Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Arts and Humanities

Brigham Young University

Theses/Dissertations

Composition

Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Affective Transfer In Writing: Utilizing Affect In Teaching For Transfer, Emily Morgan Jun 2022

Affective Transfer In Writing: Utilizing Affect In Teaching For Transfer, Emily Morgan

Theses and Dissertations

According to current scholarship in writing studies, students with a positive affect toward writing are more likely to transfer writing knowledge and skills. Yet my findings from an IRB-approved longitudinal study suggest that this is not always the case. This study was designed to see what students transfer from their first-year composition course, focusing especially on rhetoric, process, genre, and mindfulness. In annual semi-structured interviews that took place over the course of three years, two study participants described having positive writing affect but did not discuss transfer, even when prompted. These students express caring much more about a writing task …


Connections In High School Writers: Affective Connections As A Writing Self-Efficacy Dimension, Sarah Kate Johnson May 2020

Connections In High School Writers: Affective Connections As A Writing Self-Efficacy Dimension, Sarah Kate Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

While scholars of writing self-efficacy (WSE) have long explored self-efficacy as multidimensional, not every crucial dimension of self-efficacy has been explored (Walker; Zumbrunn et al.; Bruning and Kauffman). Recently, scholars have called for new WSE dimensions so that scholars can better examine the contextual and relational factors of self-efficacy (Usher and Pajares 786). My thesis is one answer to this call. Using ideas from contemporary affect theory and data from an IRB-approved study on thirteen high school seniors in a language arts class, I theorize and explore a new dimension of WSE that I call affective connections. Affective connections are …


Evidences Of Critical Thinking In The Writing Of First-Year College Students, Shannon Bryn Soper Dec 2015

Evidences Of Critical Thinking In The Writing Of First-Year College Students, Shannon Bryn Soper

Theses and Dissertations

A healthy civil society depends on citizens who have mature critical thinking skills and a willingness to entertain opposing points of view. The development of critical thinking in young adults has long been studied, but there has been little agreement on what the attributes of critical thinking are and how to reliably assess them. While many studies have attempted to assess the critical thinking abilities of college students, none have yet measured critical thinking through using the Critical Thinking Analytic Rubric (CTAR) to assess first-year college students' writing. This study used a modified version of the CTAR rubric to investigate …


With So Little Time, Where Do We Start? Targeted Teaching Through Analyzing Error Egregiousness And Error Frequency, Katie Fredrickson Jun 2014

With So Little Time, Where Do We Start? Targeted Teaching Through Analyzing Error Egregiousness And Error Frequency, Katie Fredrickson

Theses and Dissertations

Why do so many students confuse good writing with simply error-free writing, and what can writing instructors do about it? In order to answer this question, the present study first undertakes an exploration of the different meanings associated with grammar and how those definitions have influenced composition instruction. These influences range from an over-emphasis on grammar in the first half of the twentieth century to allowing it to disappear almost completely from the composition curriculum in the second half of the century. However, because research demonstrates that students over this same time period make errors in writing at a fairly …


Baumrind's Authoritative Parenting Style: A Model For Creating Autonomous Writers, Rachel Page Payne Mar 2013

Baumrind's Authoritative Parenting Style: A Model For Creating Autonomous Writers, Rachel Page Payne

Theses and Dissertations

Though Quintilian introduced the term in loco parentis in his Institutio Oratoria by suggesting that teachers think of themselves as parents of a student's mind, composition scholars have let parenting as a metaphor for teaching fall by the wayside in recent discussions of classroom authority. Podis and Podis have recently revived the term, though, and investigated the ways writing teachers enact Lakoff's "Strict Father" and "Nurturing Mother" authority models. Unfortunately, their treatment of these two opposite authority styles reduces classroom authority styles to a mutually exclusive binary of two less than satisfactory options. I propose clinical and developmental psychologist Diana …


Drink Me, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Blog, James Arthur Goldberg Jun 2010

Drink Me, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Blog, James Arthur Goldberg

Theses and Dissertations

Language itself is a technology, and the advent of each major technology of language transmission (from the alphabet to the printing press to the Internet) has changed the range of speaker-audience dynamics which are the starting point for all creative writing. In this thesis, a writer, armed only with his blog archives and a smattering of John Tenniel illustrations, guides the curious reader through various issues raised by creative writing in the blog form. Topics discussed include self-presentation, the juxtaposed brevity and expansiveness of online texts, nonlinear reading, alternative models for revision, the literary possibilities of the hyperlink, speaker-audience-time relationships …


Public Spheres, Democracy, And New Media: Using Blogs In The Composition Classroom, Katherine Elizabeth Cowley Mar 2010

Public Spheres, Democracy, And New Media: Using Blogs In The Composition Classroom, Katherine Elizabeth Cowley

Theses and Dissertations

Public spheres theories provide purpose and direction to composition instruction: the teaching of writing within this context empowers our students to participate in public discourse and make a difference in communities. New media has been celebrated for its democratic nature, and composition instructors have begun to use public spheres theories as they incorporate new media in the classroom to create a protopublic space. Yet most composition instructors have ignored the wealth of evidence that shows that the Internet is not as democratic as it seems. As such, our new media teaching practices should account for both the democratic opportunities and …


An Irresistible Invitation: Enhancing Academic Publication In Rhetoric And Composition By Inviting Online Peer Commentary, Sarah L. Cutler Jun 2009

An Irresistible Invitation: Enhancing Academic Publication In Rhetoric And Composition By Inviting Online Peer Commentary, Sarah L. Cutler

Theses and Dissertations

In many ways the current publishing system in rhetoric and composition, which centers on the peer-reviewed journal, undermines core values we hold for ideal scholarly communication. These values include collaboration, dialogue, participation, and public engagement. Though the current system's methods of preserving, distributing, and maintaining quality control of scholarly work contradict our values, technological developments have made possible alternative publishing models that could better uphold our values. Developing a preprint archive where scholars develop and share ideas before submitting them for publication in traditional peer-reviewed journals would bring our publishing process closer to our ideals.


The Progymnasmata: New/Old Ways To Teach Reading, Writing, And Thinking In Secondary Schools, Natalie Sue Baxter Jul 2008

The Progymnasmata: New/Old Ways To Teach Reading, Writing, And Thinking In Secondary Schools, Natalie Sue Baxter

Theses and Dissertations

Within the past two decades, theorists have begun to look back to the classical rhetorical past for answers to modern dilemmas in composition teaching. Several textbooks have been published that focus their teaching of college composition on the classical tradition. While the movement to revitalize classical rhetoric is gaining strength in universities, however, the benefits of this movement have not yet reached, in any real way, the levels of elementary, middle school, or high school education. This thesis shows how the classical rhetorical curriculum generally, and a specific part of that curriculum, the progymnasmata, accomplish important aims of modern composition …


Educating For Democracy: Reviving Rhetoric In The General Education Curriculum, David M. Stock Aug 2005

Educating For Democracy: Reviving Rhetoric In The General Education Curriculum, David M. Stock

Theses and Dissertations

This study is, in part, a response to arguments that claim higher education fails to prepare students with fundamental communication skills necessary for everyday life and indicative of "educated" persons. Though the validity of such arguments is contestable, they nonetheless reflect fundamental inadequacies in current educational theories and practices that have evolved over centuries of curricular, cultural, and socioeconomic change. Current theories and practices in higher education, specifically general education, reflect a misunderstanding of both the purpose of education in a democracy and the role of the liberal arts, specifically rhetoric, in accomplishing that purpose. The consequences of rhetorically-impoverished general …


Advanced Placement English And The College Curriculum: Evaluating And Contextualizing Policy, Jennifer Dawn Gonzalez Jul 2004

Advanced Placement English And The College Curriculum: Evaluating And Contextualizing Policy, Jennifer Dawn Gonzalez

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the context in which Advanced Placement (AP) English policies are made, examining the political and economic realities that impact policy decisions as well as the discipline-based critiques of the AP English program which have led many writing program administrators (WPAs) and faculty to question existing credit and placement policies. Recent efforts to dramatically expand the AP program have left many questioning whether the AP English experience actually fulfills the promises suggested by the program. After reviewing current literature relating to AP English, this thesis examines the findings of an empirical study conducted at BYU. The study evaluates …