The accountability measures implemented by the states as a result of federal government mandates required by the No Child Left Behind Act (2001 [NCLB]) have created the need for states to develop standardized benchmark assessments as part of the compliance requirements set by the federally mandated act. State and local standardized tests have become an everyday part of public school life. A quantitative study was conducted to assess the correlation of students' scores on the reading portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) and students' reading percent scale-scores on one Florida county's benchmark reading assessment (CBAT) with students' teacher-assigned grades (TAG) for 10th-grade, English Language Arts courses. The study also assessed the predictive values of the 3 criterion variables and the moderating effects of 6 categorical variables: Race (White, Black, and Hispanic), Socioeconomic status (SES), English Language Learner status (ELL), and Students with Disabilities status (SWD), which contribute to Florida's Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) ranking of school grading policy. The study found that there was a moderate and positive correlation among the 3 criterion variables and that the combination of students' scores on the reading portions of both the CBAT and the FCAT showed a significant predictive value in predicting students' TAG. The study showed an even higher predictive value of the combination of students' scores on the CBAT and students' TAG in predicting students' scores on the FCAT. The study showed there was a moderating effect of the categorical variable Race on the correlation between students' CBAT reading scores and students' TAG; however, Race did not moderate the correlation between students' scores on FCAT and students' TAG. / The study found a moderating effect of the categorical variable SES on the correlation between students' scores on CBAT and students' scores on FCAT and students' TAG. The study showed a moderating effect of the categorical variable ELL between students' scores on FCAT and students' TAG and between students' scores on CBAT and students' TAG. The categorical variable SWD did not show any moderating effect between students' scores on CBAT and students' TAG, or between students' scores on FCAT and students' TAG. / by Christopher A. Beaulieu. / Thesis (Ed.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

This thesis is designed to invite scholars, writers, and teachers of rhetoric and composition pedagogy to re-evaluate the revision process as a means of inspiring and supporting first-year writers to become acquainted with their “writer’s voice.” This study explores students’ resistance towards revision and argues that recognizing and developing revision habits will help students revise independently. Self-directed revision not only strengthens a writer’s ability to engage in the writing process more astutely, but it is also a fundamental component to the self-identification process from which the writer draws inspiration. This thesis is structured into four main sections: (1) Introduction, referring to aim and methodology; (2) Chapter 1, addressing the importance of “self-directed” revision; (3) Chapter 2, a case study presenting first-year student responses to writing and revision; (4) Conclusion, discussing the relevance of implementing a strategic and shared value approach to first-year composition revision assignments. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

by Siu Kwai-peng. / Includes bibliographical references / Thesis (M.Ph.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1986

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Typescript (photocopy).rev / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries / Department: English.

In this research we have experimented on three classes of EFL college students, each trained on one of the three cognitive linguistic constructs just mentioned. After the respective training, each class was required to write a posttest essay applying the knowledge they had just learned. Chapter 6 we have analyzed the data both quantitatively and qualitatively. Though from the statistical results, some of the classes have not improved their mean scores significantly, our more dependable qualitative composition analyses using cognitive-functional-linguistic tools, did reveal that in general the students can understand the trained CL constructs and are able to apply the knowledge to their essays, which has caused the improvements of many of the posttests in terms of richness and depth of ideas, of textual organization, and of syntactic choices. / Studies of ESL/EFL writing still lack a comprehensive theory that can accommodate all the major approaches to ESL/EFL writing, such as the process, the product, and the genre ones. None of these can claim to be able to solve all the problems independently in real ESL/EFL classrooms. / The cognitive-functional-linguistic analytical tools introduced in Chapter 5 and applied mainly in Chapter 6 serve to strengthen the product concerns of our cognitive-functional-linguistic process writing framework. We want to claim that this research framework has not only integrated various writing approaches, but also the potential to accommodate other potential approaches, such as those with literary and stylistic concerns. / The present approach takes combining all these paradigms in an organic way as a starting point and seeks a theoretical framework for it from the neighboring discipline, linguistics, especially cognitive linguistics (CL) and systemic functional grammar (SFG). The writing model that has been set up in Chapter 4 of this research has provided us with a detailed description of the writing processes. With this model we can address very specific writing issues, including those relevant to our experiment, such as how and where ideas and language related to conceptual metaphor (CM), image schemas (IS) and cognition-based grammar (CG) come into the writing processes, and how prewriting activities can provide help for the writers. / Yuan, Ye. / "August 2007." / Adviser: Peter Crisp. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: A, page: 0596. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 240-252). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

First year college writing classes originated in the United States at Harvard University in 1874. Since then, theorizing such a course has proven a place of contention, as its purposes and subjects have proven difficult to sort and impossible to agree upon. When Harvard first began teaching introductory composition, literature played an integral role in the course, both as subject matter and as a means of acculturation for an increasingly diverse student body. Since then, many universities have continued to use literature as an important component of what has remained the only course largely required of all first year students. However, the use of literature in introductory composition has been contested since such courses began. Conflicting ideals have typified the conversation concerning the role(s) of reading in writing classes, in large part because of how the discussion has been framed. The difficulty in framing in part stems from participants thus far addressing the issue in limiting ways. For example, some have claimed that the issue had already been resolved, while others have argued to separate the discussion of literature in first year writing from theoretical, institutional, and historical concerns, given contradictory accounts of that history, or denied it altogether. Re-examining that history demonstrates that the uses and purposes of literature in first year writing have been continually and critically implicated in issues far more complex than whether or not a poem appears in a writing class. Institutions subordinated composition to literature in English departments, which led first to writing departments turning to literature as a validating subject matter, then later rejecting it to assert the independence of writing as a discipline. Institutional and political struggles have clouded adequate theorization of reading and writing in first year classes as well. The discussion has sometimes treated both reading and writing unproblematically, and even recent efforts to introduce to the conversation multiple ways of writing have ignored related and multiple processes of reading. Rewriting a historical narrative of how literature has been used in first year writing that includes theoretical and institution concerns clarifies how those concerns underwrite more recent discussion. Bringing those concerns to the surface allows a richer theorizing of introductory composition and literature's role in it, particularly with the inclusion of recent challenges to the privileged nature of the category "literature." Transferring a prevalent model of writing as a cognitive, expressive, or social-cultural process to similarly identify reading processes offers one means by which we might reconfigure first year writing, inviting students to engage various ways of reading and writing. Addressing ways in which theoretical, institutional, and historical forces have shaped first year writing provides the means by which we might be more reflexive and critical in shaping such courses in the future. It also might allow the conversation of the role(s) of literature in composition to leave its 120 year stasis and take a progressive turn. / Graduation date: 1999

Like other social institutions, universities have been created and administered by and for a white-male dominant culture that continues to marginalize women and anyone else designated as -Other- according to race, class, ethnicity, ability, age, size, and sexuality. This discussion questions the dominant model of standard written discourse in the college English classroom where linear, abstract argument centered on autonomous thinking and reasoning prevails. It explores how such a discourse privileges a patriarchal system of education that subordinates other ways of learning and writing, particularly those that may be closely associated with contemporary women's learning, and it looks at some experimental writing strategies for teachers and students who want to challenge the dominant model of discourse within the institution and perhaps better enable students to write with a sense of their own goals and purposes. / Graduation date: 1994

This thesis has explored the effects of sentence combining on the writing of English-speaking Freshman writing students at Taylor University, Upland, Indiana, to establish local base-line data for future research with sentence combining on ESL students. Under the assumption that regular practice in sentence combining would result in improved ability in written communication, four classes of students at two levels were pre-tested using the cloze procedure on three short passages of college-entrance-level reading material. Two classes were taught sentence combining techniques through the semester, one exclusively and one as an adjunct to other rhetorical. concerns. Two were taught with an emphasis on global writing processes. All were again post-tested using the cloze procedure at the end of the semester and asked to write a time-limited essay.An analysis of covariance was done to purge the residual scores of the pretest influence since random assignment of experimental and control groups was not possible. Statistically significant improvement among those taught sentence combining was noted.Having established statistical validity among a native, English-speaking control population the implication for ESL would be that the assumption now needs to be taken to the next level, applying the form and techniques of this study to an ESL population.In order to prepare for such a further step in research, some restructuring of materials would be necessary. The cloze tests (3 pre- and 3 post-tests) from this study need to be re-scored by acceptable answer as well as exact answer scoring procedure. Frequency lists of acceptable answers for each blank need to be established. For the pre- and posttests of the ESL population, the same cloze test passages could be used and scored by clozentropy -- weighing acceptable answers according to their frequency in the native speaker pretest. Then statistical significance of the technique on the teaching of writing in ESL by means of the technique of sentence combining could be determined either verifying or nullifying the hypothesis that the same conclusions would be reached with ESL students.Were similar findings to be reached in research with an ESL population, the importance of practice in sentence-level manipulation practice in techniques of sentence-combining would appear to be worth noting, Incorporation of sentence combining into a teaching of writing syllabus would seem to be a logical, pedagogically sound practice.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English