Revising Flash Fiction for Coh-Metrix: Experiential Learning With Discourse Technologies

Authors

  • Christopher R. Wolfe Miami University Author
  • Mitchell Dandignac Miami University Author

Keywords:

discourse technology, psycholinguistics, textual cohesion

Abstract

Students in a course on the psychology of language and thought first wrote flash fiction stories and analyzed them using course concepts. As an experiential learning exercise, they subsequentially analyzed those stories for a number of psycholinguistic variables using the discourse technology Coh-Metrix. Their assignment was to change a number of specific variables by at least one standard deviation. The assignment proved challenging to students and was subsequently revised. Evidence—from anonymous student surveys, focus groups, end-of-semester course evaluations, and performance on the assignment itself—suggests that students gained an intuitive feel for psycholinguistic concepts and this emerging discourse technology.

Published

2024-04-25