The Stanford Study of Writing Isn't Representative of Student Writing in General
Wired wrote about about the Stanford Study of Writing earlier today.
Lunsford's team found that the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across. The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago.
The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing. In interviews, they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world. For them, writing is about persuading and organizing and debating, even if it's over something as quotidian as what movie to go see.
Sadly, the author there forgets to mention that this study only looked at college students at Stanford. While I read the post there, I couldn't help but think that my own experience as a writing teacher is completely different - most probably because I never taught at Stanford. This study is completely biased and to look at it as anything else but a study of Stanford students is plain wrong.
Just have a look at the demographics of the participants and you will see how different this group is from regular college (let alone community college) students.
Demographics
Student Demographics - Gender, Origin, Academics
| Category | Stanford Class of 2005 | Study of Writing Participants |
| Total Number | 1,616 | 189 |
| Male | 50.1% | 47.5% |
| Female | 49.9% | 52.5% |
| States Represented | 49 | 33 |
| Most Represented State | California , 44% | California , 43% |
| Countries Represented | 38 | 18 |
| HS GPA 3.8+ | 84.8% | 97% |
| SAT Verbal over 700 | 67% | 74% |
| SAT Math over 700 | 71% | 76% |
Student Demographics - Race and Ethnic Background
| Category | Stanford Class of 2005 | Study of Writing Participants |
| White/Caucasian | 43.6% | 42.3% |
| African American | 10.3% | 6.9% |
