published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Curriculum Studies / Master / Master of Philosophy

The purpose of the study was to determine the "interlanguage" characteristics in Chinese-American college writers' texts. Also, the study sought to determine the connections between their "interlanguage" characteristics at the syntactic and discourse levels and their cultural values and linguistic backgrounds. The population of the study consisted of 3 randomly selected Chinese-American students who have taken freshman writing classes at UCLA.The methods employed in this case study were context-sensitive textual analysis and qualitative techniques. In the context-sensitive analysis, twenty-four academic papers by these students were analyzed from four angles--error analysis, syntactic fluency analysis, cohesive ties analysis, syntactic construction analysis, and discourse organization pattern analysis. In the use of qualitative techniques, twenty-seven interviews were carried out, two recordings of family dinner and party were analyzed, and answers to questionnaires were studied.Findings support the hypothesis of the study--there are characteristic features in the texts by Chinese-American writers, and these characteristics at both syntactic and discourse levels have correlations to their linguistic background and cultural values. At the discourse level, the essay organization in these students' essays tends to follow an indirect pattern as Kaplan has claimed in his 1966's study. At the syntactic level, thekinds of errors occurring in these students' texts are the same as ESL Chinese students' errors, which supports the research findings by Zhu Hong, Hu, and other ESL researchers. Thus, the study has made two-fold connections--between Chinese-American college writers' texts and their cultural and contextual backgrounds and between ESL studies and composition studies.The implications of the research findings for the teaching of basic writing and future research in the field are discussed in the last chapter to enhance Chinese-American students' as well as their writing teachers' awareness of their writing characteristics and of connections between their cultural values and linguistic background. / Department of English

The multi-case study examined the role that social interaction plays in the writing development of fourth grade African American students in three different classrooms in a large Midwestern city. The study explored the nature of the students' interactions and the points during the writing process where interactions occurred. Also under investigation was how teachers facilitated the interactions within their classrooms. Each classroom was considered a case and cases within each case were then selected to allow for a more in-depth examination of the nature of students' conversations. Data collected included observations, student interviews, and artifacts. Information gathered from the study was analyzed using a constant comparative approach. Themes that emerged were compared across cases.Analysis of the data showed that there were many purpose for the interactions in which the African American students engaged. The interactions: (1) enabled students to get assistance from peers and teachers, (2) provided students with encouragement, (3) motivated students as writers, and (4) fostered a deeper understanding of writing. The data also showed that students engaged in verbal and nonverbal interactions at various points in the writing process with peers, teacher, and even themselves. While the teachers varied in their approaches to facilitating the interactions, even when they did not intentionally create opportunities for interactions, the students engaged with one another anyway. Based on the results of the study, teachers should consider affording African American students the opportunity to regularly interact with their peers during writing time, providing an audience that extends beyond the classroom teacher. / Department of Elementary Education

Access to abstract permanently restricted to Ball State community only. / Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community only. / Department of Elementary Education

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 316-330). / Microfiche. / xvi, 330 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

<p>This study has been prompted by the negative remarks that lecturers make concerning the academic performance of students and the number of years they spend at the Eastern Cape Technikon before completing their diplomas. The aim of this study was to identify the kinds of strategies that English Second Language (ESL) students use to cope with English language writing tasks.</p> <p><br /> Academic writing requires a conscious effort and much practice in composing, developing, and analyzing ideas. Black students at tertiary institutions in South Africa face additional difficulty, especially when they have to deal with writing in English which is an unfamiliar language to them. This presents them with social and cognitive challenges related to second language acquisition. Since the black students do not often consider the social contexts in which L2 academic writing takes place, models of L1 writing instruction and research on composing processes are often found wanting in their L2 writing pedagogy. In this study, I argue that language proficiency and competence is the cornerstone of the ability to write in the L2 in a fundamental way. L2 writing instructors should take into account both strategy development and language skill development when working with black students. This is critical in South Africa considering the apartheid legacy and the deprived social conditions under which black students often live and acquire their education. Therefore, using critical discourse analysis and aspects of systemic functional linguistics, this study explores errors in written cohesion and coherence in relation to L2 writing strategies used by black students at the Eastern Cape Technikon. The study focuses on errors in the form of cohesive devices of referring expressions using topic development used by students. The aim was to explore the strategies used by black students to write coherent academic texts. Further, the study intends to scrutinize the grammatical devices of reference, through analyzing the forms of cohesive devices and theme development. A focus on the writing process as a pedagogical tool enables me to explore the relationship between the quality of students‟ academic writing and coping strategies used, and come up with a model of L2 writing (coping) strategies for academic writing at the Eastern Cape Technikon. I investigate the L2 writing process adopted by competent and non-competent black students in the process of producing coherent academic texts by comparing strategies that the two groups of students adopt.</p>

Responding to Student Writing: Strategies for a Distance-Teaching Context identifies viable response techniques for a unique discourse community. An overview of paradigmatic shifts in writing and reading theory, 'frameworks of response' developed to classify response statements for research purposes, and an overview of research in the field provide the theoretical basis for the evaluation of the empirical study. The research comprises a three-fold exploration of the response strategies adopted by Unisa lecturers to the writing of Practical English (PENl00-3) students. In the first phase the focus falls on the effect of intervention on the students' revised drafts of four divergent marking strategies - coded correction, minimal marking, taped response and self assessment. All the experimental strategies tested result in statistically-significant improvement levels in the revised draft. The benefits of self assessment and rewriting, even without tutorial intervention, were demonstrated. The study is unique by virtue of its distance-teaching context, its sample size of 1750 and in the high significance levels achieved. The second phase of the research consisted of a questionnaire that determined 2640 students' expectations with respect to marking, the value of commentary, their perceptions of markers' roles and their opinions of the experimental strategies tested. Their responses were also correlated with their final Practical English examination results. The third phase examined tutorial response. The framework of response, developed for the purpose, revealed that present response strategies represent a regression to the traditional product-orientated approach to writing that contradicts the cognitive and rhetorical axiological basis of the course. There is thus a disjunction between the teaching and theoretical practices. The final chapter bridges this gap by examining issues of audience, transparency, ownership, timing of intervention and training. The researcher believes that she has successfully identified practical and innovative strategies that assist lecturers in a distance-teaching context to break away from old response blueprints. / English Studies / D.Litt. et Phil. (English)