Group items tagged

Grand Valley State University's Self-Study Format. Self Study Format The University Assessment Committee, in consultation with the Dean's Council and the Provost, have identified the following attachments as the format for the GVSU Program Self-Study. This document is intended as an opportunity for a unit to examine its Strategic Plan as well as identify and evaluate its progresses, successes, and areas of concern.

This study examined the perspectives of both tutors at university writing centers and the Non-Native English Speaking (NNES) students who use the centers. Using qualitative methods, this study looked at perceptions of the academic writing needs of the NNES students, along with characteristics of tutoring sessions which made the sessions successful in the eyes of tutors and students. The study used interviews, observations, a survey, and artifacts to look at these topics and then compared the perceptions of tutors and students. Additionally, the study compared writing centers at two universities, one of which employs an ESL specialist, in order to learn if employing this specialist affects success for the tutors and NNES students. Results indicate that student and tutor perceptions of student needs were similar in that they expressed consistent need for grammar assistance and help with low-order concerns (LOCs). Sessions at both universities were successful, according to tutors and students, if sessions focused on these grammar and LOC needs. Employing an ESL specialist did not affect the perceptions of students or tutors nor did it seem to effect the success of sessions for either students or tutors.

"As student populations in colleges and universities continue to diversify, composition programs do not always meet students' varying needs. English as a Second Language (ESL) students appear to fail mainstream writing courses at higher rates than their traditional counterparts, yet mainstreaming continues to be mandated, often due to budgetary constraints. Many programs offer multicultural writing courses, but these, too, are often ineffective for many students. Meanwhile, as Paul Kei Matsuda shows, there is a decided split between the disciplines of composition and ESL. Since ESL scholars have a much stronger history of working with diverse student populations than composition scholars do, this study aims to look to ESL scholarship, specifically to contrastive rhetoric, to explore more effective methods of teaching writing to students with varying needs. This case study takes an in-depth look at one student's journey writing across cultures. Ming, a Chinese immigrant who has been in the United States for approximately ten years, is a junior at the University of Rhode Island who struggles with writing. Over the course of one semester, three of her projects were studied in depth. Data include transcripts of audiotaped tutorial sessions in the URI Writing Center, Ming's assignments and papers, and the researcher's notes from interviews with Ming following the tutorial sessions. ^ The new contrastive rhetoric (Connor, Kaplan, Purves) insists that external factors such as culture, education, and media influence the rhetorical patterns writers use. Through a lens of contrastive rhetoric, it becomes clear that most of Ming's difficulties when writing stem from a lack of familiarity with the conventions of U.S. academic discourse or of what her reader expects from her text. The source of much of this is cultural. While Ming's experiences are not generalizable, an in-depth look at her experiences foregrounds some of the issues that contrastive rhetoric addresses, making th

"Post-secondary writing centers have struggled to produce substantial, credible, and sustainable evidence of their impact in the educational environment. The objective of this study was to develop a college-level writing self-efficacy scale that can be used across repeated sessions in a writing center, as self-efficacy has been identified as an important construct underlying successful writing and cognitive development. A 20-item instrument (PSWSES) was developed to evaluate writerly self-efficacy. 505 university students participated in the study. Results indicate that the PSWSES has high internal consistency and reliability across items and construct validity, which was supported through a correlation between tutor perceptions of client writerly self-efficacy and client self-ratings. Factor analysis revealed three factors: local and global writing process knowledge, physical reaction, and time/effort. Additionally, across repeated sessions, the clients' PSWSES scores appropriately showed an increase in overall writerly self-efficacy. Ultimately, this study offers a new paradigm for conceptualizing the daily work in which writing centers engage, and the PSWSES offers writing centers a meaningful quantitative program assessment avenue by (1) redirecting focus from actual competence indicators to perceived competence development and (2) allowing for replication, causality, and sustainability for program improvement. "

This article presents three case studies that closely examine various types of inter-actions taking place in writing center tutorials involving newly arrived pre-ma-triculated ESL writers. By learning what strategies tutors commonly use and how successfully the ESL writers negotiate their goals for the visit and the form and meaning of their text through this sample, this study aims to help identify what characterizes successful tutorials and what unique challenges English language learners might face when interacting with tutors. Results from these case studies show that it is not how many corrections tutors make or suggest for the students' papers, but how much the tutors engage their tutees in a meaningful dialogue that brings satisfaction to the ESL students. Findings also suggest that deliber-ate efforts should be made to equip ESL writers with necessary metalanguage to communicate their goals for their visit.

Archives ToC by issue, 1986-present

This link goes to an archive of volumes and history of Composition Studies, back to 1986.

Journal of Creative Writing Studies is a publication of Creative Writing Studies Organization (CWSO), which also hosts the annual Creative Writing Studies Conference . See the conference homepage to view its CFP for the 2016 conference. If you would like to become a member of CWSO, please consider backing our crowd funding campaign.

The present study aims to investigate the extent to which L2 learners' individual differences (field dependency and writing motivation) predict their retention of a teacher's written corrective feedback (CF) in the short and in the long run. Using Ellis's (2010) theoretical framework, the study examines the issue from cognitive and affective perspectives. Data was collected from 127 intermediate-level university students through written essays, a field-dependence/independence (FDI) questionnaire, and a writing motivation questionnaire, which were analyzed through t test, ANOVA, and multiple regression. The results reveal that there is a strong relationship between field independence (FI) style and the students' successful short-term and long-term retention of corrections in the subsequent writings. Writing motivation, however, influences the short-term retention of CF only.

"Unnecessary Hangups" (in praise of using machine-based self-instruction or guided self-study tools when budgets don't allow for large tutoring staffs); report from a new WC; "Three Sources for Writing Lab Tutors" (on using funding from Veteran Affairs to provide services for veterans on the G.I. Bill); "Usage Study at BYU" (on identifying effective instructional materials); mailing list

A proposed self-study questionnaire for writing center accreditation, by Dennis Paoli, Marcia Silver, and Jo Koster, in 1977, submitted to the National Writing Centers Association.

"The Journal of Writing Research (JoWR) is an international peer reviewed journal that publishes high quality theoretical, empirical, and review papers covering the broad spectrum of writing research. The mandate of the Journal of Writing Research is: to publish excellent and innovative writing research drawn from a range of academic disciplines (e.g. psychology, linguistics, pedagogy, design studies, communication studies, information and communication technology, learning and teaching) to stimulate interdisciplinary writing research to be fully international to apply high academic standards, including double blind peer review to share knowledge through open access "

From Neal Lerner's July 2011 message to WCenter: Folks, the latest issue (July 2011) of the Journal of Writing Research includes a very impressive study by James Williams and Seiji Takaku of the relationship between college students' self-efficacy, help-seeking behaviors, writing center visits, and writing performance. Here's a link to a pdf of the study: http://www.jowr.org/articles/vol3_1/JoWR_2011_vol3_nr1_Williams_Takaku.pdf Here's a snippet to take to your dean: "The analysis showed that those students who frequently obtained writing center tutoring received higher grades in composition than those who did not, regardless of their ESL or native-English-speaker status. The frequency of writing center tutoring seemed to be especially valuable for the ESL students, who outperform their domestic cohorts, receiving significantly higher grades in composition."

Longitudinal Studies of Writing Development

resources related to self-study or self-assessment

a discussion of resources on women and rhetoric/composition

When the time comes, register as a member of the organization and attend the conference. Perhaps you may wish to run for office or participate in elections. While many scholars have been expressing the need for more recognition for creative writing studies for some time, the field is still young and the organization is brand new.

Launched in March 2013, the National Census of Writing seeks to provide a data-based landscape of writing instruction at two- and four-year public and not-for-profit institutions of higher education in the United States. Despite numerous calls for empirical data to ground the design and administration of writing programs and writing centers, this is the first comprehensive study of its kind and covers the following sections:  * Sites of writing * First-year writing/English composition * Identifying and supporting diversely-prepared students * Writing across the curriculum (WAC) and writing beyond the first year * The undergraduate and graduate writing major and minor * Writing centers * Administrative structures * Demographics of respondents

"Launched in March 2013, the National Census of Writing seeks to provide a data-based landscape of writing instruction at two- and four-year public and not-for-profit institutions of higher education in the United States. Despite numerous calls for empirical data to ground the design and administration of writing programs and writing centers, this is the first comprehensive study of its kind and covers the following sections: Sites of writing First-year writing/English composition Identifying and supporting diversely-prepared students Writing across the curriculum (WAC) and writing beyond the first year The undergraduate and graduate writing major and minor Writing centers Administrative structures Demographics of respondents With data from 900 institutions, the National Census of Writing will help educators and administrators across the country to better understand the variety of ways in which writing instruction is delivered in the twenty-first century. The research team has made the processed data available through this open-access database, which allows individuals to gather national data on pressing local questions. The database is searchable by type of institution, institutional size, geographical location, and, when we have consent, by the name of the institution."

The Consortium on Graduate Communication is an independent community of educators who provide professional development in academic written and oral communication to (post-)graduate students before and during their master's and doctoral degrees. The purpose of the CGC is to create online and face-to-face opportunities to discuss and share resources, ideas, research, and program models for this vital segment of international higher education. CGC members are interested in ESL/multilingual students as well as those studying in their first languages, and both written and oral communication.

A variety of writing resources, both print and video links, provided by Keuka College's Accelerated Studies for Adults (ASAP) program.

E. Marin Smith is a graduate student in the Department of English at California State Polytechnic University San Luis Obispo. Her interest in Eastern religious philosophy began while she was teaching English in Kathmandu, Nepal where she studied Hinduism, and later while teaching in Japan and studying Zen Buddhism.