prompt n.

[Herb Stahlke]

My university requires a writing exam for graduation.  The topics for
those are referred to as prompts.

Herb

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 2:32 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: prompt n.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Education researchers used sentences as prompts in experiments in the
> 1960s. I do not know if the term was used earlier by behaviorists.
>
> circa 1967, American educational research journal, Volume 4, American
> Educational Research Association.
>
> Over the ten training trials the prompt sentence for a given word pair
> appeared twice in each of the five ordinal positions within the
> paragraph. ...
> Each frame in the "program" consisted of a prompt sentence containing
> an English word as the subject ...
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=7cIrAAAAMAAJ&q=trials+prompt#search_anchor
>
> Here is a 2005 book about "writing to the prompt" that provides some
> evidence that your students use of the term is widespread.
>
> Title   Writing to the prompt: when students don't have a choice
> Author  Janet Angelillo
> Publisher       Heinemann, 2005
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=zv5JAAAAYAAJ&
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 1:54 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: prompt n.
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> It's tempting to say that the testing use of "prompt" has been
>> influenced by technology (from Command Prompt), in which case this OED
>> entry would be related. I am not convinced, however, that this is how
>> it came into being--it does sound like it had more Behaviorist
>> origins.
>>
>>> c. Computing. A word, symbol, or message automatically displayed on a screen to indicate that input  is required from the user.
>>
>>> 1977 Computer-Aided Design 9 151 Displaying and responding to prompts from the computer. 1985 Which Computer? Apr. 51/2Prompts and help messages reduce the possibility of making an error in the first place. 1992 Broadcasting 27 Jan. 35/2 An on-screen prompt encourages viewers to enter the names of household members viewing a given program. 2000 Daily Tel. 16 Mar. (Connected section) 14/2 Exit Windows to DOS mode..and change to drive letter A by typing A: at the C:> (or C:\\WINDOWS>) prompt.
>>
>> For example, consider the lines
>>
>>> Identify the key words in a test prompt.
>>
>> and
>>
>>> Identify the key words from a test prompt.
>>
>> and
>>
>>> Focus on the key words in the prompt!
>>
>> in the chapter Writing to a Prompt, in Winning Strategies for Test Taking.
>> http://books.google.com/books?id=92Lq_j-HUqcC
>>
>> The book even identifies the type of questions that should be used in
>> training students--the "released writing to a prompt questions".
>>
>> This is quite pervasive. I just grabbed the first book that popped up
>> on the list.
>>
>> VS-)
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 1:30 PM, Gordon, Matthew J.
>> <GordonMJ at missouri.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>> "prompt" is also common in rhetoric/composition contexts.
>>>
>>> -Matt Gordon
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3/15/10 12:24 PM, "victor steinbok" <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>>>
>>> In psychometrics, the body of a multiple-choice question is usually referred
>>> to as "the prompt", but ed publishers call it "stem" or "root" with the
>>> answer choices all referred to as "distractors" (even though one of them is
>>> supposed to be correct). ;-) The editors I've worked with sometimes would
>>> differentiate between the "question stem" and "prompt", the latter being a
>>> general comment that applied to multiple questions, including instructions.
>>> This seems reverse of what test specialists use, but these two groups rarely
>>> talk to each other. But it can get very confusing if you work with both...
>>>
>>> VS-)
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 12:35 PM, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>> >
>>> > Typically, when I assign a paper to a class, I will write out and
>>> > distribute several sentences of instructions and advice.  All of a sudden
>>> > (it seems to me), my students are referring to such a document as "the
>>> > prompt." (I would call it simply "the assignment"--or maybe, if I wanted to
>>> > sound informal, "the specs").
>>> >
>>> > When asked about the term, some of my students associate it with their AP
>>> > classes in high school. Is it a (behaviorist?) term that emanates from
>>> > colleges of education? The use doesn't match any of the entries for _prompt_
>>> > n.2 in the OED.
>>> >
>>> > --Charlie
>>
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