This thesis engages with travel writing at two levels: pedagogically and practically. It discusses at length, the unique configuration of travel writing’s literary currencies and conventions. Primary linguistic data were collected from travel texts collated within a portfolio of the researcher’s own negotiated and sustained practice as a travel writer. Within this portfolio the researcher engaged with a variety of travel text types, including a travel blog, prose and a poem. A close reading of these portfolio texts is presented, along with the introduction of the Aim, Design, Assessment (ADA) apparatus – a tool developed to aid the analysis and understanding of travel writing for both writers and commissioning editors. The findings present the following conclusions; Travel writing’s pedagogy does inform the practice, by way of its generic currencies and their inclusion within a travel writer’s professional practice. Secondly, that the ADA apparatus is a tool that the practitioner has applied here with measurable success in changing and developing both her writing and her attention to language. Within its conclusions, the thesis reflects on the researcher’s ResM Travel Writing degree and provides suggestions of how the genre can be taught academically. It documents a set of practices that the researcher evolved to professionalise her own travel writing. This positions the work within the discipline of applied research, where the science of academic research disclosures can be recycled into the pedagogic education and professional practice of travel writing. Examining travel writing from an interdisciplinary perspective (Tourism Knowledge, Design & Literary Studies) it also contributes to the volume of new tourism knowledge and introduces travel writing’s role as a toureme conduit.

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This study explores the benefits of multimodality in the drafting process and advocates for more disciplinary support of multimodality across first-year writing curriculums in the field of Rhetoric and Composition/Writing Studies. I explore my primary research question, how might multimodal drafting through the Literacy Sponsors Gallery Wall assignment support students' process of writing the Literacy Narrative, through an IRB-exempt study of the implementation of an original multimodal writing assignment, the Literacy Sponsors Gallery Wall, in my first-year writing classroom during the Fall 2021 semester. The results of this study illuminate valuable opportunities for multimodality to be integrated into the composition classroom during the writing process rather than it being utilized primarily as a transformative tool once the writing process has concluded. When multimodality is included as a natural aspect of the writing process, it allows more room for students to express and celebrate their multiliterate identities. / Master of Arts / Most of the time, writing assignments in academic contexts are limited to page-bound essays of block text. This is because of tradition and the cultural belief that this type of writing is the only mode, or format, worthy of value in a classroom. But that is not necessarily the case. Multimodal writing, i.e., more visually stimulating compositions that combine more than one mode of communication, are generative for student writers. However, multimodality is usually seen as a "last but not least" aspect of a draft's life cycle, meaning it is employed once the draft has been completed and is used to transform the draft into a more visual mode (infographic, poster, etc.). In this paper, I argue that multimodality should be taken up more in the field of Rhetoric and Composition/Writing Studies and embraced as a worthy aspect of the drafting process. I created a qualitative study in which I evaluated how multimodal drafting acts as a beneficial scaffolding tool for teachers.

Academic writing is an important part of undergraduate study that tutors recognise as central to success in higher education. Across the academy, writing is used to assess, develop and facilitate student learning. However, there are growing concerns that students appropriate written work from other sources and present it as their own, committing the academic offence of plagiarism. Conceptualising plagiarism as literary theft, current institutional practices concentrate on deterring and detecting behaviours that contravene the rules of the academy. Plagiarism is a topic that often elicits an emotional response in academic tutors, who are horrified that students commit these ‘crimes’. Recently, educators have suggested that deterring and detecting plagiarism is ineffective and described moralistic conceptualisations of plagiarism as unhelpful. These commentaries highlight the need for credible alternative approaches to plagiarism that include pedagogic aspects of academic writing. The authorial identity approach to reducing plagiarism concentrates on developing understanding of authorship in students using pedagogy. This thesis presents three studies that contribute to the authorial identity approach to student plagiarism. Building on the findings of previous research, the current studies used a sequential mixed-methods approach to expand psychological knowledge concerning authorial identity in higher education contexts. The first, qualitative, study used thematic analysis of interviews with 27 professional academics teaching at institutions in the United Kingdom. The findings from this multidisciplinary sample identified that academics understood authorial identity as composed of five themes; an individual with authorial identity had confidence; valued writing; felt attachment and ownership of their writing; thought independently and critically; and had rhetorical goals. In addition, the analysis identified two integrative themes representing aspects of authorial identity that underlie all of the other themes: authorial identity as ‘tacit knowledge’ and authorial identity as ‘negotiation of identities’. The themes identified in the first study informed important aspects of the two following quantitative studies. The second study used findings from the first study to generate a pool of questionnaire items, assess their content validity and administer them to a multidisciplinary sample of 439 students in higher education. Psychometric analyses were used to identify a latent variable model of student authorial identity with three factors: ‘authorial confidence’, ‘valuing writing’ and ‘identification with author’. This model formed the basis of a new psychometric tool for measuring authorial identity. The resultant Student Attitudes and Beliefs about Authorship Scale (SABAS) had greater reliability and validity when compared with alternative measures. The third study used confirmatory factor analysis to validate the SABAS model with a sample of 306 students. In addition, this study identified aspects of convergent validity and test-retest reliability that allow the SABAS to be used with confidence in research and pedagogy. The overall findings of the combined studies present a psycho-social model of student authorial identity. This model represents an important contribution to the theoretical underpinnings of the authorial identity approach to student plagiarism. Differing from previous models by including social aspects of authorial identity, the psycho-social model informs future pedagogy development and research by outlining a robust, empirically supported theoretical framework.

While memoria is the fourth canon of rhetoric, its generative power remains essentially absent from rhetoric and composition studies. In my dissertation I use Mnemosyne's story as a way to reconceptualize memoria beyond the confines of mnemonic techniques and memorization. I provide an overview of memoria using the terministic screens of storehouse, invention, and subjectivity in order to explain its absence and the consequences of this gap. I posit that the generative, critical, and embodied qualities of memory shape our ways of knowing and being and our hermeneutical, inventive, and revisionary practices.I argue that memory is rhetorical: it's not just what is remembered/forgotten that matters, but how it is remembered, by whom, for what purpose, and with what effect. Rhetorical memory is a process and product(s) of remembering. Rather than remaining fixed, rhetorical memory is dynamic, relational, infused with emotion, steeped in imagination, and context dependent. It is also relational, not autonomous and continuous. When memory is written, it expresses, analyzes, connects, rebuilds, and transforms the links between private and public, past and present, self and other, reason and emotions, fact and fiction, and mind and body. Rhetorical memory is (re)visionary. In chapter two, I explicate the constructed/reconstructed nature of rhetorical memory as demonstrated by Maxine Hong Kingston in No Name Woman. I also examine how rhetorical memory enriches feminist pedagogy(s), especially how agency might emerge and be sustained. In chapter three, I focus on the critical aspects of rhetorical memory by investigating how the memory of Mary Magdalene was constructed to maintain cultural hegemony. I argue that rhetorical memory provides a critical tool for underrepresented groups to critique, disrupt, and revise truth claims often represented in traditional bodies of knowledge. In chapter four, I assert that rhetorical memory empowers writers to uncover white privilege and take action against such injustices. I also include a section on how I incorporate rhetorical memory into my pedagogical practices. I call on scholar teachers to address how our professional discourses and scholarly conventions impede how we communicate about the kinds of insights we gain from rhetorical memory.

The research reported on in this thesis forms part of the foundation of a bigger research project in which an attempt is made to provide better, faster and more efficient feedback on student writing. The introduction presents the localised and international context of the study, and discusses some of the problems experienced with feedback practice in general. The introduction also gives a preview of the intended practical implementation of the research reported on in this thesis. From there on, the thesis is presented in article form with each article investigating and answering a part of two main guiding questions. These questions are: 1. Does feedback on student writing work? 2. How can feedback on student writing be implemented as effectively as possible? The abstracts for the five individual articles are as follows: Article 1 Article 1 presents a rubric for the evaluation of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) software based on international recommendations for effective CALL. The rubric is presented after a brief overview of the pedagogical and implementation fundamentals of CALL, and a discussion of what needs to be included in a needs analysis for CALL evaluation. It is then illustrated how the evaluation criteria in the rubric can be used in the design of a new CALL system. Article 2 Providing feedback on student writing is a much-debated topic. One group of researchers argues that it is ineffective and another group remains convinced that it is effective, while at ground level teachers and lecturers simply carry on “marking” texts. The author of this article contends that both arguments have valid contributions to make and uses the arguments both for and against feedback to create a checklist for effective feedback practice. Adhering to this checklist should counter most of the arguments against feedback while supporting and improving the positive arguments in favour of feedback. Article 3 This article reports on an experiment which tested how effectively standardised feedback could be used when marking L2 student writing. The experiment was conducted using a custom-programmed software tool and a set of standardised feedback comments. The results of the experiment prove that standardised feedback can be used consistently and effectively to a degree, even though some refinements are still needed. Using standardised feedback in a standard marking environment can assist markers in raising their awareness of errors and in more accurately identifying where students lack knowledge. With some refinements, it may also be possible to speed up the marking process. Article 4 This article describes an experiment in which Boolean feedback (a kind of checklist) was used to provide feedback on the paragraph structures of first-year students in an academic literacy course. The major problems with feedback on L2 writing are introduced and it is established why a focus on paragraph structures in particular is of importance. The experiment conducted was a two-draft assignment in which three different kinds of feedback (technique A: handwritten comments; technique B: consciousness raising through generalised Boolean feedback; and technique C: specific Boolean feedback) were presented to three different groups of students. The results indicate that specific Boolean feedback is more effective than the other two techniques, partly because a higher proportion of the instances of negative feedback on the first draft were corrected in the second draft (improvements), but more importantly because in the revision a much lower number of changes to the text resulted in negative feedback on the second draft (regressions). For non-specific feedback, almost as many regressions occurred as improvements. In combination with automatic analytical techniques made possible with software, the results from this study make a case for using such checklists to give feedback on student writing. Article 5 This article describes an experiment in which a series of statements, answerable simply with yes or no (labelled Boolean feedback), were used to provide feedback on the introductions, conclusions and paragraph structures of student texts. A write-rewrite assignment (the same structure as in article 4) was used and the quality of the student revisions was evaluated. The results indicate that the students who received Boolean feedback showed greater improvement and fewer regressions than students who received feedback using the traditional method. The conclusion provides a brief summary as well as a preview of the immense future research possibilities made possible by this project. / Thesis (Ph.D. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

The research reported on in this thesis forms part of the foundation of a bigger research project in which an attempt is made to provide better, faster and more efficient feedback on student writing. The introduction presents the localised and international context of the study, and discusses some of the problems experienced with feedback practice in general. The introduction also gives a preview of the intended practical implementation of the research reported on in this thesis. From there on, the thesis is presented in article form with each article investigating and answering a part of two main guiding questions. These questions are: 1. Does feedback on student writing work? 2. How can feedback on student writing be implemented as effectively as possible? The abstracts for the five individual articles are as follows: Article 1 Article 1 presents a rubric for the evaluation of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) software based on international recommendations for effective CALL. The rubric is presented after a brief overview of the pedagogical and implementation fundamentals of CALL, and a discussion of what needs to be included in a needs analysis for CALL evaluation. It is then illustrated how the evaluation criteria in the rubric can be used in the design of a new CALL system. Article 2 Providing feedback on student writing is a much-debated topic. One group of researchers argues that it is ineffective and another group remains convinced that it is effective, while at ground level teachers and lecturers simply carry on “marking” texts. The author of this article contends that both arguments have valid contributions to make and uses the arguments both for and against feedback to create a checklist for effective feedback practice. Adhering to this checklist should counter most of the arguments against feedback while supporting and improving the positive arguments in favour of feedback. Article 3 This article reports on an experiment which tested how effectively standardised feedback could be used when marking L2 student writing. The experiment was conducted using a custom-programmed software tool and a set of standardised feedback comments. The results of the experiment prove that standardised feedback can be used consistently and effectively to a degree, even though some refinements are still needed. Using standardised feedback in a standard marking environment can assist markers in raising their awareness of errors and in more accurately identifying where students lack knowledge. With some refinements, it may also be possible to speed up the marking process. Article 4 This article describes an experiment in which Boolean feedback (a kind of checklist) was used to provide feedback on the paragraph structures of first-year students in an academic literacy course. The major problems with feedback on L2 writing are introduced and it is established why a focus on paragraph structures in particular is of importance. The experiment conducted was a two-draft assignment in which three different kinds of feedback (technique A: handwritten comments; technique B: consciousness raising through generalised Boolean feedback; and technique C: specific Boolean feedback) were presented to three different groups of students. The results indicate that specific Boolean feedback is more effective than the other two techniques, partly because a higher proportion of the instances of negative feedback on the first draft were corrected in the second draft (improvements), but more importantly because in the revision a much lower number of changes to the text resulted in negative feedback on the second draft (regressions). For non-specific feedback, almost as many regressions occurred as improvements. In combination with automatic analytical techniques made possible with software, the results from this study make a case for using such checklists to give feedback on student writing. Article 5 This article describes an experiment in which a series of statements, answerable simply with yes or no (labelled Boolean feedback), were used to provide feedback on the introductions, conclusions and paragraph structures of student texts. A write-rewrite assignment (the same structure as in article 4) was used and the quality of the student revisions was evaluated. The results indicate that the students who received Boolean feedback showed greater improvement and fewer regressions than students who received feedback using the traditional method. The conclusion provides a brief summary as well as a preview of the immense future research possibilities made possible by this project. / Thesis (Ph.D. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

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