<p> The goal of the study is to develop an equity-minded theory of college writing readiness. An estimated third of incoming students are academically underprepared for college writing. The majority of these students will not earn a baccalaureate. Because rigorous pre-college preparation is a chief indicator of postsecondary achievement, improving college writing preparation in high schools is strategic to increase graduation rates. The writing disparities linked to the prevailing cognitive model of writing instruction raise equity concerns that hinder successful reform to meet the literacy learning needs of students from all linguistic backgrounds. In redress, this study offers qualitative information to assess the conceptual fit of a sociocultural framework&mdash;known as new literacies theory&mdash;to describe how literacy learning occurred with two groups of students enrolled in high school college preparation. The study employs ethnographic methods to explore how the discourses practiced in college preparation classrooms support college writing readiness across different student groups. New literacies provides the frame for exploring college preparation as it is influenced not only by the local social and cultural patterns instantiated in each classroom, but also by the variant linguistic resources students bring to their respective classrooms. The study's empirical objective is to describe how college preparatory academic rigor is amplified or reduced by students' own classroom language participation. Because how college writing readiness is theorized guides how college preparation is conceptualized in policy and practice, theory development is necessary to support academic writing outcomes (and the postsecondary opportunities these outcomes represent) for all students.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-11, Section: A, page: 4690. Adviser: Diane Musumeci. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 227-233) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Because child readers are still in the process of fully acquiring their language, children's books and their translations are closely linked to orality and the oral culture. Strong sound, rhyme and rhythm, which are habitual features of children's literature, also figure as important agents in the acquisition of language. Therefore, these linguistic principles might indicate a pedagogical skopos in the translation of children's literature, that of aiding in child language acquisition. Theory on sound translation and commentaries from translators of children's literature provide arguments for the importance of retaining sound and rhythm in translation. Analyses of three French-Canadian children's books translated into English provide practical observations of how sound and rhythm are translated in actual texts.

In contemporary nature writing, beauty can indeed be said to be "in the eye of the beholder". English-Canadian and French authors of such texts often perceive and describe their natural surroundings in very individual, though culturally shared, ways. English-Canadian and French authors have developed quite different approaches to nature writing, and this difference becomes clearly apparent through a contrastive analysis of two corpora: nature writing intended for English-Canadian readers and similar texts addressed to French readers. Through the juxtaposition of these texts, the cultural topoi of each linguistic set are drawn out. In an environment where forces of globalization are bringing more languages and cultures into contact, an analysis of this type sets forth the "culturemes" that practising translators need to be aware of and respond to. A sample text that takes the findings into account illustrates this.

The objective of this study is to show how translation contributes to the "Orientalist" project and to the past and present knowledge of the Orient as it has been shaped by different disciplines such as anthropology, history and literature. In order to demonstrate this, I have decided to compare the Arabic text Alf Leyla wa Leyla (The One Thousand and One Nights) with the French translation by Antoine Galland (1704-1706) and the English translation by Sir Richard Burton (1885). According to Edward Said, the Orientalist project or Orientalism is mainly a French and British cultural enterprise that has produced a wide-ranging wealth of knowledge about an Orient that has been represented as an undifferenciated entity with despotism, splendour, cruelty, or even sensuality being its main attributes. I have chosen these translations because they come from places with a long Orientalist tradition. In 18th century France, the age of the Belles infideles, Galland is a man of the Enlightenment who appears to be a precursor of Orientalism as embodied in Montesquieu's Lettres persanes and Votaire's zadig. A century later, Burton's The Arabian Nights, backed by a deep knowledge of Islam, is published. Burton is an official in the service of the British Empire---an empire that takes pride in having the highest number of Muslim subjects. The evolution of Alf Leyla wa Leyla and its translations is followed by an analysis of the shifts applied to the representations of Oriental elements found in it (social and religious practices). These shifts as well as the annotations that refer to Arabo-Islamic culture are related to Galland and Burton's intellectual development and to the socio-historical context of their respective translations.

Translation of musical theatre has been afforded little academic study. This project aims to help fill this gap in order to develop the study of musical theatre in translation studies. This begins with defining the specificity of musical theatre as a form, using prior work in both the study and translation of theatre and of opera. The goal is to position musical theatre as an object for analysis and to outline the constraints attached to the translation thereof. An analysis of the effect on translation of some of these constraints follows based on notions from discourse analysis and music interpretation. Finally, this semiotic framework focussing on the use of isotopy is applied to a specific case of musical theatre translation, that of Man of La Mancha translated into French by Jacques Brel as L'homme de La Mancha.

The purpose of this doctoral research is to demonstrate that translation, as a form of representation, is present in the elaboration of a discourse on the nation in colonial Mexico, or New Spain. To this end, a catalogue of 712 translational products is explored by means of a classification based on a conceptual framework provided by nationalism studies. This approach leads to see how, individually and collectively, one group of translations weave the canvass of an "imagined community" of faithful, on which three other groups intertwine narratives of foundational myths, instill a sense of belonging to a continuum of classical civilizations, and, lastly, incorporate New Spain to the concert of modern nations. Historiography is part of this evolution, and the presence of translation and subsequent rewritings are traced in the fixing of a national history.

No description available.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Douglas K. Benson / Este trabajo presenta una unidad de enseñanza la cual contiene una serie de actividades educativas diseñadas con la intencionalidad de ofrecer al aprendiz un cúmulo de experiencias significativas que permitan la construcción del aprendizaje, mediante la lectura y comprensión de textos literarios que ilustran la cultura panameña; y que facilitan el desarrollo de aptitudes de toda índole. Los cuentos “El cielo se está cayendo” y “EL gallo Vicente” destacan aspectos importantes de la vida de los seres humanos dentro del ámbito social en que se desenvuelven a diario y que destacan las diferencias individuales de cada persona. Es por ello que, mediante el desarrollo de estas actividades, el aprendiz es motivado a leer, entender, distinguir, analizar, interpretar, comparar, establecer similitudes y diferencias, así como también ejemplificar el contenido y el contexto en el que se lleva a cabo cada uno de estos cuentos. Por otra parte, ambas obras literarias buscan que el aprendiz adquiera habilidades en la toma de decisiones, al momento de reflexionar y criticar objetivamente los puntos de vista de otros autores; así como también de ser creativo e innovador al reproducir lo aprendido. Cada actividad está enfocada en envolver al aprendiz en el uso efectivo del español, al mismo tiempo que adquiere un vocabulario nutrido y las estructuras gramaticales requeridas para interactuar en cualquier contexto social, mediante el intercambio de ideas, opiniones, y sentimientos, de manera efectiva y exitosa. Cabe destacar, que todas las actividades fueron diseñadas tomando en consideración que los aprendices son los principales agentes en la construcción de su propio aprendizaje y el docente se convierte en un guía y orientador en los procesos de enseñanza y aprendizaje.

No description available.