Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Barlow On Book Of Mormon Language: An Examination Of Some Strained Grammar, Standford Carmack

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Comments made by Philip Barlow on Book of Mormon language for an Oxford-published book are examined. Inaccuracies are pointed out, and some examples are given that show matching with 1611 King James usage as well as with other earlier usage. One important conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that those who wish to critique the English language of the Book of Mormon need to take the subject more seriously and approach it with genuine scholarship, instead of repeating earlier errors. This has a direct bearing on forming accurate views of Joseph Smith and Book of Mormon translation.

The Next Big Thing In Lds Apologetics: Strong Semitic And Egyptian Elements In Uto-Aztecan Languages, Jeff Lindsay

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Following several articles and presentations over the past two decades on tantalizing finds linking Uto-Aztecan languages with Near Eastern languages, LDS linguist Brian Stubbs has recently published two significant works offering extensive details and documentation. The more comprehensive volume intended for scholars and serious students of language is Exploring the Explanatory Power of Semitic and Egyptian in Uto-Aztecan, a highly technical work providing 1,528 sets of cognates with intricate details linking Uto-Aztecan languages with two versions of Semitic and with Egyptian. This is followed by an analysis of puzzles in Uto-Aztecan explained by Egyptian and Semitic ties as well as …

Teachers’ (Formative) Feedback Practices In Efl Writing Classes In Norway, Drita Saliu-Abdulahi, Glenn Ole Hellekjær, Frøydis Hertzberg

Journal of Response to Writing

This qualitative study reports on teachers’ (formative) feedback practices in writing instruction. Observations and interviews were used to collect data from 10 upper-secondary school teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing classes in Norway. The findings indicate that while the teachers attempt to comply with the requirements of the national curriculum regarding formative assessment, and acknowledge the pivotal role of feedback in that pedagogy, the dominant tendency is still to deliver feedback to a finished text. As such, there is limited use of feedback for that text and no resubmission of the text for new assessment, while feedforward …

Moving Beyond Corrective Feedback: (Re) Engaging With Student Writing In L2 Through Audio Response, Jennifer Ahern-Dodson, Deborah Reisinger

Journal of Response to Writing

This article examines teacher feedback on student compositions in an Advanced French Composition course at a Research 1 institution. Our study suggests that when teachers combine written corrective feedback with audio comments, their engagement in grading compositions may rise significantly. As teachers bring renewed energy to familiar responding practices, they shift from “grader” to “reader.” These findings have important implications for teacher training and the role of feedback in L2 courses.

Editorial Introduction, Betsy Gilliland, Grant Eckstein

Journal of Response to Writing

Welcome to the second issue of our third year of publication. As the journal has become more established, we are seeing a wide range of fascinating research and teaching work related to response to writing in both first and second language contexts. This issue is no different. In this issue, we present two research articles, two teaching articles, and a book review. In the first piece, “L2 Learners’ Engagement with Direct Written Corrective Feedback in First-Year Composition Courses,” Izabela Uscinski examines how second language learners of English engage with feedback from their college writing teachers. Uscinski draws on Svalberg’s (2009) …

Critical Discourse Analysis Of Student Responses To Teacher Feedback On Student Writing, Hee-Seung Kang, Julie Dykema

Journal of Response to Writing

This study explores student written responses to teacher feedback and analyzes these responses through the framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA). Drawing on CDA, we examined the structural, interactional, and interdiscursive features of 21 students’ paragraph-length comments on formative teacher feedback on their first assignment draft in a first-year composition class and investigated relations between the text, interaction, and context. The structural analysis indicates that the students’ comments demonstrate their emerging academic literacy skills. Our interactional analysis shows that most students took on an active role as a good student and a hardworking writer, but some students exerted their agency …

Encouraging Active Participation In Dialogic Feedback Through Assessment As Learning, Claire Louise Rodway

Journal of Response to Writing

Sustainable feedback practices, that can encourage self-regulation of performance and improvement in future work beyond an immediate task, require our students to be active participants in, and users of, the feedback we provide. Critical to this participation are the internal feedback mechanisms of reflection and self-assessment. They require students to make evaluations about their own writing without the aid of external agents, which in turn can encourage better use of teacher feedback. Moreover, dialogic collaborative feedback that encourages this type of self-evaluation through interactive cover sheets has been featured in existing practitioner research studies. This teaching article presents an extension …

Review Of Written Corrective Feedback For L2 Development, Taichi Yamashita

Journal of Response to Writing

Written corrective feedback (WCF) has been increasingly attracting researchers in second language acquisition (SLA) as well as second language (L2) writing practitioners. Bitchener and Storch, two renowned WCF researchers, define WCF as “a written response to a linguistic error that has been made in the writing of a text by an L2 learner” (p. 1). This increasing interest in WCF is understandable because the implementation of WCF is time-consuming as well as pedagogically imperative. However, it is widely known that learners keep making the same error, and thus teachers’ efforts do not pay off easily. Therefore, with the increasing number …

Response To Margaret Barker's "The Lord Is One", David J. Larsen

BYU Studies

I appreciate the opportunity to be here and to give a brief response to what Margaret Barker shared with us. I would like to talk about some of the ideas she explored and perhaps how we may apply them to our LDS scriptures to better understand what we are reading there. Barker touched on the idea of the ascent to heaven and the fact that we can find this ascent, this journey to the heavenly holy of holies, in the writing of Isaiah and other prophetic texts in the Bible. There is so much to consider as we look at …

The Kingdom Of God, Tyler Chadwick

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

The Polygamous Wives Writing Club: From The Diaries Of Mormon Pioneer Women, Andrea G. Radke-Moss

BYU Studies

Paula Kelly Harline. The Polygamous Wives Writing Club: From the Diaries of Mormon Pioneer Women.

New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Envisioning Brigham Young University: Foreword To John S. Tanner's Learning In The Light, Bruce C. Hafen

BYU Studies

Editor’s note: Bruce C. Hafen, an emeritus General Authority and former president of Ricks College, wrote this foreword to Learning in the Light: Selected Talks at BYU by John S. Tanner, who is the current president of BYU–Hawaii. This book, a new title offered by BYU Studies, gives insight into John Tanner the person and into his views on the Latter-day Saint endeavor to advance in light and knowledge “by study and also by faith.” The following encapsulates well the issues that have long concerned both educators and students of the Mormon community.

Future Mormon: Essays In Mormon Theology, James E. Faulconer

BYU Studies

Adam S. Miller. Future Mormon: Essays in Mormon Theology.

Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2016.

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Ann Booth's Vision And Early Conceptions Of Redeeming The Dead Among Latter-Day Saints, Christopher James Blythe

BYU Studies

On October 5, 1840, Joseph Smith addressed the general church body in Nauvoo on the subject of baptism for the dead, an ordinance he had introduced less than two months previously. On this historic occasion, the Prophet referenced a vision or dream that has until now escaped thorough study by Church historians. The vision was received by Ann Booth, a recent convert in Great Britain, and included images of John Wesley accepting the restored gospel and being baptized in the spirit world through the administration of David W. Patten. Booth’s revelation had garnered attention of missionaries in England and among …

The Latter-Day Saint Reimagining Of "The Breath Of Life" (Genesis 2:7), Dana M. Pike

BYU Studies

The creation and flood accounts in Genesis in the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) contain variations on a phrase commonly translated “the breath of life.” This phrase additionally occurs in some uniquely Latter-day Saint materials relating to creation. After overviewing and analyzing this phrase and its meaning in the Bible, this paper then examines the occurrences of the phrase “the breath of life” in important early Latter-day Saint texts. The purpose of this study is to illustrate and explain how and why many Latter-day Saints have come to often employ the phrase “the breath of life,” transforming its traditional …

Hammerhead Six: How Green Berets Waged An Unconventional War Against The Taliban To Win In Afghanistan's Deadly Pech Valley, Cless Young

BYU Studies

Captain Ronald Fry, with Tad Tuleja. Hammerhead Six: How Green Berets Waged on Unconventional War against the Taliban to Win in Afghanistan's Deadly Pech Valley.

New York: Hachette Books, 2016.

Pieces Of April: From The Life And Journal Of Lance Larsen, Lance Larsen, Casualene Meyer

BYU Studies

Lance Larsen, BYU professor of English, completed in May 2017 a five-year appointment as Utah’s poet laureate. BYU Studies is pleased to present a series of journal entries from Professor Larsen, preceded by a conversation between Larsen and BYU Studies poetry editor, Casualene Meyer.

The Experience Of Love And The Limitations Of Psychological Explanation, Brent D. Slife

BYU Studies

BYU Studies has a long history of publishing the annual lecture given by the recipient of the Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Faculty Lecturer Award, BYU’s highest faculty honor. It is with great pleasure that BYU Studies Quarterly publishes this year’s lecture by Dr. Brent D. Slife, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology. His speech was delivered as a forum address on May 16, 2017, at Brigham Young University.

Hosea Stout: Lawman, Legislator, Mormon Defender, Jay H. Buckley

BYU Studies

Stephen L. Prince. Hosea Stout: Lawman, Legislator, Mormon Defender.

Logan: Utah State University Press; Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2016.

Just South Of Zion: The Mormons In Mexico And Its Borderlands, Richard Neitzel Holzapfel

BYU Studies

Just South of Zion: The Mormons in Mexico and Its Borderlands, ed. Jason H. Dormady and Jared M. Tamez (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015)

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Joseph Smith Translating Genesis, Kent P. Jackson

BYU Studies

Joseph Smith’s revision of the Bible was one of his signature projects as founder and prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (originally called the Church of Christ). He began it sometime in June 1830, just three months after the first copies of the Book of Mormon came out of the bindery of the Howard and Grandin Company in Palmyra, New York. The Bible project lasted three years, until July 1833, when he dictated the last pages and declared the work finished. The venture was formidable, eventually producing seven manuscripts totaling 446 pages. Two of those manuscripts …

"We Believe The Hand Of The Lord Is In It": Memories Of Divine Intervention In The Zion's Camp Expedition, Matthew C. Godfrey

BYU Studies

On February 23, 1834, Joseph Smith attended a high council meeting in Kirtland, Ohio, and heard Lyman Wight and Parley P. Pratt explain how over a thousand members of the Church of Christ—now The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—had been violently ejected from their homes in Jackson County, Missouri. The Saints had been forced to leave the county—which had been previously identified by revelation as Zion—by irate Missouri citizens who saw Church members and their beliefs as a political and ideological threat. Hearing this report, Smith arose from his seat and declared “that he was going to Zion …

Animals In The Book Of Mormon: Challenges And Perspectives, Wade E. Miller, Matthew Roper

BYU Studies

When the Book of Mormon first appeared, skeptics said that references to horses, asses, elephants, and other animals (such as swine and cows) were out of place. During the first century after its publication, Book of Mormon critics argued that such animals never existed anywhere in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and western Europeans in the late fifteenth century. In time, however, scientific discoveries showed that species of horses, asses, elephants, and other animals had once been present in North America, although dating to an earlier period than that covered in the Book of Mormon. Encouraged by such …

Photographs Of The Fourteen Apostles Of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints, September And October 1898, Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Ronald L. Fox

BYU Studies

Ninety-one-year-old Wilford Woodruff, fourth President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died unexpectedly at 6:40 a.m. on Saturday morning, September 2, 1898, during a visit to San Francisco, California. Woodruff’s well-attended funeral was held six days later, at 10 a.m. on Thursday, September 8, 1898, at the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, Utah. Sixty-six-year-old George Teasdale, one of the Church’s fourteen Apostles, reported, “Weather sunshine and fair Arose early and . . . went to Woodruff villa and saw the body of our beloved President laying in state. . . . saw the body borne into the …

From The Editor, John W. Welch

BYU Studies

A nephew recently asked me, “Why do we care about the Old Testament? Is it even relevant today?” After catching my breath, I got wondering, how many others might share this feeling as the Church Sunday School curriculum returns in 2018 to the study of the Old Testament? And for those who feel that way, might some of the intriguing articles published in BYU Studies over the years on Old Testament topics pique their interest? I would definitely hope so.

American Universities And The Birth Of Modern Mormonism, 1867-1940, Heather M. Seferovich

BYU Studies

Thomas W. Simpson. American Universities and the Birth of Modern Mormonism, 1867-1940.

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016.

The Mormon Missionary: Who Is That Knocking At My Door?, Tim Zeidner

BYU Studies

Robert L. Lively Jr. The Mormon Missionary: Who IS That Knocking at My Door?

Wilton, Maine: By the Author, 2015.