EBQ workshop
Does the presence of others help or hurt performance?
Original practice sources, not published papers. Written for EBQ practice. Do not cite them as research.
Exam timing is 45 minutes including a 15-minute reading period. The clock is practice, not Bluebook. Claim, evidence from the cards, then a named CED concept — eloquence without the list word does not earn Part C. That constraint is the craft, not a trick.
EBQ practice clock · 45 minutes
45:00
Practice clock, not Bluebook. You can keep writing after it stops.
In a campus lab, 48 students completed a typing task alone and, on another day, with two observers behind them (order counterbalanced). For a well-practiced pangram they already typed daily, mean correct characters per minute rose with observers (alone 62, observed 71). For a brand-new symbol-mapping task taught that hour, means fell with observers (alone 24, observed 16). Individual scores were on-screen — each person’s output was identifiable.
In a design class, 36 students made posters in groups of four. In half the groups, each student’s initials appeared on the sections they drew. In the other half, no names appeared. Independent judges, unaware of condition, rated effort-related completeness (0–10). Named-section groups: mean 7.8. Unnamed groups: mean 5.1. Several unnamed-group students later said they assumed someone else would finish the border.
A music teacher compared jury scores (0–100) on a piece students had rehearsed for six weeks with a rating of the same piece recorded in an empty practice room the week before. Mean jury (audience of faculty) 81; mean practice-room recording 74. For a sight-read etude added the morning of the jury, the pattern reversed: practice-room 68, jury 59. The teacher notes this is school data, not a random sample of musicians, and students knew the jury counted toward a grade.
