No description available.

This study examines the educational and interpersonal benefits of dialogue journal writing within the Cambodian context. The research plan involved, first, a thorough survey of the literature on journal writing, which then provided the theoretical framework for the construction of hypotheses. These hypotheses asserted that dialogue journal writing brings about educational as well as interpersonal benefits. In educational terms, this task enables learners to attain proficiency in speaking, reading and writing, gain functional competence, and develop critical thinking skills. In interpersonal terms, dialogue journal writing helps in the development of the relationship between the teacher and the learner and offers a source of cultural information. The next stage involved assigning and collecting the journals and then analysing them to check for the presence of particular features which were asserted to bring about the benefits as stated in the hypotheses. The writer conducted her research with a class of Cambodian students at Phnom Penh University. Within the journals of the eighteen learners, most of these features were discovered, thus supporting the hypotheses that journal writing offers particular educational and interpersonal benefits. Where the features were absent or variant, explanations for this based on the culture of the learners, the conditions of the country during the period of the study, and the culture of the teacher were offered. Finally, the writing in the dialogue journals of the subjects provided strong evidence that dialogue journal writing offers learners a scope for genuine studentteacher communication and for personal communication and mutual understanding between each individual student and teacher.

<p>The aim of this essay is to investigate how writing is taught in upper secondary school as well as what kind of writing is taught, the teachers’ attitudes towards writing and how written production is assessed. I am interested to see if teachers use different methods both when it comes to teaching and grading writing.</p><p>My research is based on recorded interviews with four upper secondary school teachers from two different schools. The teachers were interviewed on their planning, executing and grading of writing within English A and B. I have also carried out extensive reading of earlier research in order to get a complete background.</p><p>The result shows that all four teachers believe that writing is an important part of language learning and they all enjoy teaching it. The main focus is put on the formal aspects of writing, in order to prepare students for the national tests. Only one of the four teachers feel that creative writing is the best way to learn a second language. All teachers go through the formal rules of writing with the entire class before giving them an assignment. The biggest difference between the different teachers is the marking and final grading of the written production, where one teacher does not grade assignments at all and another has developed her own scale.</p>

This thesis aims to examine students&rsquo / attitudes towards brain-based applications in the English Composition II course. For this purpose, a case study was carried out with a group of 23 first year students at the Department of Foreign Language Education at Middle East Technical University in the second half of the 2002-2003 academic year. After receiving writing training with a brain-based methodology for ten weeks, the students were given an attitude questionnaire which aimed at identifying their attitudes towards brain-based applications in the course. One week later, the iv researcher also conducted interviews with 10 of the 23 students separately to investigate students&rsquo / attitudes towards brain-based applications in the course further. The analysis of the data collected through the attitude questionnaire indicated that 93 % of the students showed significant positive attitudes towards the brain-based applications, while only 1 % of the students had negative attitudes towards the brain-based applications. The analysis of the results of the interviews also revealed that all students had positive feelings about the brain-based applications. Accordingly, the results indicated taking this composition course resulted in highly positive feelings such as confidence, relaxation, or being valued in the students. All students found writing meaningful and relevant to themselves. They stated to have acquired various skills during the course such as writing skills, computer skills, teaching skills, emotional intelligence, and an awareness of needs. They found these useful and meaningful for their lives in general, as students, and as teachers as part of their future profession.

In 1985, 66 school districts filed a suit against the Kentucky Department of Education accusing the system of inequitable spending practices. In 1990, the Supreme Court declared the entire educational program unconstitutional, resulting in the Kentucky Education Reform Act or KERA. This new reform movement brought a plethora of changes to school districts across the state including its mode of assessment. KERA introduced new avenues of measuring student progress using writing as the main vehicle to assess content and communication skills. Unfortunately, the majority of Kentucky's high schools showed little improvement in this tested area with only 34% of high schools reaching proficiency in the past twenty years of KERA's existence. In 2009, Kentucky passed into law Senate Bill 1, voiding the previous assessment but increasing the focus on on-demand writing for five grades rather than the three required by KERA. Preempting this new reform was the adoption of the Common Core Standards, which also includes a focus on writing. This consistent attention to writing assessment, and data identifying writing as a major weakness across the Commonwealth, prompted the impetus to examine four schools that achieve high scores in on-demand writing assessment. This qualitative investigation employed a case study design to research these four sites, which represented four different geographic locations in the state. Data sources included observations, interviews, document analysis, and fieldnotes to explore these schools through an interpretivist lens. The collected data were entered into qualitative research software to enable collective coding resulting in distinct categories and resulting themes. Three themes evolved in this cross-case analysis: curriculum, learning culture, and motivation. Teachers from these schools use similar classroom strategies and the learning environments reflect corresponding characteristics. Each school addressed student motivation differently, but the analogous perception of inducing intrinsic and extrinsic student engagement in writing occurred in all four schools. The implications of these results could be overwhelmingly positive as schools seek suggestions to improve writing scores. The findings from this investigation are relevant to the time and may serve as an impetus to improve writing instruction.

The goal of the research study was to explore the cognitive, social, and affective factors that contribute to the development of 8th grade writing skill. The central research question for this study was: How does a collaborative model of teaching writing prepares students for high achievement on Florida Writes? The researcher successfully answered this inquiry by asserting the following supporting questions: How does school culture impact teacher collaboration and student engagement in teaching writing? What is the relationship between engaging in a collaborative model of teaching writing and improvement of writing skill in middle level students? The study determined how and why the writing skill was developed at an urban, rural middle school in a Central Florida School District. The rationale for completing research at Horizon Middle School was to provide an exemplar in the teaching of writing skill, a phenomenon. Horizon Middle School presented a learning community that was entrenched in the same challenging demographics, but distinctly showed a high level of academic achievement in writing. Instead of teaching through a formulaic, test-generated approach, students learned through discovery, personal relationship, and engagement. Not only did 97% of 8th grade students passed the Florida Writes examination, but in the process of preparing for the standardized assessment was an embedded foundation laid for students and their future learning. The review of literature focused on: school culture, models of teaching at the middle level, models of teaching writing at the middle level and the standardization found within the FCAT Writes. Data collection was completed through classroom observations, one-on-one interviews and participation in faculty meetings. Data analysis was completed by addressing each research iv question through the conceptual framework. The study determined that this was a model for developing the writing skill for all middle level students, an exemplar within the field. Suggested uses for the study included the development of future studies focus on successful schools that were challenged by the same demographics and consideration of the partnership that Horizon had with the University of Central Florida as a model for other educational communities to consider.

No description available.

Thesis advisor: Maria E. Brisk / Writing is an essential tool for creating meaningful communication and as such it must be taught beginning in elementary school. Although in the past 100 years writing has become more common in our everyday lives, methods of teaching writing and teacher education have not kept pace with changes (National Commission on Writing, 2003). As a result, teachers are underprepared to teach writing and do not teach it enough (Gilbert and Graham, 2010). The goal of this study is to understand how teacher-researcher relationships can facilitate the development of a teacher's knowledge of the theoretical foundations of teaching writing through systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and the teaching and learning cycle (TLC), and how that understanding affects the implementation of meaningful writing instruction that supports bilingual students as they learn to write. Using a modified action research methodology (Herr and Anderson, 2005; Reason and Bradbury, 2001; Zeichner, 2001) the data were collected over the course of one school year and analyzed utilizing the action research spiral by examining interactions between a teacher and a researcher through seven vignettes, including planning lessons, teaching, and reviewing lessons. These vignettes reflected particular instances of support, the evolution of the teacher's understanding of teaching writing informed by SFL, and changes in instruction relating to the TLC. Student writing was also analyzed using rubrics informed by SFL theory. The findings suggest that a complex relationship exists between teachers and researchers and that multiple factors are involved in successful change initiatives. The factors include the process of change through individualized support over time, negotiation, and two types of tension: disequilibrium and resistance. In the current study, these factors helped develop the teacher-researcher relationship in ways that promoted changes in the teacher's practices and, to some extent, her beliefs about writing instruction which resulted in the creation of a hybrid pedagogy. While this pedagogy did not demonstrate a full implementation of instruction informed by SFL theory, it did improve the quality of writing instruction and the resulting student writing. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Thesis advisor: Patrick J. McQuillan / Though writing is an essential life skill (National Commission on Writing, 2003, 2004, 2005), time spent writing in classrooms across the US is brief (Applebee and Langer, 2006; Applebee and Langer, 2011; Graham and Perin, 2007; National Commission on Writing, 2003). Furthermore, writing achievement of English learners (ELs) who represent nearly five million US students (Mather and Foxen, 2010) is often lower than other sub-groups (Fry, 2007, 2008). As such, using case study research (Stake, 2000, 2003) this study explored three sixth-eighth-grade teachers' experiences with an initiative to enhance writing instruction through the use of systemic functional linguistics (SFL), an approach that emphasizes writing for multiple purposes and the explicit teaching of language (Christie and Derewianka, 2008; Derewianka, 1990, 1999). SFL-informed instruction is an emerging strategy used to enhance the writing of ELs in US schools (see Brisk, Hodgson-Drysdale, and O'Connor, 2011; Brisk and Zisselsberger, 2010; Gebhard, et al., 2007; Schleppegrell and Go, 2007). A key argument of this ethnographic study is that the shape of the degree to which these three teachers took up a new way of teaching writing can be explained along a series of continua, consisting of the following five dimensions: cultivation of caring relationships with students, recognition of the needs of ELs, view of writing, commitment to professional growth, and commitment to collaboration and a number of related sub-dimensions. Another finding relates to the affective dimensions of teaching and learning, attention to which appeared to enhance teachers' enactment of SFL. Implications of these findings benefit teacher educators and professional development providers committed to enhancing writing instruction in US schools and speak to the field of educational reform more broadly by offering insight into multiple dimensions that influence teachers' uptake of a change endeavor. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Submitted by Jorge Silva (jorgelmsilva@ufrrj.br) on 2018-05-09T17:42:29Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2016 - Fl?via Renata Figueira de Freitas.pdf: 4184850 bytes, checksum: 9be9fe44290f203e518dd23bd5889093 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-05-09T17:42:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2016 - Fl?via Renata Figueira de Freitas.pdf: 4184850 bytes, checksum: 9be9fe44290f203e518dd23bd5889093 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-12-06 / CAPES / This research has as general objective to elaborate a didactic intervention for teaching writing, through the production of two textual genres - the letter of request and reader's letter, held respectively with students of 6th and 9th grades of elementary school a public school in the city of Rio de Janeiro. In addition to this overall objective, this study aimed to develop argumentative skills of students in basic education and verify that the taking of the procedural nature of writing awareness contributes to enhancing the quality of the texts produced in this educational stage. This work is an action-research,(THIOLLENT, 2011) performed by the students and the teacher-researcher, in order to propose an intervention that could promote the language improvement of students through the writing social uses. From the data analyzed, it was found that the understanding of writing as a process can, in fact, contribute to the preparation of written texts. By comparing the students` initial production to the final ones, it was noticed that not only progress has been made regarding to the quality of the texts produced, but also the argumentative skills were developed, proving, thus, that the didactic sequence is a viable route to the teaching of writing in basic education. / Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo geral elaborar uma interven??o did?tica para o ensino de escrita, atrav?s da produ??o dos g?neros carta de solicita??o e carta do leitor, realizada, respectivamente, com alunos do 6? e 9? anos do ensino fundamental de uma escola p?blica da cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Al?m desse objetivo geral, este trabalho visou desenvolver a capacidade argumentativa dos discentes na educa??o b?sica e verificar se a tomada de consci?ncia da natureza processual da escrita colabora para melhoria da qualidade dos textos produzidos nessa fase de escolaridade. O presente trabalho trata-se de uma pesquisa-a??o (THIOLLENT, 2011) desenvolvida com a participa??o dos alunos e da professora-pesquisadora, a fim de se propor uma interven??o capaz de promover o desenvolvimento lingu?stico dos alunos por meio dos usos sociais da escrita. A partir dos dados analisados, foi poss?vel constatar que a compreens?o da escrita como um processo pode, de fato, contribuir para a elabora??o de textos escritos. Atrav?s da compara??o das produ??es iniciais ?s produ??es finais dos alunos, percebeu-se que houve avan?os quanto ? qualidade dos textos produzidos e ao desenvolvimento da capacidade argumentativa, comprovando-se, assim, que a sequ?ncia did?tica ? um percurso vi?vel para o ensino da escrita na educa??o b?sica.