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The right to write: novice English teachers write to explore their identities in a writing community
Making Use of Massinger seeks to provide a framework by which educators can facilitate more meaningful discussion about premodern and early modern texts including playwrights like Shakespeare and Phillip Massinger. Establishing modes of engaging with literature (and thus the uses of literature) from the scholarship of Dr. Rita Felski and Dr. Ayanna Thompson, this project analyzes a study conducted by Haley Rominger on ASU undergraduate students on their reactions to Phillip Massinger's play "The Roman Actor". Ultimately this study showed that a deeper dialogue was attained in discussing topics that had modern implications such as race, gender, and power dynamics.
Writing is an important lifelong skill. Most college freshmen are required to take first-year composition (FYC) to meet the needs of writing across disciplines. Yet, a great number of students enter college unprepared. To combat this, the writing process should be practiced as part of a solid writing program. The Common Core State Standards, the “WPA Outcomes for First-Year Composition,” and the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Education address the use of the writing process as a lifelong skill. Using Emig’s (1971) work on the composing process and Flower and Hayes’ (1981) cognitive process theory as a theoretical framework, this study seeks to define the components of the writing process and how these evolve for students in an online FYC course.
A qualitative, descriptive case study approach was used to explore qualitative documents. These documents were coded according to themes gleaned from the writing process literature. These emerging themes: invention work, multiple draft production, and the collaborative and social aspects of writing were used throughout the process-based curriculum. Participants made changes to their general writing process by conducting more invention work than they had before and finding the practice worthwhile, by producing more drafts than they had on previous writing projects, and by reflecting more about what the collaborative and social aspects of writing mean to them. The online FYC course curriculum gave students the tools to build and shape their existing writing practices, or as one participant wrote, “I wasn’t reinventing the wheel, just operating the tools.”