Writing Survey Reflection

When looking back on the Writing Survey I noticed that each question clearly focuses on a section of English. The langauge used in this survey is language that only students who have taken some writing/english courses would understand. The use of Gee's social language and intertextuality is evident in this survey as soon as you read the first few questions. If you were to hand this survey to a math or science major they wouldn't know how to respond because they wouldn't know what most of the vocabulary meant but as writing major we have a pretty good idea as to what each question is asking. The information that can be collected using this survey is seeing how well students understand simple concepts it takes to be a Writing Major but also ask about different techniques that students use to perfect their writing. For example; "I typically brainstorm or do other planning activities(ex. freewriting, listening, clustering,) as part of my writing process". This is not a question with a right or wrong answer, it is just to see how different students prepare their writing and how they choose to succeed. Some challenges researchers face when designing quantitative surveys like this one is repetativeness with the questions, realizing that some questions posed in the survey might trick or confuse the survey takers. This survey is also lacking in some very important aspects of being a good writer. Some other areas in writing that could be included in this survey are regarding how students work in groups, how they use technology when they write, and making the overall survey a little shorter so that the students don't get bored taking it.