The authors of the report by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin note that certain types of function words are known to say different things about a person. They note that "high rates of pronoun use have been associated with greater focus on one's self or on one's social world, auxiliary verb use has been associated with a narrative language style, article use has been associated with concrete and formal writing, and preposition and conjunction use has been associated with cognitive complexity."
That is, function words allow us to assess how people are thinking more than what they are thinking about."
Using articles and prepositions were both correlated to higher grades. But using lots of auxiliary verbs, impersonal pronouns, personal pronouns, adverbs and negations were negatively correlated.
“Admissions offices are looking for people who exhibit intellectual maturity, for students who are able to go beyond the immediate personal narrative,” David Beaver, one of the study's coauthors, told USA Today. “When I was very young, my great aunt was fond of saying that when washing, clean the back of your hands, and the fronts will take care of themselves. Likewise, students should not worry about function words. If you focus on expressing interesting ideas, the function words will take care of themselves."
But it all may be for naught, if Mitchell Stevens is right. Stevens spent 18 months embedded in the admissions office of a prominent liberal arts college. His conclusion? Essays almost never have any impact on admissions.
Read more at http://national.deseretnews.com/article/3554/You-can-learn-more-about-how-a-person-thinks-by-looking-at-this.html#m6kpG1AUZaSF1Qdl.99
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