Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Words! Words! Words!: Teaching The Language Of Tax, Stephen B. Cohen

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Relationship Between Traditional Grammar Terminology And Metacognitive Application Of Grammar Concepts, Annalisa M. Buerke

Master of Education Program Theses

This literature review revisits the debate of whether grammar instruction can improve adherence to written English conventions. However, the paper focuses on the role of traditional definitions rather than on delivery methods. Two questions guide this paper: I. Do traditional terms and definitions hinder students' understanding of grammar concepts? 2. How can teachers define grammar terms in a clearer, more accurate manner? The paper uses prominent grammarians such as C. Weaver, R. Noguchi and M. Kolin and provides a history of methodology, noting researchers' observations of traditional terms and definitions. The paper concludes that secondary teachers can supplement traditional definitions …

Haptic Communication And Musical Aesthesis: Feeling In Jazz, Jon Radwan

CHDCM Publications

No abstract provided.

On Mccomiskey And Ryan's City Comp: Identities, Spaces, Practices, Matthew Ortoleva

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

City Comp: Identities, Spaces, Practices is a collection of essays that address the intersections of composition studies and place studies. But don't look for any sublime vistas or sweeping landscapes in this volume. Rather, City Comp is an engagement with urban spaces and the citizens, teachers and students who write, work and live in these spaces. The (auto)ethnographic, narrative style of the collection is common to composition studies, but this volume resists the kind of self-therapeutic tendencies that are often found with such an approach. Rather, City Comp makes a critical exploration of the historical, political, cultural and …

Nurturing Sense Of Place Through The Literature Of The Bioregion, Patrick Howard

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This paper explores the possibility that a participatory engagement with the literature of the bioregion, in this case the North Atlantic coast, may work against the life alienating tendencies of our modern culture, to reaffirm and renew our children’s consciousness of and sensitivity for their place in a larger Earth community. We are in need of another way of knowing our place, a way to activate and reactivate the complex articulations and relations of things. Through the literature of the bioregion and a bodily, imaginative and participatory engagement with the other-than-human, children can return to the conditions of human embeddedness …

Examining The Skills, Attitudes, And Perceptions Of Developmental Writing Students At A Midwestern Private College, William P. Elgersma

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Postsecondary degree-granting institutions recognize that students lack necessary academic skills, but the characteristics of this at-risk population have not been as clearly identified. As well, the value of remedial programs that serve this at-risk population need to be investigated.

The survey instruments for this study were developed by the researcher. The purpose of the study was to examine the skills, attitudes, and perceptions of basic writers of a remedial writing course Academic Skills Center (ASK 060) at a private Midwestern college. Specifically, this study identified the value of the remedial writing program related to perceived level of competence and academic …

The Effects Of Instant Messenger On The Undergraduate Experience, Kimberly Schaefer

Honors Theses

The use of Instant Messenger (IM) by American undergraduate students has grown rapidly over the past decade. As a result, IM has come to play an important role in the collegiate experience and daily life of today's undergraduate students. This study explores the effects of IM's growing popularity upon the academic efforts, relationships, and daily living habits of undergraduate students through an analysis of data obtained from surveys and focus groups at a small private university. The research concludes that students perceive IM to be a distraction, decreasing productivity; however, these disadvantages do not affect student IM-use, and IM is …

The Rhetoric Of Pedagogy And The Pedagogy Of Rhetoric, Jennifer G. Moore

Honors Theses

"There is a serious crisis in education. Students often do not want to learn and teachers do not want to teach. More than ever before in the recent history of this nation, educators are compelled to confront the biases that have shaped teaching practices in our society and to create new ways of knowing, different for the sharing of knowledge (hooks 12)."

Drawing from the work of such writers as bell books, Paolo Friere, and Gilles Deleuze, this thesis explores limitations and constraints of traditional pedagogy, then brings this critique to bear upon the traditional pedagogy of rhetoric. Drawing from …

A Comparison Of Anonymous E-Peer Review Versus Identifiable E-Peer Review On College Student Writing Performance And Learning Satisfaction, Ruiling Lu

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Services - Urban Education

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of anonymous e-peer review with identifiable e-peer review on student writing performance and learning satisfaction. It also investigated whether anonymous e-peer review facilitated a greater amount of critical peer feedback.

Quasi-experimental design was used to test group differences on the dependent variables. Participants were 48 freshmen enrolled in two English Composition classes at Old Dominion University in the fall semester of 2003. The two intact classes taught by the same instructor were randomly assigned to the anonymous e-peer review group and the identifiable e-peer review group.

The results showed that …

The Bible And Theological Education: A Report And Reflections On A Journey, Patrick R. Keifert

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Outcomes Book: Debate And Consensus After The Wpa Outcomes Statement, Susanmarie Harrington, Keith Rhodes, Ruth Fischer, Rita Malenczyk

All USU Press Publications

The WPA Outcomes Statement represents a working consensus among composition scholars about what college students should learn and do in a composition program. But as a single-page document, the statement cannot convey the kind of reflective process that a writing program must undertake to address the learning outcomes described. The Outcomes Book relates the fuller process by exploring the matrix of concerns that surrounded the developing statement itself, and by presenting the experience of many who have since employed it in their own settings. For departments, programs, and individuals, this collection levers the Outcomes Statement in all its simplicity and …

Discord And Direction: The Postmodern Writing Program Administrator, Sharon James Mcgee, Carolyn Handa

All USU Press Publications

Postmodernism's central moves include questioning hierarchy, valuing paratactic associations, and rejecting grand narratives, and the work of a Writing Program Administrator, most days, includes those moves as well. The argument of this collection is that the cultural and intellectual legacies of postmodernism impinge, significantly and daily, on the practice of the Writing Program Administrator. WPAs work in spaces where they must assume responsibility for a multifaceted program, a diverse curriculum, instructors with varying pedagogies and technological expertise—and where they must position their program in relation to a university with its own conflicted mission, and a state with its unpredictable views …

Refiguring Prose Style: Possibilities For Writing Pedagogy, T. R. Johnson, Thomas Pace

All USU Press Publications

For about two decades, say Johnson and Pace, the discussion of how to address prose style in teaching college writing has been stuck, with style standing in as a proxy for other stakes in the theory wars. The traditional argument is evidently still quite persuasive to some—that teaching style is mostly a matter of teaching generic conventions through repetition and practice. Such a position usually presumes the traditional view of composition as essentially a service course, one without content of its own. On the other side, the shortcomings of this argument have been much discussed—that it neglects invention, revision, context, …

Genre Across The Curriculum, Anne Herrington, Charles Moran

All USU Press Publications

American first-year college writing courses operate without a powerful context: they are designed to teach academic writing, but what kind of academic writing? Which of the many particular discourses, and, within those discourses, which recurring social situations? Lacking a clear context to refer to, textbook authors inevitably privilege form. Genre across the Curriculum will function as a "good" textbook, one not for the student, but for the teacher, and one with an eye on the context of writing. Here you will find models of practice, descriptions written by teachers who have integrated the teaching of genre into their pedagogy in …

Circles And Letters: I Do; I Understand, Thomas Kitchen

MA TESOL Collection

How do we writing teachers respond to our students’ writing? How does our response affect both us and the students? Is it irresponsible to mark only a few recurring errors? Or is irresponsible to mark every error? Do students learn better when the errors are labeled or not? What about positive feedback?

This thesis explains an action research project I conducted with my reading/writing students. In the project, I explored many methods of responding to student writing, and I documented how one of those techniques affected me and my students. That technique called the reduced grammar technique focuses on recurring …

An Interdisciplinary Comparison Of Master's Thesis Abstracts, Patricia Belle Chance

Theses Digitization Project

Explores different ways that organizational moves and other discourse elements such as hedging are reflected in graduate student research abstracts for theses, dissertations and research articles. Master's thesis abstracts from five disciplines at California State University, San Bernardino were analyzed. Rhetorical conventions in these texts that reflect the epistemological and social expectations of the writers' academic communities were explored. Results indicate that these abstracts use a variety of hedging patterns and many of the moves that have been described for published research articles.

Style: A New Perspective On Kate Chopin, Daniel Arredondo

Theses Digitization Project

Uses Edward Corbett's theory of style to help define Chopin's style and expose her rhetorical strategies (sentence and paragraph length, diction, tropes, scheme, etc.) in the short story "The Story of an Hour ." Examines the controversy over using literature to teach composition and provides an analysis of the reasons for and against using literature in composition classes. Finally, defends the use of literature in writing classrooms.

Exploring Creative Writing In The Middle School Classroom Via The Effective Use Of Multimedia, Nicole Allison Bezi

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project is to develop a website by which students can improve their understanding of literary elements. This project will aid the students in completing some research as part of the initial stages of the WebQuest, to help them better understand the importance of literary elements.

Successful Strategies For Expository Writing, Bonnie Dee Reed

Theses Digitization Project

This study focused on creating an Integrated Expository Writing model to improve fifth and sixth grade students' abilities to write well constructed expository essays. It was developed through researching Step Up to Writing, the Six-Traits, interactive writing, play / realia, paired / shared writing, and writers' workshop.

"Is It Really A Natural Fit?": The Construction Of "Technology" In Composition Studies, Irina Fealy

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis analyzes two popular computer assisted instruction teaching platforms: Daedalus Integrated Writing Environment (DIWE) and Blackboard (BB). The major focus of the exploration is to find out whether or not these programs are really a "natural fit" with the high expectations of new rhetoric compositionists.

When English As A Second Language Students Meet Text-Responsible Writing, Miso Jung

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis follows two international freshman students in an English composition class at California State University, San Bernardino. The results indicate that the students generally experienced feeling challenged and overwhelmed about the unfamiliar topic, but detailed assignment guidelines played a key role for students to progress in understanding the assignment.

From 9/11 To Iraq: Analysis And Critique Of The Rhetoric Of The Bush Administration Leading To The War In Iraq, Lakesha Nicole Covington

Theses Digitization Project

The project investigated the events that led the United States from September 11, 2001 to the current war in Iraq. The specific time frame examined was the period beginning on September 11, 2001 and ending with the first pre-emptive attacks in Iraq on March 19, 2003.

A Metaphoric Cluster Analysis Of The Rhetoric Of Digital Technology, Michael Eugene Marse, Nicholas Negroponte

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis seeks to identify and explain some technology in order to more fully understand modern communication. This study makes use of metaphoric cluster analysis to examine the technological rhetoric of Nicholas Negroponte.

Negotiating "Post" Era Writing Pedagogies, Hannah Sloan Holbrook

Theses Digitization Project

This study examines how post-process theories are being defined, negotiated, and enacted in composition classrooms. While recognizing that most composition instruction remains shaped by modern and process oriented theories, this research asks how post-process considerations might be currently informing teaching practices in some classrooms.

First Time Up: An Insider's Guide For New Composition Teachers, Brock Dethier

All USU Press Publications

First time up?—an insider's friendly question from 1960s counter-culture—perfectly captures the spirit of this book. A short, supportive, practical guide for the first-time college composition instructor, the book is upbeat, wise but friendly, casual but knowledgeable (like the voice that may have introduced you to certain other firsts). With an experiential focus rather than a theoretical one, First Time Up will be a strong addition to the newcomer's professional library, and a great candidate for the TA practicum reading list. Dethier, author of The Composition Instructor's Survival Guide and From Dylan to Donne, directly addresses the common headaches, nightmares, and …

On Location: Theory And Practice In Classroom-Based Writing Tutoring, Candace Spigelman, Laurie Grobman

All USU Press Publications

Classroom-based writing tutoring is a distinct form of writing support, a hybrid instructional method that engages multiple voices and texts within the college classroom. Tutors work on location in the thick of writing instruction and writing activity. On Location is the first volume to discuss this emerging practice in a methodical way. The essays in this collection integrate theory and practice to highlight the alliances and connections on-location tutoring offers while suggesting strategies for resolving its conflicts. Contributors examine classroom-based tutoring programs located in composition courses as well as in writing intensive courses across the disciplines. While earlier scholarship has …

Movie In Search Of America: The Rhetoric Of Myth In Easy Rider, Hayley Susan Raynes

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis is a rhetorical analysis of the movie Easy Rider. It explores how auteurs Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern's use of road, regional, and cowboy mythology creates a text that simultaneously exposes and is dominated by the ironies inherent in American culture and breathes new life into the cowboy myth, reaffirming the cowboy's place as one of America's most enduring cultural icons.

Electronic Dictionaries In The Esl Composition Class, Rebecca Lynn Rudd

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis examines the use of electronic dictionaries by ESL students. In particular, it considers how, when and why students use electronic dictionaries in their writing processes. It also explores the extent to which students use words found in an electronic dictionary appropriately in their texts and whether electronic dictionary use influences their long-term acquisition of vocabulary.

James Stevens, James H. Maguire

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

By 1930, James Stevens had gained a national reputation as one of the Northwest’s most promising and outspoken young writers. Seventy-five years later, he has slipped so far into obscurity that relatively few people know of his contributions not only to Northwest writing but also to American literature in general and to the literature of the American West in particular. His tall tales made Paul Bunyan one of the great heroes of American popular culture. The controversial literary manifesto he co-authored with Oregon author H. L. Davis led to a new era in the history of the Northwest’s literature. And …

"I Knew There Was Something Wrong With That Paper": Scientific Rhetorical Styles And Scientific Misunderstandings, Carol Reeves

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

This selection unpacks scientific prose and claim substantiation for Nobel Prize winner, Stan Prusiner, in the transmissible spongiform encephlopathies field (i.e., mad cow disease). Applying linguistic strategies such as M. A. K. Halliday's "favorite clause type," the author examines argumentative strategies in dense scientific prose both in bold and cautious rhetorical styles and invented lexical changes in new scientific development.