User:Phoderolfeen/sandbox

This is the sandbox for the user and student editor Phoderolfeen. The article I will be working on is Jury instructions. ~

Some thoughts on improving the article Jury instructions be its own article, it just needs fleshing out. Phoderolfeen (talk) 03:17, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Talk page recommended rolling this into the jury_trial article, but I disagree. This article is important enough to
 * Add more examples of what recent studies have found regarding jury comprehension of jury instructions.
 * Add 'Janet Randall' to source list, and discuss findings and recommendations in the expanded article. She conducted two studies of the comprehensibility of Massachusetts civil jury instructions, with undergrads as the subject. One study "found significant improvements (a) when instructions were rewritten in 'Plain English' - with passive verbs (Ferreira 2003) and 'legalese' (Diana & Reder 2006) minimized - and (b) when subjects could read as they listened." (Randall, J., L. Graf & N. Clarke (2015) Improving juror comprehension: reading while listening. Presented at the Linguistics Society of America Annual Meeting 2015, Portland, OR.
 * Add more specific examples of jury instructions, such as the example given in the existing article. In California, the instructions to the jury in civil cases were revised to make them easier to understand.
 * Add sentence explaining this article mainly focuses on U.S. jury trials, and is not indicative of how juries in other countries are instructed.

Instructor update
Here is the link to your group's shared sandbox:Nd08/sandbox. Remember to communicate your individual proposal with the other student working on this topic. Cakers01 (talk) 20:43, 19 February 2018 (UTC)