Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T20:38:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Claudia Mazzini Perrotta.pdf: 2334383 bytes, checksum: 3b554289d6e90b5e6eb584d4283511c2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-08-01 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The production of academic text, commonly, awakens feelings in researchers that may hinder or even prevent the realization of its discursive - and life - projects. Therefore, the aim of this study was to present a deployment of the speech clinic focused on potential authors wishing to publish in sphere of academic communication in order to help provide support and help overcome insecurities that can inhibit the creative process in the writing field. The work is constituted in the interface with D.W. Winnicott psychoanalysis still having reference to ideas developed by Clare Winnicott and Marion Milner - the three authors dedicated to deepen facets of creating, giving clues into to how we are in a complex and delicate field which generates anxieties and sufferings. Were also narrated referential clinical episodes and then framed principles that guide the therapeutic writing space. The dialogue with the authors of reference as well as the clinical repertoire shared here allowed us to affirm the need for the therapist to practice care functions in this context, such as: welcoming the suffering brought by potential authors which involves listening carefully to their concerns and how they are outlined from their personal languages, demystify supposed difficulties or symptoms of diseases and especially restate the cultural object 'academic writing', to enable new experiences in the field of communication and enhance sayings invested with personhood / A produção do texto acadêmico, comumente, desperta nos pesquisadores sentimentos que podem dificultar ou mesmo impedir a realização de seus projetos discursivos, e de vida. Diante disso, o objetivo deste estudo foi apresentar um desdobramento da clínica fonoaudiológica voltada a autores em potencial que pretendem publicar na esfera acadêmica de comunicação, de modo a contribuir para dar sustentação e ajudar a superar inseguranças que podem inibir o processo criativo no campo da escrita. O trabalho se constitui na interface com a psicanálise de D.W. Winnicott, tendo ainda como referência ideias desenvolvidas por Clare Winnicott e Marion Milner os três autores se dedicaram a aprofundar facetas do criar, dando pistas de como estamos em um campo complexo, delicado e que gera sofrimentos e ansiedades. Foram também narrados episódios clínicos referenciais, sendo então emoldurados princípios que norteiam o espaço terapêutico da escrita. A interlocução com os autores de referência bem como o repertório clínico aqui compartilhado permitiu afirmar a necessidade de o terapeuta exercer funções de cuidado nesse contexto, tais como: acolher o sofrimento trazido pelos autores em potencial, o que implica escuta atenta de suas inquietações e da forma como são enunciadas, a partir de seus idiomas pessoais; desmistificar supostas dificuldades ou sintomas indicativos de doenças e, principalmente, reapresentar o objeto cultural escrita acadêmica, de modo a possibilitar novas experiências no campo da comunicação e potencializar dizeres investidos de pessoalidade

Thesis (M.A. (Translation Studies and Linguistics)) -- University of Limpopo, 2014 / Refer document

The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of the essay writing process of first year undergraduates at Chancellor College (University of Malawi) and to a lesser extent those of the lecturers responsible for teaching academic skills. A mixed methods design, combining qualitative and quantitative techniques, was employed in order to obtain richer data for deeper understanding of the students’ writing process. Two hundred students from the humanities and social science faculties responded to a self-completion questionnaire towards the end of semester one. Based on the students’ responses, an open-ended questionnaire was administered to four full time English for Academic Purposes (EAP) instructors. Findings from this study indicate that most students find it very challenging to obtain sufficient and relevant source text information, paraphrase or summarise information, and use an appropriate academic writing style. As solutions to these challenges, the students suggested the need for timely essay writing instruction, availability of resources for essay writing, increased amount of time spent on essay writing instruction, and discipline specific instruction in essay writing. EAP instructors identified lack of teaching and learning materials, large EAP classes, and students’ negative attitude towards the EAP course, as some of the challenges they encounter when teaching the course. The EAP instructors proposed an increase in the number of staff members, making students aware of the significance of the EAP course at an early stage, and the availability of up to date resources, as some of the ways in which the teaching of the course can be improved. Overall, the findings seem to suggest that difficulties that students encounter during the writing process and teaching challenges that EAP instructors face, have great impact on students’ perception of academic writing as well as their approach to writing tasks. The findings also suggest a lack of dialogue between the students and their lecturers. This is evident in students’ unawareness of the nature of the writing demands of their lecturers and disciplines; students’ desire to have timely essay writing instruction; and the lecturers’ concerns about students’ negative attitude towards the EAP course.

This volume is a tribute to our friend and colleague Philip Shaw, Professor of English linguistics at the Department of English, Stockholm University, on the occasion of his 65th birthday. The 22 contributions to this volume by friends and colleagues worldwide bear witness to Philip’s academic versatility as well as his interests beyond academia. The first paper, ‘Narratives of Nature in English and Swedish: Butterfly books and the case of Argynnis paphia’, a genre study by Annelie Ädel and John Swales, is illustrated by Philip devoting himself to one of his favourite activities. It is followed by four other genre analyses, based on very different texts: Trine Dahl, ‘Telling it Like it Is or Strategic Writing? A portrait of the economist writer’, Paul Gillaerts, ‘Move Analysis of Abstracts from a Diachronic Perspective: A case study’, Maurizio Gotti, ‘Investigating the Generic Structure of Mediation Processes’, and Nils-Lennart Johannesson, ‘Orrmulum: Genre membership and text organisation’. The following five papers all relate to Philip’s work in the fields of English as a Second Language (ESL), English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), and English for Academic Purposes (EAP). The ESL study by Britt Erman and Margareta Lewis is titled ‘Vocabulary in Advanced L2 English Speech’, and ELF is represented by Beyza Björkman’s ‘Peer Assessment of Spoken Lingua Franca English in Tertiary Education in Sweden: Criterion-referenced versus norm-referenced assessment’. The three following papers relate to Philip’s work on academic writing: Magnus Gustafsson & Hans Malmström, ‘Master Level Writing in Engineering and Productive Vocabulary: What does measuring academic vocabulary levels tell us?’, Akiko Okamura, ‘Philip Shaw’s Writing Expertise in Academic Discourse’, and Diane Pecorari, ‘Additional Reasons for the Correlation of Voice, Tense and Sentence Function’. The three papers to follow address issues within the fields of dialectology and sociolinguistics, representing different speech communities in the English-speaking world: Joan C. Beal, ‘Tourism and the Commodification of Language’, Peter Sundkvist, ‘“Ridiculously Country”: The representation of Appalachian English in the Deliverance screenplay’, and Sandra Jansen, ‘“I don’t sound like a Geordie!”: Phonological and morphosyntactic aspects of Carlisle English’. This naturally leads on to studies on World Englishes, represented by papers by Kingsley Bolton, ‘World Englishes, Globalisation, and Language Worlds’, Gunnel Melchers, ‘The North Wind and the Sun: A classic text as data for World Englishes’, Christiane Meierkord & Bridget Fonkeu, ‘Of Birds and the Human Species – Communication in Migration Contexts: English in the Cameroonian migrant community in the Ruhr area’, and Augustin Simo Bobda, ‘The Emergence of a Standardizing Cameroon Francophone English Pronunciation in Cameroon’. The five final papers deal with a variety of linguistic topics all close to Philip’s heart but not so easily accommodated into the above sections. They are: Maria Kuteeva, ‘Tolkien and Lewis on Language in their Scholarly Work’, Karin Aijmer and Anna Elgemark, ‘The Pragmatic Markers Look and Listen in a Cross-linguistic Perspective’, Magnus Ljung, ‘Goddamn: From curse to byname’, Christina Alm-Arvius, ‘Opposites Attract’, and Erik Smitterberg, ‘Non-correlative Commas between Subjects and Verbs in Nineteenth-century Newspaper English’.

Thesis (DAppLing)--Macquarie University, Faculty of Human Sciences, Dept. of Linguistics, 2009. / Bibliography: p. 208-233.

As more students enter Canadian universities from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, supporting the development and transition of their academic writing skills through assignment and feedback design has become very important. Many of these students and their instructors identify academic writing as one of the students’ biggest problems in a Western university or college (Robertson, Line, Jones & Thomas, 2000; Yang, 1994; Zhu & Flaitz, 2005). Yet there is little support available for the instructors who work with these students (Dedrick & Watson, 2002). This study focuses on my interactions with three instructors in graduate programs that have a high proportion of international students who use English as an additional language (EAL). By weaving together action research and case study research, three themes became apparent: the instructors saw no clear distinction between the needs of EAL students and those who have English as a first language; the instructors were unclear about how to teach writing in their discipline; and, the instructors felt frustrated and overburdened by their workload. I also learned how I, as a researcher and an educational developer, can better interact with instructors to ensure support at the level of assignment and feedback design. The first lesson is when interacting with others it is necessary to identify the lens that represents one’s institutional and cultural lens. Because I did not adequately identify and interrogate my lens, I gave in to my colonial impulse to direct the study and the participants. The second lesson is the space in which we two instructors – the person from a given discipline and the person who is an educational developer – come together as a kind of “contact zone” (Pratt, 1998). I had hoped that the instructors and I would come together as a kind of Venn diagram, with our knowledge overlapping in a neutral and fruitful way, but I learned that the space where we come together is fraught and vulnerable for both the participants and the researcher. The third lesson is that relationships, which traditionally are not highly valued in our workplace in higher education, are extremely important in order to foster dialogue, continue conversations, and allow for the necessary revisiting and development of our work together. The main recommendation stemming from this study is workplace training for administrative staff who are in educational development positions. This study is important because there is little previous research in this area. As more Learning and Teaching Centres emerge at Canadian institutions, we must learn how to work effectively with instructors to affect curricular and assignment change. We must also question whether the kind of support a member of a Learning and Teaching Centre can provide is enough to affect this change, or whether other models, such as the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and faculty mentoring, are essential in the development of the understanding of how to better support the development of the academic writing skills of international EAL students.

The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of the essay writing process of first year undergraduates at Chancellor College (University of Malawi) and to a lesser extent those of the lecturers responsible for teaching academic skills. A mixed methods design, combining qualitative and quantitative techniques, was employed in order to obtain richer data for deeper understanding of the students’ writing process. Two hundred students from the humanities and social science faculties responded to a self-completion questionnaire towards the end of semester one. Based on the students’ responses, an open-ended questionnaire was administered to four full time English for Academic Purposes (EAP) instructors. Findings from this study indicate that most students find it very challenging to obtain sufficient and relevant source text information, paraphrase or summarise information, and use an appropriate academic writing style. As solutions to these challenges, the students suggested the need for timely essay writing instruction, availability of resources for essay writing, increased amount of time spent on essay writing instruction, and discipline specific instruction in essay writing. EAP instructors identified lack of teaching and learning materials, large EAP classes, and students’ negative attitude towards the EAP course, as some of the challenges they encounter when teaching the course. The EAP instructors proposed an increase in the number of staff members, making students aware of the significance of the EAP course at an early stage, and the availability of up to date resources, as some of the ways in which the teaching of the course can be improved. Overall, the findings seem to suggest that difficulties that students encounter during the writing process and teaching challenges that EAP instructors face, have great impact on students’ perception of academic writing as well as their approach to writing tasks. The findings also suggest a lack of dialogue between the students and their lecturers. This is evident in students’ unawareness of the nature of the writing demands of their lecturers and disciplines; students’ desire to have timely essay writing instruction; and the lecturers’ concerns about students’ negative attitude towards the EAP course.

Most teachers prefer not to write and publish on teaching. As a result, teaching tends to be written by researchers and others who are not core participants in the practices and contexts they are writing about. Furthermore, the narratives these writers provide are frequently told and explained in language that teachers find inauthentic. Since composing in writing is a key component of learning, teachers who do not write miss out on valuable opportunities for self-growth; and those who do not publish their reflections in any written form forgo a source of collaborative learning. This Doctor of Philosophy study examines the possibilities of published reflective writing in teacher learning for TESOL practitioners.

Thesis (DAppLing)--Macquarie University, Division of Linguistics and Psychology, Dept. of Linguistics, 2009. / "December 2008". Bibliography: p. 299-327.

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2009. / Title from screen (viewed on September 30, 2009). Department of English, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Ulla M. Connor, Thomas A. Upton, M. Catherine Beck. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 60-62).