Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationMany national reports indicate that more attention needs to be placed on writing and the teaching of writing in schools. The purpose of this quantitative study was to, first, examine the structure of the DWA and, second, to use the scores from the DWA to examine the relationship between ELL status and writing proficiency. Five major research questions were addressed: 1) Does the DWA provide valid and reliable scores of writing proficiency for students in general and for specific groups of students based on ELL status and ethnicity? 2) What is the relation between ELL status and writing proficiency for ninth-grade students attending public schools in Utah during the years 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007, and to what extent do student variables, such as gender, social economic status, and ethnicity, independently and cumulatively explain the relationship? 3) To what extent do the school variables, percent of low-income students in a school, percent of minority students in a school, size of the school, and mean ELL status at a school independently and cumulatively explain the relation between ELL status and writing proficiency? 4) To what extent do the district variables, percent low-income students in a district, percent minority students in a district, size of the district, mean ELL status in a district, and whether a district is urban or rural independently and cumulatively explain the relation between ELL status and writing proficiency? 5) To what extent does the relationship between ELL status and writing proficiency interact with ethnicity? The results of the study indicated that the DWA was a valid and reliable form of writing assessment. Determined also was the fact that deficiencies in writing skills are at their greatest when ethnicity, social economic status, and limited English language proficiency are considered. The results of the present study have suggested ways to rethink how writing is conceptualized and assessed, how past instructional practices have possibly resulted in disparities among ethnic groups, how writing skills vary with student, school, and district characteristics, and how differential writing instruction may benefit students of different ethnic groups and ELL statuses. A ?one-size-fits-all? approach to writing instruction will not benefit all students in Utah or throughout the nation. Because writing differs between ethnic groups, writing instruction must differ as well

Communication Accommodation in Context: An Analysis of Convergence and Divergence in Action

This collection of essays examines nature and relationship of discourse and social distance by focusing largely on the concepts of divergence and convergence throughout the communication process. The first essay examines the risk communication strategies used by officials to effectively and accommodatively confront and manage the outdoor New York City smoking ban. The second essay performs a rhetorical criticism of former-President Bush?s September 11th Speech, outlining specific instances in discourse that both decrease and increase social distance with the audience. And the third essay steps into the ESL classroom to propose ways in which we can better recognize and understand the effectiveness of different communication accommodative teaching styles from ESL instructors. Overall, the collection discusses how a better, more comprehensive understanding of convergence and divergence may provide more efficient and powerful discourse throughout various everyday communicative scenarios in the world

The Development of an Academic Literacies Programme for Students in Britain and Beyond

Richmond’s Academic Literacies Programme (ALP) is a content-based form of instruction for university students which teaches critical reading, research skills, content synthesis, and writing and presentation skills. It is designed to empower all students to research and write effectively throughout their undergraduate studies. This article is a quantitative case study review of a British-American university’s ALP, examining student feedback across academic disciplines on specific taught ALP skills and comparing their improvement from 2014 to 2022. Chi-squared goodness-of-fit tests showed students valued research, critical reading, academic writing, essay structure, understanding academic honesty, using tutor feedback, and referencing skills; however, survey development and recommendation reports were not meeting student needs in their majors and so were removed from the programme. In comparison, in a follow-up review conducted in 2022, the skill of identifying research gaps was not effectively used or applied. However, independent group testing found the usefulness of skills at the lower learning level improved from 2014 to 2022, as did the application of skills at the higher level. This study concludes that ALPs are valuable for all university students beginning higher education research, regardless of first language or degree course

Inter-institutional Comparison Of Faculty Perceptions On The Purpose Of Freshman Year Composition Programs

The purpose of this study is an investigation of instructors‟ perceptions of composition learning objectives focusing on which should be taught and which should be emphasized. The researcher observed that instructors do not regard all course objectives in English Composition courses equally; emphasizing some and giving others brief consideration. From this observation, this study was developed to measure objectives as well as to examine principal reasons for the differences in perception. Using an 18-question (16 content area and two demographic) survey based on content areas chosen to mirror general learning objectives in composition courses, along with six focused interviews, the researcher discovered some levels of agreement, some of disagreement, and some areas of neutrality. The researcher has established some connections and some disconnects between some of the general learning objectives from English Composition courses, which are intriguing and thought provoking. Since instructors deliver instruction using learning objectives as the goals to be achieved in the English Composition courses they teach, it is prudent to be concerned with how these objectives are perceived and implemented by the users. The data collected conclusively reflects instructors‟ perceptions of learning objectives are not all the same. As the researcher measured instructors‟ perceptions of English Composition learning objectives, the results demonstrate that there are stronger relationships with some of the learning objectives, and some objectives have no relationships; some objectives are well matched and others are not. The purpose of this study, understanding relationships between instructors‟ perceptions of learning objectives in FY English Composition courses, will provide us with research to help improve objectives and positively impact instruction

Argumentation Mining in User-Generated Web Discourse

The goal of argumentation mining, an evolving research field in computational linguistics, is to design methods capable of analyzing people's argumentation. In this article, we go beyond the state of the art in several ways. (i) We deal with actual Web data and take up the challenges given by the variety of registers, multiple domains, and unrestricted noisy user-generated Web discourse. (ii) We bridge the gap between normative argumentation theories and argumentation phenomena encountered in actual data by adapting an argumentation model tested in an extensive annotation study. (iii) We create a new gold standard corpus (90k tokens in 340 documents) and experiment with several machine learning methods to identify argument components. We offer the data, source codes, and annotation guidelines to the community under free licenses. Our findings show that argumentation mining in user-generated Web discourse is a feasible but challenging task.Comment: Cite as: Habernal, I. & Gurevych, I. (2017). Argumentation Mining in User-Generated Web Discourse. Computational Linguistics 43(1), pp. 125-17

The Role of Regulatory Focus in the Experience and Self‐Control of Desire for Temptations

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141440/1/jcpy163.pd

Threads of influence: Greek tragedy and its relevance to the contemporary novel, with specific reference to Donna Tartt's 'The secret history', and my novel, 'The first seven years'

This MPhil concerns the contemporary literary novel and how it has been influenced by the Golden Age of Greek tragedy. It comprises of three parts: the thesis and the novel, hereby presented, and the journal of creative experiences, which was observed at viva. My thesis examines the historical development of Greek tragedy and its structure. It further explores how tragedy has influenced writers through the ages, culminating in the literary tragedy of today. The methodology of tragic form is investigated in the works of writers educated in Greek tragic structure, and also those with no classical background. This thesis aims to show how novelists without a classical education have accessed the tragic form, via threads of literary influence, and utilised it successfully, albeit often unconsciously. My novel, The First Seven Years, is a work of contemporary tragic fiction. It tells the story of one woman’s attempts to do the best for her child. Trapped between raising her young son, Alfie, and caring for an increasingly frail elderly relative, Kate becomes emotionally and physically stretched. When she discovers Alfie has been badly bullied in his failing state school, her attempts to change schools have tragic consequences. Finally, my journal, presented at viva, compiles my creative thoughts, notes and research for both novel and thesis in one portfolio. My original notebooks show much of my novel’s planning and I have included visual images used of characters, buildings, locations, Kate’s photography and Martha’s pottery. Factual research is also integrated; investigating peripheral neuropathy, school league tables and admissions criteria. Thesis research includes relevant newspaper cuttings, programmes to Oedipus Rex and Phèdre, readings by DBC Pierre & Jeanette Winterson, and an interview with David Guterson. This journal has proved invaluable throughout my MPhil, both as an inspiration and an aide-mémoire

EFFECTS OF COLLABORATION AND ISOMORPHIC MODELS ON TRANSFER: AN L2 WRITING INVESTIGATION

How can feedback become a productive resource for students? Much of the research investigating the role of feedback in second language (L2) writing has set out to find an answer to this question. Based on the principle that feedback is given to students as a means of providing useful information to improve their writing (Bitchener, 2008, 2009; Hanaoka & Izumi, 2012), the discussion on feedback includes the idea that learners will transfer knowledge from feedback to improve subsequent writing (Hyland, 1998; Storch & Wigglesworth, 2010). When learners apply feedback to their subsequent writing, they are using collected knowledge, which is the essence of learning transfer (Schwartz, Bransford, & Sears, 2005). Unfortunately, no method of writing feedback has been deemed the frontrunner for improving learner texts (Ferris & Roberts, 2001; Hyland & Hyland, 2006; Storch & Wigglesworth, 2010) or for helping learners transfer writing knowledge across writing situations (James, 2006a,b, 2008, 2009, 2010). While this outlook may seem bleak for writing instructors, recent research provides evidence for presenting learners with expert models as a fruitful way of offering feedback