Education Commons^™

Literature In The World: A Critical Discourse Study Of World Literature Pedagogy, Elisa Cogbill-Seiders

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

“Literature in the World” is a critical discourse analysis of world literature pedagogy in U.S. higher education. It investigates the ways discourse communities in higher education produce and shape the field of world literature. The dissertation begins by establishing and analyzing the generic conventions of university mission statements, finding they are primarily dominated by discourse on global learning. It follows with an analysis of world literature course descriptions from the same schools. World literature course descriptions alternatively replicate, resist, or subvert global learning discourses. The last chapter uses findings from the first two chapters to trace how university and instructor …

Language And Literacy: Politics Of Language, Brittany A. Zayas, Missy Watson

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus is for a Freshmen Inquiry Writing Seminar, which is a two-section, collaboratively taught course wherein one of the two courses engages students in critical thinking, reading, and writing about the issue of language and literacy, while the other introduces students to conventions of academic writing and mentors them in social and rhetorical writing processes. Thus, this course draws on the topic of language and literacy as a vehicle for critically analyzing students' own languages and literacies and developing especially their academic and information literacies.

Unraveling Identity Signifier Literacy: A Case Study Of First-Year Composition Students' Communication Practices, Bailey Mcalister

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Identity signifier literacy is defined as one’s ability to accurately read – via personal interactions or via visual, verbal, written, or digital communication – the signifiers others display in direct and indirect ways and interpret these signifiers to gain understanding of others’ identities. In this study, 22 first-year composition students were surveyed about their communication practices in order to see how their identity signifier literacies influence and are influenced by digital environments and composition. These results are meant to improve first-year composition pedagogy by making connections between students’ informal composition practices and their academic composition courses.

Empoword: A Student-Centered Anthology & Handbook For College Writers, Shane Abrams

PDXOpen: Open Educational Resources

EmpoWord is a reader and rhetoric that champions the possibilities of student writing. The textbook uses actual student writing to exemplify effective writing strategies, celebrating dedicated college writing students to encourage and instruct their successors: the students in your class.

Through both creative and traditional activities, readers are encouraged to explore a variety of rhetorical situations to become more critical agents of reading, writing, speaking, and listening in all facets of their lives. Straightforward and readable instruction sections introduce key vocabulary, concepts, and strategies. Three culminating assignments (Descriptive Personal Narrative; Text-Wrestling Analysis; Persuasive Research Essay) give students a chance to …

Fiqws Fall 2018: Phase 2 Assignment Prompt The Exploratory Essay, Sabina Pringle, Missy Watson

Open Educational Resources

This phase two writing assignment prompt for FIQWS 10003 - HA1 WCGI History & Culture and FIQWS 10103 - HA1 Composition for WCGI History & Culture (fall 2018) provides guidelines for writing an Exploratory Essay in which students will consider the ideas of course readings and compose an essay that demonstrates their engagement with those ideas. The rhetorical purpose of this assignment is for students to demonstrate the ways in which their thinking about language and literacy has developed so far in the course, using evidence based on interpretations, ideas, and examples as well as passages from four or five …

Fiqws Language And Literacy: Mine/Yours/Ours/Theirs, Missy Watson

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus is for a Freshmen Inquiry Writing Seminar, which is a two-section, collaboratively taught course wherein one of the two courses engages students in critical thinking, reading, and writing about the issue of language and literacy, while the other introduces students to conventions of academic writing and mentors them in social and rhetorical writing processes. Thus, this course draws on the topic of language and literacy as a vehicle for critically analyzing students' own languages and literacies and developing especially their academic and information literacies.

Action, Experience, And Responsibility: Using I And We In High School Writing, Corinne Mccumber

Undergraduate Research Symposium 2018

In the field of composition studies, scholars often explore and debate how educators should train students to use the general forms of academic writing. Of particular interest, a trend has emerged in high schools where students are banned from using the words “I,” “me,” “we,” and “us” to avoid sounding subjective--even though composition studies scholars consistently employ these first-person pronouns for rhetorical effect. In this presentation, I closely examine how scholars use first-person pronouns in award-winning works. In particular, I show how scholars employ “I” and “we” to introduce personal examples, to call readers to action, and to reassert responsibility …

Literacy Education Across Languages In Writing Centers., Lance M Gibson

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Literacy education in writing carried out through writing centers (WCs) is a practice that occurs beyond one individual language; rather, almost every developed country provides some extent of education regarding written communication in an alternate language, whether facilitated through a WC or a classroom. Many of these countries’ methods for writing education have been documented in either self-reported evaluation or surveys; however, this documentation of methods is only the beginning of a larger conversation about how these international writing methods have evolved into discussions on topics related to these methods. Writing education that occurs in multiples languages within the same …

From Rice Eaters To Soy Boys: Race, Gender, And Tropes Of ‘Plant Food Masculinity’, Iselin Gambert, Tobias Linné

Animal Studies Journal

Tropes of ‘effeminized’ masculinity have long been bound up with a plant-based diet, dating back to the ‘effeminate rice eater’ stereotype used to justify 19th-century colonialism in Asia to the altright’s use of the term ‘soy boy’ on Twitter and other social media today to call out men they perceive to be weak, effeminate, and politically correct (Gambert and Linné). This article explores tropes of ‘plant food masculinity’ throughout history, focusing on how while they have embodied different social, cultural, and political identities, they all serve as a tool to construct an archetypal masculine ideal. The analysis draws on a …

Bursting The Filter Bubble: Information Literacy And Questions Of Valuation, Navigation, And Control In A Digital Landscape, Komysha Hassan

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The evolution of social media platforms and other public forums in the digital realm has created an explosion of user-generated content and data as a component of the already content-saturated digital landscape. The distributed, horizontal nature of the internet as a platform makes it difficult to ascertain value and differentiate between texts of varying validity, bias, and purpose. In addition, the internet is not an inanimate interface. As Pariser (2011) argues, content aggregators, such as Google, actively filter, personalize, and therefore limit each individual's access to information, in both range and type. This has created a crisis of information valuation …

Investigating The Causes And Cures For Unclear Scholarly Writing, Marlene Ingrid Mahony

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative dissertation investigated possible causes and cures for unclear scholarly writing. For this study, a stipulative definition of unclear scholarly writing, or “academese,” is that the language tends to be vague and verbose. The problem, according to the included literature, is that people who use or accept vague language have less academic, social, professional, and civic power. Academese, some say, can detach readers and that can accordingly diminish collective exchange. Because higher education is meant to share knowledge, promote agency, and prepare students to communicate powerfully within and beyond the university, this study researched the causes and cures of …