What does past research say about proofreading
What does past research say about proofreading
PSYC 311 PROOFREADING INTRODUCTION OUTLINE 1
An Introduction Section, in Brief:
Begin with a broad description or definition (if needed) of the topic
Continue with a brief discussion of why this topic is important to study (why it matters)
Introduce general background research on the topic (not directly related to your methods,
conditions, IV/DV, etc)
Merge into research more relevant to your specific design and methodology
Spend the most time and detail discussing research that directly relates to yours (i.e. share
methodology, or were the inspiration for your hypotheses)
Conclude with the purpose of your study and hypotheses
PROOFREADING OUTLINE
Articles:
1: Healy
2: Riefer 91
3: Riefer 93
4: Smith
5. Wong
You must find and add others where needed!
Proofreading: what it is and why it’s important (4,5)
o Professionalism, grades
Why it needs to be studied: we are not very good at it (5)
o Not taught
o Reading is hard anyway, adding proofing makes it cognitive overload
o Top down processing (TDP): we don’t notice the details; we make
assumptions about what SHOULD be there instead of seeing what’s actually
there
Requirements of a proofreader (4)
o Knowledge of language/education
o Attention to detail
o Patience & thoroughness
o Proof reading skills (strategies)
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PSYC 311 PROOFREADING INTRODUCTION OUTLINE 2
What does past research say about proofreading?
o Type of error matters?
Contextual
Grammatical
Spelling only (1,2,3)
o Familiarity matters (your own work, reading someone else’s more than
once)
This is because of TDP
How do we proofread?
o Phonological (Sound) vs. Visual (1)
Find more misspellings when visually different (a/t vs. o/e)
Why? TDP (we look at envelope first, then sound it out only if
needed)
Research on strategies to eliminate the TDP effect
o Moving pen/finger
o Using a ruler per line
o Backwards reading (2)
Eliminates TDP as a factor
Not effective
Backwards and slow is best
Results: only good for spelling, and then only if reading slow
These finding suggest something that affects all these strategies is:
# of times paper is reviewed?
Reading speed?(1,2,3)
o Team vs solo (3)
Results: team better, but didn’t matter if they worked together or
separate
Conclusion: two proofreaders are better than one
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PSYC 311 PROOFREADING INTRODUCTION OUTLINE 3
o Another type of strategy, might be reading aloud. Why? Well…
Riefer (3):
Team: one read aloud, one read silently
Solo: half of them read aloud, half silently
Reading out loud (working together) didn’t make a difference
However, Riefer notes that he didn’t actually test aloud as a variable-
it was confounded with the team/solo
Therefore… the purpose of this current study
o To explore the effectiveness of reading aloud as a strategy
o To adopt Riefer’s materials (explain them!)
But focus on just aloud/silent as strategy
Hypothesis!
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