An appropriate representation of self is crucial in reporting past research, establishing a committed writer stance, and persuading the reader in academic writing. While research has suggested an underuse of authorial reference in student writing at the university level, less attention has been devoted to students preparing to enter university. In this study, I seek to investigate students’ usage and perceptions of reporting verbs along a continuum of authorial power at a community college in Hong Kong. Based on a revised averral framework by Charles (2006b) and the reporting verb taxonomy by Hyland (2002a), an analysis was performed on 614 academic written assignments (compared with proficient writing by native-speaking students in the UK in both frequency and textual examination), 697 questionnaires, and interviews with 13 students and three teachers. Findings reveal that the community college students were impassioned opinion holders characterized by an overuse of first person I in a cognitive, affective, and factive fashion. However, they overlooked the potential of ‘mitigated’ expressions of self-mention (such as it is argued that) and discourse verbs such as argue and suggest to develop an argumentative ethos and dialogic interaction essential in effective reader engagement. A misunderstanding of the purpose of academic writing, an insensitivity to reporting verbs, and a categorical forbiddance of self-mention by teachers appear to be the main reasons for not further developing a writer presence by Hong Kong students. In view of the low language proficiency of the students, conflicting writing guides, and teachers’ nonchalance about providing help, teaching recommendations were offered with the use of learner corpora and non-academic materials. / published_or_final_version / Applied English Studies / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the effectiveness of teaching students to write essays using a multi-cue decision-making strategy that asked students to Inscribe the writing space, Define the rhetorical problems locally, Discover the information necessary to solve the local rhetorical problems, and Link the individual units of the essay logically (IDDL). An explanatory mixed methods research design was employed to investigate the importance of using direct explicit instruction of single-cue writing strategies. The research questions were: what is the effect of teaching first-year university students single-cue heuristics as measured by their growth in essay writing between a pretest and posttest measure? and, what is the effect of teaching first-year university students single-cue heuristics as measured by their final essay grades at the end of term? A total of 99 students, divided into control (22 students) and experimental (77 students) groups, participated in the quantitative data collection by providing pretest and posttest writing samples. In the qualitative data collection phase, twenty students (ten from each group) were individually interviewed. While the results indicated that the control group outperformed the experimental group on all measures, except content, there were a number of confounding variables that require further investigation.

poetry

None

A collection of poems, written from 2011 - 13, focusing on lyrical, narrative, and sound-centered forms.

<p> Storytellers have an interdependent relationship with their narratives. If you have ever told a lie, you understand. Stories take on a life of their own, as you consider the potential ramifications of each contingent piece. Definite sets of things happen as results of specific other things. If you throw an ax at me, only a few things can immediately happen, and our relationship will be forever changed. Events evolve. When we create or discover a narrative, we live by its logic. Upon consideration, a moment compels a series of moments modulated by a voice, a single perspective, a personal narrative, which is to say a story. Stories are fabrications of reality, conveyance mechanisms of fact, fiction, and assertion. Stories are contrived, whereas narratives just exist. Narratives are there to be discovered. They are the veins of human action left by life&rsquo;s tendency toward disorder. Narrative is entropy through time.</p>

Cancer, craft beer, little league, vogue. It's a collection of essays. And this is its abstract.

Thesis by James "Jack" McCrone, completed to obtain MFA degree in poetry.

A poetic meditation on place (and sense of place) in the west and in the evolving technological modern.

This thesis is a series of chapters from a memoir-in-progress about the author's mother's experience as a Vietnamese-French immigrant, and the author's own identity quest. The chapters are organized thematically. Prose poems have been inserted between some chapter groupings as section breaks.