Har längden betydelse?
En kvantitativ studie av elevers textstrukturer
AbstractJohannes Åberg 2012: Har längden betydelse? ? En kvantitativ studie av elevers textstrukturer.Does the length matter? ? A quantitative study of student text structures. Essay writing is one part of the national test in the school subject Swedish. Here the student gets the opportunity to demonstrate that it is able to follow instructions and produce a coherent text. The examinator's task hereby becomes a troublesome process with subtle distinctions between rights and wrongs. This quantitative study consists of an investigation of the significance of length in students? texts, i.e. text length, sentence length and word length. The aim is to collate the texts grade with these three aspects of length and also compare feminine and masculine language features. 17 student texts from the 2011 national test in Swedish for students aged 15, written by nine girls and eight boys from the grade levels not achieving the goals, satisfactory and very well satisfactory, form the basis for the study. These are three grade levels in a scale of four, where the second highest has been omitted.The results indicate that the answer to the question in the title is yes and furthermore that boys and girls use the length variable in different ways. For instance, boys tend to produce shorter texts with more longer words. There is also a slight correlation between short sentences and high grades. Finally, it seems to be of the highest concern to write a longer text if you want to avoid the lowest grade.