College reading programs are traditionally remedial or developmental in nature and often take a decontextualized skills based approach to reading and to supporting college readers (Holschuh & Paulson, 2013). Skills oriented deficit-based approaches to reading provide deficit-based frameworks for readers to construct self-perceptions. TLS 239 Literacy Tutoring is an undergraduate service-learning course where students learn about reading process and theory and develop strategies to tutor in community schools for twenty-four required hours. Coursework frames literacy as a socially constructed process and students engage in a miscue workshop, strategy presentations and in exploring the reading process. In this study, I examine the coursework of 38 students enrolled in TLS 239 and students' reports of shifting their perceptions and self-perceptions of literacy through coursework that challenged their literacy conceptualizations. In this study, I conceptualize Ken Goodman's (2003) theory of revaluing as restorying through a construct of story (Bruner, 2004; Short, 2012) and a semiotic theory of inquiry (Peirce, 1877), a process of fixating new belief. This struggle, or inquiry into reading provides a framework for students to renegotiate and restory their perceptions of literacy and their self-perceptions as literate. Findings indicate that conceptualizing reading as a socially constructed process including the construct of a reading transaction (Rosenblatt, 1994) and the construct of miscue (Goodman, 1969) was anomalous to college students' perceptions of literacy and caused students to doubt previously held misconceptions about reading. Students reported shifts towards conceptualizing reading as the construction of meaning, shifts towards positive self-perceptions as readers, and shifts in their literacy engagements. Students reported an increase in confidence, reading differently, reading more effectively, becoming metacognitive, reading more assigned readings in college, reading more for leisure and feeling more actively engaged in their other courses. Implications include conceptualizing literacy learning as social and emotional learning and the pedagogical implications of literacy instruction framed within a construct of inquiry.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Duquesne University, 2006. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p.168-183) and index.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of DVDs in enhancing student vocabulary development in second-language contexts. To this end the study sought students’ perceptions of DVD subtitles and their level of vocabulary knowledge. It also examined the extent to which watching a DVD with or without intralingual subtitles can improve students’ vocabulary recognition and recall. The literature review included a discussion on the variables operant in second-language acquisition; the use of visual media on vocabulary learning; and the effects of subtitling practices as a didactic tool for vocabulary recall and recognition. The study adopted a mixed-method approach and data were collected through a survey and openended questionnaire; a Vocabulary Levels Test; a Vocabulary Knowledge Scale Test; and vocabulary intervention activities. The findings indicate that DVDs can enhance students’ vocabulary in second-language teaching and learning contexts. More importantly the study confirms audio-visual images create greater sensory input that is, “words associated with actual objects or imagery techniques, are learned more easily than those without” (Chun and Plass, 1996:183). / English Studies / M.A. (TESOL)

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This study steps into a long running discussion of the place of imaginative literature in First Year Composition (FYC) courses. Chapter one surveys the scholarship, including the work of Erika Lindeman and Gary Tate, two compositionists whose debate has been at the center of this discussion, and three scholars' responses to the issues their debate raises. Instructors might be able to include imaginative literature in FYC courses if they use the literature to support the courses' rhetorical goals rather than to "teach the literature" itself.