Teaching of Writing

This dissertation project examines patterns of stance in essays written by high- and low-performing students in two upper-level undergraduate courses, one in political theory and the other in economics. It employs methods of linguistic discourse analysis, drawing largely on Appraisal Theory (a subset of Systemic Functional Linguistics), in combination with methods from corpus linguistics and theoretical insights from rhetorical genre studies. It examines how recurring patterns of stance in students' essays correspond to the goals and assessment criteria for writing in the courses, as revealed through interviews with the instructors and analysis of selected course material. Through this robust set of analytic approaches, the study aims to make explicit patterns of stance in student writing that correlate with high- and low-graded essays and with the disciplinary contexts. The broader aim is to render explicit patterns of interpersonal meanings constructed in students' texts that construe such abstract qualities as critical reasoning, complexity and nuance in argumentation, and control of the discourse—features identified by the instructors as valued in student writing. The study contributes to the field of composition and rhetoric by pinpointing discursive resources that enable some student writers to construct more discipline-congruent styles of argumentation than others. Specific findings show that, while the two essay assignments require different ways of using language to construct valued stances, the high-performing writers in both contexts more consistently construct a "novice academic" stance while the low-performing writers more consistently construct a "student" stance. The former is marked by the rhetorical qualities of contrastiveness, dialogic control, critical distance, and discoursal alignment, or assimilation of the disciplinary discourse. In contrast, the “student” stance is marked by frequent personalizing moves, repeated references to the classroom discourse, and comparatively infrequent use of discursive resources that construe the rhetorical qualities listed above. These findings have implications for instruction in writing in the disciplines (WID) contexts, specifically in terms of how instructors can refine their metalanguage about writing for discussing stance with students explicitly and in detail.

The complexity of pedagogical actions for initial
education teachers is not reduced to directing and giving guidelines from a pedestal; it is part of the class, it
requires a lot of tact and preparation. Every time, the
effort is greater to innovate and generate stimulating
and productive learning processes, however; at the
same time, the expectations of parents and society are
very high. Situation that calls for transforming pedagogical practices and responding to the social and learning
needs of children. The objectives of the study are: a) to
describe the beliefs of educators and parents regarding
the initiation of early literacy in children of 05 years of
age; and b) establish to what extent the family involvement model through the performance of fine motor
activities from home, favors the learning of graphomotor skills. The methodology used corresponds to the
mixed approach, descriptive-explanatory in scope. The
results show not only the impact of the family involvement model, based on the incorporation and exchange
of experiences and knowledge between classroom
teachers and parents, in the learning of early literacy;
Rather, they highlight that taking into account the beliefs
of teachers and parents are decisive to transform and
change the trajectory of the everyday and usual in the
educational culture.

With respect to the writing process in particular, a now well-established body of research demonstrates that process-oriented writing instruction benefits student achievement in writing. Process-oriented terms and concepts have entered the material environment of America's schools, in ...

In this course, students are introduced to the field of Writing Studies, in which we treat writing across genres and academic fields as objects in themselves. Students will become familiar with genre analysis, rhetorical analysis, academic research methodologies, and argumentation.

The methodological principle of "symmetry" has been developed within Science Studies, and powerfully taken up within recent research of the public understanding of science. In this chapter I argue its value for researchers within New Literacy Studies (NLS) who are interested in drawing insight from marginalised literacy practices and unsuccessful student and employee writing.

Symmetry is an issue of the repertoires of explanation that the researcher draws on (and fails to draw on) in their research. In the context of researching literacy and student writing, it is an issue of whether we draw on say, psychological or social, single or multiple, universal or contingent repertoires of explanation when trying to understand and to explain literacy practices, and the successful and unsuccessful writing of our students.

While this focus may seem rather abstract, the notion of symmetry actually offers a very practical guide in the process of research and analysis, as well as a tool for reflexivity and critique in such research. It offers a powerful means of explaining the strength of the kind of research advocated by NLS, and a potential clarification of what it means in NLS to "relativise literacy practices at an analytic level" (Brian V. Street 1996: 5). Significantly, if offers a further challenge to the pervasive deficit accounts of public literacy and student writing within popular and political discourse, and even within much research.

The teaching of writing has been widely studied by several authors interested in understanding the theoretical concepts that guide the pedagogical practices of teachers of mother tongue in class production.Thus, practices that conceive the production of text as a product (and not as a process that requires different steps) are unveiled from the research carried out by different authors around the country. The work presented here in is part of the role of these surveys, from the moment that looks at in order to understand the perspective of traditional dictates production of text that often prevails in most classes of production as well as understand the

Raento, Pauliina (2013). Keskustelu: Ennakkoluuloton yhteistyö, riskinotto ja koulutus parantaisivat oppikirjatilannetta [Discussion: Open-minded collaboration, risk taking, and training would improve textbooks]. Tieteessä tapahtuu 31: 6, 45–46.