The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of word processor use by foreign college writers and their attitudes toward writing, writing revision practices, writing quality, attitudes toward the use of computers, and time spent on computers. The results indicate that students' attitudes toward writing and their perceptions of computer usefulness significantly affected their writing quality. Students with more positive attitudes toward writing and the usefulness of computers tended to produce better quality writing. In addition, the findings indicate that students' writing revision practices significantly affected their attitudes toward writing. Students who revised their writing more frequently tended to have better attitudes toward writing than those who did not. In contrast, students' levels of computer anxiety, computer confidence, computer liking and their writing revision practices did not significantly affect the quality of their writing. Furthermore, the amount of time that students spent on computers did not significantly affect their attitudes toward using computers in writing.

Thesis (M.T.S.C.)--Miami University, Dept. of English, 2003. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 105).

This thesis examines the way in which purpose and identity are realised in the written case reports of radiography students in comparison with those of professional writers. Students entering a new discourse community have to take on a new social identity and this identity is expressed by means of familiarity with the appropriate discourse conventions, including genre as the most overt expression of rhetorical purpose. Also important are the pragmatic choices used by writers to guide readers’ understanding of text and to construct interaction between them, i.e. metadiscourse, which here provides an additional and complementary way of viewing purpose and identity. The study aims, at a more theoretical level, to make a contribution to writing research by integrating genre analysis and metadiscourse analysis within a single framework to provide new insight into the resources available to writers to construe identity in text. At a descriptive level, it provides analyses of a hitherto neglected genre of medical writing. Because the study compares the writing of novices and professionals, the description of this genre makes findings available for pedagogical application. Radiographers and radiologists work as members of the same professional teams and both publish case reports, often in the same journals. Data for the study is provided by two corpora of reports, one produced by radiography students and the other published in national journals by professionals. The genre analysis establishes the move structure of the radiological case study for both corpora and a cross-corpus analysis of metadiscourse demonstrates how identity is realised in the text as the moves unfold. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are adopted with regard to the data. The student reports appear to be examples of a sub-genre of case reports with the move structure and metadiscoursal strategies differing in several significant ways, reflecting the different purposes and identities of the writers. Student writers are found not to be concerned with the more persuasive rhetorical functions of the genre and tend to align themselves with the viewpoint of the patient rather than the medical profession, drawing on school essay discourse and making use of metadiscoursal strategies associated with textbooks. / Linguistics / D.Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Theses and dissertations constitute a substantial platform for the documentation and dissemination of research findings, and the professional presentation of such findings is crucial for maintaining scientific integrity. Highly effective fact finders may lack writing skills and experience, or they may simply encounter barriers when expressing ideas, and thus perhaps inadequately present what they have so adequately found. In short, adequate editing of theses and dissertations is essential. Whereas a multitude of guidelines is available for thesis and dissertation writing, there is little guidance available on the editing of such works. Thus, with the latter objective in mind, this thesis is dedicated to developing a practical model to editing postgraduate research papers. Despite a notable lack of theory in the field of thesis editing, which became apparent while reviewing the respective literature, the most suitable sources of theory were selected to provide a basis for developing a model for thesis editing. These sources, combined with insights from a practical dissertation editing assignment, allowed for the design of a model for the practical editing process of postgraduate research texts. The editing model is based on a process-oriented approach, i.e. one which focuses on the learning process of the student. Moreover, the model promotes a level of editorial intervention that conforms to the current perception of ethical intervention in thesis editing. Ethical intervention is currently being negotiated against the backdrop of such standards as the purpose of thesis writing as well as the requirement of originality of theses and dissertations. In a testing phase the model was applied in a thesis editing assignment and emerged as a valuable guide in the process of editing. It also proved practicable in all its major aspects. Nevertheless, since a single testing assignment is not sufficient to prove the general practicality of any model, the model is still to be considered a prototype and may have to undergo further refinement after additional comprehensive testing. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Tesisse en verhandelinge is 'n belangrike basis vir die optekening en verspreiding van navorsingsbevindinge, en die professionele aanbieding van sodanige bevindinge is noodsaaklik vir die behoud van wetenskaplike integriteit. Tog is kom hoogs doeltreffende navorsers soms minder bedrewe of ervare skrywers, of hulle bloot voor hindernisse te staan wanneer hulle hul gedagtes moet verwoord, wat tot die ontoereikende aanbieding van bevredigende bevindinge lei. Kortom die toereikende redigering van tesisse en verhandelinge is van die allergrootste belang. Hoewel daar etlike riglyne vir die skryf van tesisse en verhandelinge bestaan, is daar weinig leiding beskikbaar vir die redigering daarvan. Gedagtig hieraan is hierdie tesis daarop toegespits om 'n praktiese model vir die redigering van nagraadse navorsingstekste te ontwikkel. Ondanks 'n merkbare gebrek aan teorie op die gebied van tesisredigering, wat baie duidelik uit 'n oorsig van die betrokke literatuur blyk, is die mees toepaslike teoretiese bronne as grondslag vir die ontwikkeling van 'n model vir tesisredigering gekies. Met behulp van hierdie bronne, tesame met die insigte verkry uit 'n praktiese redigeeropdrag, kon 'n praktiese model vir die redigering van nagraadse navorsingstekste ontwerp word. Die redigeermodel berus op 'n prosesgerigte benadering, dit wil sê 'n benadering wat op die student se leerproses konsentreer. Daarbenewens argumenteer die model ten gunste van redaksionele ingrepe wat met huidige opvattings oor etiese tesisredigering strook. Dit geskied teen die agtergrond van die huidige gesprek oor etiese intervensie, wat onder meer teen die agtergrond van standaarde soos die doel van die tesis sowel as die oorspronklikheidsvereiste vir tesisse en verhandelinge gevoer word. Die model is tydens 'n toetsfase in 'n tesisredigeringsopdrag toegepas en blyk nuttige riglyne vir die redigeerproses te bied. Ook het al die kernkomponente daarvan geblyk prakties bruikbaar te wees. Aangesien 'n enkele toetsopdrag nie voldoende is om die algemene bruikbaarheid van 'n model te bewys nie, word die model steeds as 'n prototipe beskou en dit sal waarskynlik ná bykomende omvattende toetsing verder verbeter word.

The market for high-tech services is expanding, and writers will have to create more documents to market these services. Researchers note marked differences between traditional goods marketing and services marketing. A rhetorical framework for high-tech services marketing will give writers a tool for creating effective marketing messages. This study examines the five canons of rhetoric in their classical context, and then examines how the first professional teachers, the Sophists, used rhetoric to promote their services. The canons of rhetoric are then analyzed to show their modern significance. This study also considers visual rhetoric and how writers can use it effectively. This study shows that companies should promote service quality and strong service relationships through the rhetorical element of ethos. This study examines services marketing samples through a visual and verbal rhetorical framework, providing rhetorical insights that writers can use in their work.

Situating makerspaces as an extension of post-industrial economies, and sites where technical communication and craftivism take place, this dissertation builds on critiques of makerspaces as hobbyist spaces that privilege digital electronics, populated mostly by white men. To do so, this dissertation analyzes who participates in feminist makerspaces, how “makers” describe their work and their experiences, and the roles of rhetoric and technical communication within feminist makerspaces. Building on prior studies of maker communities, this research follows a mixed methods approach and an iterative methodology, including online survey, site studies, interviews, and on-site automated survey to collect user data via kiosk. The online survey asked participants to describe makerspaces they’ve visited, their experiences visiting makerspaces, their work, and themselves. Follow-up interviews conducted with three survey participants addressed times participants felt unwelcome or out of place in a makerspace. Additionally, site studies consisted of visiting and observing two Midwestern makerspaces, both of which partnered with public libraries. This dissertation argues that makerspaces need to do a better job of welcoming guests and new members and actively hosting social events, rather than passively marketing workshops focused on specific technologies. Although people are becoming more familiar with makerspaces, regardless of gender and other aspects of identity, participants describe social anxieties about entering new spaces and unfamiliar communities as common barriers to entry, even before encountering issues based on gender, race, and other aspects of identity. If makerspaces (and “maker” communities more broadly) aim to be more inclusive and equitable, then actively welcoming people in general is a necessary baseline. As such, this dissertation draws from rhetorical theory to suggest ways that makerspaces can improve their hospitality and technical communication practices.

The purpose of this case study was to examine what would happen when poetry writing was incorporated into a technical writing course for engineering students. To make poetry relevant to engineering students and topics of technical writing, a low-stakes assignment of poetry writing as prewriting about a technical object, called Technical Poetry, was designed and paired with a high-stakes assignment of technical description. The study explored with a group of engineering students their experiences of writing technical poetry, how they perceived it, and how it changed their technical writings and perceptions of engineering. The study did not intend to teach the engineering students to become professional poets, but to keep the focus of the study on enhancing technical writing instruction and developing students’ technical writing through a creative, poetic, and expressive pedagogy. The problem that engineering students have, of writing for and communicating through technical documents with a broad range of audiences who vary from high-technical to low-technical and lay readers, demands a broad range of exercises in different writing forms and genres. The Expressive Theory of composition emphasizes the benefits of creative and poetic writing exercises that foster writing from alternative perspectives, such as the poet’s perspective, and eventually improve the students’ writing and communication skills. Furthermore, the Conceptual Metaphor Theory informed the study of the roles metaphors play in language and mind and how they can be applied to writing technical documents and clarifying complex technical and scientific matters for readers. Poetry was used as a creative and expressive pedagogical tool that introduced poetic devices such as metaphors, similes, and analogies to equip engineering students with language techniques for effective technical communication with a broad range of audiences. The practice of writing poetry and creating metaphors also served to familiarize the engineering students with the creative thinking experience used in industrial designing, inventing, and technical problem solving, referred to as biomimicry or biomimetic. A qualitative case study was designed for in-depth case-by-case research. Data were collected from multiple sources including the students’ technical poems, technical descriptions in prose, pre- and post-poetry reflections or questionnaires, and interviews. The study adopted coding and discourse analysis methods to examine the students’ metaphors in communicating complex technical concepts with lay readers, their experiences of technical poetry writing, and their perceptions of engineering through the creative poetic pedagogy. As a result, the vast majority of the students reported positive changes in their perceptions of poetry and engineering and showed more effectiveness in their technical writings. In addition to writing technical poems that embodied metaphors, the students wrote technical descriptions that included numerous metaphors which, in turn, made their technical writings more understandable and relatable to lay readers. Recommendations are offered for ways that technical writing instructors can design and apply poetic, expressive, and creative pedagogies. Poetry was one way to make a change in the way English instructors teach technical writing to engineering students. Further studies can look at the impact of other literary and creative pedagogies.

The surface-level experience of hypertextuality as formless and unbounded, blurring boundaries among texts and between readers and writers, is created by a deep structure which is not normally presented to readers and which, like the ultrastructure of living cells, defines and controls texts' nature and functions. Most readers, restricted to surface-level interaction with texts, have little access to the deep structure of any hypertext. In this dissertation, I argue that digital hypertexts differ essentially from paper texts in that hypertexts are constructed in multiple layers, with surface-level appearance and behavior controlled by sub-surface ultrastructure, and that these multiple layers of structure enable and necessitate new methods of textual study designed for digital texts. Using participant-observation from within my own practice as a webmaster, I closely examine the sub-surface structural layers that create several kinds of Web-based digital hypertexts: blogs, forums, static Web pages, and dynamic Web pages. With these hypertexts as the primary models, along with their enabling software and additional digital texts-wikis, news aggregators, word processing documents, digital photographs, electronic mail, electronic forms-available to me as a reader/author rather than a webmaster, I demonstrate methods of investigating and describing the development of digital texts. These methods, like methods already established within textual studies to trace the development of printed texts, can answer questions about accidental and intentional textual change, the roles of collaborators, and the ways texts are shaped by production processes and mediating technologies. As a step toward a formalist criticism of hypertext, I propose concrete ways of categorizing, describing, and comparing hypertexts and their components. I also demonstrate techniques for visualizing the structures, histories, and interrelationships of hypertexts and explore methods of using self-descriptive surface elements in paper-like texts as partial substitutes for the sub-surface self-description available in software-like texts. By identifying digitization as a gateway to cooperation between human and artificial intelligences rather than an end in itself, I suggest natural areas of expansion for the humanities computing collaboration as well as new methodologies by which originally-printed texts can be studied in their digital forms alongside originally-digital texts.

A conflict exists between student desire for a pragmatic education leading to gainful employment and our desire to teach them to think critically about the world. This study argues the necessity of both and concludes—through the voices of three workplace writers—that students must become avid life-long learners and researchers in order to keep pace in an age of exponential information growth. This study presents three workplace writers‘ self-reports in the post process era. Arguing the validity of writers‘ self-reports, this study moves research of workplace writers beyond process, which is typically considered invention, drafting, revising, and editing, by expanding the lens through which we consider workplace writers. Specifically, this study examines their history as writers, the preparation they received, their motivation to write on the job, their acquisition of job specific literacy, how they manage multiple audiences, the corporate identities and voices they must assume, the process they employ to accomplish their writing, their revision strategies, how they manage writer‘s block, and, finally, the survival skills they utilize in order to become proficient workplace writers. The addition of these facets to the standard process model seeks to push research beyond post process. Bartholomae suggests students will ―invent the university‖ in their writing. This study suggests that they will one day invent the workplace in much the same way. The three writers studied here describe steep learning curves before they felt adept at writing in their workplaces, highlighting the importance that students identify as life-long learners and researchers. They privilege grammar and mechanics, yet they acknowledge the importance of collaboration, solid research skills, and audience. They offer survival strategies for getting their writing done amidst the chaos of workplace demands and occasional writer‘s block. Finally, this study suggests a pedagogy that seeks more intentionality in teaching students about writing while teaching them to write in order to provide them with a meta-awareness of the act of writing that will carry them successfully into the workplace. / Dr. Patrick Bizzaro Dr. Resa Crane Bizzaro Dr. Jeannine Fontaine

Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2002. / Bibliography: leaves 221-226.