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COOK: What are you looking into now? Where do you see the field going in the future?Number one: most college applicants seem to write personal narratives. As far as I can tell.
PENNEBAKER: One of the most fascinating effects I’ve seen in quite awhile is that we can predict people’s college performance reasonably well by simply analyzing their college admissions essays. Across four years, we analyzed the admissions essays of 25,000 students and then tracked their grade point averages (GPAs). Higher GPAs were associated with admission essays that used high rates of nouns and low rates of verbs and pronouns. The effects were surprisingly strong and lasted across all years of college, no matter what the students’ major.
To me, the use of nouns -- especially concrete nouns -- reflects people’s attempts to categorize and name objects, events, and ideas in their worlds. The use of verbs and pronouns typically occur when people tell stories. Universities clearly reward categorizers rather than story tellers. If true, can we train young students to categorize more? Alternatively, are we relying too much on categorization strategies in American education?
The Secret Language Code
Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns
By Gareth Cook
Number two: most college composition textbooks applaud the use of verbs, caution against overuse of nouns, and condemn nominalization (non-nouns turned into nouns) with zeal.
The world is topsy-turvy.
13 comments:
I've been using a lot of materials and training videos/audio from the Institute of Excellence in Writing lately, and one thing immediately jumps out at me about this from that. You know who likes nouns (and adjectives)? Girls. And who tends to prefers verbs and adverbs? Boys.
The administrators in my district have been remarking for the last two years that essays for Regent's exams are lacking sufficient details...which would contain more nouns than verbs.
ime the bigger problem is that one needs to be in an Honors section to obtain writing instruction in many schools, as the nonHonors sections are focused on reading comprehension.
"Higher GPAs were associated with admission essays that used high rates of nouns and low rates of verbs and pronouns."
Really? This must be from "The Onion".
Since when are college essays reflective of a student? My son's AP English class is analyzing their essays in detail. They are graded. I see changes that reflect the sensibilities of his teacher.
MIT changed their essays (not part of the Common App) to have five shorter ones of no more than 250 words. You have to get to the point. Their admissions people said that they no longer ask for a Common App-type 500 word essay because it doesn't necessarily reflect the student.
I clearly see a fuzzy over-emphasis on the essays in the Common App and supplements. They want to see consistent good grades in school, but the tie-breakers are usually the essays. I think they have that backwards, especially if they really care about good GPAs.
Psychologists just want something to do with their degrees. It reminds me of all of the "team-building" programs they sell to big corporations. The programs allow mid-level managers to feel like they are doing something while at the same time not dealing with pathological and incompetent workers.
The fuzzies control so much, and it's best to know how to manipulate them. Admissions officers claim that they can tell the difference, but all they can pick out are the ones done poorly.
Pennebaker uses text mining methods (specifically, a parts-of-speech classifier) to analyze vast amounts of text by computer. The big problem with automated text analysis is that, while it can discover fascinating correlations that wouldn't be noticed on smaller datasets, it can't provide reasons.So this correlation between noun usage and good grades is no doubt there, but why? We can't really know.
I tried to find the original paper - this must have been published SOMEWHERE - but failed. I imagine if I had a copy of the book, I could find the reference. I am curious to see what they did.
Froggiemama: "I tried to find the original paper - this must have been published SOMEWHERE - but failed."
The paper has been submitted, but not accepted (yet). The submitted title (which can change before publication ...) is: "The Smallest Words in College Admissions Essays Can Predict Grade Point Average"
-Mark Roulo
Froggiemama: "The big problem with automated text analysis is that, while it can discover fascinating correlations that wouldn't be noticed on smaller datasets, it can't provide reasons.So this correlation between noun usage and good grades is no doubt there, but why? We can't really know."
The (pre-print) paper provides some suggestion on why. And the quote fragment above says so, too, a little bit: "... the use of nouns -- especially concrete nouns -- reflects people’s attempts to categorize and name objects, events, and ideas in their worlds. The use of verbs and pronouns typically occur when people tell stories. Universities clearly reward categorizers rather than story tellers."
Basically, one cluster of words shows up when you are journaling ("Dear Diary, today I ...") or writing fiction and a different cluster of words shows up when you are writing a more "logical" essay/article with a point you are trying to prove or defend. Universities want the second and the ability/preference toward this sort of writing shows up in college GPA.
My practical takeaway from this is that K-12 should have the kids do less journaling and more expository writing [but I would think this even if it didn't matter for college, so don't read too much into my opinion :-)].
-Mark Roulo
"... the use of nouns -- especially concrete nouns -- reflects people’s attempts to categorize and name objects, events, and ideas in their worlds. The use of verbs and pronouns typically occur when people tell stories. Universities clearly reward categorizers rather than story tellers."
That is his theory - but most likely (and I haven't seen the paper), the results from the text mining algorithms are not telling him that. This type of text analysis is strictly correlational - these words tend to occur together, the noun count is higher in certain kinds of documents, etc.
"That is his theory - but most likely (and I haven't seen the paper), the results from the text mining algorithms are not telling him that."
Right.
The correlation is mechanical and shows the type-of-words to GPA correlation.
The reason that this correlation exists seems to be a human interpretation based on looking at a bunch of these essays (I have only skimmed the paper).
-Mark Roulo
Students majoring in science and math usually receive lower grades in comparison to students majoring in the humanities. Given that split, does the paper treat an A in biochem as the equivalent of an A in film studies?
There also seems to be a significant bias against flunking out certain students at certain institutions, which would raise the low end of the grading curve.
The whole thing looks like a gimmick dressed up as nonsense, if it were applied to education. Students should write more essays, and fill out fewer worksheets.
Terri - really?????
You know who likes nouns (and adjectives)? Girls. And who tends to prefers verbs and adverbs? Boys.
WOW.
Academic writing is intensely 'nouny.' The nounification of academic writing is pretty much its distinguishing feature.
True of all academic writing in all subjects; nothing to do with the humanities versus the sciences.
I'm pretty sure I understand this phenomenon now.
For a long time I've wondered why writing really does seem to be thinking.
Now I believe the mechanism (or one important mechanism) is 'nominalization.'
You combine a noun and a verb into one noun, and then you can talk about the noun-verb using another verb, which means you are making a more complex statement.
Complex sentence structures generally allow you to express more complex thoughts, BUT a simple declarative structure using nominalizations let's you talk about very complex concepts, too.
Heh. The word "nominalization" is a nominalization.
I'm laughing!!!!!
It IS!!!
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