Digital Commons Network^™

Character Driven Architecture: Authentic Characters In Imitation Worlds, Gabriayle Stapf

Masters Theses

This paper is an introduction to the manuscript of my creative writing thesis that includes my own impetus and background, my process for my writing, my vision for that creative fiction piece, what the literary context for my fiction writing is, and what I believe the meaning of being a Christian scholar amounts to. Various other authors’ works are referenced as inspiration and motivation for my creative works and desire for contributing to the field of literature.

Embedding Transformative Social Emotional Learning Into Writing Instruction, Kristen Holsomback

Masters Projects

In order for students to succeed in writing tasks they must have social emotional competencies in self-regulation, engagement, and relationship skills. Many teachers are unprepared to teach these SEL competencies embedded in writing instruction. This project explores the need to embed Transformative SEL within writing instruction with a framework in culturally sustaining pedagogies. With a background in sociocognitive theory and sociocultural theory, this project seeks to equip teachers with the skills necessary to address students SEL competencies of: self-regulation, self-awareness, and relationship skills. Self-regulation skills comprise goal setting, self-instructions, self-monitoring, and self-reinforcement. Self-awareness skills include self-efficacy and student engagement. Relationship …

Understanding Primary Level Learner Progression In Scotland: Insights From Scottish Online Formative Assessments (Sofa) Data From The Highland Local Authority, Alexander Towne, Sladana Krstic

Assessment and Reporting

This report presents findings from more than 30,000 Scottish Online Formative Assessment (SOFA) assessments completed across one Scottish local authority during the 2024-2025 academic year. It demonstrates how SOFA can be used to monitor learning progression across numeracy, reading and writing, identify attainment gaps between learner groups, and provide detailed diagnostic evidence to support classroom practice, school improvement and local authority panning. Although based on a single local authority, the study illustrates how curriculum-aligned formative assessment can complement national assessment evidence by providing richer insight into learner development.

Explicit Writing Instruction Across Content Areas: A Professional Development, Bethany B. Richardson

Masters Projects

Research shows that writing instruction has diminished in the elementary classroom due to high stakes testing in reading and math.  Writing is a driving force for literacy achievement and should be prioritized.  In order to improve writing instruction, teachers need professional development in explicit instructional strategies for writing in other content areas.  According to cognitive processing theory, students are using multiple cognitive and metacognitive processes to complete a singular writing task.  Using scaffolds like write alouds, mentor texts, and graphic organizers can help teachers support students in their writing. Scaffolding theory suggests that students need high levels of support in …

Exploring Chatgpt's Role In Developing Productive Language Skills: A Systematic Review, Milana Abbasova, Eljan Salimli

Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Although the interactive features of ChatGPT offer substantial benefits for language education, its integration presents complex pedagogical and ethical challenges. This systematic review critically evaluates the capabilities and limitations of ChatGPT in enhancing expressive language capabilities, specifically speaking and writing. Adhering to PRISMA guidelines, a rigorous search of the ERIC database and a forward snowballing technique via Google Scholar yielded an initial pool of 1,124 records, culminating in the final selection of 22 empirical studies for in-depth analysis. Grounded in Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory and the SAMR integration model, the findings conceptualize ChatGPT as a virtual ``More Knowledgeable Other'' that provides …

Zoom In And Zoom Out: (Re)Telling Our Cultural Literacy Practices Through Engaged Learning, Isela Almaguer

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

Empowering bilingual learners to engage in the Zoom In and Zoom Out approach is a way to enrich and validate students' cultural identity and support students' linguistic and academic development while fostering rich writing opportunities for students. Teachers will discover a genuine way that empowers students to explore vocabulary, build comprehension, and acquire a love for writing. This effective multifaceted strategy approaches writing by leveraging students' cultural background and literacy practices. Students will capitalize on their funds of knowledge and use their experiences to further propel their writing efforts. By starting from within, diverse learners make stronger connections with the …

Who Are Pessoa’ English Heteronyms? A Review Of Maria Colom Jiménez’ Thesis Fernando Pessoa’S English Literary Characters, Mohamed Jalid

SOROUD: The journal of Literacy Criticism

This paper aims at introducing Maria Colom Jiménez[1]’ thesis Fernando Pessoa’s English Literary Characters: A critical Study and Assessment of Personalities and Texts, which was presented in 2016 at Universidad Complutense de Madrid in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the doctorate degree. Pessoa’s heteronyms (literary characters/ personalities) is presented herein not as pseudonyms, but rather as fictional characters that undertake, alongside or on behalf of him, the task of planning, thinking, creating and writing. Such an imaginary world is, according to Jiménez, the first literary endeavor that allowed him to develop what he called ‘drama emgente’ (drama in people). …

Orthographic Representations In American Sign Language Fingerspelling, Zed Sehyr, Lauren Fillet, Kiana Billot-Vasquez, Emily Saunders, Karen Emmorey

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

This study examined fingerspelling accuracy and error patterns in deaf American Sign Language (ASL) signers and written spelling in hearing English speakers to investigate how orthographic representations are shaped by phonological, visual, and motor encoding strategies. Deaf participants (n = 39) completed a fingerspelling repetition task, while hearing participants (n = 35) completed a written dictation task using the same word and pseudoword stimuli. While overall accuracy did not differ significantly between groups, deaf participants exhibited qualitatively distinct error patterns, including higher rates of deletions and transpositions, compared to hearing participants who made more substitution errors. Deaf participants also produced …

Developing A Noticing Skill Of Learners Of Jfl Through Writing With Chatgpt, Anna Suzuki

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Acquiring an additional language, especially whose linguistic systems differ from a learner’s first language, such as English and Japanese, is quite challenging. However, the improvement of technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) has some potential in supporting language learning.

This study investigated how ChatGPT can assist learners of Japanese whose first language is English in writing Japanese narrative of a 4-panel story and what learners notice comparing their Japanese writing with ChatGPT’s production. This study followed three steps: writing, an online survey, and a one-on-one interview. Four undergraduate students who were taking either a 200-, 300- or 400-level Japanese course …

Build Me Up: Overcoming Writing Problems Among Pupils In A Rural Primary School In Belaga, Sarawak, Malaysia, Lim Kok Ien, Melor Md Yunus, Mohamed Amin Embi

Jurnal Pendidikan Humaniora

This study aims to investigate the effect of the 'Build Me Up' in helping Year 5 pupils in a rural primary school overcome problems in constructing correct sentences. The analysis of the data indicated that the 'Build Me Up' tool did help the pupils overcome their problems in writing grammatically correct sentences. The use of 'Build Me Up' aids pupils in writing sentences using present tense, past tense, present continuous tense and past continuous tense correctly.

Building Argumentative Writing Skills In An Adult Esl Classroom, Cristina Lighthiser

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This capstone project addressed the challenge that adult English Language Learners (ELLs) faced in meeting the complex demands of argumentative writing in academic and professional settings, and was guided by the question, How can the design of an adult ESL curriculum support students in developing argumentative writing through scaffolded lessons on hortatory exposition? This research sought to address a gap in instructional supports for adult ESL students as they developed persuasive writing skills. The curriculum design explicitly focused on language features essential to hortatory exposition. The resulting unit was a six-lesson, twelve-hour curriculum for intermediate adult ESL students at a …

Investigating The Interlanguage Fossilization Of English Writing In Foreign Language Acquisition, Ammar Abdul Fattah Habeeb

Journal of Language, Literature, and Arts

Interlanguage fossilization represents a common phenomenon in Foreign/Second language acquisition. The current study attempted to investigate the students’ writing compositions to reveal if interlanguage fossilization occurred or not. A diagnostic test has been used to collect the data. A sample of this study was chosen randomly from 20 EFL students of the sixth year preparatory schools in the academic year (2023-2024). The findings of this study displayed that two kinds of interlanguage fossilization are found and achieved by students. Morphological fossilization and syntactical fossilization. Morphological fossilization contained (85.63%) and syntactical fossilization consisted of (14.37) %.Low English proficiency led students’ writing …

A Snapshot Of Three High School, Female Students' Writing Knowledge, Apryl L. Poch

Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education

This study explored the writing knowledge of three typically developing strong high school female writers. Students completed one semi-structured, individual interview. Interview questions were adopted from Lin et al. (2007) and Saddler and Graham (2007). Results indicated that students possess relatively mature conceptions of writing, focusing more on the collective expression of writing. However, students did struggle with understanding the meaning of expository writing. Further consideration of students’ writing knowledge may allow teachers to better scaffold and develop the ways in which they teach writing across the high school grades, and to advance students’ content acquisition.

An Analysis Of The Impact Of Cognitive Writing Strategies On High School Writing Scores In A Suburban Tennessee District, Bethany A. Wilson

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) writing assessment revealed that only 27% of eighth and 12^th graders are proficient in writing. The federal No Child Left Behind and Every Student Succeeds Acts have put pressure on schools to demonstrate proficiency on reading and math tests, leaving minimal time for instruction in other subjects, including writing. In addition to the pressure of standardized testing, teachers also find themselves underprepared to teach writing and overwhelmed by the demands of large teaching loads. While researchers have reported benefits associated with cognitive writing strategies since the 1960s, instructional demands have prevented …

Language, Literature, And Culture Newsletter, Twelfth Edition (January 2026), Language, Literature, And Culture Department, Clark University

Language, Literature, and Culture

The twelfth issue of the Language, Literature, and Culture department newsletter, which went out in January 2026. The Language, Literature, and Culture department newsletter aims to "share stories, news, ideas, achievements, and important information about and within our academic department that can be helpful to the campus community at large".

Eng 2100 - Writing 1 - Writing As Being, Jonathan Toro

Open Educational Resources

This is an Open Educational Resources (OER) syllabus for ENG 2100 - Writing 1 - Writing as Being. In this course, students will examine how their identities and communities shape their understanding of themselves and the world around them—how it affects the way they move and think in the spaces they occupy. Through the usage of personal narrative and critical writing, the students will study how language, culture, community, and socio-historical contexts influence their ways of knowing and being. Then, they will utilize these influences—the very systems that affect them in tremendous ways—to write themselves into being.  All course materials, …

The Contributions Of Student-Level And Classroom-Level Factors For Australian Grade 2 Students’ Writing Performance, Anabela Malpique, Mustafa Asil, Deborah Pino-Pasternak, Debora Valcan

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Using multilevel modeling, the current study examined student-level predictors of compositional quality and productivity in Grade 2 Australian children (N = 544), including handwriting automaticity, literacy skills, executive functioning, writing attitudes, and gender; and classroom-level (n = 47) variables predicting students’ writing outcomes, including the amount of time for writing practices and the explicit teaching of foundational (handwriting, spelling, grammar) and process writing skills (planning and revision strategies). Multilevel analyses revealed that student-level factors, including gender, general attitudes, and transcription skills (handwriting automaticity and spelling), were key predictors of writing outcomes. Interaction analyses showed that spelling and word reading influenced …

Meaningful Work: A Phenomenological Study Of Embedded Writing Peer Mentors, Susan S. Detwiler

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This phenomenological case study examines the experiences of writing peer mentors who are embedded in a first-year inquiry-based writing seminar. It aims to understand how peer mentors who are engaged in the complex practice of supporting first-year writers in a writing classroom make sense of themselves and writing. At a large R-1 diverse university, I interviewed 6 writing peer mentors 3 times over 1 calendar year. I traced their development from mentees, (first-year writing students), through their three semesters of peer mentoring. They also shared written reflections from their training praxis course (a course for peer mentors focusing on their …

Book Review Of Baron, Naomi S.. Who Wrote This?: How Ai And The Lure Of Efficiency Threaten Human Writing, Vanessa G. Osborne

Feminist Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Language, Literature, And Culture Newsletter, Ninth Edition (September 2025), Language, Literature, And Culture Department, Clark University

Language, Literature, and Culture

The ninth issue of the Language, Literature, and Culture department newsletter, which went out in September 2025. The Language, Literature, and Culture department newsletter aims to "share stories, news, ideas, achievements, and important information about and within our academic department that can be helpful to the campus community at large".

Does Writing Have A Future?, David J. Gunkel

Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association

Professor David J. Gunkel is the Chair of the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University – but that is his latest achievement in an extensive list of accomplishments. He is an award-winning educator, researcher, and the author of more than ninety scholarly articles and thirteen books. And it is his latest book, AI for Communication, and his latest thinking about what we have called artificial intelligence and writing that brought him to our 82^nd annual conference.

In his keynote address on Saturday, October 9^th, 2024, Dr. Gunkel argues that AI does not signal the “end …

Teaching Bilingual Learners With Dysgraphia, Angela Gonzalez-Urbina

Masters Projects

With the push for legislation on the Dyslexia law in Michigan and elsewhere, teachers need to understand what dyslexia and dysgraphia are to support all students. An extra understanding is necessary in bilingual education and reading challenges because they use two language systems in and out of the classroom. Reading and writing are already areas that impact the working memory of the learner; adding dysgraphia to that proves to be more of a challenge. Dysgraphia can coexist with dyslexia, and individuals with dysgraphia often experience difficulties with spelling and writing speed. This project introduces dysgraphia as one of the reading …

Reflection And Reimagination As Resistance: Towards Humanizing Critical Writing Pedagogy, Grace Y. Kang, Sonia M. Kline

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Given the pressures, demands, and standardization teachers face in our sociopolitically charged times, teachers need opportunities to reflect and reimagine their instruction. Drawing on critical and related scholarship, we conceptualize critical humanizing writing pedagogy. We share our instructional moves as teacher educators for enacting humanizing writing pedagogy in a graduate course and supporting teachers to enact humanizing writing pedagogy in their K-12 classrooms. Specifically, we show how a graduate student and practicing teacher found ways to shift toward critical orientations as she navigated her school’s curriculum and state standards. We argue that sociocultural and critical lenses provide powerful tools for …

Teachers’ Talk About Children’S Texts, Sarah J. Mccarthey, Ngan Vu, Jiadi Zhang

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Using a framework for discourses about writing, the qualitative study investigates teachers’ discussions about student texts during focus group sessions. The setting was a small, private school with a diverse student population and teachers who shared an approach to teaching. Their discussions focused on aspects of student writing including word choice and voice; learning to write within genres such as narrative, opinion, and poetry; and writing for an audience. Teachers valued multimodality by emphasizing how pictures and text can support one another throughout the writing process. The data reflect teachers’ knowledge of the students as writers and their cultural and …

The Digital Forum: A Pedagogical Approach To Teaching College English Composition, Thomas Edward Plichta

Theses and Dissertations

This action research study focused on the identification of ways to improve the curriculum of freshman Writing Intensive Seminars using an innovative multimodal pedagogical methodology, the Digital Forum, in addition to formal papers and in-class writing. The research examined a Writing Intensive Seminar with approximately 20 students; There were two Research Questions for the present study. RQ1: How does the incorporation of the Digital Forum as a pedagogical approach in college freshman writing classes influence students' levels of behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement? RQ2: How does the incorporation of Digital Forums in freshman English Composition courses affect the quality of …

Action Research Integrating Heggerty’S Phonemic Awareness Instruction For Transfer Into Third-Grade Writing, Jennifer Elizabeth Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Writing requires the ability to encode phonemes to separate sounds to spell. Students who are mystified by print often find writing a laborious task. This action research investigated the impact of Heggerty's Bridge the Gap phonological instruction on third grade writing development, specifically focusing on elaboration. Recognizing that strong phonological foundations are crucial for both reading and writing success, this study addressed the gap in phonological instruction found in upper elementary grades. The research questions guided the research: What is the impact of phonological awareness instruction on third-grade students’ elaboration domain in writing? 2.) What are the third-grade students' perceptions …

Teachers' Feedback And Students' Emotional Wellbeing In Writing Courses, Amar Bahadur Sherma

Journal of English Learner Education

While feedback is a corrective business in every sphere of human life, most students do not have a positive perception of teachers’ feedback. Previous studies have emphasized the relationship between students’ writing achievements and the effectiveness of teachers’ feedback. However, no substantial research on how teachers’ feedback affects students’ emotional well-being has been undertaken. This article examines the relationship between students’ understanding of their teachers’ feedback on their writing assignments and emotional wellbeing. Data was collected from (N = 63) Nepali undergraduate students through Google Forms. The Forms consisted of structured and unstructured questions. According to the data, a mismatch …

The Science Of Reading, Writing, And Dual And English Language Learners, Vickie Johnston, Nika Verna

Journal of English Learner Education

This paper presents an evidence-based approach to meeting the needs of dual language and English Language Learners (ELL) that includes leveraging the skills and knowledge of the home language, oral language instruction, and the utilization of both effective writing instruction and multicultural children’s literature. This evidence-based approach includes insights gleaned from the science of reading (SOR) and research on writing development with ELLs and instruction needed to help their written communication skills. Practical classroom applications for using multicultural children’s literature include integrating the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework to ensure the literature chosen is necessary for some and beneficial …

No Longer At War With My Words: Finding Healing Through Therapeutic Writing, Marlo Degaetano Kreitzinger

Theses and Dissertations

While living in Dallas, Texas, I had the incredible opportunity to work with women transitioning out of homelessness, addiction, prison, or other life traumas. During my four years of facilitating life skills and job readiness classes, I witnessed a desperate need for healing. Many of the women I served were stuck in the repetitive cycle of their unprocessed emotional trauma. These women were often victims of the unprecedented mental health crisis plaguing our world and had little to no access to mental health resources. My initial introduction into therapeutic writing helped me to accept my own mental health crisis and …

Pour Une Recherche Plus Décloisonnée : L’Approche Stylistique, Génétique Et Forensique, Moulay Youssef Soussou

Dirassat

This article is intended to be an account of our scientific project, a project carried out by crossing disciplinary boundaries, going through several stages in order to achieve more decompartmentalized research, to adopt a multidisciplinary approach of stylistic, genetic and computer science. In order to approach the complex question of style in Flaubert, the one which represents the sovereign image of the writer par excellence, we followed in an initial phase a philological study, resembling the "study of genesis" in vogue at the turn of the century of the 19th and 20th centuries. After this work carried out on the …