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Courtney Johnson

Ms. Mounts

Modern Lit.

07 Mar 2018

Effective or Not Effective?

Matthew G. Springer wrote an article called What Gets Students Motivated to Work

Harder? But it is not effective. The study he performed is not a good representation of every

student. He becomes wordy and carries on information that is not needed. The statistics springer

used were nice but still not enough. The author Matthew G. Springer present on ineffective

article, because of his small study group and his wordiness throughout several sections, but he

was able to present statistics, but they are not enough.

Springer uses a very small group study compared to how many kids there are in the

world. “We selected 300 fifth grade students in a large southern urban school district who were

eligible for free after-school tutoring services.” (Springer paragraph 11). There is no variation in

section one. He uses only middle schoolers in his study and they don't understand the concept of

money like high schoolers do. There are only 300 people in his study when there are millions of

students in the world that may have different opinions. The study Springer conducted does not

represent other students’ thoughts on their motives.

The author become very wordy at times too. He uses complex words not everyone may

understand, such as “...monetary and nonmonetary…”(Springer paragraph nine). He add

unnecessary details to the article that takes away from the main idea. Springer then doesn’t
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provide enough explanations of what is needed. Overall he explains what doesn’t need it and

doesn’t explain was needs explaining.

The statistics he presented were not enough. “The students in the certificate group

attended 42.5% more of their allotted tutoring hours than those assigned to the control group.”

(Springer paragraph 18). He adds a summary of the study but the study was too localized. Also,

he presents specific data but it is all only positive. The facts that are also presented are believable

but are biased.

The small group study and his wordiness throughout the article made Matthew G.

Springer’s article ineffective even through he was able to provide great statistics they just

weren’t enough. His group study he performed was not big enough and becomes very wordy

throughout the article. Through nice, the statistics stated were not enough. All readers should

evaluate authors before trusting what they have to say.