For many, literacy is reading and writing- a critical tool for ethos construction. But for a marginalized group of ex-offenders, former prison inmates, who were not accustomed to reading and writing as an agent for character invention, the ability to employ literacy and to construct ethos was a challenging and almost unsuccessful attempt. I discuss in this thesis a community-writing project I designed as a graduate student and my partnership with Boaz & Ruth, a local faith-based non-profit organization working with ex-offenders. Through the collaboration I facilitated writing skills workshop, which objective was to have the ex-offenders to write personal narratives. The writing exercises enabled me to examine implications at work when a marginalized groups like the ex-offenders endeavor to invent ethos, develop rhetorical dialogues and contended with public discourses.

The aim of this study is to describe, analyseand understand which lesson plans teachers share with each other on the website www.lektion.seabout studentswriting. The website is open for all teachers andeveryonecan share their lessons with each other’s. The study is based on 31 lesson suggestions whichare intended for teacherswho teach inschool years1-9. The sampleofmy study is based on lesson plans with a pronounced idea of writing as a processThe thesis beginswith a review of the Literacy concepts, the writingdiscourse and the subject of Swedish.The analyses of the lesson plans indicate that the subject of Swedish mainly focuses on skills as correctly written text and good handwriting. Even if the instructions of the lesson plans clearly state that the actual content is important, the formalities and the correctness seem to be the real focus. Even if it says in the instructions that it is the content that matters, is it the correctness of the formalities that is pronounced in the instructions. Teachers says that they work with writing as a process but theydo it in a mechanical wayand the dialogue between the studentislimited to respons-giving instead of interaction in order todevelop the content ofthe texts. Most of the texts that thestudentsin both primary and secondary school are asked to write in my study arenarrative texts with descriptive elements.Mystudy indicates six findingsThe first tendency issubject of Swedish has an emphasis on writing as a skill. The second tendency is that writing isregardedasindependent work. The third tendency is about the types of texts thataremost common. The fourth tendency is that the writing process is looked upon as a method that follows strict rules. The fifth tendency shows that writing as a process is not so common among all the lesson plans which are published on the website. Thesixthtendency describes theuse of pencil and paper as the most common writing toolsin the lesson plans.

No description available.

Providing feedback on students’ written tasks is a common aspect in today’s classrooms. Feedback affects students’ written language learning by either enhancing it or hindering it, depending on what, how and when it is given. The purpose of this degree project is to research how teachers perceive students’ writing process, how they give feedback on students’ written tasks in a primary EFL classroom, and the reasons behind their chosen strategies. Semi-structured interviews with two English teachers teaching years 4-6 were used as a method for this study. To support and analyse the data from the interviews, this project contains an overview of the fields of written language learning, formative assessment, effective formative feedback and writing as a process using literature and previous research. The literature and research show that teaching writing in a foreign language should focus on enhancing students’ interest in writing by supporting their curiosity and willingness to become writers. This can be done by focusing on content of a text instead of grammar or spelling, as this does not support young learners in their writing process. Teachers therefore need to provide feedback on aspects such as content, coherence and structure and give students information on how they can proceed in and improve a task. That is when the feedback will have the most positive effect on students’ learning. Further, the process-based approach of writing is argued to be beneficial for students’ learning as it encourages students to take an active part in their writing process. The major conclusions of this study are that the two teachers prefer to give informal and oral selective feedback on students’ writing tasks during the task. They give feedback once or twice on a task and often in the middle, to scaffold a progression. However, this is not in alignment with process-based writing. The study also shows that the two teachers are not aware of the theories underpinning writing as a process. Instead, they are well trained in ways of formative assessment and scaffolding language learning, but not the process-based approach of writing.