Writing Seminar Survey


Gender:  M  F

Age:              

Do you consider yourself a member of any of the following ethnic groups (you may circle more than one):

African-American Native-American Asian-American

Latin-American Caucasian Other

Please circle the type of environment in which you grew up:

Urban Suburban Rural Other

Please estimate how many minority students were in your high school graduating class: ________

How many students in total (approximately) were in your high school graduating class? ________

Please answer the following questions as truthfully as possible. Circle the answer that most accurately reflects your opinion on the question asked, from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

The Writing Process

strongly strongly
disagree agree
1. I enjoy writing: 1 2 3 4 5

2. I have frequent practice in writing: 1 2 3 4 5

3. I feel comfortable with the writing process: 1 2 3 4 5

4. I write well: 1 2 3 4 5

5. I write to communicate with others: 1 2 3 4 5

6. When I'm writing, I have a sense of writing to an audience: 1 2 3 4 5

7. Writing helps me explain things to other people: 1 2 3 4 5


Note: This survey was developed by Leslie Harris (in collaboration with Cynthia Wambeam, Robert Smith, and Terry Craig) as part of on-going research on the effectiveness of Internet-based English Composition teaching as compared to traditional methods of instruction. Students in experimental and control classes fill out the survey at the beginning and at the end of the semester, to determine how their attitudes about writing change over the course of the class. Differences in attitude in experimental classes are compared to those recorded by the control group(s). This is only one of several measurements used as part of the experiment.