This thesis examines writing centers and offers suggestions for tutor training that might help realize the ideal of the writing center as a Burkean parlor, a place where collaboration via continuous meetings and conversations between tutors and participants take place. Conflict can surface because of different cultural backgrounds and world views, particularly in terms of gender issues.

This thesis follows five second language (L2) students in an introductory composition class at California State University, San Bernardino. The study investigates their perceptions and responses to grammatical coded feedback provided by their writing instructor. The results showed that students wanted, expected, appreciated and understood the coded feedback that was given to them.

During the 1990s, many low-income countries were committed to the United Nations Education for All (EFA) goals of ensuring universal access to primary education and learners’ completion of all primary grades (Gove & Wetterberg 2011:1). Since then some countries, including South Africa, have made impressive strides towards expanded access to schooling. Much of the progress has stemmed from additional inputs such as classrooms, educators, and textbooks and this has created the assumption that with sufficient inputs, learning will naturally flow. However, increases in enrollment rates alone have not always translated into high quality education or even basic learning. Additionally, South Africa’s unique politically burdened history has had profound effects on the education system. Due to its multifarious population and the amalgamation of various sectors, including education, the Department of Basic Education was and still is faced with the daunting challenge of providing quality education to its diverse citizens. This has resulted in the establishment of multiracial, multilingual, and multicultural schools. The corollary is that schools have become more inclusive. However, the ability of South Africa to educate its learners cannot be measured by access to schooling or enrollment rates alone, but rather by its ability to impart to learners the knowledge and skills necessary to function as literate and numerate members of the broader society. Within the context of EFA several international organisations began to conduct early grade reading assessments in many developing countries in Africa and Asia. These studies include SACMEQ, PIRLS and prePIRLS, EGRA, and ASER. The aim of these assessments is to facilitate the expansion of quality education by providing the necessary data to monitor educational quality, and by improving the research capacity and technical skills of educational planners. Within the context of major transitions throughout the world, the organisations mentioned above perspicaciously focused on countries that encounter major challenges in literacy. The extensive studies on reading and writing that were conducted by some of these organisations amplify the crisis in education and the plight of early grade learners. Nationally and internationally the situation appears to be relatively bleak, especially for L2 learners. Literacy, specifically reading literacy, forms the backbone of scholastic success at primary, secondary and tertiary levels and research consistently shows that learners who are good readers also tend to perform well academically (Pretorius & Machet 2004:129). Emanating from the above, this study focused on the factors that affect foundation phase English second language learners’ reading and writing skills. The study was conducted at five English medium primary schools in Port Shepstone. A literature study on second language acquisition and the factors that impact on the English second language learners’ reading and writing achievements was undertaken. Furthermore, the expansion of the English language, the significance of the primary language in second language acquisition, insights and issues focusing on bilingualism and multilingualism, theories on second language acquisition, reading and writing in the home language, and factors related to English second language learners’ reading and writing achievements were examined. A mixed-method research design was utilised. In order to obtain an in-depth perspective both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used to collect data from foundation phase educators, and the parents of isiZulu-speaking foundation phase learners. Survey questionnaires, which were the main research instruments for gathering data, were distributed to the parents of isiZulu-speaking learners and the educators. Additionally, individual interviews were conducted with educators and reading and writing observations were also conducted. Quantitative data analysis was done by means of tables, frequencies, and graphs. Qualitative data was subjected to analysis by means of an eclectic approach. This study found that cultural, psychological, social, cognitive, school, and developmental factors do indeed affect the second language learners’ reading and writing skills. It was found that the learners’ home language background significantly affected their pronunciation of words in English, their ability to use phonics to read and write, and their ability to differentiate between male and female when writing sentences. Moreover, no specific model of acculturation was found to be apparent in this study. However, the processes of integration and separation did play a role in the learners’ acculturation. On the other hand, the processes of assimilation and maginalisation were not found amongst isiZulu-speaking learners. Two prominent psychological factors, anxiety and motivation, were apparent in this study. This study revealed that isiZulu-speaking learners do experience reading and writing anxiety but do not experience writing test anxiety. It was also found that isiZulu-speaking learners do enjoy reading in English and they demonstrate relatively positive attitudes towards reading. Their attitudes towards writing in English were somewhat varied. Although integrative motivation and instrumental motivation were seen to play a dual role in the learners’ experiences, the parents’ views were strongly influenced by instrumental motivation. IsiZulu-speaking learners have good social relationships with their peers. Educators affirmed that these learners interact relatively well with both their English-speaking peers and their isiZulu-speaking peers. The amiable relationships were also observed by the researcher during the classroom reading and writing observations. None of the isiZulu-speaking learners experienced social isolation or alienation at any of the five English medium schools. IsiZulu-speaking learners’ ability to speak and understand isiZulu is relatively good. However, their ability to read and write in isiZulu is generally poor. IsiZulu-speaking learners usually cope well with conversational skills in the English language. However, their ability to read English texts fluently with understanding and to write simple stories in English ranges from fair to poor. Generally, at the five schools similar approaches were used to teach reading and writing. The dominance of the phonic approach was observed during several reading lessons. In general, educators expressed their absolute dissatisfaction with the CAPS document and the CAPS English home language workbook. They were not content with the manner in which the phonics is structured in the CAPS workbook and document. Educators asserted that CAPS is too challenging for most isiZulu-speaking learners, too much of emphasis is placed on assessments, and due to the large learner/educator ratio educators experience frustration when teaching reading and writing. Educators emphasised the significance of Grade R attendance and the Grade R curriculum. Furthermore, they asserted that learners who enter Grade 1 at the age of five are not ready for formal schooling and they generally experience reading and writing difficulties. Moreover, this study reproduced those found in literature that showed that generally girls significantly outperform boys on reading and writing tasks. There were various reasons for the parents wanting their children to learn to read and write in English. Two of the prominent reasons advanced by the parents were: parents want their children to learn more than one language and learning English at school will help their children to continue their studies at colleges or universities. Overall, this study has demonstrated that the English language has significantly impacted on all aspects of the isiZulu-speaking foundation phase learners’ lives, and more especially has considerably influenced their reading and writing achievements at English medium schools. / Inclusive Education / D. Ed. (Inclusive Education)

In the last 20 years, various investigators have contributed valuable insights that shed light on the interconnected matrix of self-efficacy and attribution theories of motivation in instilling confidence and desire for academic achievement. However, these two areas of beliefs and their effects on students‟ achievement have rarely been researched together with writing performance here in Ethiopia. Both quantitative and qualitative methodologies have been integrated in the analysis of the data gathered from two secondary schools. The quantitative method was employed where participants were involved in taking composition test, filling out the self-efficacy scale and a questionnaire on attribution so as to investigate the relationships among the variables. The qualitative method was also used to examine the teachers‟ role in boosting students‟ motivation towards effecting goal-oriented striving at success in English writing performance The findings of this study indicated that there is a positive and strong relationship between writing self-efficacy beliefs and awareness and effective performance in writing tasks. It was also found that the learners who attributed their success to their ability and effort rather than to external causes achieved better results. Moreover, the findings of the qualitative data indicated that teachers‟ interest and motivation to teach writing can play a crucial role so as to raise the learners‟ feelings of self-worth and self-efficacy to do the writing activity. In other words, teachers need to capitalise on their learners‟ fervent desire for success and achievement in whatever line of endeavour, and the vital role effective writing skills play in the realisation of life goals. / English Studies / M.A. (Specialisation in TESOL)

published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 327-342). / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / xxi, 342 leaves, bound 29 cm

Thesis (DAppLing)--Macquarie University, Faculty of Human Sciences, Dept. of Linguistics, 2009. / Bibliography: p. 208-233. / Introduction -- Conceptual frameworks: language competence and the acquisition of modality -- Generic frameworks: speech, writing and electronic communication -- Linguistic frameworks: modality and related concepts -- Research design and methodologies -- FTDs in the ACAD and BB corpora -- Learner's use of FTDs in discoursal context and their individual repertoires -- Conclusions and implications. / While natural interaction is one of the important components that lead to successful language learning (Vygotsky 1978, 1986), communication in classroom practice in Thailand is mostly teacher-centered and not genuinely interactive. Online group communication is different because it allows learners to exercise interpersonal communicative skills through interaction and meaning negotiation, as in reciprocal speech situations. At the same time it gives learners time to think and produce language without having to face the kind of pressure they feel in face-to-face classroom discussion. The language learner's competence is thus likely to be enhanced by opportunities to communicate online, and to be more visible there than in academic contexts, although there is a dearth of experimental research to show this. One way of investigating the pedagogical potential of bulletin board discussions is to focus on the interpersonal linguistic devices used in textual interactions (Biber 1988). -- The purpose of this research is to find out whether students communicating online in bulletin board writing will exercise their repertoires of linguistic fine-tuning devices (hedges, modals, and intensifiers) more extensively than when writing academic essays. This was expected because hedges, modals and intensifiers are likely to be found in interactive discussions (Holmes 1983), while academic tasks do not create such an environment. Though hedges and modal devices are also found in academic genres (Salager-Meyer 1994, Hyland 1998), those used tend to be academic in function rather than communicative. -- In order to compare the frequency and variety of the fine-tuning devices used by learners in the two mediums, data was gathered from 39 Thai students of English at Kasetsart University, from (1) their discussions in online bulletin boards and (2) their academic essays. Tasks were assigned on parallel topics in three text types (narrative, explanatory, argumentative) for both mediums. The amount of writing was normalized to create comparable text lengths. Measures used in the quantitative analysis included tallying of the types and tokens of the experimental linguistic items, with the help of the AntConc 2007 computer concordancer. Samples of written texts from the two mediums were also analyzed qualitatively and compared in terms of their discourse structure (stages, moves and speech acts), to see which functional segments support or prompt particular types of pragmatic devices. -- The findings confirm that in electronic bulletin boards the students exercise their repertoires of fine-tuning devices more frequently, and use a greater variety of pragmatic functions than in academic essays. This is probably because online discussion fosters interactions that are more typical of speech (Crystal 2006), and its structure allows for a series of interpersonal moves which have no place in academic tasks. Text-type also emerged as a significant factor: writing argumentative texts prompted greater use of modals and intensifiers than the narrative and explanatory ones. Thus students' communicative competence showed itself most fully in the argumentative online assignments, and was not so evident in academic and expository essays. Frequent use of modal and intensifying elements was also found to correlate with the students' English proficiency grades, and how regularly they wrote online. This incidentally shows the importance of exposure to L2 in language acquisition, and that lower-proficiency learners need more opportunities to exercise their L2 resources in interactive discourse, in order to develop competence in using them. -- These research findings support Long's (1996) 'Interaction Hypothesis', that learners learn best in situations that cater for interaction; and Swain's (1985) 'Output Hypothesis', that learners need the chance to exercise their language naturally in a variety of contexts -through academic tasks as well as social interactions, which are equally important for language education. Extended performance opportunities undoubtedly feed back into the learner's communicative competence. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / xi, 389 p. ill

Thesis (DAppLing)--Macquarie University, Division of Linguistics and Psychology, Department of Linguistics, 2008. / Bibliography: p. 404-418. / Introduction -- Literature review -- Methodology -- Results -- Discussion -- Conclusion. / This study sets out to examine the pragmatic competence of Cantonese adult learners of English possessing different levels of proficiency when performing the speech act of requesting for a formal purpose in writing. Pragmatic judgment - one of the two aspects of pragmatic competence - was examined by studying the most proficient group (i.e., native Cantonese-speaking EFL teachers at university), whereas pragmatic performance - the other aspect of pragmatic competence - was examined by studying the two weaker groups (i.e., university students at two language proficient levels). Both pragmatic judgment and pragmatic performance were examined by investigating the same four dependent variables (i.e., politeness, directness, formality and amount of information). Teacher data, collected through a Pragmatic Judgment Questionnaire completed and returned by sixteen EFL teachers (eight native Cantonese speakers and eight native English speakers) and by means of individual interviews, were analyzed quantitatively for responses to twelve questions and qualitatively for responses to an additional two questions. Student data, consisting of both experimental and authentic letters and e-mails, were analyzed quantitatively. -- Main research findings suggest: *It is possible for very proficient NNSs of English, (i.e., the EFL teachers in this study), to achieve native-like pragmatic judgments in most aspects, except for their views on several pragmatic considerations (i.e., "unnaturally polite" expressions, usefulness of "negative" words, supportive moves not to be used and writing plans preferred). *As the English proficiency of L2 learners improves from Grade E to Grade A/B (as determined by the Hong Kong A-level Examinations in the subject "Use of English"), their pragmatic performance shows improvement. -- For pedagogical reasons, a qualitative analysis was conducted for Questions 1 and 2 in order to generate examples of "unnaturally polite"/ "polite" / "impolite" expressions and to provide examples of inappropriate supportive moves in relation to three writing topics. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / xvii, 576 p