This thesis describes an action research project undertaken at Manchester Community College, Manchester, Connecticut, USA. The project was designed to gather evidence to address the research question: Can an intercultural approach to composition provide community college students with the cultural awareness and skills to succeed in the culture of the academy without devaluing the home cultures from which the students come to the college? The project involved asking English 101 (freshmen composition) students to read James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and then to apply intercultural skills to their analysis and interpretation of the text. About 80 students participated in the project over a two-year period. The thesis includes an overview of composition theory, with emphasis on current trends in postmodern/postcolonial approaches that emphasize a binary (self/Other) world view. It also provides an overview of intercultural theory and an examination of the ways in which it reflects or differs from bicultural theory and from current trends in composition. It also contains descriptions of intercultural activities undertaken in my classroom. Most of the data was gathered by the use of online discussion boards. The student/subjects responded to five writing prompts which asked them to reflect on their intercultural experience with academic culture. In addition, students were able to access the researcher’s research diary via a discussion board, and many posted comments to the diary that became a rich source of evidence. Students also completed a paper-and-pencil exit survey, and five students participated in follow-up interviews. The analysis of the data reveals that most of the students experienced a dawning recognition, rather than an immediate recognition, of academic culture as a distinct culture. While most students experienced a mild degree of culture shock because of this recognition, they went on to develop coping mechanisms that facilitated their competency and confidence in the target culture. The analysis chapters (Chapters 6, 7, 8 and 9) examine the many ways in which students experienced academic culture, their responses to it, and their development and use of intercultural skills to facilitate their interactions with the culture. In particular, students did not demonstrate a binary world view, but instead revealed the ability to use academic writing to create a third space, in which they brought academic culture, their own cultures, and the cultures represented by the text into relation.

Responding to Student Writing: Strategies for a Distance-Teaching Context identifies viable response techniques for a unique discourse community. An overview of paradigmatic shifts in writing and reading theory, 'frameworks of response' developed to classify response statements for research purposes, and an overview of research in the field provide the theoretical basis for the evaluation of the empirical study. The research comprises a three-fold exploration of the response strategies adopted by Unisa lecturers to the writing of Practical English (PENl00-3) students. In the first phase the focus falls on the effect of intervention on the students' revised drafts of four divergent marking strategies - coded correction, minimal marking, taped response and self assessment. All the experimental strategies tested result in statistically-significant improvement levels in the revised draft. The benefits of self assessment and rewriting, even without tutorial intervention, were demonstrated. The study is unique by virtue of its distance-teaching context, its sample size of 1750 and in the high significance levels achieved. The second phase of the research consisted of a questionnaire that determined 2640 students' expectations with respect to marking, the value of commentary, their perceptions of markers' roles and their opinions of the experimental strategies tested. Their responses were also correlated with their final Practical English examination results. The third phase examined tutorial response. The framework of response, developed for the purpose, revealed that present response strategies represent a regression to the traditional product-orientated approach to writing that contradicts the cognitive and rhetorical axiological basis of the course. There is thus a disjunction between the teaching and theoretical practices. The final chapter bridges this gap by examining issues of audience, transparency, ownership, timing of intervention and training. The researcher believes that she has successfully identified practical and innovative strategies that assist lecturers in a distance-teaching context to break away from old response blueprints. / English Studies / D.Litt. et Phil. (English)

Responding to Student Writing: Strategies for a Distance-Teaching Context identifies viable response techniques for a unique discourse community. An overview of paradigmatic shifts in writing and reading theory, 'frameworks of response' developed to classify response statements for research purposes, and an overview of research in the field provide the theoretical basis for the evaluation of the empirical study. The research comprises a three-fold exploration of the response strategies adopted by Unisa lecturers to the writing of Practical English (PENl00-3) students. In the first phase the focus falls on the effect of intervention on the students' revised drafts of four divergent marking strategies - coded correction, minimal marking, taped response and self assessment. All the experimental strategies tested result in statistically-significant improvement levels in the revised draft. The benefits of self assessment and rewriting, even without tutorial intervention, were demonstrated. The study is unique by virtue of its distance-teaching context, its sample size of 1750 and in the high significance levels achieved. The second phase of the research consisted of a questionnaire that determined 2640 students' expectations with respect to marking, the value of commentary, their perceptions of markers' roles and their opinions of the experimental strategies tested. Their responses were also correlated with their final Practical English examination results. The third phase examined tutorial response. The framework of response, developed for the purpose, revealed that present response strategies represent a regression to the traditional product-orientated approach to writing that contradicts the cognitive and rhetorical axiological basis of the course. There is thus a disjunction between the teaching and theoretical practices. The final chapter bridges this gap by examining issues of audience, transparency, ownership, timing of intervention and training. The researcher believes that she has successfully identified practical and innovative strategies that assist lecturers in a distance-teaching context to break away from old response blueprints. / English Studies / D.Litt. et Phil. (English)