Writing in School : A study of how students in upper secondary school use adjectives and adverbs in school writing

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to see how often, and to what extent, students in upper secondary school use adjectives and adverbs in their school writing. Additionally, a comparison was made between girls and boys. 40 texts were used in total, and 20 of them were written by girls and 20 written by boys. I counted the adjectives and adverbs in the texts and took notes of what kind of adjectives and adverbs were used as well as how often each of them were used. In this study, I found that girls outperform boys in both total number, of both adjectives and adverbs, as well as in variety. Furthermore, I found that students use far more adjectives than they do adverbs in their school writing.