The purpose of the study was to determine whether or not The Basic Communication Skills Program, a consultant developed and staff determined writing program, still had an impact on all program participants two years after its completion. The secondary aim of the study was to describe the strengths and weaknesses of the consultant developed and staff determined approach. The approach involved a consultant training teams of principals and teachers from sixteen elementary schools in the writing and writing instructional processes. The teams then determined a program for their staffs.There were four components of the study: team teacher surveys, principal surveys, interviews of school teams and professional consultants' surveys on inservice methods. Responses on surveys were tallied, percentages calculated, and interviewees responses categorized to verify assumptionsFindings1. More than half of the team teachers frequently or sometimes continued to use the writing program's ideas in their classrooms.2. Approximately half of the teachers affected by the team used the program ideas frequently or sometimes in their classrooms in the judgment of the team members.3. Sixty-three percent of the team teachers responded that their staff could not have developed a writing program without the assistance of a consultant, and eighty-six percent of the principals agreed.4. Professional consultants did not agree with team teachers and principals on the necessity of a consultant in helping a school to develop a writing program.Conclusions1. The use of a consultant to inform teachers and principals before they design their writing programs is beneficial.2. The consultant developed and staff determined approach can have a continuing impact on school teams and nearly half of their staffs.3. More than a team of a principal and two teachers from a school needs to participate in training sessions conducted by a consultant in order to have a continuing impact on the entire staff.

Thesis (MTech (Faculty of Education))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-121). Also available online.

Research grant proposals are a very important genre in many academic disciplines, and a window into which we are able to observe academic engagements and interactions. However, there has been little textual analysis of the genre and research on how successful scholars approach the writing task. Drawing on the social constructionist genre scholarship, this study collected and analyzed nine successful SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) research grant proposals from nine professors in the field of education at a Canadian university. The proposals were examined in terms of three important textual features: generic structure, referential behavior, hedges and boosters. Semi-structured discourse-based interviews with the nine professors as insider informants were also conducted. The main findings of the study include the following: (1) A three-move scheme was developed in this study as reflecting the generic structure of research grant proposal summaries. In analyzing the main text of research grant proposals, I first recognized the ICMC pattern (Introduction-Context-Methodology-Communication of Results) as the overall structure; ten moves as the constitutive functional components were then identified under this pattern. (2) Non-integral (where the name of the cited author does not appear in the actual citing sentence), non-reporting (where no reporting verb such as show, establish, suggest is employed to introduce the cited work), and generalization (where the proposition is attributed to two or more sources) forms of citations were found to be predominantly used in the research grant proposals. Self-citation was also used with a high frequency in this genre. 3) The use of boosters was found to exceed the use of hedges, and the distribution of hedges and boosters were found uneven across the rhetorical sections. Interviews with the nine professors further reveal how communicative purposes, institutional practice, and reader-writer relationship co-constructed the format as well as the stylistic features of grant writing. The study provides genre analysts as well as novice grant writers some useful insights into the research grant proposal writing.

Suggestopedia (also sometimes referred to as "Accelerated Learning") is a teaching methodology that claims to remove barriers to learning rather than teach students how to learn. Developed by Bulgarian psychotherapist and medical doctor Georgi Lozanov (1926- ), it utilizes a detailed, three-phase cycle of teaching in which about 75% of teaching time is devoted to "Activations", games and activities in which students rehearse material previously presented in unique "Concert Sessions" (which make up the other 25% of contact time). Suggestopedia highlights factors often forgotten in the classroom: the design of an "optimum" learning environment, high expectations of success from the teacher, the use of music and art, the importance of enjoying the learning process, and the fostering of an atmosphere of "relaxed alertness". The method has been used with some success, particularly in the teaching of foreign languages. Ostensibly based on the way we learn naturally, Suggestopedia has developed a number of incarnations, in some cases because Lozanov's work was not freely available in the West during the Cold War. This dissertation outlines the salient features of both Suggestopedia and some of its incarnations. Additionally, it suggests ways in which the method may be utilized in the high school English classroom in South Africa. In particular, it describes an intervention in which elements of Suggestopedia were used to teach creative writing in a multilingual environment. In short, this intervention involved the creation of a traditional two page creative "essay" inspired by, inter alia, the teacher's high expectations, the meditative atmosphere created by music, and the posters in the students' peripheral vision. A total of 158 Grade 9 and Grade 11 (mainly isiZulu speaking) students in an "ex-model C" school wrote, edited, and submitted such essays, the main criterion of success being whether each essay was deemed by the teacher to be of a sufficiently high standard to be reproduced here. The project, based on a qualitative research design using the process approach to writing and a Suggestopedicbased pedagogy, elicited many engaging pieces of writing from students. The spirit of their writing as well as the writers' own comments about the process will hopefully suggest the genius and versatility of the Lozanov methodology. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2007.

This study surveyed grant writers at independent small colleges in Indiana and bordering states to discover their typical processes, personnel management, and whether these colleges encouraged effective grantsmanship. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics reported as percentages, frequencies, and means.Conclusions include the following:Over five-sixths of respondents had additional duties. The vast majority said grant writing time varies daily due to these other tasks. As a median, writers with dual or more duties devoted 33% of their time to grant writing.Over three-fourths were not required to attend introductory training. While most pursued training classes, superiors seemed to be nonchalant about their professional development. Self motivated study, grant writing associations, and mentors were major factors for growth in grant writing skills.Around 90% of presidents and 85% of advancement vice presidents met grantors. Just over half of other superiors and a plurality of other senior advancement personnel cultivated grantors.Over three-fourths helped faculty with proposals. This informal quality control involved editing, writing, and teaching faculty how to write proposals. Just over half the colleges used formal quality control. About two-thirds have internal permission systems to prevent embarrassments, so one-third cannot prevent disasters or track proposal success, failure, or origin. Colleges seemed complacent about liability since less than half required approval from an Institutional Review Board for proposals with human subjects.About half felt their colleges succeeded with grants. Actual results were decidedly mixed. Deciding factors were income, faculty engagement, and external and internal relationships. Many colleges seemed to lack easily accessible grant records. Having dual or more duties could hinder but did not prevent success.Over two-thirds contacted donors. About half who cultivated increased success rates or gained profitable insights. Most of the others tacitly implied increased success. The top three overall grant winners all cultivated. Respondents saw cultivating as good, but viewed skillful writing as crucial.Other attributes such as religious affiliation, enrollment, minority percentages, etc. seemed not to affect success.Results cannot be completely generalized, but descriptive data and inferred conclusions should assist all small-college grant writers. / Department of Educational Studies

Within recent years there have been numerous scholarly discussions describing the tendency to erect various binaries between the fields of composition and creative writing. In order to investigate some of these binaries, I used an ethnographic methodology and the Engestrom model of activity systems to examine one first-year composition and one introductory creative writing classroom. Doing so, I came to understand how several factors, such as mediated artifacts, rules, and division of labor affected how the instructors taught writing, how these factors affected the writing process of students, and what was produced in the classroom. Ultimately, the methodological lens of ethnography, where the perspective of instructors and students was at the forefront of inquiry, integrated with an exploration into the structure of activities, allowed me to interrogate previous non-empirical, lore-based scholarship. / Department of English

There is no abstract available for this dissertation. / Department of English

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Mar. 11, 2008). Directed by Nancy A. Myers; submitted to the Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references (p. 176-186).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2006. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 44-06, page: 2537.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / Adviser: Alister Cumming.