Activity During High-Repetition Practice of Syntax

Recent work has shown that repetitive, low cognitive load exercises may have benefits in gaining mastery of computer programming language syntax as well as positive scaffolding effects when learning problem solving. This paper presents results from a qualitative think-aloud study that explores two questions relating to what types of activities students engage in while completing syntax exercises and how the distribution of those activities changes with practice. We coded, with high temporal resolution, activities that study participants engaged in while completing syntax exercises. We find that students can gain mastery of simpler syntactic constructs through practice, while learning of more complex constructs can benefit from debugging and referring to previously completed exercises. In all cases, however, students appear to achieve proficiency in writing constructs after surprisingly few exercises. Our results suggest that a high-repetition learning framework for syntax meets stated goals of a safe and productive environment for students to learn syntax. We expect that our results will be generalizable to other settings in which practice is utilized as a pedagogical tool.