Reading and Language Commons^™

More Than Just Nonsense Verse?: The Language Of Dr. Seuss And Children's Literacy, Nicole Hewes

Senior Scholar Papers

In this Senior Scholars project I wanted to demonstrate that Dr. Seuss books are much more than just nonsense verse. For the first part of my project, I familiarized myself with all of his texts and scrutinized his use of language in a textual analysis. By scrutinizing Geisel’s use of language and wordplay, I hoped to isolate some characteristics that make a Seuss book different from other types of stories and texts. The second part of my project was an empirical study that tested what influence reading a real Seuss text versus a fake Seuss text has on students’ performance …

A Special Dvd Homework Project To Assist At-Risk Students With Reading Practice, Mary Kathleen Kronemeyer

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project was designed to give students and their family's additional support in language arts through a technologically facilitated means to review the skills and strategies that are covered in one theme of the first grade Houghton Mifflin Reading Program. This project provides this additional instruction via a DVD which models ways for the students to practice spelling, practice sight words, reinforce the grammar shills of nouns and verbs and review definitions of vocabulary words.

Learning Through Literature Versus Scripted Lessons, Leticia Aviles-Parsons

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project was to create a guide for planning literature lessons connected to the state mandated curriculum, including today's standards for a fifth grade class and the recently adapted Common Core Standards in Language Arts. This project explains the reading comprehension problems that students in elementary school are facing, especially English learners.

The Shape Of Catharine Sedgwick's Career, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Catharine Maria Sedgwick published her first novel in 1822 and her last in 1857. Her productivity slackened in the 1850S, as aging weakened her eyesight and arthritis made it difficult to write clearly. However, from 1822 through the 1840s, she published multiple works of prose fiction (tales, sketches, novellas, or novels) nearly every year. Despite this extraordinary record of productivity, Sedgwick regularly appears in literary history as the author of a single work, Hope Leslie (I827), her historical novel about relations between the Puritans and the native inhabitants of New England. A few other women authors before and contemporary with …

Phonetics And Phonology Of Chicahuaxtla Triqui Tones, Kosuke Matsukawa

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Chicahuaxtla Triqui (Otomanguean, Mexico) is one of the rare tone languages with five contrastive level tones and its underlying tone system is even more complicated than its surface five-level tone system. The complexity of its underlying tone system has developed through the historical tone shifts from Proto-Triqui. The surface tone system of Chicahuaxtla Triqui is also unusually complicated and its complexity led to the insufficient analysis of the previous studies (e.g. Longacre 1952, 1957, 1959; Good 1978). To understand the tone system and tonal phonology of Chicahuaxtla Triqui, we must know their diachronic development from Proto-Triqui because historical tone shifts, …

Ancient Iconic Texts And Scholarly Expertise, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

This essay probes the origins of iconic textuality in the ancient Near East, informed by post-colonial perspectives on iconic texts. The surviving art and texts from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia exhibit at least four forms of iconic textuality: monumental inscriptions, portraits of scribes, displays and manipulations of ritual texts, and beliefs in heavenly texts. The spread of literacy did not displace the social prestige of scribal expertise that was established in antiquity. The every-growing number and complexity of texts accounts for the continuing cultural authority of scholarly expertise. The tension between expert and non-specialist uses of texts, however, explains scholarship’s …

Bibliography Of Central European Women's Holocaust Life Writing In English, Louise O. Vasvári

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Bibliography For The Study Of Text And Image In Modern European Culture, Natasha Grigorian

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Linguistic Discrimination In Writing Assessment: How Raters React To African American “Errors,” Esl Errors, And Standard English Errors On A State-Mandated Writing Exam, David M. Johnson, Lewis Vanbrackle

Faculty Articles

Raters of Georgia''s (USA) state-mandated college-level writing exam, which is intended to ensure a minimal university-level writing competency, are trained to grade holistically when assessing these exams. A guiding principle in holistic grading is to not focus exclusively on any one aspect of writing but rather to give equal weight to style, vocabulary, mechanics, content, and development. This study details how raters react to “errors” typical of African American English writers, of ESL writers, and of standard American English writers. Using a log-linear model to generate odds ratios for comparison of essays with these error types, results indicate linguistic discrimination …

Cold War Legacies In Digital Editing, Amanda A. Gailey

Department of English: Faculty Publications

The editorial methods developed during the Cold War professionalized scholarly editing and appealed to new ideas about the relationship between American academics and the government by aligning with the supposedly value-neutral goals and methods of the behavioral sciences, much to the discomfort of many humanists. Some of the implicit assumptions underlying midcentury editorial methods persist in digital editing, and may risk positioning digital editions as marginalized scholarship within the digital era, just as print scholarly editions became widely considered second-rate scholarship in the twentieth century.

Legal Discourse, Conceptual Metaphors, And Basic Writing Programming: A Study Of Ayers V. Fordice, Joyce Olewski Inman

Dissertations

In what ways does legal discourse influence our perceptions of students labeled as basic writers and these students’ perceptions of themselves? How does standards-based discourse affect student writers’ abilities to define themselves in academe? This dissertation involves an examination of legal and public discourse surrounding Ayers v. Fordice, one of the most prominent desegregation cases in higher education, in an attempt to answer these questions. Its intent is to explore how conceptual metaphors prevalent in these discourses affect our understandings of basic writing programming in the state of Mississippi but also in the field of composition more globally.

My …

The Influence Of Peer Tutors And Technology-Actuated Reading Instruction Process On Third-Grade Students' Self-Perceptions As Readers: A Multiple Case Study, Brenda Shill Daw

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Driven by Lev Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory (1986), my study investigated the self-perceptions and interactions of seven underperforming, third-grade readers while using Technology-Actuated Reading Instruction (TARI). Partnered with same-age peer tutors, readers used digital tools to listen to, read/record, and playback oral reading passages. They practiced, peer- or self-edited, and selected their best reading products as part of the iterative process. As reading is a complex cognitive skill (Reinking, 2005), TARI incorporated higher cognitive learning activities via a synthesis of Gagné's (1985) nine conditions of learning and the Four-Component Instructional Design Model (van Merriënboer & Kester, 2005).

Much of the current …

Authorial Intent In The Composition Classroom, Ian Barnard

English Faculty Articles and Research

This article examines the disjunction between, on the one hand, critical theory’s critique of the privileging of authorial intent in protocols of textual interpretation, and, on the other hand, continued obeisance to authorial intent in composition textbooks and pedagogy. By unpacking the implications of this disjunction, I show the limitations that the reification of authorial intent creates for composition pedagogy and student writing. I conclude by suggesting how bracketing authorial intent in the composition classroom might enhance composition pedagogy and student writing, while also challenging fundamental epistemologies of the field.

Teachers And Language Learning In Primary Schools: The Acquisition Of Additional Languages In The Early Years, Anna Dillon

Doctoral

This study set out to explore teachers’ attitudes towards home language maintenance among children acquiring English and Irish as additional languages in the early years of primary school and to explore the experiences of mainstream teachers who are working with these children. The study includes a consideration of the pedagogical issues involved in teaching young English and Irish language learners and an examination of the support that the whole school community provides for the teachers and the children. Data were gathered using a mixed methods approach, bearing in mind the rights of children to use their home languages and learn …

Exploring Prejudice, Miscegenation, And Slavery's Consequences In Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson, Steven Watson

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

This research paper analyzes Mark Twain's use of racist speech and racial stereotypes in his novel Pudd'nhead Wilson. Twain has often been criticized for his seemingly inflammatory language. However, a close reading of the text, supplemented by research in several anthologies of critical essays, reveals that Twain was actually interested in social justice. This is evident in his portrayal of Roxana as a sympathetic character who is victimized by white racist society in Dawson's Landing, Mississippi during the time of slavery. In the final analysis, Twain's writing was a product of the time period during which he wrote. This …

Traditional Story As A Tool In Substance Abuse Prevention And Treatment., Claiborne Beth Ohlsson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study examined the viability of traditional stories in substance abuse treatment. The subjects for this study were young women ages 18-30 who were in substance abuse treatment in a small, rural, health department. During the 4-week study, 4 traditional stories were used in group sessions that gave the women a common reference point and a common language to frame discussions. Using story in the IOP sessions helped to create a safe, supportive environment as well as creating an opening for discussions about trauma and abuse, and other significant issues. Principles of 12 Step Recovery were woven into the …

Uncle Tom’S Cabin In The National Era: Commentary On Chapter 1 And 2, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

In the first chapter of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe warns her readers that the “indulgence” of slave owners and the “affectionate loyalty” of the slaves themselves towards their masters have misled some observers to believe the “poetic legend” of slavery as a benevolent “patriarchal institution.” She does not deny the genuineness of these emotions, but she warns that “the shadow of a Law” makes a mockery of the human relationships that develop between masters and slaves: “So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to a …

Multiple Literacies, Fragmented Identities: Arab Students At American Universities, Gamil Mohammed Al-Amrani

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a combination of ethnography and case study which describes the Social and cultural context of literacy acquisition among Arab students at the University of Arkansas. I examine the power relations that define this minority group in the larger Social context and describe how these relations shape, transform, and sometimes threaten their cultural identities in the classroom. The dissertation investigates the different Social and cultural factors that facilitate or obstruct their learning process, factors such as age, gender, religion, and marital status. It explains how the students' acquisition of literacy exists within a larger dynamic process of Social …

Fishermen, Chigozie Obioma

Department of English: Faculty Publications

We were fishermen.

Father first called us so after he whipped us sore for fishing at the Ala stream in the summer of May 1995. Earlier that year, the bank had transferred him from our hometown of Akure to Yola, a volatile and violence-prone city in the north of Nigeria. Father wouldn't move us with him so he lived apart and visited only once in two weeks, always coming at midnight on Fri- days and disappearing at dawn on Sundays. Each time he returned, mother would detail how the house had fared in his absence - a breakdown of home …

Reading Literature Through The Eyes Of C. S. Lewis, Lauren L. Umstead

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis examines the reasons why Christians should read literature, how they should read, and what they should read through the perspective, literary vision, and imaginative genius of C. S. Lewis. Reading a variety of literature, particularly classic literature, not only does not contradict a biblical Christian worldview but also has the potential to enhance the Christian faith.

This thesis explores the unique approach of C. S. Lewis, one of the literary giants of the twentieth century. Through his perspective, this paper will examine the value of literature, the proper way to determine what constitutes a “good book,” and how …