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The Effectiveness Of Using Speech-To-Text Technology To Support Writing Of Students With Learning Disabilities, Jennifer Adams

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the effects of using Speech Recognition (SR) technology to create more cohesive writing for students with learning disabilities as compared to the use of paper and pencil. Six students with IEPs from general education classrooms, ages 7 years old to 9 years old, participated in this study.

Prior to the start of this study, the subjects completed a baseline assessment to measure their expressive writing abilities in response to a narrative prompt. The students were required to include a topic sentence, beginning, middle, and end, and demonstrate understanding of the conventions of writing. There was not a …

Aspects Of Author Queries And The Role Of Library Resources In Manuscript Crafting, Philip Chike Aghadiuno

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Manuscripts sent to editors are often in different states of crafting or drafting. It is the task of the editor to help the author by polishing the manuscripts to the acceptable standard. Editors may seek clarifications from the authors about the missing links in the drafts. They may ask for references of strong claims, improvement of the draft, refinement of the argument, adjustment in tone, chapter re-organisation, fixing grammar points, among others. Editors raise these flags in the editorial process through author queries. The nature of queries written by the editor for the author differs from the ones written by …

Writing & Linguistics News, Georgia Southern University

Writing & Linguistics News (2012-2022)

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Somos Tierra Floreciendo: El Surgimiento De La Literatura Kichwa Como Herramienta Política Y Cultural, Kaia Heimer-Bumstead

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Este proyecto de estudio independiente examina el papel de la literatura escrita en la resistencia cultural y política de los pueblos kichwas de la sierra ecuatoriana. Analiza la manera en que la historia de colonización influye en la expresión cultural y lingüística de los pueblos originarios, en particular la fuerte tradición de oralidad y los niveles bajos de alfabetismo en la propia lengua que caracterizan a la actual producción cultural de la sociedad kichwa. Dentro de esto contexto, discute las implicaciones de adoptar y utilizar recursos y códigos occidentales, como la escritura alfabética, para preservar, fortalecer y revitalizar la lengua …

How Self-Regulated Strategy Development In Writing Eases The Transition From Special Education To Regular Education For Students With Learning Disabilities, Charlene K. Irvin-Brown

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The author’s own and her students’ struggles with writing encouraged her to research best practices in teaching written language in order to ease the transition of students with learning disabilities to the regular education classroom. She found that Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) along with teaching the writing as a recursive process had the highest effect size. She narrowed her research by focusing on the stages of SRSD and best practices for teaching writing. She also reviewed the Minnesota writing standards for third through fifth grade. The author created an eight-lesson curriculum that incorporated the stages of SRSD for teaching narrative …

How Interacting With Teacher Feedback Impacts Students’ Writing, Kristen Bankers Saxhaug

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The following research question is investigated in this paper: How does purposeful interaction with teacher feedback impact the writing outcomes of high school students? The literature review explored the topics of writing development, feedback, and motivation and self-efficacy in writing. A mixed methods approach was used to investigate whether purposeful, directed interaction with teacher feedback led to improved outcomes in students’ writing. Participants were a cohort of 36 racially diverse, at-risk students who were behind their grade-level peers in the development of age-appropriate literacy skills in a co-taught intervention English class. The data revealed that teaching students how to interpret …

Secondary Students’ Writing Achievement Goals: Assessing The Mediating Effects Of Mastery And Performance Goals On Writing Self-Efficacy, Affect, And Writing Achievement, Meryem Yilmaz Soylu, Mary G. Zeleny, Ruomeng Zhao, Roger H. Bruning, Michael S. Dempsey, Douglas F. Kauffman

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

The two studies reported here explored the factor structure of the newly constructed Writing Achievement Goal Scale (WAGS), and examined relationships among secondary students’ writing achievement goals, writing self-efficacy, affect for writing, and writing achievement. In the first study, 697 middle school students completed the WAGS. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed a good fit for this data with a three-factor model that corresponds with mastery, performance approach, and performance avoidance goals. The results of Study 1 were an indication for the researchers to move forward with Study 2, which included 563 high school students. The secondary students completed theWAGS, as …

Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition In Middle School: An Examination Of Three Instructional Conditions, David B. Lee

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The importance of vocabulary knowledge gained through incidental learning is well documented. The growth of incidental vocabulary knowledge is especially crucial for middle school students due to the complex words encountered in their studies. However, research on incidental vocabulary acquisition for middle school students is lacking. The purpose of this study was to compare the relative effectiveness of three instructional conditions (reading, writing, and reading and writing) on incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention with middle school students in an English as a first language (L1) environment.

In this within subjects repeated measure study, 263 eighth-grade participants received treatment in three …

Malp® In The Classroom With A Focus On New Activities For Learning To Improve Linguistic Complexity In Writing For English Learners Seventh-Grade Students, Jehan Hanna Rehayem

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

This study was conducted to answer the following question: Can MALP® help raise the ELP of our EL students in writing by focusing on new activities for learning to improve linguistic complexity? Based on the existing literature, I designed my study to incorporate tried strategies pertaining to the implementation of MALP® in Writing with a focus on linguistic complexity in the classroom. I carefully documented my students’ progress using established assessments. At the end of five months, more than fifty percent of my students rose to the next level on the ELP rubric for Writing, a much more promising progress …

How Can The Orton-Gillingham Approach Be Used As An Effective Tool To Receive A Deeper Understanding Of Syllables And Word Spelling For Students Who Are Hard Of Hearing?, James D. Grota

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Students who are deaf or hard of hearing come to school with limitations to learning that the average student does not have. Being able to hear words and sounds is an important part of learning to spell those words. This paper will identify some characteristics in the development of learning word syllable recognition and phonics, as well as, strategies to help improve learning for students who are deaf and hard of hearing by using the Orton-Gillingham Approach. The OrtonGillingham Approach uses a multisensory strategy that includes audio, visual, and feeling to help solidify word recognition and spelling. Although the approach …

Teaching Writing To English Learners: Professional Development For Content Teachers By Ell Teachers, Elizabeth D. Gillaspey

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question for this project was: what is the best format and content for a professional development class designed to help middle school content teachers improve their skill-set for teaching ELL writing? After presenting literature on different types of professional development as well as best practices for teaching ELL writing, a modified version of train-thetrainer was used to develop four professional development sessions. The sessions were designed to be presented in a school by that school's ELL teachers and they each have a separate focus: background information, pre-writing strategies, during writing strategies, and post-writing strategies. The project contains slides …

How Reading Through Literary Lenses Impacts The Quality Of High School Students’ Arguments, Craig D. Zimanske

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this study was: how does teaching high school students to analyze text through literary lenses impact the quality of students’ arguments? Topics explored in the review of the literature include the context of struggling readers, literary theory and literary lenses, teaching literary theory to secondary students, and argument writing. A cohort of 18 struggling readers in a co-taught high school English class were instructed to shift their reading focus from finding meaning to constructing meaning. To accomplish this, students were familiarized with the tenets of three literary lenses (social-class, gender/feminist, and psychological) and guided through …

Writing & Linguistics News, Georgia Southern University

Writing & Linguistics News (2012-2022)

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Write Place At The Write Time: A Study Of How Writing Contexts Affect Rates Of Productivity And Perceptions Of Success In Creative Writing, Sydnie R. Long

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This research explores the writing contexts of a few creative writers in an effort to learn more about the habits and conditions with which creative writers prefer to work. My goal is to observe how different contexts affect the success or productivity a writer experiences. I will build my project off the central question, is there a correlation between writing contexts and success in writing? From there, I will divide the project into three subsections guided by four subquestions aiming to explore where and how writers write, and gain an insight to their views on what success and productivity mean …

When We Found Us, Christopher Ratcliff

Honors Projects

A collection of pieces which represent a use of magic or mythic themes as applied to real-world experiences through both poetry and fiction work. An examination of the progress of the author through these themes and subjects curated in more-or-less chronological order by time of conception. The brutal mundanity of the rural Midwestern experience mingled alongside the magic-realism and mythic archetypes which span throughout history.

Final Ma Portfolio, Mary O'Hara

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio contains four essays primarily focused upon composition and rhetoric.

Sfl In The Secondary Classroom: Writing Procedural Recounts To Describe Thinking When Solving Algebraic Equations, Theresa Brunker

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research questions addressed in this classroom study were, after explicit instruction, do students choose language structures inherent to procedural recounts, such as technical verb processes, precise nouns, sequence words and causal phrases to describe their mathematical thinking? Additionally, do student self-perceptions of their mathematical abilities change after learning to write procedural recounts to describe their thinking processes? This study examined the use of these language structures prior to explicit instruction in writing procedural recounts and compared it to post-intervention writing samples. The author documents the use of these writing structures by participants before and after intervention and finds relational …

Culturally Responsive Grammar: Utilizing Contrastive Grammar Analysis To Support Knowledge Of Modern Dialects In The High School Classroom, Katie Corrigan

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

Varying dialects are spoken depending on the speaker’s location and community. While each one of these dialects has very clear patterns and rules, only one dialect, Standard American English, is regarded as “correct grammar” according to academic and professional associations. For this reason, students learn the rules of Standard American English in school. However, this practice leaves students who speak other dialects at a significant disadvantage. This capstone addresses this dichotomy by providing curriculum that includes grammar instruction using a contrastive approach. Students are simultaneously taught grammatical rules in both Standard American English and African American Vernacular English in order …

An Integrated Social Studies And Writing Curriculum Guide For Primary Grade English Language Learners, Gayle E. Hammer

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

Two guiding questions are addressed in this project. The first is: How can primary teachers of English Language Learners (ELLs) use a Comprehensive Curriculum Integration Guide (CCIG) to integrate the teaching of social studies content and standards with ELD? The second questions: How can using Student Learning Experiences for Engagement (SLEE) provide support for English Language Development (ELD) in the domains of speaking and writing for ELLs in the primary grades? It provides the research and rationale for creating a guide, which includes instructions, templates and resources for unit planning, weekly lesson planning, SLEE and suggested scaffolds and supports for …

A Phenomenological Study Of Graduate Chinese Students’ English Writing Challenges, Papia Bawa, Sunnie Lee Watson

The Qualitative Report

More students from China are looking to the United States for learning opportunities. However, such students have serious English writing deficiencies. This is due to significant differences between the two languages. This phenomenological study of five Chinese, graduate level students in the United States, informs us of these issues and provides a basis upon which we can explore viable instructional strategies to deal with such issues. The key findings suggest that the participants feel marginalized due to English language deficiencies, which is complicated by a deficiently structured English language instructional system. Based on these findings, several themes are presented that …

Writing & Linguistics News, Georgia Southern University

Writing & Linguistics News (2012-2022)

• 2016 Brannen Creative Writing Award ceremony & reading

Creating New Synergies: Approaches Of Tertiary Japanese Programmes In New Zealand [Review], Michiko Kaneyasu

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

Review of Creating New Synergies: Approaches of Tertiary Japanese Programmes in New Zealand, Edited by Masayoshi Ogino, Penelope Shino, and Dallas Nesbitt. Auckland: Massey University Press, 2016. 302 pp.

Writing With Parents In Response To Picture Book Read Alouds, Danielle L. Defauw

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

High-quality writing instruction needs to permeate elementary students’ in- and outside-of-school experiences. The aim of this research was to explore how teaching writing to parents may support home-school literacy connections. This qualitative case study explored parents’ experiences in interactive writing sessions. The descriptive coding and constant comparative analysis of transcribed parent writing sessions, field notes, and documents revealed three themes: (1) Writing Tips and Strategies, (2) Parent-Writers, and (3) Story Connections. The parent writing sessions facilitated parents’ understanding of how to support their elementary-age children’s writing development. Parents demonstrated a desire to support their children’s writing development, and they needed …

E. B. White Could Nod Too: Thoughts Occasioned By Reading “Death Of A Pig”, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This is an essay on grammar and writing, with extended consideration of the value of Strunk & White as a guide. Although the essay defends Strunk & White against several of that volume’s strongest critics, it also illustrates that even the best writers—and E. B. White was terrific, as was Antonin Scalia—sometimes make mistakes. (At great, perhaps excessive, length, the essay dissects a problematic passage in White’s “Death of a Pig.”) We should learn from those mistakes, not accept them as inevitable.

Curriculum Innovation: Incorporating The Kern Engineering Entrepreneurial Network (Keen) Framework Into Online Discussions, Lisa Bosman, Brooke K. Mayer, Patrick J. Mcnamara

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

The purpose of this study was to respond to the following research question: How does the Kern Engineering Entrepreneurial Network (KEEN) framework build interest in technical topic areas, impact student learning outcomes, and develop the entrepreneurial mindset when applied to the engineering classroom? The KEEN framework was developed to combine the entrepreneurial mindset with engineering education to produce a more valuable, strategically prepared engineer, rather than simply an “obedient engineer”. The framework proposes that the entrepreneurial mindset of students is increased by promoting curiosity, encouraging connections, and creating value. The results from this work provide insight into the impact and …

The Art Museum: A Site For Developing Second Language And Academic Discourse Processes, Rosalind Horowitz, Kristy Masten

Journal of Pedagogy, Pluralism, and Practice

This chapter presents the art museum as a socio-cultural learning site, where emergent bilingual students engage in multiple modes of expression to expand oral, written, and visual literacies for academic purposes An historical view of the art museum as an educational space is considered with past limitations and new directions. Theoretical considerations contributing to new conceptualizations of the museum as a contextual- space for development of academic discourses provide a backdrop for new museum approaches. After describing the situated perspective of the authors who work with students at a Hispanic Serving Institution, we offer three approaches for incorporating the museum …

Dwelling In The Ruins: Recovering Student Use Of Metaphor In The Posthistorical University, Daniel P. Richards

English Faculty Publications

This article argues that the field of Rhetoric and Composition has long harnessed the active potential of metaphor to change its own practices but has considerably overlooked student use of metaphor--a particularly urgent oversight given the metaphorical battleground that constitutes the discourse of contemporary higher education. Using this exigency, the article 1) explains how a more thorough reading of Lakoff and Johnson's popular work on metaphor theory can re-energize Rhetoric and Composition to be more inclusive of student experiences in classroom coverage of metaphor and 2) offers imaginative but concrete pedagogical approaches and activities aimed at facilitating student learning of …

Efl Education In Mainland China: Word Memorization And Essay Writing Among High School Sophomores, Rehema Clarken

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This dissertation explores English as a Foreign Language instruction within the context of the contemporary Chinese education system. Basic outlines chart the historical development of EFL studies in the United States and China framing the question of what each community values as important measures of success when assessing language learning. While traditional Chinese methods value strict memorization of vast word lists (背单词, BeiDanCi, BDC) the US educational community stresses essay writing—particularly on standardized tests such as the ACT, SAT, and TOEFL, which are required for university admissions. Therefore, this study investigates the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and writing ability among …

Learning Language And Vocabulary In Dialogue With The Real Audience: Exploring Young Writers’ Authentic Writing And Language Learning Experiences, Ewa Mcgrail, J. Patrick Mcgrail, Alicja Rieger

Research, Publications & Creative Work

Purpose: To explore the potential of conversations with an authentic audience through blogging for enriching in the young writers the understanding of the communicative function of writing, specifically language and vocabulary use.

Design: We situate our work in a language acquisition model of language learning where learners develop linguistic competence in the process of speaking and using the language (Krashen, 1988; Tomasello, 2005). We also believe that language learning benefits from formal instruction (Krashen, 1988). As such, in our work, we likened engaging in blogging to learning a language (here, more broadly conceived as learning to write) through both natural …

On The Same Page: Theory, Practice & The Ela Common Core State Standards, Jessica Lauer

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This research sought to examine how writing was happening in high schools. States across the country, including Michigan, began implementing the Common Core State Standards in 2010. The standards place a heavy focus on informational texts particularly as a student reaches high school. The standards also suggest that writing should be a shared responsibility among teachers, acknowledging the importance of cross-disciplinary writing skills. Using a grounded theory approach to analyze the semi-structured interviews conducted with eight English teachers in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, this research revealed a disconnect between theory and practice when it comes to how educational standards …