Works In Progress 2

The second presentation was about dialogue. John C. Myers is a psychology major that participated in the works in progress symposium to help him get into graduate school. John's research was based on "What’s Different about Dialogue? A Comparative Approach." He was interested in discourse processing, especially reading. John's research involved: reader characteristics, expectations, and goals. He conducted an experiment that had two catagories: news and litrary. The news readers read at a faster rate and better recalled casual relationships. The literary readers read slower and better recalled surface and text basic information. This suggested that the literary readers were looking deeper into the reading for more detailed information. Dialogue (speech) is easier to understand. John's study stated that expository text is more difficult to comprehend. A conversion from dialogue to monologue may ulimately facilitate comprehension. Monologue will serve as a mid-point. His materials are two expository text. They were to read one sentence at a time to calculate reading times. He plans to obtain thirty participants, ten in each condition( expository, dialogue, and monologue). The effect of genre will also be consdiered. John predicted that dialogue are the easiest to comprehend and expository text are the hardest.

John did a good job with his presentaton. He stated good points and information to back it all up. I think the result of his experiment will give him the results he is looking for. He spoke very well and brought the conversation down a level so that everyone in the room could understand. I do not really know how this presentation would help me with my paper.