Developing Writers In Higher Education Chapter 5 Summary

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Intro
In chapter five of Laura Aull’s book, Developing Writers in Higher Education, Aull goes over her study of the presence of generality, certainty, and hedges and boosters in undergraduate students writing. Throughout this chapter she follows along several lines of inquiry (henceforth known as LOI) related to the topics, for the purpose of this paper I will only be writing about one, the use of generalization.
Introducing the LOI Aull begins the chapter with a dramatic start, asking us to “consider the following sentences written by incoming college students,” which led to “Since the beginning of time, people have feared new technologies”(Aull, Pg.139) “Our culture today stresses perfection and nobody wants to be less than perfect”(Aull, Pg.139) “Pressure always brings out the worst in people”(Aull, Pg.139) “Every mature, established person has control over what they say and do”(Aull, Pg.139)
In doing so Aull reveals the LOI by introducing examples of generalization in these students writing, thus giving the reader an expectation of the content and research to follow. As she delves into the problems associated with this writing style associated with “students transitioning into higher education”(Aull, Pg. 139) she maintains her LOI by defining what generalization is in relation to
Ways Aull Maintains the LOI …show more content…

Throughout Aull’s paper, she organizes her information into approximately twelve sections (it depends on what you count) with secondary titles that make it easy for the reader to break her work down into more manageable chunks. By separating her work with subtitles such as “textual examples,”(Aull, Pg.148), “analysis methods and corpora,”(Aull, Pg. 142) and “differences based on student level”(Aull, Pg.153), Aull is making her work more accessible for readers that may lie outside of the experts field to follow her