English Language and Literature Commons^™

Exploring The Academic/Creative Writing Binary, Jessica O'Leary

Honors College Theses

I began to work on this study in my ENG 201: Writing in the Disciplines class during my junior year at Pace University. After being asked to write a paper on what writing looks like in my discipline, I realized that my perceptions of the kinds of writing done by faculty and students in a university English department were limited and constricting as a result of the binary way in which I viewed academic and creative forms of writing. For instance, I had trouble believing that my creative writing professor studied pre-med in undergrad. I continued my research on this …

Professionalism In The Writing Center: Combining Compassion And Composition, Carrigan Price

Tutor's Column

Much is demanded from peer tutors if they are to be perceived as professionals; they must be a listening ear, a helping hand, and an expert writer in order to effectively help students. However, tutors’ behavior must adapt to each individual student, paper, and session. Truly professional tutors ignore traditional definitions of professionalism in favor of providing students the help and advice they most need. Tutors need to pay attention to students’ initial behavior, students’ body language throughout the session, and their own feelings of comfort or discomfort in order to appropriately react to the private and personal content of …

Review Of Baptism Of Fire: The Birth Of The Modern British Fantastic In World War I, Ian A. Isherwood

Interdisciplinary Studies Faculty Publications

The Great War had a lasting influence on literature and literary culture in Britain. Spanning the ‘brows’ of literary taste were authors writing in response to the cataclysmic violence experienced by the war generation, at both the war front and the home front. The war's shadow permeated all aspects of cultural expression; its experience found authors who, with varying degrees of success, wrote on its lasting influence to a readership that, as the decades wore on, grew increasingly afraid of another world war. One of the responses undoubtedly influenced by the war was the genre of fantasy. As one of …

Law Library Blog (April 2019): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Language Attitudes Of Writing Center Consultants: Perception And Expectation, Benjamin John Sparks

Masters Theses

This master’s thesis explores the results of research into the language attitudes of peer consultants working in a writing center at a large regional public university in the American Midwest. A survey was administered to writing center staff in which they were asked to evaluate the sociopolitical relationship between standard and nonstandard English dialects, the perceived relative grammaticality of these dialects, and the traditional concept of appropriateness in academic writing. Also included were questions pertaining to how consultants manage the practical responsibilities of their positions and the expectations of students and professors with the writing center’s stated policy of linguistic …

Review Of The War That Used Up Words: American Writers And The First World War, By Hazel Hutchison, Ian A. Isherwood

Interdisciplinary Studies Faculty Publications

There is a vast array of scholarship on the literature of the First World War, much of it concerning British authors. When American war literature is considered, it is usually the so-called “Lost Generation” writers of the 1920s and 1930s. If the war had a significant effect upon American literature, it is argued, then it served as a trope for some of the great writers of the 1920s—Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Faulkner—who wrote of living in its generational shadow in the following decades of so-called peace.

Hazel Hutchison’s book is a corrective to the many assumptions about …

“My Books Will Be Read By Millions Of People!”: The Laguardia Community College Octavia E. Butler Project On Wikipedia.”, Ximena Gallardo C., Ann Matsuuchi

Publications and Research

[This book chapter (“My Books Will Be Read By Millions of People!”: The LaGuardia Community College Octavia E. Butler Wikipedia Project.”) originally appeared in Approaches to Teaching the Works of Octavia Butler, edited by Tarshia Stanley, published by the Modern Language Association of America." Pages 45-51. ISBN: 9781603294157]

In this essay, we examine the innovative community college classroom project that resulted in the first installment of Wikipedia Project Octavia E. Butler: the crafting of thorough, rigorously researched, well-written Wikipedia entries for Butler’s works by teams of undergraduate students.

The first part of the essay focuses on our design of a …

Using Spanish In English-Language Spaces: Identifying Bilingual Composition Students' Translanguaging Practices, Maria Isela Maier

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation is a qualitative study that uses ethnographic research methods to examine the translanguaging practices of bilingual students in first-year composition at a university along the U.S.-Mexico border. Specifically, I observe how and why bilingual students employ translanguaging practices, as they are encouraged or invited by their instructors, in contexts where English Standard Language policies exist. The results of this qualitative project demonstrate bilingual students' use of translation as part of their translanguaging practices, as well as a tool that uncovers students' writing processes which also demonstrates their language negotiation. Furthermore, the students' translanguaging practices reveal the rhetorical use …

A Literary Journey Back In Time, Hannah K. Heil

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

Before I began writing, I reflected on the effect literature has had on my life. I brainstormed different experiences in which I found literature to be very influential. I talked with various people including my parents and past teachers to ensure the accuracy of the various childhood stories I decided to write about. When it came time to put the final draft together, I focused on my various experiences with literature and the grand effect it has had on my life. I also incorporated why I value being a literate person today as a university student.

Editor's note: For this …

Confidence Is Key: The Importance Of Building A Student’S Confidence In Writing, Tyler Monson

Tutor's Column

It’s Friday afternoon and there’s barely any wiggle room between tutoring sessions. Every English 2010 student has been rushing to the Writing Center to get their papers edited before they have to turn it in at midnight. Some papers are contemplative, well-structured and only need light tweaks, while others are “more of a thought piece at the moment.”

“Does That Make Sense?” The Importance Of Clear Assignment Instructions And Rubrics, Carly Schaelling

Writing Center Analysis Papers

Students often struggle to understand the expectations of their teachers when completing writing assignments. Teachers often feel frustrated when students seem to understand what they are asking, only to grade papers and see that the gap between their assignment tasks and students’ performance is larger than expected. As a Writing Center tutor and first year graduate instructor for English 1010, I have had experiences that have helped me appreciate the importance of having clear written assignment instructions as well as detailed rubrics. Having these two elements incorporated with assignments can help students focus more on their writing tasks and less …

Back To The Beginning: Rudyard Kipling's Story Of How Beings Learned To Write, D. Marie Nelson

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Focuses on ways that Kipling used his abilities as writer, artist, and father to tell the story of how writing began, touching on linguistic and childhood development theories.

Thinking Continental: Writing The Planet One Place At A Time By Tom Lynch, Susan Naramore Maher, Drucilla Wall, And O. Alan Weltzien, Cory Willard

The Goose

Review of Thinking Continental: Writing the Planet One Place at a Time by Tom Lynch, Susan Naramore Maher, Drucilla Wall, and O. Alan Weltzien, eds.

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Lib 3065 (Research Methods And Resources For Writers), Christopher Tuthill

Open Educational Resources

This course explores the theoretical and practical impact of information research on writing. Students develop proficiency in evaluating, identifying, and using relevant print and web sources to locate business, government, biographic, political, social and statistical information necessary for in-depth journalistic reportage and other forms of research and writing.

Annotated Bibliography Assignment For English 201, Elida Deklein

Open Educational Resources

This assignment will help students of English Composition II to construct an annotated bibliography as a precursor to a research paper.

Run Me Dusk, Zane Truman Dezeeuw

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This is a full-length novel with a critical afterward. Run Me Dusk is a falling-out of love narrative about twenty-seven-year-old Milo who, after being broken up with by his boyfriend Red, flees from Illinois back to his hometown in southwestern Colorado to meditate on his place and purpose in life. The themes covered in this book are gay relationships, family relationships, mortality, and the natural world.

The Rhetoric Of Academic Discourse: A Qualitative, Phenomenological Study Of Students' Self-Investigation Of The Acquisition Of Academic Discourse In First-Year Writing Courses, Barbara E. Morgan

English Dissertations - Archive

Whether at a four-year university or a two-year community college, students who choose to pursue higher education will likely be required to demonstrate their eligibility to enroll in college-level writing courses. At a vast majority of colleges and universities in the United States, such eligibility is determined through various means that include college placement tests, like AccuPlacer®, or other standardized assessments and determinants. Once students are deemed prepared or eligible to enroll in college-level writing courses, their academic journeys often include some form of the compulsory first-year English classes. These courses, also known as freshman writing or composition courses, have …

Redactándome A Mi Misma: Writing Place, Process, And Identity Across Two Languages, Jenna Ziegelmayer

Senior Honors Projects

Emily Dickinson once wrote a poem titled “Tell all the truth but tell it slant,” where she advises writers to do just that. One should tell the truth about their experiences, but tell it through their own unique perspective in order to make it “dazzle” on the page. My slant? Una segunda lengua.

As a student of Spanish, learning a different language has impacted the way that I see the world and my place in it. Studying abroad taught me about the language and culture of Spain, but it also taught me a lot about myself, my own native language, …

Final Ma Portfolio, Elizabeth Armor

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

A Final Portfolio submitted to the English Department of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the field of English.

Maybe She Found Me In A Poem, Robin Gow

English and Creative Writing Honors Papers

Maybe She Found Me in a Poem explores my own family relationship and family stories through a variety of poetic forms, persona poetry, and prose pieces centered on an imagined relationship with my grandmother who died before I was born. The collection asks, “How much are our family stories our own?” and “Can we create memory?” Themes of haunting, ghosts, queerness, shared memory, death, and burial are carried throughout the collection and brought forward in their respective sections. Images are placed throughout as part of the collection to amplify the “haunting” power of the text.

J.M. Coetzee And Literary Paternity: The Father In The Work Of Writing, Joshua Kesterson

Masters Essays

No abstract provided.

Using Multilingual Literature To Enhance Multilingual Students’ Experiences In Second Language Writing Classes: An Innovative Classroom Practice, Ekaterina Arshavskaya

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Research on second language writing instruction consistently shows low levels of student engagement (Lee, 2012) in writing classes. In order to address this challenge, researchers have argued for the need to introduce various forms of expressive writing (Bilton & Sivasubramaniam, 2009), including student interpretive practice with texts (Kramsch, 1997).

Another common problem associated with second language writing instruction is lack of connection between writing and reading activities. Prominent language educators have long recognized the benefits of connecting reading and writing activities with English learners (Krashen, 1992). According to Krashen (1992), we learn to write through reading. To resolve these multiple …

Fan Fiction In The English Language Arts Classroom, Kristen Finucan

MA in English Theses

Inspired by the observation of an obvious deficit in students’ comprehension of higher level literature, as well as an apparent weakness in both verbal and written critical analysis skills, this study explores the creation of collaborative fan fiction by students as they read the classic text, The Great Gatsby. Fueled by research in the areas of fan fiction, participatory culture, and cooperative learning, this inquiry took place over the course of six weeks in a high school English class comprised of 10th and 11th grade students. Throughout the study, the researcher examined student survey results, videos of students as they …

Et Cetera, Marshall University

Et Cetera

Founded in 1953, Et Cetera is an annual literary magazine that publishes the creative writing and artwork of Marshall University students and affiliates. Et Cetera is free to the Marshall University community.

Et Cetera welcomes submissions in literary and film criticism, poetry, short stories, drama, all types of creative non-fiction, photography, and art.

Afterword: Horizons Of Transformation: When Age, Literacy And Scholarship Meet, Louise Wetherbee Phelps

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Building Community Within The Writing Center, Candace Cooper

Theses and Dissertations

Since their inception, Writing Centers have had the purpose of helping students with their writing, and they have met this goal by using collaborative learning and by talking to students about their writing. While the form of the center has changed over time, its purpose has not, and to better help Writing Centers achieve their purpose, they should focus on building community both amongst their tutors and between their tutors and tutees. A greater sense of community, welcome, and harmony will make the center a better place to work for the tutors, and it will make students/clients will feel more …

Stop, Think, And Question, Andrea Carlquist

Tutor's Column

The purpose of this paper is to encourage peer tutors to attempt utilizing different questioning methods during tutoring sessions. Instead of asking closed off questions with definite answers, tutors should ask open-ended questions that challenge the student. This method of questioning will also help the tutor as it will alleviate pressure from them and make the student and tutor equally accountable for the session. The Socratic method of questioning is also suggested as it allows sessions to develop more organically based on topics that are useful and interesting to both the student and the tutor.

Wearing The Collaborator Hat, Jessica Hahn

Tutor's Column

Writing tutors take on several roles when working with students, which range from coaches to counselors. However, one of the most important roles of writing tutors is the collaborator. Collaboration encourages both the tutor and the student to draw on each of their strengths, rather than only relying on the knowledge of the tutor alone. Some roles that restrict tutors as collaborators are roles such as editors and experts. Tutors avoid being editors of papers because they are only able to address surface level issues in writing rather than global issues. Being an expert is too much of a burden …

Tutors—Writing Myth Busters, Stephanie Pointer

Tutor's Column

The purpose of this essay is to help tutors understand that myths about the writing process are hurting students and their writing. Peer tutors are in a unique position to teach students the truth about the writing process. Many students feel incapable of writing well because they struggle with the writing process. Helping students recognize false beliefs about writing and understand the truth will do more to improve student writing and confidence than teaching writing mechanics. When students have a deeper understanding of the importance of having a focused audience, writing bad drafts, and allowing for their limited time frame, …

Tutors: “Theses” The Problem: Students And Thesis Statements, Jackson Bylund

Tutor's Column

Although it is a common element of academic writing, the thesis statement is woefully misunderstood and misused by many new college students. The Writing Center staff spends too much time reexplaining this principle and helping visiting students construct a solid thesis; time that could be better spent on other key aspects of their essays, like content and organization. This essay strives to explain what a thesis statement is, how it is crafted, how and why students have such a poor understanding of the concept, and what can be done to fix this obnoxious issue.