This study explored the extent to which graduate students enrolled in Higher Education courses were proficient at writing. While writing proficiency has been extensively studied in elementary students, high school students, and undergraduates, little attention has been paid to formally evaluating graduate student proficiency. Despite the relatively new idea of assessing graduate student writing, it is a concern for graduate faculty and a valid area for study. This study was based on a sample of graduate students enrolled in at least one course in Higher Education at public institutions of higher education in the United States. A total sample size of 97 students was obtained. Two instruments were administered to the participants: A General Information and Writing Experience Questionnaire (G-WEQ) and the SAT II: Writing Test, Part B. The G-WEQ was designed to capture demographic information about the participants, as well as allow participants to provide a self-assessment of writing and describe the writing experiences they are currently encountering in graduate school. To assess writing proficiency for the participants, the SAT II: Writing Test, Part B was used. The purpose of the test is to "measure [test takers'] ability to...recognize faults in usage and structure, and to use language with sensitivity to meaning" (Educational Testing Service, 1999-2000, p.7). The z-Statistic for a Single Sample Mean significance test was used to determine whether the sample mean scored significantly higher than the population mean on the SAT II: Writing Test. This was not the case (z=0.295, p<0.38). The graduate students in this sample did not score significantly higher on the SAT II: Writing Test, Part B than the typical high school senior whose scores enter into the norm group.

The purposes of this study were to validate the writing section of the Eiken Can-Do Questionnaires used in this study and the second purpose was to determine the effects of ten affective orientations (i.e., Desire to Write English, Attitude Toward Learning to Write English, Motivational Intensity, Instrumental Orientation for Writing in English, L2 Writing Anxiety, L2 Writing Self-Confidence, Willingness to Communicate in L2 Writing, Self-Esteem, Cognitive Competence, and General Self-Worth), on the participants’ responses to the Eiken Can-Do Questionnaires. This purpose is valuable because little is known about the relationship between Can-Do Questionnaire and affective variables investigated in this study. The final purpose of this study was to develop Can-Do Questionnaires as an internal measure for a university writing class. The participants of this study were 204 university students studying in two private universities in Tokyo, Japan. The first instrument was the writing section of the Eiken Can-Do Questionnaire; this questionnaire served as the outside measure in this study. The second, six out of nine essays written by the students were assessed as a measure of their writing ability in English. The Affective Orientation Questionnaire was administered to measure ten Affective Orientations. The questionnaire and essay data were analyzed using the Rasch rating scale. All of the participants completed the Background Questionnaire and Affective Orientation Questionnaire in April 2010 and 2011 and completed the writing section of the Eiken Can-do Questionnaire in April, July, and December 2010 and 2011. six writing assignments were produced by 179 out of the 204 participants wrote during the 2010 and 2011 academic year, and the relationships among the variables were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling. The results indicated that the use of the Eiken Can-Do Questionnaires as the proficiency level measure was appropriate for this group of university students. The Eiken Can-Do Questionnaires were predictors of Motivation and L2 Self-Confidence. Motivation was a predictor of WTC in L2 Writing. Therefore, it should be noted that the Eiken Can-Do Questionnaires had an indirect effect with WTC in L2 Writing. The result implies that through having Eiken Can-Do questionnaires and Classroom Can-do Questionnaires to achieve their future goals, their English classes and their future learning objectives were connected.　 It is necessary to provide students with adequate practice and guidance in using the Eiken Can-Do Questionnaires in order to promote a deeper understanding of their purposes and uses. / Teaching & Learning

Studien syftar till att undersöka hur lärare arbetar med skrivförmågan i årskurs 4–6 och om de ser några skillnader inom skrivförmågan mellan pojkar och flickor samt hur de i så fall motverkar dessa skillnader. Nejman (2020) menar att skillnaderna i betyg mellan pojkar och flickor är ett av skolans största likvärdighetsproblem. Resultatet i studien bygger på åtta kvalitativa intervjuer av semistrukturerad karaktär med lärare som är yrkesverksamma och antingen undervisar eller har undervisat i svenskämnet. Resultatet diskuteras genom det sociokulturella perspektivet och vad tidigare forskning säger om ämnet. Undersökningens resultat visar att de flesta lärare i denna studie arbetar med genrepedagogik i klassrummet. Det visar också att lärarlegitimation spelar roll i relation till användandet av arbetssätt och metoder för skrivförmågan. En viktig faktor som nämns av flera av lärarna i studien är att läsning stärker skrivförmågan. Att det finns skillnader mellan pojkar och flickor inom skrivförmågan är något som både forskning och resultatet av intervjuerna visar, däremot är det få lärare som uttrycker att de använder sig av några arbetssätt i klassrummet för att minska dessa skillnader. Det som är av betydelse menar lärarna är klassrumsplaceringen.

PhD (English) / Department of English

This literature review explores the use of Extramural English in the classroom and its effects on students’ language acquisition. Through a systematic analysis of different studies on EE activities such as video games, the Internet, gaming, and other activities, this paper will investigate the possible positive or negative effects of EE activities on students’ performance. The results of this literature review show that students who are more exposed to EE activities have a better result with regard to the acquisition of English than their peers because the language of communication in Extramural activities is mainly English.  The results also show that by incorporating EE in the classroom, teachers will be able to define the student’s strengths and weaknesses through eliciting the learning evidence when learning English as a second language.

Written and oral material produced by a group of low-achieving learners of English from the 2-year lines of the Swedish upper secondary school was analysed from the perspective of grammatical correctness and communicative ability. The grammatical analysis focussed on the verb phrase and tests included both free production in speech and writing and elicitation tests. Communicative ability was assessed ‘ ‘objectively* ’ by identifying such parameters as fluency, copiousness and span, and “holistically” by using non-expert evaluators.The scores thus obtained were correlated. Grammatical correctness was correlated with communicative ability both in speech and in writing and writing proficiency was correlated with speech proficiency with respect to both grammatical correctness and communicative ability.Our findings are that there is a positive correlation between grammatical correctness and communicative ability. A remarkable finding is that the percentage of correct verb phrases correlates very weakly with communicative ability in written data. In oral data, the correlation is in fact slightly negative. The learner’s competence in grammar is reflected in both his written and oral performance. On the other hand, there is no correlation between communicative ability in writing and communicative ability in speech.The study shows that a working command of a set of syntactic rules is essential for communication. Errors are, however, an integral part of the learning process. The major part of errors are accounted for by the learner’s use of compensatory strategies. Among these low-achievers, communicative ability in conversation is distinct from writing ability. / digitalisering@umu

This study investigates the effectiveness of context-specific teaching materials delivered through an adapted process genre model of writing, in enhancing academic writing proficiency of tertiary level English foreign language (EFL) students. The study was conducted at a College of Technology in Oman and was motivated by the low EFL writing level of tertiary students at the college. The study employed a quasi-experimental design in which two main groups (experimental and control) were included. The experimental group received EFL writing instruction for one semester via the especially developed teaching materials, while the control group received EFL writing instruction via the prescribed textbook. The findings indicated statistically significant differences between the experimental and control groups in the Mid-Semester examination (MSE) and the Level-Exit examination (LEE). A qualitative analysis of the experimental group’s writing suggests that this group significantly outperformed the control group in writing fluency and accuracy. Therefore, based on the findings of the current study, it can be concluded that context-specific materials delivered through the proposed process genre model of writing are effective in enhancing tertiary level students’ academic writing proficiency in an EFL context. Specifically, the writing intervention had a positive effect on students’ ability to compose a variety of genres in an examination setting, which is an important finding, given that the process-genre approach to writing is normally not associated with writing in an examination setting. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)

At Base Elementary School (BES) in the Southwest United States school administrators were concerned that writing proficiency levels for 2014-2015 were below district and state standards and there was not a clear understanding of teachers' perceptions on writing proficiency of military-connected (MC) students at the target site. Therefore, the purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore teachers' perceptions on writing proficiency of MC students at BES. Using Lave and Wenger's communities of practice framework, a qualitative instrumental case study was used to discern perceptions of elementary English Language Arts (ELA) teachers regarding the writing proficiency of MC students. Through a purposeful sample of 12 ELA teachers, telephone interviews were used to explore teachers' writing perceptions. Data from interviews were analyzed using inductive and iterative analysis resulting in identification of key themes. Major themes included the status of existing writing practices, diverse culture of MC students, need for collaborative relationship building among teachers, and the need for targeted writing professional development (PD) focused on connecting evidence-based practices (EBP) to state writing standards using culturally responsive practices (CRP). The resulting project of a white paper, will promote stakeholder awareness of teachers' perceptions, includes themes supporting the findings with recommendations that teachers would benefit from targeted writing PD focused on EBP and CRP using a collaborative model. Teacher use of these recommendations may promote social change by improving writing support for MC students possibly leading to improved performance on state proficiency assessments.

La présente recherche collaborative vise à décrire (1) la mise en œuvre de pratiques en contexte d’atelier d’écriture de deux enseignantes vietnamiennes de français langue étrangère au deuxième cycle du secondaire bénéficiant d’une formation continue sur ce dispositif ; (2) les effets de leurs pratiques d’atelier d’écriture sur le développement de la compétence à écrire en français langue étrangère de leurs élèves ; et (3) les répercussions de leur participation à cette recherche collaborative sur le changement de leurs pratiques d’enseignement de l’écriture. Afin de répondre à ces objectifs, nous avons observé chacune des enseignantes à deux reprises, l’une au début et l’autre, à la fin de l’expérimentation. Elles ont de plus décrit leur mise en œuvre de l’atelier d’écriture lors d’une entrevue téléphonique qui se déroulait toutes les deux semaines au cours de cinq mois. D’autre part, nous avons évalué la performance en écriture en français langue étrangère des élèves (n=33) de ces deux enseignantes au prétest et au post-test au moyen d’une épreuve de production écrite. Enfin, nous avons mené une entrevue semi-dirigée avec les enseignantes au début et à la fin de la recherche pour collecter les changements qu’elles ont apportés dans leurs pratiques d’enseignement de l’écriture et identifier les éléments du dispositif de recherche facilitant ces changements. Nos résultats indiquent que durant la recherche, les enseignantes ont mis en place l’atelier d’écriture dans leur classe. Au moyen d’observations directes en classe à l’aide du modèle du multi-agenda de Bucheton et Soulé (2009), nous avons remarqué une amélioration dans la qualité de leurs pratiques de tissage, de pilotage, d’étayage et d’atmosphère à la fin de l’expérimentation. Les pratiques déclarées, quant à elles, permettent de constater que les enseignantes ont organisé l’atelier d’écriture sur une base régulière et ont respecté presque pleinement les principes de ce dispositif présentés lors de la formation. Du côté des élèves, ils ont amélioré significativement la qualité de leurs productions écrites sur le plan du contenu, de l’organisation, de la structure des phrases, du choix des mots, de la voix d’auteur et des conventions linguistiques au post-test. De plus, leurs productions écrites étaient plus longues et meilleures en ce qui concerne la complexité lexicale ainsi que syntaxique. Finalement, les enseignantes ont déclaré apporter des changements dans leurs pratiques d’enseignement de l’écriture, et ce, grâce à la formation que nous avions organisée pour elles, à notre soutien durant leur expérimentation et à leur observation mutuelle de la mise en œuvre de l’atelier d’écriture. / The purpose of this collaborative research is to describe (1) the implementation of writing workshop practices by two Vietnamese teachers of French as a foreign language at the upper secondary level who received in-service training on this device; (2) the impact of their writing workshop practices on the development of their students’ competence in writing French as a foreign language; and (3) the repercussions of their participation in the collaborative research on the change in their writing teaching practices. Our results indicate that during the research, teachers implemented the writing workshop in their classrooms. Through direct classroom observations using Bucheton and Soulé’s (2009) multi-agenda model, we noted an improvement in the quality of weaving, piloting, scaffolding, and atmospheric practices implemented by the teachers at the end of the experiment. The reported practices show that the teachers implemented the writing workshop on a regular basis and complied almost fully with the principles of this device presented during the training. On the students’ side, they significantly improved the quality of their written productions in terms of content, organization, sentence fluency, word choice, authorial voice and linguistic conventions on the post-test. In addition, their written productions were longer and better in terms of lexical and syntactic complexity. Finally, the teachers reported making changes in their practices of teaching writing, thanks to the training we had organized for them, to our support during their experimentation, and to their mutual observation of the implementation of the writing workshop.