Surely We Must Learn to Read before We Learn to Write!

Simon, Lopez, M., Sutton, K. and Clear, T.

While analysing students' marks in some comparable code-reading and code-writing questions on a beginners' programming exam, we observed that the weaker students appeared to be able to write code with markedly more success than they could read it. Examination of a second data set from a different institution failed to confirm the observation, and appropriate statistical analysis failed to find any evidence for the conclusion. We speculate on the reasons for the lack of a firm finding, and consider what we might need to do next in order to more thoroughly explore the possibility of a relationship between the codereading and code-writing abilities of novice programming students.

Cite as: Simon, Lopez, M., Sutton, K. and Clear, T. (2009). Surely We Must Learn to Read before We Learn to Write!. In Proc. Eleventh Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE 2009), Wellington, New Zealand. CRPIT, 95. Hamilton, M. and Clear, T., Eds. ACS. 165-170.

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