Scott,+Daniel,+Andy

Research Topic - Does gender matters in what type -poetic or non-poetic- of literature they like? (Only for KIS and Illinois students)

Research Plan - Our current idea is to print our 2 hard copies of poetry along with 2 hard copies of speeches or short stories, so 4 in total that are all approximately equal in length. We will then give students a choice in choosing one to read and giving us their honest opinion of what they think of the piece they choose. Our goal of our study is to compare how the cultures value poetic to non-poetic literature. For every subject we test, we will record the gender and age so when analyzing our results, we can compare more sufficiently.

Hypothesis - Females will choose poetry more frequently than males. We also believe that more Korean students will choose the poetry than American students as well.

We believe that Korean students will choose more poetry because at the KIS school, they seem to have a higher appreciation of the arts. We also believe less boys will choose to read the poetry because they need to feel a sense of masculinity when choosing a piece to read.

=Literature Assignment - Article Summaries=

__**The Information and Reading Preferences of North Carolina Children**__

In this article, there is a section that mentions about the study of literature preferences among students. According to the study by the researchers, there are no typical pattern to what type of literature students like. It all depends on what they do daily, what they like, how they live, etc. Each children has unique interests and there are no particular order to who likes what. This article then talks about the reason why scholars try to figure out what type of literature people likes, and the most interesting reason was this: if the researchers do find out a preference in literature, then the writers can write that prefered literature type and earn more money. I believe the top part of the aricle is what is really important to my group because if this article's study was properly done, then there is a high possibilty that gender might not matter with the type of literature people like.

Gender and Reading Preferences

This article gives the opposite information that I got from the first article. According to Smith and Wilhelm's research done on 2002, there are preferences of literature.

(http://www.education.com/reference/article/gender-reading-preferences/?page=2)
 * Girls comprehend fiction better than boys.
 * Boys seem to prefer nonfiction, magazines, and newspapers.
 * Boys tend to prefer short texts or texts with short sections.
 * Girls enjoy leisure reading more than boys.
 * Many boys enjoy reading about sports and hobbies.
 * Some boys enjoy fantasy and science fiction.
 * Graphic novels and comic books are more popular with boys than girls.
 * Boys prefer visual texts.
 * Boys really do judge a book by its cover.

The study first began because there was an interesting story about the gap between boys and girls' English scores. While the boy's average English score remained about the same since 1998 to 2000, but the girls score increased, which made the gap of the two average scores greater. What really interested me about this article was that the idea in this article collides with the previous article. Reading this article, it seems like girls prefer fiction and boys prefer nonfiction and newspapers. If this is the true case, then in my groups study, a similar outcome might occur.

Scott Endsley 3-1-11 Sociology Literature Review

The general topic in which I will be researching revolves around the concept how genders and different age groups favor the finer arts in America. My partners from KIS will be researching the same idea, however, in regards to Korean culture. Our actual research topic asks how genders and age groups perceive poetry in regards to reading pleasure. We believed that the Korean culture would appreciate finer pieces of literature more times than American culture. When conducting research and trying to find statistics on the idea of poetry alone, I was unable to find any studies that had been done that would offer good information to base our project of off. The idea of studying poetry in a culture seems to be pretty untouched. Since I was unable to find adequate information on poetry alone, this is why the concept I will be researching is expanded to the fine arts in general of a culture and how its appreciation varies with different genders and age groups. My immediate reaction to not finding information on poetry alone leads me to believe that there is a specific reason no one has looked at this concept before, however, I think it would be interesting to be the first to for the reason that we have no others to compare to or fall short to. The first piece of literature in which I found was an article titled //Contemporary Women Poets and the Female Affiliation Complex// which was written by Jane Dowson. I chose this article because it does a nice job reflecting how 21st century poetry is geared towards females more than males. Her reasoning for this assumption is that over the past 300 years, the literary world has been male dominated. Women did not have a chance to get fame of a piece of work in which they had written. However, in recent years, the literary world has become less segregated to the point that there are becoming more and more famous female writers and poets. So she believes that since now more females will be rightfully respected in terms of producing literature, that the overall concept of poetry will be geared towards more women. This article relates to my research question because it leads me to believe that when asking people to choose a piece of literature to read, more women will choose the poetry piece than men. This will be interesting to refer back to after conducting some of my own research to see how women favor poetry to men. A statistical piece I found when research was the //2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts// which was conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts. The overall concept behind this study was to figure out the trend of how Americans take in the finer arts compared to past years. One of the studies present shows the trends of American adults that have attended at least one benchmarks arts activity in the last 12 months. As of 2008, this percentage was the lowest it had ever been by nearly 5%. We see a steady decrease in Americans and their attendance to fine art events. Another useful statistic taken shows the same steady above broken down into age groups. We see the 18-24 age group at about 33% and then the 35-44 age group at about 37% which is the highest of any age group. An important aspect of this chart is that for every age group, the percentage has dropped since 2002 by an average of 4%. The last relevant study done was in regards to what adults liked reading for leisure. The majority chose mystery at 32%, where only 7% chose poetry which was included in the category, “other”. This information is relevant to my topic because it gives me an idea of how age groups vary in appreciation of the arts and also shows me what adults like to read. This is helpful because it shows me what age groups I should focus my research on to get the broadest variety of results. The third source I found was a study also conducted by the National Endowment of the Arts. This study was called, //Reading at Risk: A survey of Literary Reading in America.// This study was conducted to see trends associated with reading fine literature. One of the charts in this report show how the percentage of Americans who have read fine literature in the past year has been steadily declining over the years. As of 1982, 57% of Americans reported reading fine literature pieces. However, as of 2002, this number had dropped nearly 10% and has continued dropping up until today. An interesting aspect of this report is when it breaks down the number of readers into races. We see what races tend to read literature compared to others. This study has made me think of different ways in which I could go about my own study. I am considering adding the race aspect along with gender and age, however, I do not know if this would result in biasness for the same study in Korea due to what races are present and accessible there.

Works Cited Dowson, Jane. “Abstract.” Introduction. //Contemporary Women Poets and the Female Affiliation Complex//. By Dowson. 6. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Mar. 2011. [|http://www.jstor.org/‌stable/‌1395641?&Search=yes&searchText=poetry&list=hide&searchUri=/‌action/‌doAdvancedSearch%3Fq0%3Dpoetry%26f0%] >. National Endowment for the Arts. //Reading At Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America//. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Mar. 2011. . National Endowment for the Arts. //2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts//. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Mar. 2011. .

Research Plan:   Print out 4 (still haven’t decided best number) hard copies of literature where there is an equal number of poetic and non-poetic writings. With these hard copies, go around asking students which of the four they would prefer to read and why and record general information about the student(age, gender).   Still need to decide what literature to use for our experiment that would result in the least amount of bias.

(Jenny Darrow) I think your research plan is good. Make the stories and poetry on the same topic so people will choose which type of literature they would rather read than which topic they would rather read. I think the opinion part about what they read is important too.

(Faiza) I think that this experiment has been planned well. Are you going to give people a survey to judge the literature they just read, or are they going to tell you how they feel?

I think that the main problem is that Uhigh, being a private school, would not give an accurate representation of most Illinois high school students. (Nick)

__**Illinois Research**__

Research Summary: I asked 80 students, 10 boys and 10 girls from each grade, at University High School to look at the 4 chosen pieces of literature and pick which one they would prefer to read.

The 4 chosen pieces were… Invictus – William Ernest Henley (Poem) O Captain, My Captain! – Walt Whitman (Poem) The Poor Relations Story – Charles Dickens (Non-poetic) Dissolution of the Long Parliament – Oliver Cromwell (Non-Poetic)

__Freshman__ Girls: 1 Invictus – William Ernest Henley (Poem) 2 O Captain, My Captain! – Walt Whitman (Poem) 6 The Poor Relations Story – Charles Dickens (Non-poetic) 1 Dissolution of the Long Parliament – Oliver Cromwell (Non-Poetic) Boys: 2 Invictus – William Ernest Henley (Poem) 1 O Captain, My Captain! – Walt Whitman (Poem) 4 The Poor Relations Story – Charles Dickens (Non-poetic) 3 Dissolution of the Long Parliament – Oliver Cromwell (Non-Poetic)

__Sophomores__ Girls: 1 Invictus – William Ernest Henley (Poem) 4 O Captain, My Captain! – Walt Whitman (Poem) 2 The Poor Relations Story – Charles Dickens (Non-poetic) 3 Dissolution of the Long Parliament – Oliver Cromwell (Non-Poetic) Boys: 2 Invictus – William Ernest Henley (Poem) 3 O Captain, My Captain! – Walt Whitman (Poem) 0 The Poor Relations Story – Charles Dickens (Non-poetic) 5 Dissolution of the Long Parliament – Oliver Cromwell (Non-Poetic)

__Juniors__ Girls: 3 Invictus – William Ernest Henley (Poem) 4 O Captain, My Captain! – Walt Whitman (Poem) 1 The Poor Relations Story – Charles Dickens (Non-poetic) 2 Dissolution of the Long Parliament – Oliver Cromwell (Non-Poetic) Boys: 3 Invictus – William Ernest Henley (Poem) 2 O Captain, My Captain! – Walt Whitman (Poem) 2 The Poor Relations Story – Charles Dickens (Non-poetic) 3 Dissolution of the Long Parliament – Oliver Cromwell (Non-Poetic)

__Seniors__ Girls: 4 Invictus – William Ernest Henley (Poem) 3 O Captain, My Captain! – Walt Whitman (Poem) 1 The Poor Relations Story – Charles Dickens (Non-poetic) 2 Dissolution of the Long Parliament – Oliver Cromwell (Non-Poetic) Boys: 7 Invictus – William Ernest Henley (Poem) 2 O Captain, My Captain! – Walt Whitman (Poem) 0 The Poor Relations Story – Charles Dickens (Non-poetic) 1 Dissolution of the Long Parliament – Oliver Cromwell (Non-Poetic)

Findings: __Freshman__ 3/10 girls chose poetic readings 3/10 boys chose poetic readings

__Sophomores__ 5/10 girls chose poetic readings 5/10 boys chose poetic readings

__Juniors__ 7/10 girls chose poetic readings 5/10 boys chose poetic readings

__Seniors__ 7/10 girls chose poetic readings 9/10 boys chose poetic readings

__Totals__ 22/40 girls chose poetic readings 22/40 boys chose poetic readings

44/80 respondents chose poetic readings over non poetic readings.

Presentations

Report of Findings