The development of keystroke logging programs and their use to study the writing process affords an opportunity to combine keystroke logging together with diagnostic tests to provide further information about the test-taking process beyond the given answers. This exploratory study provides a starting point for the usage of keystroke logging programs when taking diagnostic linguistic tests. Twenty-one Swedish students in upper secondary school took a morphological test in English that assesses morphological knowledge – which recent studies suggest is related to reading and writing development – using the keystroke logging program GenoGraphiX-LOG. Temporal and revision data, as well as GenoGraphiX-LOG’s provided statistical and visualization tools, were used to investigate the cognitive processes of the participants in relation to morphological knowledge. Haye’s model of the writing process and the Morphological Pathways Framework (MPF) was used to ground the analysis in current cognitive theory. The results reveal that higher-level processes such as evaluation and planning can be seen with the help of keystroke logging, as well as the integration of morphological information and spelling. The current analytical and visualization tools provided by GenoGraphiX-LOG require further development to streamline their usage together with diagnostic linguistic tests. / Utvecklingen av program för registreringen av tangenttryckningar och deras användning inom forskning om skrivprocesser bidrar ytterligare information om provtagningsprocessen utöver provsvaren. Denna explorativa studie ger en startpunkt för användningen av program för tangenttryckningsregistrering tillsammans med diagnostiska lingvistiska prov. Tjugoen svenska elever i andra året på gymnasiet utförde ett morfologiskt prov på engelska som utvärderar morfologisk kunskap – vilket relaterar till läs- och skrivutvecklingen enligt nya studier – med hjälp av programmet GenoGraphiX-LOG. Temporal och revideringsdata användes, tillsammans med programmets verktyg för statistisk redovisning och visualisering, för att undersöka deltagarnas kognitiva processer i relation till deras morfologiska kunskap. Hayes modell av skrivprocessen och Morphological Pathways Framework (MPF) användes för att förankra analysen i aktuell kognitiv teori. Resultaten visar att högre processer såsom evaluering och planering kan synliggöras med hjälp av registrering av tangenttryckningar. De nuvarande analytiska och visualiseringsverktygen i GenoGraphiX-LOG behöver utvecklas vidare för att effektivisera dess användning med diagnostiska lingvistiska prov.

The genre of biography is, by nature, imprecise and limited. Real lives are lived synchronously and diversely; they do not divide spontaneously into chapters, subjects or themes. All biographers construct stories, in the process forcing the disordered complexity of an actual life into a neat literary form. This doctoral submission comprises a book length creative work, Poisoned: The Trials of Mary Dean, and a reflective written component on that creative work, Writing Fictionalised Biography. Poisoned is a biography of Mary Dean, who, although repeatedly poisoned by her husband at the end of the nineteenth century, did not die. This biography, presented in the form of a first-person memoir, is based closely on historical evidence and is supported with discursive notes and a select bibliography. The reflective written component, Writing Fictionalised Biography, outlines the process and challenges of writing a biography when the source material available is inadequate and unreliable. In writing Poisoned my genre solution has been fictionalised biography - biography which is historically diligent while utilising fictional writing strategies and incorporating fictional passages. This written component reflectively discusses how I arrived at that solution. It includes discussion of the sources I utilised in writing Poisoned, including the limitations of trial transcripts and other court records as biographical evidence; useful precursors to the form; the process wherein I located both a form for my fictionalised biography and a voice for my biographical subject; possible models I considered; how I distinguished established fact from speculative supposition in the text; as well as some of the ambivalences and ethical concerns such a narrative process implies.

The Kelvin Grove Urban Village (KGUV) is a 16-hectare urban renewal redevelopment project of the Queensland Department of Housing and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Over the last century, the land has housed military and educational institutions that have shaped Brisbane and Queensland. These groups each have their own history. Collectively their stories represented an opportunity to build a multi-art form public history project, consisting of a creative non-fiction historical manuscript and a collection of digital stories (employing oral history and digital storytelling techniques in particular) to construct a personal sense of place, identity and history. This exegesis examines the processes used and difficulties faced by the writer/producer of the public history; including consideration of the artistic selection involved, and consequent assembly of the material. The research findings clearly show that: giving contributors access to the technology required to produce their own digital stories in a public history does not automatically equate to total participatory inclusion; the writer/producer can work with the public as an active, collaborative team to produce shared historically significant works for the public they represent; and the role of the public historian is that of a valuable broker--in actively seeking to maximize inclusiveness of vulnerable members of the community and by producing a selection of multi-art form works with the public that includes new media.

Thesis (MA (English))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis describes a qualitative investigation of the creative writing processes of successful publishing authors in the South African context. Four successful South African authors of fiction were interviewed with the intention of garnering current, local insights into the creative writing process in order to nuance this field of knowledge and to challenge reductive, undynamic ways of thinking about it. What these creative writers say about their writing processes is discussed in the context of previous empirical research on the writing process and the creative process in the related fields of composition studies and psychology. The resulting theoretical paradigm for the study was a flexible, recursive cognitive process model of the writing process within the context of a particular domain and field, in opposition to a stage model of writing or models of writing that are devoid of social and affective context. Interviews with Margie Orford, Imraan Coovadia, Lesley Beake and John van de Ruit investigated how expert creative writers work in the South African context and explored contributing factors to the writing process, from initial inspiration or origination of ideas through to submission of completed manuscripts for publication. The creative writers in question are experienced authors who have published more than once as the intention was to discover what successful or established authors of literary fiction do, with an eye to making a contribution to current international attempts at theorising the field of creative writing. The results of this research indicated clear support for most of the combined underlying theories and hypotheses discussed in the literature study, with an indication of some areas that required further refining and research, such as the impact of situational variables on the writing process. Finally some suggestions are made as to how the theoretical models might be improved through combination and comparison with one another and with more extensive empirical research, and some of the implications of this research for creative writing pedagogy and the development of novice writers are explored. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis beskryf ’n kwalitatiewe ondersoek van die kreatiewe skryfprosesse van suksesvolle gepubliseerde outeurs in die Suid-Afrikaanse konteks. Onderhoude is met vier suksesvolle fiksieskrywers gevoer met die doel om hedendaagse, plaaslike insig in die kreatiewe skryfproses te verkry ten einde hierdie kennisgebied te nuanseer en reduserende, ondinamiese denke daaroor aan te veg. Hierdie kreatiewe skrywers se beskrywing van hul skryfproses word bespreek teen die agtergrond van vorige empiriese navorsing oor die skryfproses en die kreatiewe proses in die verwante gebiede van stylstudies en sielkunde. Die teoretiese paradigma vir die studie wat hieruit gespruit het, was ’n buigsame, rekursiewe kognitiewe prosesmodel van die skryfproses in die konteks van ’n spesifieke domein en gebied, in teenstelling met ’n faseskryfmodel of skryfmodelle sonder enige maatskaplike en affektiewe konteks. Deur middel van onderhoude met Margie Orford, Imraan Coovadia, Lesley Beake en John van de Ruit is ondersoek hoe ervare kreatiewe skrywers in die Suid-Afrikaanse konteks werk, en faktore wat tot die skryfproses bydra, is ondersoek. Sodanige proses strek van aanvanklike inspirasie of die oorsprong van idees tot die inlewering van voltooide manuskripte vir publikasie. Die betrokke kreatiewe skrywers is bedrewe outeurs wat reeds meer as een keer gepubliseer het, aangesien die voorneme was om uit te vind hoe suksesvolle of gevestigde outeurs te werk gaan met die oog daarop om ’n bydrae te maak tot huidige internasionale pogings om die gebied van kreatiewe skryfwerk te teoretiseer. Die resultate van hierdie studie toon duidelike ondersteuning vir die meeste van die gekombineerde onderliggende teorieë en hipoteses wat in die literatuurstudie bespreek is, alhoewel daar ’n aanduiding is dat sommige gebiede verdere verfyning en navorsing verg, byvoorbeeld die impak van situasionele veranderlikes op die skryfproses. Laastens word enkele aanbevelings gemaak oor hoe die teoretiese modelle verbeter kan word deur kombinasie en vergelyking met ander modelle en deur meer omvattende empiriese navorsing, en die implikasies van hierdie navorsing vir die pedagogie van kreatiewe skryfwerk en die ontwikkeling van amateurskrywers word ook ondersoek.

The aim of this essay is to describe how students in third grade speak about writing. I want to investigate what ideas and awareness children has about writing. I want to compare the results from third grade with pre-school children. I also want to find out how it is in other countries and over time. To achieve the aim, have four questions been formulated: What is writing for children in third grade? What similarities and differences are there with children in other countries? Has there been any change regarding children´s conceptions of writing compared with a 1985 study? Has there been any development in children´s conceptions of writing between pre-school and third grade? The study is based on interviews with ten students in third grade to get answers for the aim of this study. The questions for the interview are from a previous study The Mind is Not a Black Box: Children´s Ideas about the writing Process where Nora Scheuer, Montserrat de la Cruz, Juan Ignacio Pozo, Maria Faustina Huarte and Graciela Sola (2006) used four questions with picture cards. Each card represents a child in the writing process (anticipating, writing, revising, rereading). The results showed that students in third grade have come further in their development and have a more complex knowledge of what writing is than pre-school children. The students in third grade can describe which cognitive processes they process when they write. The results also showed that students have been formed by the formal teaching. They describe writing based on the criteria’s school puts on them. Students in third grade want to develop a fully spoken text that meets the language requirements that school or adults place on them. The Portuguese children speak about a concern about cursive witch Swedish children don´t do. This is probably because cursive is not a requirement in the Swedish curriculum.

This dissertation constitutes an illustration of how writing instruction in elementary school, year three, is conducted. At this stage of schooling, most pupils are assumed to have acquired basic reading and writing skills, and from now on, and increasingly over the years that follow, they are expected to read and write longer texts within different genres and subjects. The aim of this thesis is to study writing lessons that were conducted under the framework of four writing projects in a classroom, and the student-written texts that that resulted thereof. The writing pro-jects are characterised by focus on similar text types, which in my mate-rial includes "the fairy tale", "a letter to the editor", "instructions" and a "factual text". The focus of the study is on the relationship between the learning support offered to the pupils in the classroom and the na-ture of texts that the pupils then write. The research is inspired by ethnographic methodology, and is based on material consisting of field notes, video recordings and student texts. The theoretical framework assumes a socio-cultural view of learning and a dialogical view of text and writing. The teaching practices are studied on the basis of how they are built up by different chains of activities (reading, conversation and writing). Particular attention is paid to which text dimensions are addressed in classroom conversations: content, form or function. The pupils’ texts are analysed on the basis of their macro structure, and the analysis builds on the concept of "text activity". On an overall level, the results point to writing being a social activity, which is also closely interconnected to reading, and above all dialogue and conversation. The writing instruction offered to the students is also characterized by a broad view of what literacy is about. The study points out the value of versatile learning support, where the function, form and content of texts, in relation to the learning goals, are made explicit in the teaching. An important result is that the functional dimension of writing, in particular, favours writing development. On a more general level, the study raises the question of which literacy skills can and should be pro-moted by writing education in the early primary school years.

Onward Bound: -- the first 50 years of Outward Bound Australia traces the founding and development of this unique, Australian, non-profit, non-government organisation from its earnest beginnings to its formidable position today where it attracts some 5,000 participants a year to its courses. The project included interviewing hundreds of people and scouring archives and public records to piece together a picture of how and why Outward Bound Australia (OBA) developed -- recording its challenges and achievements along the way. A mediated oral history approach was used among past and present OBA founders, staff and participants, to gather stories about their history. This use of oral history (in a historical book) was a way of cementing the known recorded facts and adding colour to the formal historical outline, while also giving credence to the text through the use of 'real' people's stories.

A growing body of writing research suggests college students’ and teachers’ conceptualizations of writing play an important role in learning to write and making the transition from secondary to post-secondary academic composition. First-year college writers are not blank slates; rather, they bring many assumptions and beliefs about academic writing to the first-year writing classroom from exposure to a wide range of literate practices throughout their lives. Metaphor acts as a way for scholars to trace students’ as well as their instructors’ assumptions and beliefs about writing. In this study, I contend that metaphor is a pathway to meta-cognitive awareness, mindfulness, and reflection. This multi-method descriptive study applies metaphor analysis to a corpus of more than a dozen first-year composition students’ endof-semester writing portfolios; the study also employs an auto-ethnographic approach to examining this author’s texts composed as a graduate student and novice teacher. In several cases writing students in this study appeared to reconfigure their metaphors for writing and subsequently reconsider their assumptions about writing. My literature review and analysis suggests that metaphor remains an underutilized inventive and reflective strategy in composition pedagogy. Based on these results, I suggest that instructors consider how metaphoric competence might offer writers and writing instructors an alternate means for operationalizing key habits of mind such as meta-cognitive awareness, reflection, openness to learning, and creativity as recommended in the Framework for Success in Post-Secondary Writing. Ultimately, I argue that writers and teachers might benefit from adopting a more flexible attitude towards metaphor. As a rhetorical trope, metaphors are contextual and, thus, writers need to learn to mix, discard, create, and obscure metaphors as required by the situation.