Berling NPR blog post

Zoe Berling

Why College Students May Feel Like Imposters On Campus

I went on NPR and found a quick scientific segment on the effect of the psychological state of freshman students on their success in college.  The interview Psychologist Greg Walton was summarized by the NPR correspondent Shankar Vedantam.  Vedantam collaborated with Steve Inskeep from the Morning Edition to create a concise depiction of Walton’s research. The style differs from a print story because multiple people contribute to creating the narrative.  The information was delivered through a series of comments, each one clarifying the other person’s point.  It was more of a discussion, rather than a revealing of facts.  

The language was pretty informal because the segment was only about four minutes and the audience was parents with college age students. I didn’t have any problems with the sentence structure; it sounded colloquial and easy to understand.  There were points where the conversation was difficult to follow.  I think that the reason is that the conversation was really condensed.  The analogy to the car oil was stupid.  Because of the brevity of the segment, there wasn’t enough lead up.

Attribution in radio stories is different than attribution in written news in that it’s easier to get away with informal language.  Looking at the transcript of the story made Vedantam’s introduction of Greg Walton look awkward, but it sounded relatively natural when I was just listening.

I wonder if these kinds of stories follow a script or if the commentators are just following notes.  It doesn’t read like a script.  However, there are some lines that sound scripted, like “and that’s interesting” and “that’s right.”  These transitions sound natural, but look corny.  

The segment was generally ok.  There were no major stylistic problems. Even though the content wasn’t mind blowing, the points were gracefully conveyed.  The biggest problem was the car analogy, which sucked.  Honestly, it ruined the segment for me.

http://www.npr.org/2013/10/16/235188760/why-college-freshman-may-feel-like-imposters-on-campus