published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

The purpose of this study is to answer the research question: What are the elements of the writing process and written texts of kindergarten/first grade students in a whole language classroom that constitute authenticity? The written texts of twenty-one children from a variety of ethnic, socioeconomic and linguistic backgrounds were collected over the course of the school year. The tests were categorized according to penpal letters, signs/labels/captions and dialogue journal entries. Each category was analyzed to describe the writer's place in the context of situation, the function that each text served and the interaction of the linguistic cueing systems. The data indicate that the physical elements in the Context of Situation as described by Michael Halliday that proved most important to authenticity are: (1) Availability (proximity) and accessibility of a wide variety of resources. (2) Experience of students in creating and identifying resources in the environment. (3) Many opportunities to interact with audiences. (4) Student ownership of the process. The social relationships within the classroom that proved most important to authenticity are: (1) having a "real" audience for writing. (2) The relationship between the writer and the audience. (3) The degree of invitation with choice of when and where to write. The features of written texts which proved most important to authenticity are: (1) The students' familiarity with the genre of text. (2) The function of the texts to fulfill the purposes of the students. Whole language classrooms such as the one in this study provide a rich source of data for the study of authenticity.

Huang, Zeping. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 121-132). / Abstracts in English and Chinese; appendix two in English and Chinese. / Acknowledgements --- p.i / Abstract --- p.iii / Abstract (Chinese) --- p.v / Table Of Contents --- p.vi / List of Tables --- p.ix / List of Figures and Graphs --- p.x / Chapter CHAPTER ONE --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1. --- Motivation --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1.2. --- The importance of language use in L2 writing --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1.2. --- The possibilities of integrating corpora into L2 writing instruction --- p.2 / Chapter 1.1.3. --- The need for corpus-informed approach --- p.2 / Chapter 1.2. --- Purpose of this study --- p.4 / Chapter 1.3. --- Research questions --- p.5 / Chapter 1.4. --- Overall research methods --- p.5 / Chapter 1.5. --- Significance of the study --- p.5 / Chapter 1.6. --- Organization of the thesis --- p.6 / Chapter CHAPTER TWO --- LITERATURE REVIEW --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1. --- "Research on corpora and L2 writing...," --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1.1. --- Studies on corpus use from teachers' perspective --- p.9 / Chapter 2.1.2. --- Studies on students' direct use of corpus --- p.10 / Chapter 2.1.3. --- Empirical Studies on corpus and vocabulary learning --- p.17 / Chapter 2.2. --- Evaluations of the studies under review --- p.19 / Chapter 2.2.1. --- Evaluation of research on corpus-informed teaching materials development --- p.19 / Chapter 2.2.2. --- Evaluations of empirical research on students' direct use of corpus --- p.21 / Chapter 2.3. --- Call for further studies --- p.22 / Chapter CHAPTER THREE --- METHODOLOGY --- p.24 / Chapter 3.1. --- Participants --- p.24 / Chapter 3.2. --- Research Setting --- p.25 / Chapter 3.3. --- Materials --- p.25 / Chapter 3.3.1. --- Corpora used --- p.26 / Chapter 3.3.2. --- Selecting the target words --- p.28 / Chapter 3.3.3. --- Sifting the concordance lines --- p.29 / Chapter 3.3.4. --- Formulating the queries --- p.30 / Chapter 3.4. --- Research design --- p.32 / Chapter 3.4.1. --- Pretest --- p.33 / Chapter 3.4.2. --- Immediate posttest --- p.33 / Chapter 3.4.3. --- Delayed posttest --- p.34 / Chapter 3.5. --- Procedures --- p.35 / Chapter 3.6. --- Instruments --- p.37 / Chapter 3.6.1. --- Questionnaires --- p.37 / Chapter 3.6.2. --- Learning journals --- p.38 / Chapter 3.6.3. --- Uptake sheets --- p.38 / Chapter 3.7. --- Data collection and analysis --- p.38 / Chapter 3.7.1. --- Holistic scoring --- p.39 / Chapter 3.7.2. --- Analysis of the use of target words --- p.40 / Chapter 3.7.3. --- Questionnaire responses --- p.42 / Chapter 3.8. --- Chapter summary --- p.43 / Chapter CHAPTER FOUR --- RESULTS --- p.44 / Chapter 4.1. --- Holistic scores --- p.44 / Chapter 4.2. --- Use of signaling nouns (SNs) --- p.46 / Chapter 4.2.1. --- Accuracy --- p.46 / Chapter 4.2.2. --- Complexity --- p.61 / Chapter 4.2.3. --- Retention of the target patterns --- p.73 / Chapter 4.3. --- Content Schemata nouns --- p.74 / Chapter 4.4. --- Evaluation of the concordance exercises --- p.75 / Chapter 4.4.1. --- Effects on vocabulary learning --- p.75 / Chapter 4.4.2. --- Effect on L2 writing --- p.78 / Chapter 4.4.3. --- Difficulties in doing the concordance exercises --- p.80 / Chapter 4.5. --- Chapter summary --- p.84 / Chapter CHAPTER FIVE --- DISCUSSION --- p.85 / Chapter 5.1. --- Did the corpus-informed approach improve students' overall writing quality? --- p.85 / Chapter 5.1.1. --- Cut-off sentences --- p.87 / Chapter 5.1.2. --- Culture-loaded information in concordance lines --- p.88 / Chapter 5.2. --- Did the corpus-informed approach improve vocabulary use in students' writing? --- p.90 / Chapter 5.2.1. --- Interface of lexis and syntax --- p.91 / Chapter 5.2.2. --- Encouraging usage-based learning --- p.95 / Chapter 5.2.3. --- Raising learner awareness of collocation and colligation --- p.97 / Chapter 5.2.4. --- Retention of lexico-grammatical patterns --- p.98 / Chapter 5.3. --- Did students think that corpus-informed approach helped their writing? --- p.100 / Chapter 5.4. --- Towards a tentative model of corpus-informed writing instruction --- p.102 / Chapter 5.4.1. --- Preparing Materials --- p.104 / Chapter 5.4.2. --- During the exploration of a topic-specific corpus --- p.105 / Chapter 5.4.3. --- Follow-up activities after exploration of the topic-specific corpus --- p.106 / Chapter 5.5. --- Chapter summary --- p.108 / Chapter CHAPTER SIX --- CONCLUSION --- p.109 / Chapter 6.1. --- Summary of this study --- p.109 / Chapter 6.1.1. --- Enhancement of lexico-grammatical patterns --- p.109 / Chapter 6.1.2. --- Enhanced awareness of the importance of collocations --- p.111 / Chapter 6.1.3. --- Pivotal role of prior grammatical knowledge in corpus-informed learning --- p.111 / Chapter 6.1.4. --- Insignificant correlation between learning CSNs and ideas development --- p.113 / Chapter 6.2. --- Pedagogical implications --- p.113 / Chapter 6.2.1. --- Writing materials development --- p.114 / Chapter 6.2.2. --- Implementation of corpus-informed activities --- p.115 / Chapter 6.3. --- Limitations and suggestions --- p.117 / Chapter 6.3.1. --- A longer experimental time frame --- p.117 / Chapter 6.3.2. --- More lexical input --- p.118 / Chapter 6.3.3. --- More comparison groups --- p.118 / Chapter 6.3.4. --- Different proficiency levels --- p.119 / Chapter 6.3.5. --- Web-based concordances and more follow-up learning activities --- p.119 / Chapter 6.3.6. --- Case studies --- p.120 / Chapter 6.4. --- Closing remarks --- p.120 / Bibliography --- p.121 / Appendix One Questionnaire One --- p.133 / Appendix Two Questionnaire Two --- p.136 / Appendix Three Learning Journal --- p.139 / Appendix Four Pre-writing Vocabulary Study --- p.140 / Appendix Five Pretest Writing Task --- p.153 / Appendix Six Immediate Posttest Writing Task --- p.154 / Appendix Seven Delayed Posttest Writing Task --- p.155

The aim of this study was to examine the approaches to the teaching of English composition writing in Botswana junior secondary classrooms and to produce models that might enhance the effective teaching of composition writing at the junior secondary school level. The aims of the study triggered the objectives of identifying the challenges posed by the use of such approaches to teachers; determining if the approaches used by teachers inhibit students' performance in composition writing; and proposing possible solutions or models to the challenges in the teaching and learning of English composition writing in the classroom context. Relevant theoretical and practical literature germane to the study was reviewed and descriptions of the conceptual framework/ the research design, and methodology provided. The study utilized the qualitative technique through interviews, observations, reviews, examination of documents and students' artifacts. Based on the aforementioned methodologies, the major findings were that: * Teachers utilized mainly the product oriented approach to the teaching of English composition writing. * Teachers were confronted with challenges emanating from the use of the product oriented approach to writing such as surface level errors, wrong grammar/tense, lack of vocabulary and organization skills, and inability of students to compose and communicate effectively in writing. * The teachers' use of the product oriented approach is believed to have among other things, contributed greatly to the students' poor development of writing skills such as wrong spelling and punctuation, lack of organization, lack of ideas and vocabulary, and inability to compose and communicate effectively in writing. * A model to improve the teaching of English composition writing was developed based on the major findings above. Finally, on the basis of the findings and the conclusions made, pertinent recommendations were made to enhance the effective teaching of English composition writing at the junior secondary schools in Botswana. / Educational Studies / D.Ed. (Didactics)

During the second semester of the 1989-90 school year, all of Virginia's 65,000+ sixth-grade students were the first to take literacy tests in mathematics, reading and writing as part of a new Virginia Assessment Program mandated by the legislature. Passing scores on all three of these literacy tests is now mandatory for admission to ninth grade. The writing portion of the assessment requires that students construct a writing sample in response to a writing prompt. For the three years prior to 1989-90, school systems within the state could participate voluntarily in a fourth-grade baseline test to determine student potential for failing the sixth-grade assessment. Students whose papers fall into the bottom quartile of all papers scored each year are considered at-risk for failing the Literacy Passport Test at the sixth-grade level. This study examines the writing behaviors and the characteristics of the papers written by four fifth-grade students identified by the Virginia Department of Education as at-risk for failing the Literacy Passport Test. The author chose to function both as researcher and as participant/observer in the study, functioning in both of these roles for a twenty-one week period during the fall and early winter of 1989-90. Data was collected during a three hour per day, three day a week time period. Collection sources included field notes, interviews with students and teachers, and student papers, including the fourth-grade baseline assessment, papers written during the twenty-one weeks of data collection and a simulated Literacy Passport Test writing sample. Findings include a description of each student's approach to writing and an analysis, both analytical and domain-based, of the writing of selected papers of each of the four students. Implications for teaching, as well as suggestions for further research, are included in this document. / Ed. D.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education