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This research, based on Halliday's functional concepts, examined students language use in a communicative event, dialogue journals, in a Japanese as a foreign language setting. Holistic evaluation and precise analysis of Japanese particles were used to study the relationship between students' attempts to express content, their attempts to use linguistic forms, and the success of those attempts. The main finding is that increasing attempts, both qualitatively and quantitatively, on content and form, enhanced meaning-making ability in Japanese; however, overly high risk-taking on content at first inhibited success, leading to writer's block. More accomplished students were able to adjust their content to their linguistic ability at first, but to increase their risk-taking on both factors over time. Precise analysis further revealed students' hypotheses making in using Japanese particles. The findings suggest that both teachers' linguistic and strategic guidance in their responses and their attention to content are crucial.

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Richmond School District successfully implemented in 1978-1984 an innovative approach to the teaching of writing--the writing process. This study sought to determine why teachers participated in developing a new writing curriculum in their schools, what characteristics of the setting promoted these curriculum development practices, and what curriculum leaders did to promote teacher participation in curriculum decision making. Historical evidence for this thes is included interviews with eleven participants in reform, including the curriculum leader with greatest responsibility for its implementation. In addition, various print and manuscript documents provided a basis for interpretation of pertinent events. As policy study this thesis described and analyzed the practices and experiences of the school district that embodied the implementers' values. A single teacher-leader in the district accounted for much of the change in teacher practice. A district-wide emphasis on writing process praxis was further supported by the school board and the district's senior staff. Specific social characteristics of the curriculum development setting, Richmond School District, help account for the adoption of the reform. The study argues for the importance of; (a) selecting the most appropriate innovation for implementation, (b) empowering participants in educational reform, and (c) an effective change agent to inspire participants. Implications for educators and recommendations for further research came from these insights.

This classroom-based interpretive inquiry investigates how two academic writing instructors with disciplinary backgrounds in English Literature and English Education teach writing to graduate students with other disciplinary backgrounds. The instructors' teaching practices are conceptualized within a Vygotskian socio-cultural framework. Relevant educational issues are situated within two fields of education, Second Language Education and L1 writing instruction. This inquiry challenges the polarized views of writing instruction reflected in the second language literature. The research participants were two writing instructors and two focal students in one class. Data collected and analyzed include 70 hours of classroom-based observations in two classes over a semester, 12 hours of interviews with the research participants over 16 months, and documents such as course handouts, the focal students' portfolios, teacher audio-taped and written feedback to student drafts. Findings indicate that the writing instructors provided writing instruction and writing opportunities both in the specific disciplinary discourses of their students and other discourses. The instructors' goal-directed teaching practices were informed by their own generalist and discipline-sensitive evaluative orientations toward academic writing instruction at postsecondary levels. The instructors' evolving individual beliefs, perceptions, and practices were shown to be related to embedding sets of nested institutional contexts, such as developments in composition and education theory, and the changing theoretical orientations of the instructors' teaching units. Despite the instructors' different emphases on discipline-specific and general features of writing, findings suggest that both instructors mediated the students' appropriation of disciplinary discourses.

This thesis has analyzed 50 English compositions written by Japanese college students in order to determine some of the reasons for semantic errors which occur in the student themes. Five major categories of semantic errors were identified: (A) Semantically Wrong Choice of Lexical Items, (B) Omission of Words or Phrases Semantically Necessary, (C) Errors with the Structure of Phrases and Clauses, (D) Words Used in the Wrong Form Class, (E) Errors in Idiomatic Usage. From this analysis, it has been determined that the major cause of error was semantically wrong choice of lexical items, the choice of verbs, determiners, and P-words being particularly troublesome.This analysis also revealed that some of the causes for semantic errors were native language interference, differences in meaning distinctions and scopes of meaning in one language or the other, incomplete knowledge of grammatical and lexical restrictions of words, interference within English itself, and cultural interference. It was also evident that semantic errors related to the teaching methods used in most Japanese secondary schools. Reliance on the grammar-translation method in the junior high and senior high schools did not provide students with enough competence for them to write free compositions at the university level.Finally, this thesis offers brief suggestions on ways a teacher of EFL to Japanese students might teach some of these problem areas and improve the English writing ability of Japanese college level students.

The purpose of the study was to compare effects of two types of teacher feedback on two specific writing behaviors of fourth grade children.Experimental design of the study compared two groups using pretest/posttest measures: (1) Experimental Group I contained two intact classrooms with a total of forty-four fourth grade children. Treatment for this group involved having children write stories on a twice-weekly basis and receive a written and oral comment from the writing teacher about production of the stories. (2) Experimental Group II contained two intact classrooms totaling fifty-one fourth grade children. Treatment for this group involved having children write stories on a twice-weekly basis and receive only written comments from the teacher about production of the stories. No control group was used in this study.Objective data obtained for analysis were derived from the measurement instrument, a rating scale, specifically developed for this study. The instrument measured four writing behaviors--originality, vocabulary, content and mechanics. Only content and mechanics were used in treatment. Each of these behaviors were rated on a seven-point scale, with seven the highest and one the lowest. The highest rating indicated maximal use and the lowest minimal use of a specific writing behavior.The instrument appeared to have a high face validity. Examination of the items on the rating scale showed that they dealt with observable writing behaviors. To establish reliability of the instrument all compositions written were evaluated by a set of raters who were subjected to a series of training sessions in use of the instrument. Further, checks on reliability were made during seven of the fourteen writing sessions in the study. The reliability obtained by using the Cronback-Alpha Internal Consistency Index was obtained for each of the writing behaviors. Reliability coefficients were (1) Originality .99, (2) Vocabulary .84, (3) Content .84, and (4) Mechanics .62.A writing teacher was hired and trained by the experimenter to use a standard format for stimulating writing behavior. Once compositions were rated by the raters two controlled written comments were placed on compositions by the experimenter. Control over comments were achieved through development of a series of prepared feedback guides. A guide was prepared for the two writing behaviors subjected to experimental manipulation: content and mechanics. Comments were corrective in nature and contained information about content and mechanics of the composition. Comments also gave the reader suggestions for composition improvement.When compositions were returned in each experimental group treatment was administered by the writing teacher. In Experimental Group I each of the children was given an oral comment, in the form of a brief conference with the writing teacher, which accompanied the written comment. In Experimental Group II all of the children were told to look at written comments, no further reference was made about the compositions. A general statement of priase about the classes compositions as a whole was given to both groups.The following hypotheses were tested:Hypothesis I. There is no significant difference between the adjusted posttest meansof Experimental Group I and Experimental Group II for the writing behavior content.Hypothesis II. There is no significant difference between the adjusted posttest meansof Experimental Group I and Experimental Group II for the writing behavior mechanics.To test the hypothesis an analysis of covariance was used. The pretest served as the covariate and the posttest as the criterion. For each hypothesis the obtained F-ratio did not exceed the tabled F-value for significance at the .05 level of rejections. The null hypotheses were not rejected.

The purpose of this study was to determine what effects The Christensen Rhetoric Program, a method of teaching sentence and paragraph development, (1) had upon the attitudes of college freshmen toward written composition and (2) had upon their persistence in using free modifiers after a lapse of time and instruction.

In ESL writing, a controversy has existed on whether or not an assignment plays an important role when students produce their writings. Plausible arguments have been also made on the matter of amount of information given in a writing assignment. But so far, there have been no convincing data to show a favor of either side in any case.This study is designed to examine the importance of assignment and the relationship between information load and the quality of ESL student writings by analyzing compositions written by ESL students. For the collection of data, 150 students who were randomly selected from two Korean universities. They were asked to write an essay in response to three different types of writing assignments in information load and topic kind.The data were analyzed by two well trained ESL teachers with the method of holistic evaluation. The data were evaluated in nine areas of quality with a binary scale (Yes and No) and in general quality with a 1 to 6 scale. The result of data evaluation was analyzed statistically using SPSS-X. Cross tabulations were used to check for relationship between information load and general impression score, between information load and binary question scores, and between binary question scores and general impression scores. Regression techniques were used to characterize the significant relationships. In performing all calculations, a paper's score will be the sum of the individual graders' scores.The results of data analysis demonstrate that ESL students prefer a subjective topic despite the level of information load. Nevertheless, their preference is not directly related to the quality of their writings. ESL students produce higher quality of writings as they are given less information. Finally, the importance of an assignment in ESL writing classes is supported by the marking of students' higher scores in dichotomous questions.The study also discusses problems and causes of difficulties, in Korean ESL, for utilizing the method of writing education as a means of teaching the English language. The study also points out the importance of a teacher training program and suggests variables which should be considered for producing a better quality teacher training program in the Korean ESL situation. / Department of English