact on the overall result of the experiment which concluded that

listening to classical music does not have an impact on the amount of information retained while

reading.

The findings of this experiment are contradictory to Mammarella et al. who determined in

their experiment that “Classical music significantly increased working memory performance

compared with the no-music condition” (394). The results may differ because this experiment

consisted of high school students from the same age group while Mammarella et al.’s experiment

consisted of older adults. Furthermore, Mammarella et al.’s experiment consisted of repeating a

sequence of numbers, while this experiment consisted of a reading portion and a questionnaire.

However, both utilize working memory to determine the effects of classical music. Additionally,

the results of this experiment contradict Matloubi et al. as well, who states that “It seems that the

presence of competitive music has negative effects on the performance of verbal working

memory” (1). The results may differ because Matloubi et al.’s experiment consisted of different

types of music, while this experiment consisted of strictly classical music. Overall, listening to

classical music has neither a negative nor positive effect on a person’s working memory.
Questions
1. What section of the essay do you think this excerpt is from? (Introduction, Methods,
Results, Discussion, Conclusion)
This is the Discussion section.
2. What is the student writer lacking in this section?
Not sure.
3. What is the student writer excelling at in this section?
The writer did a really good job at addressing sources with different/contradicting conclusions,
as well as addressing other variables that can affect the findings.
4. What can the student do to improve this section?
The section seems good on it’s own, maybe just add a little more conversation to make the
section longer.
Group 6

While many studies have been conducted on the effects of classical music on working

memory, this experiment concluded that listening to classical music does not have an effect on

the amount of information retained while reading. Those who wish to recreate this experiment

may want to change some of the methods. For example, this experiment was limited to a small

group of people from the same age group. Thus, future studies may want to include a wider age

group rather than focusing specifically on high school students as this may result in a different

outcome. Furthermore, this experiment consisted of a specific type of music as well as a specific

text. Future studies may want to change these variables to determine if the same data is

obtained. While scholars have had differing conclusions based on the experiments they have

conducted, this experiment highlights that classical music does not have an effect on working

memory. It is important for someone to understand that while they may want to listen to

classical music while reading, it does not have an impact on the amount of information they

retain.

Questions
1. What section of the essay do you think this excerpt is from? (Introduction, Methods,
Results, Discussion, Conclusion)
This section is the Conclusion.
 2. What is the student writer lacking in this section?
The conclusion does not end off properly, a final sentence that ties up the section properly would
be a better way to end the section and the paper.
3. What is the student writer excelling at in this section?
The section does a good job at being a conclusion for the most part.
4. What can the student do to improve this section?
The addition of a reworded final sentence so that the section does not end so abruptly would be a
great addition to an otherwise excellent conclusion.