The purpose of this qualitative comparative case study is to explore the impact of teaching developmental writing through the lens of the ideological model of literacy (Street, 2003) with a new literacies stance (Bailey, 2012). The research compared the engagement levels of students who were given writing instructions through the lens of the…

This dissertation builds from previous studies of social annotation in first-year composition to link social practice theories of literacy with technologically mediated social annotation practices. Using a design-based research framework, I consider how recent developments in social annotation tools allow instructors and students to share the…

"Materiality and Writing Studies: Aligning Labor, Scholarship, and Teaching" takes an expansive look at the discipline of writing studies, arguing for the centering of the field's research and service on first-year writing, particularly the "new majority" of college students (who are more diverse than ever before) and those who…

The purpose of this study was to measure to what extent an experimental method of teaching argument incorporating elements from both Toulmin's (2004) structural approach and Walton's (2013) dialectical approach effects first-year college students' ability to write strong arguments. This experimental instruction used critical questioning as a…

Prior studies conducted on college students' perceptions of their academic control have demonstrated that academic attributions are malleable and that low levels of perceived control leading to academic failure can be mitigated by employing an Attributional Retraining (AR) intervention designed to modify maladaptive attributions. This study…

This quantitative, quasi-experimental study aimed to propose research-based AI constructivist learning activities by measuring students' self-perceptions of their critical thinking using the Motivational Strategies and Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). The study utilized the input-experience-output framework to evaluate how these learning pursuits…

Student writers labeled "underprepared" by colleges often have trouble imagining themselves as scholars. Challenges these students routinely encounter include difficulty forming original insights and translating ideas to the page. Although the usage of the term "underprepared" varies across institutional contexts, the…

Combating the spread of misinformation is a struggle that has inspired considerable research in the fields of psychology, education, political science, and information science, among others. Such research has found that "prebunking" or "inoculation" techniques--strategies that reduce the acceptance of misinformation before one…

This dissertation explored how effectively first-year writing (FYW) evaluated and selected sources for their researched writing assignments. Though students were taught how to access sources from the library and offered sources on the course management system, most often they obtained sources via the open internet. As mis- and disinformation…

Feminist pedagogy is a teaching practice, philosophy and process that seeks to confront and deconstruct oppressive power structures both within and outside of the classroom using a gendered lens. As Women's Studies departments continue to grow in many universities, feminist pedagogy seems to be gaining popularity as an approach to engaging…

Choosing relevant vocabulary to teach in ESL composition courses can be a difficult task for instructors. They often rely on intuition rather than empirical methods for vocabulary selection. This paper presents two case studies where corpora were used either to select vocabulary items for instruction or to scaffold student learning of vocabulary…

This study aims to examine the relationship between the productive knowledge of some lexical and phraseological indices and the quality of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' writing. A sample of 120 expository essays, written by semesters 1 and 5 university students in a less proficient EFL context, are rated by human evaluators and…

The ability to read and compose original scientific literature is critical to educating informed citizens, yet may be severely lacking in undergraduate curricula. We developed a linked course offering in fall 2017 consisting of a 16-student group taking an introductory biology course paired with a first-year composition course. The composition…

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the Academic Literacy (ACLT) course at the University of Kelaniya, aiming to identify areas for improvement and provide evidence-based recommendations. The study employs a mixed-method approach, utilizing questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to gather data from both undergraduate students…

One of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the world of education is the implementation of online learning. Almost all teaching/learning activities must be changed and adjusted with the virtual classes. One among other activities commonly done in an English language education program is group work or collaborative work between or among…