ENGL431fosen

I have found this article in the online library of our university, so you will have to sign in to view it. Generally I am interested in the concept of "identity" in education and the phrase "authorial identity" definitely caught my attention and I wasn't sure what it exactly meant. The authors of the article define it as "the sense a writer has of themselves as an author and the textual identity they construct in their writing". In order to explore psychology students' authorial identity in academic writing they have done two different studies and reached a common conclusion for both of them - "both studies could inform interventions to reduce unintentional plagiarism by improving students' authorial identity". It would be interesting to carry out similar research projects in departments other than psychology, e.g. science or humanities, and compare the results.

This is an article that looks at a Chinese immigrant teenager who uses online text based communication in English with a transnational group of peers. The study specifically focuses on the effects of the use of English online in regards to the individual's self-identity. The article discusses how the globalized online community shapes literacy and cultural belonging. The article explains the benefits of online literacy in a foreign language to strengthen ones ability and understanding on the L2 language. The online format also allows L2 learners a less intimidating forum to practice their L2 skills.

I posted an article earlier about WebQuest, but this article goes more in depth about what WebQuest is and how a web-based teaching method can promote learning. Not only do students work by themselves but sometimes they collaborate in groups, WebQuest also provides a fun way to get students involved and thinking. What I really liked about this article is that towards the end the authors also address the challenges in having a web-based method of teaching. This article is really well thought out and covers a lot of ground in good detail.

This is something of a partner to my other posting. Jane Mcgoningal, the author of the text analyzes gaming from chess to Call of Duty and looks at what keeps us playing. She also analyzes what can only be called a crisis of interest. People who play games rarely invest themselves in their real life as much as they do their virtual life and Mcgonigal tries to explore how to efficiently channel this focus to worldwide issues.

This article explores the reflective attitudes of college students concerning high school. College students are asked to reflect on whether their high school experience helped or hindered them. It also interviews teachers in high school and college to survey how each educator felt about their students and whether or not adequate methods were/had been empolyed to prepare them for college.

This article by Laurie Grobman (also author of one of this week's article assignments from the course packet) describes the ways in which undergraduate participation in research and research publication contributes to increased authority and sense of authorship in undergraduate students. This authorship puts the students in discourse with their education and beyond, creating a purpose and identification with their course of study rather than making them passive receivers of it. This benefits their confidence and command of composition as well as putting them in the "driver seat", so to speak, of their participation in academia, and levels the playing field of student and "real" writing, erasing old and disadvantaging dichotomies.

This study addresses the levels of writing that are done in high school to prepare for college writing courses. This study assesses whether or not these activities of writing are adequate in prepping students for college. The questions asked are: What types of writing do high school teachers assign? Do high school teachers apply evidence-based writing practices? What adaptations do high school teachers make for struggling writers? What writing assessment practices do high school teachers apply? Are high school teachers prepared to teach writing? Do high school teachers believe that writing is important beyond high school? Do high school teachers believe students possess and will acquire needed writing skills?

This article focused on how student-teacher relationships play a part in the students' development. They particularly focused on what part alienation played in students' academic achievement and in their level of disciplinary problems. It also focused on how these relationships varied between different school settings and among varying racial-ethnic groups.

This article focuses on the effects student-teacher relationships have on students' academic functioning and their level of disciplinary problems. It combines research from previous studies and combines first-hand research to develop an understanding of the differences between disruptive and non-disruptive students. They put a strong emphasis on how the research is conducted because the researched that they gathered was largely based on questionnaires and they proposed that interviews, or Teacher Relationship Interviews (TRI), could provide much more extensive and useful knowledge of the true interactions among teachers and students.

This article discusses the different types and the effectiveness of Credit Based Transition Programs or CBTPs. CBTPs are programs that allow high school students to take college level courses and earn college credit. Some of the programs even help the students apply and transition into college life. CBTPs are very widespread and common because in the "2002-2003 school year, 71% of public high schools reported students took courses for dual credit". The debate now, which the article focuses on, is whether or not to make CBTPs more accessible to middle and low achieving high schools. Since these programs have proved to be very beneficial and highly used, policy makers are currently discussing how to implement them in the majority of public high schools. Implementing CBTPs programs in middle and low achieving high schools would give more students the opportunity to go to and succeed in college.

This article by Donald Reitzes and Peter Burke reflects a sociological study into college students' perceptions of their college role in relation to their self-concept and identity. It is suggested that for these students their role performance is heavily affected by how well this role is integrated into their identity as a college student, and that students that have a greater sense of identification with their college student status will perform this student role and its accompanying responsibilities better than those who deviate from the student role identity - that is, those who identify more strongly with counter-roles. While this doesn't directly address composition proficiency and mastery, the basic theoretical approach would seem to follow that those students who are encouraged to incorproate their role as writers into their student and general identities would perform this role better and with more zeal than those who feel that this role is a performance unrelated to their fundamental identity.

This article discusses a program used by Kent State University to help high school students transition to college through an initiative that introduces the students to collegiate level academic libraries while they are still in high school. This program was started in an attempt to help college freshman succeed and to increase the retention rate at the university. In the program, high school seniors take field trips to the Kent State Library and are introduced to higher levels of research and the workings of a collegiate library. There are also online resources that are available to those outside of the immediate Kent State University area. The initial results of this program have been very positive and students have been succeeding at a higher rate. The librarians believe that college freshmen can be overwhelmed with everything a college library has to offer them and may be hesitant to ask questions, so they simply give up instead. But if they are introduced to the system when they are still in high school and excited about everything college has to offer, they are more likely to succeed when they finally reach the college level.

This article examines the importance of student authority plays in ethnographic writing. The article explores how examining ethnographic writings of students can play an important role in shaping future learning methods in the specific field. The article demonstate how promoting authority in writing helps a student become more actively involved in their field of study. Demanding authority helps student piece together information and concepts coming from their beginning anthropology courses. What more, the students grew in their writing as they were given explicit instruction on how to write in a voice that addressed their specific field.

"The Shadow Scholar" article exposes a fascinating hidden industry, which seems to be doing very well. The man who was interviewed for the article (his identity has been kept secret) has literally written thousands of papers for students whose writing ability is not up to standards of basic college requirements. The industry is thriving and the unknown individual will make roughly 66,000 this year. In fact, the standard price for these types of assignments is $2000. What I found amazing is that there seems to be three groups who seek this type of service successfully: "The English-as-second language, the deficient student, and the lazy rick kid". The article brings the idea of: what allows the final two types of students to slip through the cracks of the college education system and become so desperate for help? How can we, as part of a college community, and others change this problem so students do not have to go to this extreme? A perfect example of this problem was the shocking and slightly sickening ending comment of the article. After the ghost writer completed a 160-page graduate thesis on business ethics (which is a bit ironic), the graduate student sent an email stating "thanx so much for uhelp ican going to graduate to now."

This article addresses the importance of the student perspective in shaping and changing the educational structure of the classroom. Though this article does no explicitly address writing,it can be assumed writing is a manner in which we gain insight into the student perspective. The article examines various pedagogical perspectives in which authorization of the students perspective could best develop. The author address the traditional student-teacher relationship as that of a power relationship.However, in these power relationships there is no place for listening, because to truly listen warrant a response to what is being heard. All to often, the classroom is not a forum for open dialogue, therefore there is really very little listening going on. The student can become lost in this environment without a voice, diminish any authority that would make him/her an better writer.

This article reviews how college freshmen's self-perception influences their transition into college life and their academic success. This relates to my research question because I am curious about how freshman transition from a typical high school mindset to a successful college lifestyle. The article discusses the many different factors that influence college freshmen's self-perception and reviews the data that has previously been found on this topic. Then the authors explain how they completed their study and discuss their findings. In the introduction of this article, the authors explain that one of the largest factors for academic success and a positive transition was a freshman's reasons for attending college. If a student had long-term goals and felt that their university was going to be a positive aspect of their life then they were more likely to be successful. I thought that this was interesting because I'm not sure how many of the freshmen in my Engl 30 section have this type of mindset. In the discussion section, the authors review their findings that students' perception of their intellectual ability and ability to make friends was a major influence on their success. Students who have a positive perception of their intellectual ability are more likely to be successful academically and socially. This was interesting to me because some of the students in Engl 30 might question their intellectual ability since their test scores were low. Lastly, the authors mention that students' perception of instructors and/or mentors as sources of support was a positive factor towards a successful transition. This made me think that maybe my Engl 30 students do not see myself and the mentor as sources of support because they are struggling in class, but if we could change that than maybe they would do better and be more successful.

Author Jane E. Hindman uses her "personal" writing, through her identity as an alcoholic, a feminist, and a professor of rhetoric, to illustrate how to make writing matter, and to argue for personal writing (which she also refers to as "embodied rhetoric") as a means to "illuminate the theory and practice of teaching composition" (92). She examines how the process of personal writing can evolve into academic writing, that the two are not mutually exclusive. For those who were fascinated by the Lave and Wenger account of Nondrinking Alcoholics as a form of apprenticeship, this may be an interesting read, as she explores the concepts of personal identity and social discourse practices through her experiences with Alcoholics Anonymous.

Unfortunately, I got this article from the library's research portal, so you will have to log in to view it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Investigating the Role of Identity in Writing Using Electronic Bulletin Boards Valia Spiliotopoulos & Stephen Carey This paper details the findings of a study on the effectiveness of using online bulletin boards, in this case WebCT, in a university writing class for ESL students. The study finds that the asynchronous nature of posting online allows students to participate more fully and in ways which may not be possible in traditional class interaction. The authors also argue that the process of forming an online community of English language learners affords the students the opportunity to develop a greater sense of identity as an English speaker and as part of a community of English speakers.

For me, it started with some initial ideas from David Orr's book Ecological Literacy, and along with it the argument in his other book Earth in Mind: that all education is environmental education, and the purpose thereof is to increase ecological literacy. What this article sets out to do is to provide a more general understanding of what ecological literacy is (a blend between ecological thinking and environmental literacy). Learning appears in a fusion between three big learning domains: behavioural, affective and cognitive learning, and such a learner is called an authentic learner. An authentic learner is one who "can not only identify relevant dilemmas but also appreciate how their understanding of a scientific concept can influence their decision. The difficult fulfilment of students who face today's education is the highly fragmented status of disciplinary studies (the so-called academia). Ecological literacy sets out not only to introduce students to ecological concepts, but to push them so far as to recognise their place within the current ecosystem. Ecological Misconception Ecology is a strictly inter-disciplinary field of study, which draws concepts from Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Geology. Misconception appears when there is a misconnection between the seemingly holistic view of the general concepts, or a failure to express the necessary link between related concepts. Where does writing come in? Writing, according to the authors, is a reflective process. Students are first introduced to the concepts relevant to an ecological discussion. They are then asked to write three iteration essays to demonstrate their understanding along with their ability to make connections within the given concepts. Since it is important that students go through an extensive study just to recognise their place within the current ecosystem, personal reflection through writing is an essential tool not only to "show", but to connect, and make connections (writing discou

This article was written by Lawrence Musgrove, an associate professor of English and foreign language at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, Illinois. In the article he talks about a lot of the same problems that we have been touching on in class with concerns to first year English composition classes. After a quick discussion of the issues with English composition, he goes into his proposal for a solution. He first conjured up a metaphor between writing and driving. Bad driving has very concrete consequences, and Musgrove thinks that writing should, too. His proposal is centered on professors issuing students "writing tickets" that can be cleared up by attending workshops, seminars, revising their paper, or any other writing task their professor deems sufficient. While reading the responses posted after his article, I noticed that his ideas drew attention from all sorts of different people. People from all different professions and backgrounds (high school students, business men, elementary teachers, etc) had a variety of things to say. Some people loved his idea, and others heavily disputed it. I found that the responses generated were as resourceful as the article itself.