Thesis (M.F.A.)--Boston University. Please note: creative writing theses are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the locked Download file link and fill out the appropriate web form. / 2031-01-01

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Boston University. Please note: creative writing theses are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the locked Download file link and fill out the appropriate web form. / 2031-01-01

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Boston University. Please note: creative writing theses are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the locked Download file link and fill out the appropriate web form. / 2031-01-02

Hench, by being set in the espionage genre, and following the henchman of an evil villain, offers a commentary on the modern working world by serving as a metaphor for the corporate workplace. The film follows a lowly henchman, Hank, who learns to challenge this corporate structure by achieving self-respect, thanks to an unlikely friendship with a James-Bond-esque agent. This creative explication explains how Hench achieves commentary on how large corporate structures operate to maintain control over employees, and the effects this has on individuals. It further highlights the tools and techniques used to formulate Hench into a fully realised feature screenplay.

Prominent Feature Analysis (PFA) is a reliable and valid writing assessment tool, derived from the writing it is used to assess. PFA, used to assess on-demand expository essays in Grades 3-12, uncovers positive and negative characteristics of a sample. To extend PFA to a new academic level and genre, I assessed scientific writing of 208 undergraduates, identifying 35 linguistic and 20 scientific prominent features. An essay could earn up to 28 positive (24 linguistic and four scientific), and up to 27 negative marks (11 linguistic and 16 scientific). The minimum prominent features number in a paper was 3, the maximum was 25 (M = 12.45, SD = 3.88). The highest positive and negative prominent features numbers noted were 17 (M = 4.11, SD = 3.96), and 16 (M = 8.34, SD = 3.25) respectively. Rasch analysis revealed a good data-model fit, with item separation of 5.81 (.97 reliability). The estimated feature difficulty of items spanned over 10 logits; common errors were easier to avoid than “good writing” characteristics to exhibit. Significant correlations among linguistic, but not between linguistic and scientific features, suggest writing proficiency does not assure excellence in scientific writing in novices. Ten linguistic features significantly strongly and moderately inter-correlated with each other, appearing to represent writing proficiency. Student GPA correlated significantly with the raw prominent features scores (r = .37; p < .01), and negatively with the sum of negative linguistic features (r = -.40, p < .01), providing support for scale’s validity, and suggesting that good students are better at avoiding common writing errors than less able learners. Additionally, PFA scores positively significantly correlated with composite ACT scores. To investigate PFA’s ability to track change in writing over time, I compared 2 sets of prominent features scores of 25 students. In comparison with earlier essays, later (longer) essays exhibited significantly more positive, and more negative features. Prominent features scores did not correlate significantly between the sets. This suggests, that while PFA is a valid and appropriate tool for analysis of undergraduate scientific writing, it was not suitable for tracking change in writing ability in this small sample.

D. Phil. / Presently, in the context of South African higher education, many black students who had previously studied at historically disadvantaged institutions, enter the post-graduate academic context without the necessary language and academic literacy skills required by institutions where the language of learning and teaching is English or Afrikaans. Consequently they do not access their discourse communities optimally and also do not develop into scholars who are able to participate in the conversations of their discipline competently and confidently. In this context, this inquiry focused on the impact of the M. Ed. Community Education programme on students' academic writing proficiency. This programme is presented as a distance education programme in the Department of Curriculum Studies at the Rand Afrikaans University.

This dissertation shares findings from a descriptive case study that examined an experienced teacher’s facilitation of a collaborative story writing project using Google Docs in a culturally and linguistically diverse Grade 11 English class. An expanding body of research supports the use of web-based writing tools and peer collaboration for promoting writing skills development, yet there is little research examining how these practices are integrated within the broader teaching and learning process. In the present study, sociocultural theory provided a guiding framework for exploring the complexities inherent in the teaching and learning process as students worked in pairs (and one triad) to write a story about “the future” to be shared with an audience of upper level elementary students. Data sources included field notes taken during 16 class observations, pre- and post- project interviews with the teacher, on-going reflections written by the teacher, focus group interviews with the students, and the students’ collaborative projects stored in Google Docs. The findings cohered around five key themes that describe the teacher’s facilitation of the project: (1) incorporating procedural facilitators, including mentor texts and web-based writing applications; (2) adopting a socio-cognitive apprenticeship model to guide students toward higher levels of proficiency with narrative writing; (3) building a community of practice through peer collaboration, peer sharing, and peer editing; (4) enabling a positive and productive learning environment; and (5) transitioning to a new curriculum. The findings from this study also shed light on the affordances and constraints associated with the pedagogical supports, the collaborative context, and the use of Google Docs as integral components of the project. The dissertation concludes with recommendations for educators who are interested in integrating collaborative story writing projects or web-based writing tools within their classroom contexts. / Graduate

For my senior thesis, I have compiled essays that cover traveling to Aix en Provence for the month of June 2103 and growing up in East Tennessee. This project should exhibit my skills as a writer in the nonfiction category. I describe personal experiences, portray characters, and attempt to show readers a world that they may not otherwise have been able to experience. I blend narrative essays with travel writing to show overall how these two components create an intercultural experience that work to inform and answer each other.

Process writing research began with adult writers, eventually expanding to include school age children and more recently, emergent writers. Research at the early childhood level has often been directed at specific aspects of writing development rather than an examination of process writing development. This study used pre-existing writing samples to examine writing development in kindergarten and first grade over the course of the school year following the district-wide implementation of a writing process based intervention. The intervention utilized a writing workshop approach to teach the writing process with the addition of two elements: picture plans were used to support emergent writers’ prewriting plans, and teachers focused on a single teaching point to target writing instruction. Beginning and end of year samples from 138 kindergarten and 106 first-grade students from three elementary schools in a medium-sized, public school district in the southwestern United States were used for this study, yielding a total of 488 samples. The samples were scored to investigate the change over time on four outcome measures: quantity of words produced, attributes of prewriting picture plan, evelopmental level, and handwriting. In addition, the impact of fidelity to the intervention features was explored in relation to the four outcome measures. Fidelity to implementation was scored on each of the 10 separate aspects of the intervention: student choice for topics, reading-writing connections, prewriting, peer conferencing, teacher conferences, minilessons, revision, editing, publishing, and modeling. Overall, the study found that the greatest change over time in kindergarten and first grade was in the developmental level. There were also large effects for quantity of words produced and handwriting. A regression analysis was conducted to determine which aspects of the intervention feature were most critical to early writing development. Student choice had a significant positive association with all four dependent measures. Minilessons had a significant association with developmental level and handwriting; other significant positive associations included revision with quantity of words produced, and editing with planning. The findings suggest these features of writing workshops should be included in interventions designed to foster early writing development.

The three studies reported in this thesis investigated the contributing factors of L2 writing among adult ESL learners in the academic setting. The major purpose of this research was to explore the relationship between L2 proficiency, writing strategies, writing attitude, writing errors and L2 writing performance. This thesis aimed to provide insights for the contributing factors that are predictive of L2 writing performance in adult ESL learners, studying in English and non-English dominant settings. Study 1 (reported in Chapter 3) focused on determining the appropriate measures for investigating the individual factors of writing performance; particularly learners’ writing strategies, learners’ second language proficiency, first language (L1) interference and their relation to writing performance. Thirty-one intermediate students of L2 served as participants. A measure of vocabulary size and a writing strategy questionnaire were administered to the students. Findings in this study indicated that most of the participants’ planning strategies were limited to having a mental or written plan whereas over half of the respondents reported that they always start with an introduction and were more likely to stop drafting after a few sentences. In terms of drafting strategies, it was found that most respondents reread what they had written to get ideas on how to continue but did not go back to their outline to make changes in it. With regard to L1 use, a majority of participants do not write bits of text in their native language. Nevertheless, quite a number of participants indicated that they would write in their L1 if they don’t know a word in English. Findings in this study also suggested that participants’ biggest concerns were related to grammar and vocabulary, which resulted in them making surface level changes and checking. An overall analysis of participants’ writing output and responses from the questionnaire also provided important insights to the improvement of the measures. The revision process included rewording and rephrasing ambiguous items, removing irrelevant items from the questionnaire and restructuring the writing task for the next study. In Study 2 (presented in Chapter 4), a follow-up study was conducted to examine L2 writers’ proficiency level, writing attitude, writing errors and writing strategies in an English-dominant setting. Nine research questions were designed to guide the study framework and gather specific data regarding the research aims. A writing measure, vocabulary tests and a questionnaire were administered to the students. Findings from Study 2 indicated that L2 proficiency, particularly vocabulary size, was related to writing performance. In addition, it was also discovered that L2 writers who performed poorly were prone to performing writing strategies related to surface level checking. Therefore, it was concluded that linguistic barriers in L2 affect both writing performance and students’ ability in applying the effective strategies in writing. Apart from that, Study 2 also found that the use of L1 and translation into L2 was associated with lower writing performance. Additionally, Study 2 found that pronoun, word and sentence errors were the most prevalent errors among ESL students. A possible reason for this is because L2 students need to work with two languages while writing, mainly the grammar rules in English which are not found in their L1 as well as their own native language. Thus, L2 students face the challenge of working out English grammar rules while writing. Overall, findings in this study suggest that prevalent writing errors in English may be a sign of L1 interference and that as the use of L1 increases, writing performance decreases. In Study 3 (reported in Chapter 5), the role of proficiency level, writing attitude, writing errors and writing strategies was explored by measuring the relationship between writing attitude scores, errors in writing, strategy use and essay scores. Additionally, the role of L2 proficiency in writing performance was also investigated by assessing the relationship between vocabulary size scores, writing errors and writing performance. Findings from Study 3 revealed unexpected findings with regard to the relationship between L1 use and writing performance among the three sample groups. L1 use was found to be correlated with writing performance for Group A but not Groups B and C. It was argued that L2 writers of different L2 proficiency level and academic experience may have different orientations of L1 use. Further work on the impact of L1 use on L2 writing will be needed in order to provide insights into this area. With regard to writing errors, a relationship between errors and writing performance was reported. It was found that subject verb agreement error appeared to be a common factor for the three groups in the study that was related to writing performance. In addition, errors were also significantly correlated with L2 proficiency, suggesting that as L2 proficiency increased, errors decreased. Overall, Study 3 argues for the importance of developing and enhancing learners’ L2 proficiency to reduce errors and improve learners’ writing performance. Additionally, Study 3 also argues for the need to emphasize effective writing strategies in the ESL writing classroom.