Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2017-03-23T13:07:58Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Fernanda Martin Sbroggio.pdf: 3938406 bytes, checksum: ed17726e5744b1933c87f6537eb3acb6 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-03-23T13:07:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Fernanda Martin Sbroggio.pdf: 3938406 bytes, checksum: ed17726e5744b1933c87f6537eb3acb6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-03-15 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / This dissertation is linked to the Reading, Writing, and Portuguese Language Teaching line of research and focuses on the relation between thematic composition, mobilization of cognitive abilities to select, relate, organize, and interpret, and the construction of argumentative route and of the proposals of intervention in ten argumentative essays elaborated for the writing test of Enem 2013. Based on theoretical lines linked to cognitive, interactionist, and rhetorical argumentative sciences, this research aims at verifying, with the analysis of these essays, the role of the thematic proposal, as well of the cognitive abilities in the construction of argumentative route and in the elaboration of the proposal of intervention in Enem writing test. For this purpose, the analysis of the writing test’s thematic composition is performed, as well as the verification of how the abilities to select, relate, organize, and interpret facts and opinions are mobilized in the development of arguments, the identification of the argumentative route built by the student, and the identification and evaluation of the proposals of intervention presented. At the end of this route, it is possible to observe that both the thematic proposal and the mobilization of cognitive abilities interfere with the meeting of competencies III and V, which refer to construction of argumentative route and elaboration of the proposal of intervention, respectively. If, on the one hand, the composition of the thematic proposal interferes more directly with the meeting of competency V, on the other hand, the development of cognitive abilities is crucial to the construction of a consistent, persuasive argument, which dialogs with the proposal of intervention. This finding supports the conclusion that extra caution is necessary in the elaboration of the thematic sentence, in order to ensure that it dialogs completely with the reference matrix, instead of being a complicating factor to the meeting of the competencies analyzed in this study, as well as greater attention to these students’ basic education, which must intensify the exercise and development of thinking, in order to create citizens who are capable of mobilizing the most diverse cognitive abilities in order to accomplish a specific purpose. Given the importance of Enem in the national scenario, it is believed that the conclusions obtained by this research may be useful to expand understanding about the written test in the exam, as well as to offer a diagnosis of how understanding about the essay and the cognitive abilities necessary for its composition remain developed in the students who have already completed or are about to complete high school. This research may, as well, serve as basis to new and more detailed studies in this field / Esta dissertação está vinculada à linha de pesquisa Leitura, Escrita e Ensino de Língua Portuguesa e focaliza a relação entre a composição temática, a mobilização das habilidades cognitivas de selecionar, relacionar, organizar e interpretar e a construção do percurso argumentativo e da proposta de intervenção em dez textos dissertativo-argumentativos produzidos em atendimento à prova de redação do Enem 2013. Embasada em linhas teóricas vinculadas às ciências cognitivas, interacionistas e retórico-argumentativas, a pesquisa busca verificar, a partir da análise desses textos, o papel da proposta temática e das habilidades cognitivas na construção do percurso argumentativo e na elaboração da proposta de intervenção em redações do Enem. Para tanto, é feita a análise da composição temática da prova de redação, a verificação de como as habilidades de selecionar, relacionar, organizar e interpretar fatos e opiniões são mobilizadas no desenvolvimento da argumentação, a identificação do percurso argumentativo construído pelo educando e a identificação e a avaliação da proposta de intervenção apresentada. Ao final desse estudo constata-se que ambas, proposta temática e mobilização das habilidades cognitivas, interferem no atendimento às competências III e V, que se referem, respectivamente, à construção do percurso argumentativo e à elaboração da proposta de intervenção. Se, por um lado, a composição da proposta temática interfere mais diretamente no atendimento à competência V, por outro, o desenvolvimento das habilidades cognitivas é decisivo no desenvolvimento de uma argumentação consistente, persuasiva e em diálogo com a proposta de intervenção. Essa constatação conduz à conclusão de que se faz necessário um maior cuidado na elaboração da frase temática, a fim de garantir que ela dialogue completamente com a matriz de referência e não seja, por si só, um dificultador do atendimento às competências aqui estudadas, e de que é preciso uma maior atenção à formação básica desses estudantes, a qual deve intensificar o exercício e o desenvolvimento do pensamento a fim de formar cidadãos capazes de mobilizar as mais diversas habilidades cognitivas para cumprirem um determinado propósito. Em função da importância do Enem no cenário nacional, acreditamos que as conclusões obtidas nesta pesquisa podem ser úteis para ampliar o entendimento da prova de redação do Exame e também para oferecer um diagnóstico de como a compreensão sobre o texto e as habilidades cognitivas necessárias à sua composição se encontram desenvolvidas nos alunos que já concluíram ou estão concluindo o ensino médio. Esta pesquisa ainda pode servir como ponto de partida para novos e mais aprofundados estudos nessa área

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2017-04-27T12:41:32Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Sérgio Simka.pdf: 1492824 bytes, checksum: 982f85b74741a12867ba68ed83de614f (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-04-27T12:41:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Sérgio Simka.pdf: 1492824 bytes, checksum: 982f85b74741a12867ba68ed83de614f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-04-11 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / This work presents the elaboration of a pedagogy of writing called Pedagogy of Enchantment characterized by a theoretical-methodological-procedural structure, wich aims to make the student become a linguistic self, through linguistic self-esteem, becoming a linguistic self-writer, anchored by an architecture of thinking, saying and acting, whose objective is to develop his linguistic-textual-discursive competence. It was thought as an attempt to change the practice that has been developed on the production of the wrtitten text, wich has presented unsatisfactory result, according to the press findings and testimonials of experts brought by the research. By means of activities applied in the classroom in the light of this Pedagogy, it was possible to notice an improvement in the production of texts of the students / Este trabalho apresenta a elaboração de uma pedagogia de escrita denominada Pedagogia do Encantamento caracterizada por uma estrutura teórico-metodológico-procedimental, que visa a que o aluno se transforme em eu-linguístico, por meio da autoestima linguística, constituindo-se em eu-linguístico-escritor, ancorado por uma arquitetura de pensar, dizer e agir, cujo objetivo é desenvolver a sua competência linguístico-textual-discursiva. Foi pensada como tentativa de mudança à prática que vem sendo desenvolvida sobre a produção do texto escrito, que tem apresentado resultado insatisfatório, conforme as constatações da imprensa e depoimentos de especialistas trazidos pela pesquisa. Por meio de atividades aplicadas em sala de aula, à luz dessa Pedagogia, pôde-se notar uma melhora na produção de textos dos alunos

In this multiple case study, I examined what types of sociocultural resources adult English learners brought with them from their previous contexts and what new resources they drew upon in the U.S. while learning to write in the essay genre. The study also identified how the participants chose to use previous and new sociocultural resources as mediated by the essay genre in the U.S. The following research foci shaped this study: (1) What types of sociocultural resources do adult English learners use while learning to write in the essay genre prior to and after their arrival in the U.S.? (2) How does the essay genre mediate adult English learners’ choices about sociocultural resources in the U.S.? Data collection involved semi-structured interviews, in-class and out-of-class participant observations and collection of artifacts over a period of seven weeks. Six weeks were dedicated to essay writing in an English composition course and English workshop, and one week was used to conduct a final in-depth interview with each participant. Analysis of data included coding and theme analysis. Four refugee students with diverse cultural backgrounds and who had different contacts within the educational system in the U.S. participated in the study. Results indicate that the participants relied upon seven categories of social, symbolic, and material resources when they learned to write in the essay genre. The categories are not mutually exclusive, but they do capture the variety of resources participants drew upon as writers in the essay genre prior to and after their arrival in the U.S. To draw upon their resources in the U.S., the participants also made choices that resulted in three types of actions. Those actions included losses, retentions, and gains. The essay genre mediated some retentions and gains. Those choices were driven by the essay genre demands of the participants’ new sociocultural context and, consequently, were rooted in their interaction within the new environment. Not all of the participants’ choices were mediated by the essay genre; some of them were shaped by contextual influences. Contextual influences shaped losses, as well as some of their retentions and gains. Those were general choices that were situated within particular contextual realities. As my study shows, the essay genre along with context played a significant role in contributing to shaping participant’s agentive capacity. The essay genre, in particular, shaped the kind of competencies they had to demonstrate; contextual influences shaped the types of resources and their access to them. Understanding this interaction and, in particular, how genre helps students make purposeful choices and act as competent writers contributes to a more holistic understanding of learning to write as a sociocultural act. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.

Although the benefits of group and pair work in the second language (L2) classroom have been extensively studied, most documented research has focused on the use of oral tasks and spoken interaction between learners. Recently however, researchers have begun to investigate the advantages of collaboration on written work. More specifically, with the advancements in computer technology and web-based collaborative platforms like wikis, there has been a growing awareness of the educational possibilities of wikis to enhance L2 writing instruction. This study followed a pretest/posttest repeated measures design to investigate the impact and students' perceptions of wiki-based collaborative writing activities on individual writing performance. The study involved 12 university students in a TOEFL preparation course at a large university in Bogota, Colombia. Students were divided into two groups: the experimental group (n=8) engaged in a series of wiki-based collaborative writing activities and focused practice between pre and posttests, while the control (n=4) received no treatment. Two individual writing samples (pre and posttest) composed by each participant under timed conditions were quantitatively analyzed using the three linguistic developmental measures of complexity, accuracy, and fluency. While statistically significant differences were not evident for measures of fluency or accuracy, descriptive statistics showed an overall positive impact for collaborative writing on individual learners' written fluency. Analysis of complexity measures revealed mixed results with respect to learning gains. Further analysis of perception data reported by learners in an exit survey disclosed their positive attitude towards perceived linguistic benefits with regard to the wiki-based collaborative writing activities. Both theoretical and pedagogical implications of the study, limitations, and directions for future research are presented.

Chinese students learning English as a foreign language seem to get good marks in tests, but are poor or limited in their ability to write in English. This dilemma of China's EFL writing instruction seems to be related to the decontextualized EFL writing practices. This study aims to examine how Chinese EFL college students respond to changes in their writing instruction that pays attention to the context of EFL teaching and learning. In this study, context refers to three levels: linguistic context, situational context and cultural context. Using the mixed methods approach, I conducted the study by engaging 60 second-year undergraduate students from a university in China and five Chinese students studying in a joint program in a university in the United States. The Write-to-learn Model based on my context-oriented framework was used in the study. The findings of the study show that following a 5-month training with the Write-to-learn Model, the experimental group improved significantly more than the control group with respect to English writing, indicating that adding context to EFL teaching and learning created positive writing outcomes for EFL students. In addition, the results of this study also demonstrate that the Chinglish phenomenon was related to decontextualized EFL writing practices and thought patterns resulting from culture. Adequate comprehensible input of authentic materials was found to be a good remedy to minimize EFL students' Chinglish expressions. This study found that the Write-to-learn Model was an effective approach in China's EFL writing classes.

The aim of my study is to investigate if and in that case how the writing process and texts written by students in the upper secondary school are affected by the writing tool; does it matter if they write their texts on a computer or by longhand? Another objective is to compare such an effect with the findings of previous studies performed on earlier generations of writers. The first part of my study was a survey. It showed that two thirds of the 67 students participating thought that they would have written better texts in the national writing test if they had been able to use computers. In the second part of the study each of the fourteen participants wrote one text on computer and another by hand. Unlike the findings of earlier studies that I compared with, these students had a higher writing speed and spent significantly less time to produce their texts. This result could indicate that the students of today not only are accustomed to computers but also are unfamiliar with writing by hand. Furthermore this study, like previous studies, did not show any statistic proof of a correlation between a specific writing tool and the quality of the written text. Hence it did not support the opinion that the students of today have a disadvantage when they have to write their national test by hand. On the other hand the study indicated that such disadvantage still could be the fact for some individuals. Three of the participants took part in the third part of the study where they produced two more texts; one by hand and the other on computer. Their writing processes were recorded and the analyses indicate an individual variation in whether the writing tool had an effect on the writing process and quality of texts. / Syftet med min undersökning är att undersöka om och i så fall hur gymnasieelevers skrivprocesser och texter påverkas av om de skriver för hand eller på dator, men också att jämföra en eventuell påverkan med den som har konstaterats för tidigare generationer av datoranvändare. Bakgrundsenkäten i den första delundersökningen visade att två tredjedelar av de 67 elever trodde att de skulle ha skrivit bättre texter på det nationella provet i svenska om de hade fått använda dator. I den andra delundersökningen medverkade fjorton av gymnasieeleverna genom att skriva två texter, en för hand och en på dator. Ett resultat som skilde sig från dem i de tidigare studier jag jämförde med var att deltagarna skrev snabbare och under kortare tid när de använde dator. Resultatet tyder på att dagens gymnasieelever inte bara är datorvana utan kanske också ovana att skriva för hand. I likhet med tidigare undersökningar visade delundersökningen inte en statistiskt signifikant kvalitetsskillnad mellan deltagarnas datorskrivna och handskrivna texter. Gymnasieelevernas farhågor om att textkvaliteten skulle ha försämrats av att de tvingades skriva det nationella provet för hand fick därmed inget stöd. Samtidigt visade studien att för enskilda individer skulle det faktiskt kunna förhålla sig så. Tre av deltagarna medverkade även i den tredje delundersökningen, där deras skrivprocesser dokumenterades i samband med att de skrev ytterligare en text på dator och en för hand. Resultatet av den andra delundersökningen pekar mot att skrivverktygets påverkan på skrivprocessen och även på texternas kvalitet skulle kunna variera från person till person.

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

This study aimed to develop and validate a rating scale for assessing English First Additional Language essays at Grade 12 level for the final National Senior Certificate examination. The importance of writing as a communicative skill is emphasised with the re-introduction of writing as Paper 3 of the English First Additional Language examination at the end of Grade 12 in South Africa. No empirical evidence, however, is available to support claims of validity for the current rating scale. The literature on the concept of validity and the process of validation was surveyed. Theoretical models and validation frameworks were evaluated to establish a theoretical base for the development and validation of a rating scale for assessing writing. The adopted framework was used to evaluate the adequacy of the current rating scale used for assessing Grade 12 writing in South Africa. The current scale was evaluated in terms of the degree to which it offers an appropriate means of assessing Grade 12 Level essay writing while adhering to requirements of the National Curriculum Statement. It was found lacking and the need for a new, validated rating scale was established. Various approaches to scale development were considered in consideration of factors that impact scores directly, viz. the type of rating scale, rater characteristics, scoring procedures and rater training. A new scale was developed and validated following an empirical procedure comprising four phases. The empirical process was based on an analysis of actual performances of Grade 12 English learner writing. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was used in each of the four phases to ensure the validity of the instrument. The outcome of this project was an empirically developed and validated multiple trait rating scale to assess Grade 12 essay writing. The proposed scale distinguishes five criteria assessed by means of a seven-point scale. / Thesis (Ph.D. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

This study aimed to develop and validate a rating scale for assessing English First Additional Language essays at Grade 12 level for the final National Senior Certificate examination. The importance of writing as a communicative skill is emphasised with the re-introduction of writing as Paper 3 of the English First Additional Language examination at the end of Grade 12 in South Africa. No empirical evidence, however, is available to support claims of validity for the current rating scale. The literature on the concept of validity and the process of validation was surveyed. Theoretical models and validation frameworks were evaluated to establish a theoretical base for the development and validation of a rating scale for assessing writing. The adopted framework was used to evaluate the adequacy of the current rating scale used for assessing Grade 12 writing in South Africa. The current scale was evaluated in terms of the degree to which it offers an appropriate means of assessing Grade 12 Level essay writing while adhering to requirements of the National Curriculum Statement. It was found lacking and the need for a new, validated rating scale was established. Various approaches to scale development were considered in consideration of factors that impact scores directly, viz. the type of rating scale, rater characteristics, scoring procedures and rater training. A new scale was developed and validated following an empirical procedure comprising four phases. The empirical process was based on an analysis of actual performances of Grade 12 English learner writing. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was used in each of the four phases to ensure the validity of the instrument. The outcome of this project was an empirically developed and validated multiple trait rating scale to assess Grade 12 essay writing. The proposed scale distinguishes five criteria assessed by means of a seven-point scale. / Thesis (Ph.D. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Due to a lack of effective writing strategies and inhibition of English language proficiency, university students in China are found to produce little and shallow content in their English academic writing. Similar problems are also embodied in the academic writing of Chinese overseas students who struggle to survive in the target academic community. The purpose of this study was to investigate the writing processes of second language (L2) writers, specifically examining the writing strategies of three Chinese post-graduate students in an Australian higher education institution. The study was prompted by the paucity of research in the writing strategies used by Chinese students in English academic writing in an authentic context. Although it was too small in scale to generalise in the field of L2 writing, the study will stimulate research in L2 writing theory and practice. Based on a review of theories related to L2 writing and research in Chinese and English writing strategies, the writing strategies used by three Chinese post-graduate students while writing academic papers in English were investigated. Their understandings of English and Chinese writing processes, the issue of transfer of Chinese writing into English writing and cultural influence of native language on L2 writing were explored as well. Qualitative hermeneutic multi-case study methods were employed to provide a richer description of the writing strategies used by the three students to develop a deeper understanding of the L2 writing process. Data were provided by three Chinese post-graduate student writers in Public Health who were observed undertaking different tasks. Ally, a Masters student, was observed completing one of the assignments for a course. Susan and Roger, both doctoral students, were observed working on a second stage proposal and a journal paper respectively. Data collected from semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, retrospective post-writing discussions and papers were categorised and analysed using topical structure analysis and cohesion analysis. The findings suggest that writing in a second language is a complicated idiosyncratic developmental process influenced by cognitive development, social/educational experience, the writer's first language (L1) and second language (L2) proficiency and cultural factors as well. These proficient writers were found to utilise a broad range of writing strategies while writing academic papers in English. This study in some degree supports Silva's (1993) finding that the L2 writing process is strategically, rhetorically, and linguistically different from the L1 writing process. Most of the metacognitve, cognitive, communicative and social/affective strategies except rhetorical strategies (operationally defined in this study as organisation of text or paragraphs) were found to transfer across languages positively. These student writers were noticed to have difficulties in acculturating into the target academic discourse community because of their background of reader-responsibility which is regarded as a crucial feature in Eastern rhetoric and is distinguished from writer-responsibility in English rhetoric (Hinds, 1987, 1990).