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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 286-299).

The demands imposed on teachers who are L2 speakers of English, in the Teaching of English as a Second Language (TESL) have had far-reaching consequences. In these situations, the consequences are compounded when the teacher is a L3 speaker of English teaching English to students who are predominantly L2/L3 speakers. Such consequences were explicitly stated in a number of reports, reviews and observations (Elley, 1979; Chamberlain, 1987; Laws and Horsley, 1988; The Ministerial Taskforce, 1989) and others. Issues relating to quality of education and quality of English teaching were frequently addressed and questioned. The author's experience as a teacher of English, Head of the English Department at Titikaveka College and English Adviser for secondary schools led to a growing concern and need to delve into these problems at both the primary and secondary levels. In the absence of research in this important area, the author sought to conduct investigation in four schools. The author was further motivated to conduct research as a result of a number of recent changes within the education system. Major concerns were firstly, the introduction of the Grade 6 National Examination in 1991; secondly, the change-over from the South Pacific English Option paper to a full New Zealand English paper in the New Zealand School Certificate (NZSC) Examination in 1989; and finally, the introduction of the New Zealand Bursary Examination in 1992. The question foremost in the author's mind was how adequately were the schools equipped to implement such changes given an array of major constraints. In this study, it is hypothesised that, most of the problems related to TESL in the Cook Islands stem primarily, and mainly from the poor quality of teachers in the classroom. This does not deny the existence of problems which emanate from other factors which impact on TESL, such as the language policy and curriculum, the adequacy or inadequacy of teaching resources, and whether indeed they are appropriate and the kinds of teaching methods which prevail. These are all acknowledged as contributing factors. The argument presented in this study, is that, while these are contributing factors, they are considered not as important as the teacher factor. The thrust of this thesis recognises the teacher as the most important classroom resource, the "key" factor which ultimately determines the quality and indeed the success or failure of an education system. This is true in the particular context of the Cook islands where teaching-learning resources, by its broadest definition, are very limited. In terms of the quality of the teacher's resourcefulness, this in turn is determined by his/her level of education and the kind of training received. Underlying the thesis presented is the contention that if the teacher is well-educated and highly-trained, then teaching and learning for the child make the possibility of attaining Level IV, the highest stage in Beeby's paradigm more likely. That is, teaching which stresses meaning and understanding, problem solving and creativity and the catering of individual differences (Beeby 1966: 72). Needless to say, the converse is more likely to happen, where and when teachers have had very limited education, inadequate and inappropriate training. In accordance with the purpose as outlined in Chapter 1, this study comprises 6 chapters and a conclusion. Chapter 1 discusses the nature of the problem from a number of interrelated dimensions, which have to varying degrees impacted on the teaching of ESL in the Cook Islands. The chapter concludes by stressing the purpose and relevance of the study in terms of educational, economic and social significance. Chapter 2 reviews and discusses, from a historical perspective, the literature as it relates firstly to the teaching of English in the Pacific but more specifically the teaching of English in the Cook Islands. The chapter then discusses the theoretical development and research in the teaching and learning of ESL in an attempt to arrive at a theoretical framework. Chapter 3 presents the research instruments and procedures used to gather and analyse the data. In the main, office sources, classroom observations, questionnaires and interviews formed the basis for eliciting data. Chapter 4 draws together the major findings of the study. The limited size of the sample placed some restrictions on the analysis of results derived from this study. Nevertheless, the analysis identified some significant trends upon which conclusions can be drawn. The last two chapters, Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 deal with the interpretative aspects of the study with the intention of arriving at valid recommendations to the problems identified. In summary, the study found that the teacher in the Cook Islands context is the key factor in the process of teaching and learning of ESL. When the teacher is well-educated and adequately trained, then the possibility of quality teaching and meaningful learning becomes a reality for the student.

The purpose of this creative project is to provide a manual for French teachers who wish to incorporate a cultural element with emphasis on religion into their course. In preparing these materials, the author has had the Christian school especially in mind.The Christian school movement is developing rapidly in the United States today. These schools along with Catholic parochial schools train a significant segment of our society. Because such schools are Christocentric in philosophy, they require supplementary materials not provided by secular publishers.This Creative Project contains a teacher's manual which is divided into three sections. Each of these sections is developed around the theme of a religious holiday. Teachers aids include prayer forms in French, pertinent Scripture passages, and songs to accompany the theme. The instructor will also find grammar explanations, vocabulary helps, and comments on French customs.There are worksheets and illustrations that can be duplicated and used in the classroom as learning aids. The teacher may also profit from program ideas and other activities designed to stimulate students in the language learning process.This project is aimed at preparing materials that will appeal to young teens and will also be practical for a busy instructor.

The case studies offered in this ethnography describe the learning experiences of 13 second and third grade students, six girls and seven boys, living in a medium-sizemidwestern town in the United States, who are taught Spanish as a foreign language once a week in 30 minute sessions during the 1995-6 school year. None of the children had any prior exposure to Spanish nor any additional exposure to Spanish outside the class I taught.The research investigates several areas of individual variety, including motivation, learning style, approach to vocabulary learning, classroom behavior, expectations, and listening and pronunciation skills.The study also investigates the impact of age and gender, as well as associations between the individuals' basic skills and L2 learning success.In addition, the study documents the teacher's experiences, observations, and insights during these classroom sessions. The researcher functioned as a participant-observer by teaching, recording, transcribing, and analyzing.The material for this study comes from hours of classroom teaching which were video- and audio-taped and from careful notes. The tapes and notes were transcribed and analyzed for patterns of learning behavior.A large number of observations resulted from this indepth study. One of the main findings of the study was that classroom management, emotional climate, and peer group influence are very closely interconnected. Learning was strongly related to cooperativeness and supportiveness in the two groups of girls but not seem to be so with the boys. There was no conclusive evidence that any one personality trait was more important than another in the long run. Overall scores on the CTBS were positively related to success in second language learning and were not negatively affected from one year to the next from the time taken out to study Spanish. There was no one area in the CTBS battery that could successfully predict foreign language aptitude; the best predictor seemed to be overall classroom success. Learning a foreign language was not particularly easy or automatic with this group; however, they did seem to have an aptitude and a willingness for repeating unfamiliar sounds. / Department of English

By using Foucauldian critical discourse analysis along with Stuart Hall's theories of representation, I investigate the meanings that Yaqui representations reproduce and how they develop a discourse of Yaquinesss: the set of terms through which Yaquis came to be understood as subjects in Tucson. With the recognition era as a timeframe-the years between the onset of publicly visible Yaqui political action in Tucson in the early 1960s, to the early 1980s after official Yaqui recognition in 1978-this project argues that a discourse of Yaquiness during the recognition era expanded to include various meanings that reconstituted the Yaqui community and its survivance efforts. While a discourse of Yaquiness can be traced back to Tucson media representations that positioned Yaquis as marginal non-citizens, during the recognition era Yaqui self-representations emerged and circulated along with earlier meanings, sometimes rearticulating and challenging them, to reproduce the Tucson Yaqui community as an economically, politically, and culturally autonomous entity. I use Gerald Vizenor's definition of survivance as an active sense of presence over absence to interpret how the community's political, economic, and cultural initiatives assert Yaqui futures. This project identifies a discourse of Yaquiness through analyzing how Tucson print media representations reified Yaquis as marginal, non-citizens. However, Yaqui self-representations have also played a role in Yaqui survivance by accompanying and challenging the meanings produced by Tucson print media. This project examines how Yaqui representations added meanings to a discourse of Yaquiness that transformed as the community practiced survivance during the recognition era.

In order to address the effects of unequal relations of power inherent in expert medical knowledge and practice that contribute to health inequities, this project defines and instantiates the concept of rhetorical economies in public health through a case study of promotora practices. As everyday experts, promotoras support medically underserved communities through health education and counseling. This project defines rhetorical economies of public health as those practices and processes which deterritorialize medical expertise in order to produce and distribute new knowledge economies related to bodies, health, and disease across everyday and expert communities. This participatory research is shaped by a community partnership with a promotora at work in public health settings. Historical analysis of the emergence of biomedical perception provides the context for a feminist rhetorical, decolonial, and critical discourse analyses of public health messaging as well as of this promotora's work stories and pedagogies. This project draws from Chela Sandoval's (2000) articulation of "differential consciousness" to identify processes where everyday and embodied practice differentially engage dominant medical discourse in order to re/appropriate, subvert, and transform "spaces of power" in medical contexts. Rhetorical economies are the means through which these transformations are possible. Narrative and rhetorical analysis of a promotora's work stories and pedagogies reveal how neoliberal and racialized medical discourse reproduce political and economic marginalizations while reinscribing medicalized understandings of the body, health and disease. Using the framework afforded by González, Moll, & Amanti's (2005) "funds of knowledge" approach, this project illuminates how rhetorical economies function to recenter community ways of knowing in order to decolonize biomedical epistemologies and practices. This project provides the foundation for future research in how rhetorical economies act to re/appropriate dominant discourses and advance transformational change. Grounded in medical, feminist, and decolonial rhetorics, this project it will find application across the disciplines, including education, rhetorical studies, cultural studies, medical anthropology, medical humanities, community action research, disability studies, health communication studies, and public health.

This dissertation, "Ban Hammer: Rhetorics of Community Management in the Computer Game Industry," argues that community management, as an emerging corporate discipline, manages community discourse to produce particular subject-consumer attitudes and behaviors. Employing a multi-perspectival, suspensionist methodology, this dissertation analyzes the discursive practices of community managers working in the computer game industry, along with the communities themselves, to discover how computer game communities and computer game development organizations employ a wide variety of rhetorical strategies as they attempt to exert power over one another. Drawing from a wide range of sources in the study of rhetoric, community management, fan studies, computer game development, psychoanalysis, new media studies, and professional communication, this project argues that community manager's inhabit a unique discursive space, one characterized by unresolved and unresolvable discursive tension, and that the work of community managers has an ever increasing importance to both the computer game development cycle and the production of fan communities.

Little attention has been paid to the rhetorical practices and implications of reality television within the field of rhetoric and composition. In fact, it is easy to argue that television as a whole has been largely ignored, leaving the research to scholars in media, communication, and cultural studies. However, the convergence of media has raised questions about the nature of the viewing practices of contemporary television audiences--specifically regarding how to reconcile the complex texts audiences produce in response to television with the passive model of consumption that has defined it. Game scholars, as well as scholars of computers and composition, have theorized the powerful rhetorical potential of play with regard to video games, but they have yet to consider the way play has been invoked in other more traditional media. Therefore, this dissertation seeks to connect old media and new by considering how television, specifically reality TV, engages audiences across platforms, how audiences extend their own experience with reality programs, and what this might mean to rhetoric and composition scholars about contemporary literacy practices. In this dissertation, I argue that reality television has successfully used rhetorics of play and new media technologies to engage audiences within, across, and between programs and their digital environments. Using Survivor as a case study, I analyze the strategies that producers use to invite audiences into the program, specifically focusing on the generic characteristics that instigate play, the program's online presence, and the ways in which viewers respond by producing their own texts such as fantasy Survivor games, blogs, discussion forums, and video mash-ups. By doing so, I demonstrate how reality TV and new media technology have renegotiated the relationship among producers, audiences, and texts. Significantly, viewers become active participants with, as well as producers of, texts. Additionally, I use this research to study how play encourages self-motivated writing, community building, and the possible uses for "serious play" within the composition classroom.

In this project, I theorize public pedagogy in rhetoric and composition by examining a series of case studies within the writing programs and departments of the University of Arizona, Syracuse University, and Oberlin College. This cross-institutional study employs comparative analysis of historical, pedagogical, and institutional documents, as well as interviews I conducted with 19 faculty, administrators, and graduate teaching assistants. First, I draw on archival data to construct institutional histories that trace "town and gown" relations and institutional commitments to equality, social justice, religious and moral education, and the ideals of a land-grant mission. Then, building on these histories, I identify administrative practices that offer sustainable models for long-term public pedagogies. This research employs stakeholder theory to examine what is at stake for students and instructors engaging in public pedagogies. More specifically, I use transformative learning theory to discuss the potential rewards for students who "go public" with their writing and experiences. Finally, I examine classroom practices of instructors and argue for a theory of public pedagogy that is rhetorical, transformative, and located. I offer a model that suggests how writing program administrators might locate public pedagogies within their institution, program, and/or classrooms. I also provide instructors of rhetoric and composition with a series of questions and a graphic for usage when developing public pedagogies within their courses. This study contributes to current scholarly conversations about public writing, community outreach, and civic engagement by examining how programs and pedagogies function across different institutional contexts.