EdD, University of Cincinnati, 2003, Education : Literacy

The present case study investigated students' perceptions of factors affecting their acquisition of a second language. The purpose of the study was to better understand Japanese women's cultural and identity issues in second language writing opportunities and how such issues may impact the student as a second language writer. The results indicated that: 1) the students experienced identity and cultural conflicts. The first language identity is threatened, the new second language identity feels strange, and issues of group identity and individual identity exist; 2) as second language writers, the students experienced problems in conflicts with protecting the first language self; 3) the students experienced conflicts between language one and language two's (English) cultural writing norms; 4) certain classroom tasks presented conflicts to the English as a second language student and educators in the field need to be aware of the nature of the conflicts students face.

Committee: Dr. Mary Benedetti (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, EDU Teaching and Learning

Second language (L2) writing research has shed light on the important question of whether instructors' feedback (written and/or oral) is beneficial for students' writing (Conrad & Goldstein, 1999; Bitchener, 2008; Ferris, 2006; Truscott, 2007), and yet there are still debates about the efficacy of teacher feedback. One of the reasons why this continues to be a subject of debate is how feedback has been investigated. The research has generally been quantitative in nature and has looked at outcomes (in the form of student writing) as well as teacher practices in terms of the types of feedback they actually provide. What has been missing is qualitative research that looks at feedback dynamics through the eyes of students, especially with regard to how they actually transfer, or attempt to transfer, teacher input to their writing. To address this gap, this qualitative case study explored L2 students' actual feedback experiences through the lens of transfer. The participants for this study were four L2 (second language) graduate students from China enrolled in an academic writing course. The triangulated data source included class observations, field-notes, interviews, questionnaires, self-writing reports, and the actual written products of the participants. Working with such notions as scaffolded feedback (e.g., Donato, 2000; Odo & Yi, 2014; Rassaei, 2014; Weissberg, 2006; Williams, 2002) and situated transfer (e.g., Anson, 2016; Berkenkotter and Huckin, 1993; Rounsaville, 2012; Wardle, 2009) from a socio-cognitive perspective, the foci of the study were: (1) to examine how the L2 students responded to and transferred the teacher's grammar and content feedback; (2) to investigate whether a `transfer climate' emerged as the students moved across the three major writing tasks in the writing course; (3) to determine whether a transfer perspective is useful in understanding the feedback dynamics that place in academic writing courses, and (4) to see whether the transfe (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Advisor) Subjects: English As A Second Language; Literacy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, EDU Teaching and Learning

The present study attempted to examine the general trends and details of English majoring Korean EFL college students' L2 academic writing anxiety and self-efficacy and to explore potential sources of their L2 academic writing anxiety and self-efficacy. Although affective aspects in second language acquisition (SLA) have been extensively studied over time, the majority of study has focused exclusively on the negative psychological aspects (e.g., language anxiety). On the other hand, self-efficacy has been considerably explored in the field of educational psychology to discuss the relationships between self-efficacy and academic performance. In the L2 context, however, self-efficacy is a more recent topic of interest, and only a few studies have explored both L2 writing anxiety and self-efficacy. Hence, drawing on Bandura's (1986) social cognitive theoretical framework, both negative and positive psychological dimensions centered around L2 academic writing anxiety and self-efficacy were chosen as the foci of the present study. This study adopted an explanatory sequential mixed methods approach to understanding quantitative results with more in-depth qualitative data (Creswell, 2014). The first quantitative phase of the study derived from a series of statistical analyses of survey data of a total of 174 participants by using two measurement scales, Cheng's (2004) Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI) and Latif's (2015) English Writing Self-Efficacy Scale (EWSS); one independent writing task from the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL); and a background information questionnaire. In the following qualitative phase, there were two sets of qualitative data: one derived from open-ended questionnaire responses from a total of 150 participants and the other from individual semi-structured interviews of 16 participants. For the interviews, based on the survey results, 16 focal participants were selected and divided into 4 groups: (a) high anxiety and l (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela Dr. (Committee Chair); George Newell Dr. (Committee Member); Leslie Moore Dr. (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: Education; Educational Psychology; Foreign Language; Language

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, EDU Teaching and Learning

This longitudinal, qualitative multiple-case study explored four MA students' second language (L2) academic writing anxiety in coursework for a TESOL program. The participants in this study came from China, Uyghur in China, Vietnam, and Mexico. They were culturally and linguistically diverse. Employing a social cognitive theoretical framework (Bandura, 1986) and a complex dynamic approach (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008), this study investigated the many facets of L2 writing anxiety. Viewing writing through the lens of the process writing approach (Flower & Hayes, 1981), this study examined the sources, intensity, and fluctuations of L2 writing anxiety during each phase of writing academic papers as well as at different times during one academic semester. Given the nature of assignments in the TESOL MA program, another lens through which the participants' engagement with writing anxiety was investigated was reading for writing. Major sources of data included semi-structured interviews, participants' responses to anxiety self-evaluation scales, recall protocols, course syllabi, field notes, and writing samples. Findings are reported first through four separate case studies and then through cross-case analysis in response to the study's research questions. At a broader level, the study found that the TESOL MA students' L2 academic writing anxiety was multi-faceted, situation specific, and individually driven. In more specific terms, and with respect to the writing process, the highest level of L2 writing anxiety occurred during the pre-writing stage. As for major anxiety sources, this varied for each individual. For some it was writing topic and task representation, while for others it was new learning context, language use (grammar and vocabulary), or teacher evaluation of their writing. With regard to movement across the semester, anxiety levels were high at the beginning of the semester due to fear of unfamiliar assignments, and then, after a long period of rel (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Advisor); Youngjoo Yi (Committee Member); George Newell (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; English As A Second Language; Foreign Language; Higher Education; Language

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, EDU Teaching and Learning

This study explores L2 (second language) students' experience with the writing tutorial in a university writing center. University writing centers were initiated to provide writing instruction to L1 (first, native language) students and have since developed to enhance their writing ability for academic purposes. With the shift of the concept of literacy in the U.S, the focus of writing instruction in the writing center has moved from focusing on the rules of grammar and punctuation in order to “make better writing”, to a collaborative pedagogy aiming to “make better writers” (North, 1984). However, as international students are increasing in the American university, their concerns for writing in English as L2 writers seem to have some conflict between the writing center's philosophy of writing instruction and the expectation that the international students have to fulfill their own needs to improve their writing ability. This study, in this light, was conducted to gain a better understanding of the work of writing centers with L2 students in terms of how the tutor and the L2 students interact with each other during the tutorial, focusing on issues and elements that inhibit the L2 students from improving their English writing ability. From the perspective of social constructionism, this study is framed by the notion of instruction as a conversational accomplishment, and learning in this view occurs as a social process mediated through interaction. With a particular focus on analyzing the talk and interaction transcribed form videoed tutorials and interviews with tutors and tutees, this study aims to examine the nature of L2 learners' writing practices occurring in the one-to-one writing tutorials with the tutors and to provide a comprehensive vignette of experiences of L2 writers in the writing center. Nine issues that capture the dynamics of the international students' interaction with Writing Center tutors emerged from the analysis of the corpus of data: six origin (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Advisor); Caroline Clark (Committee Member); David Bloome (Committee Member) Subjects: Adult Education; Education; English As A Second Language; Foreign Language; Language; Language Arts; Multicultural Education; Multilingual Education; Rhetoric; School Administration; Teaching

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, EDU Teaching and Learning

In recent years, globalization, migration and mobility, the digital revolution, the predominance of English as the lingua franca, and the prominence of writing and written communication have reshaped the linguistic landscape in many regions worldwide, including the U.S. Hence, nowadays, to be literate in more than two languages is rather a necessity and multilingualism is rather the norm for many people around the globe. Yet, despite the growing body of knowledge in second language (L2) writing research addressing increasingly diverse writing contexts, little is known about multilingual writers; even less is understood about how they construct texts and negotiate meaning as they shift among languages. Hence, the purpose of this dissertation was to examine the nature of multilinguals' writing with respect to language use and language-switching. The participants were second (SL) and foreign language (FL) students at a US university, who were studying a third language (L3) as an FL. They performed three writing tasks in their L2 and L3. The complexity theory approach provided the conceptual framework of the study. Data were collected using a background questionnaire, think-aloud protocols, written texts, logfiles, and interviews. Statistical and qualitative analyses indicate quantitative and qualitative differences between (a) multilinguals' L2 and L3 writing; and (b) SL and FL third language learners' L3 writing. These distinctions are regarding the amount of L1, L2, L3 use, and L-S frequency and direction. Furthermore, the results point to quantitative and qualitative differences between bilinguals' and multilinguals' L2 writing. In addition, it was found that L2 proficiency and L3 development did not seem to have influenced L-S frequency in L3 writing. Moreover, the study identified conditions that seemed to favor monolingual and mixed utterances in multilinguals' composing. Thus, it revealed qualitative differences between multilingual as opposed to bilingual writ (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Committee Chair); Leslie Moore (Committee Member); Wynne Wong (Committee Member) Subjects: Adult Education; Composition; Education; Educational Theory; Foreign Language; Language; Linguistics; Multilingual Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, EDU Teaching and Learning

L2 learners strategically and actively engage in their writing tasks while interacting with various available resources, including their learning goals and histories. The current study examined mediated actions in the writing of college-level Korean as a foreign language (KFL) students and re-conceptualized L2 writing strategies from a socio-cognitive perspective, particularly drawing on Engestrom's (1999) Activity Theory, and the notions of mediation and agency. An important frame of reference was Lei's study (2008) that examined English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' writing strategies from the activity theoretical perspective. That study motivated me to explore similar issues in a different context, the KFL context. This qualitative comparative case study looked at the writing engagement of five KFL students taking an intermediate-level Korean course for an entire academic quarter running 10 weeks. Using various sources of data (e.g., interviews, stimulated recall protocols, process logs, observations, writing autobiography, and students' writing assignments), I categorized mediated strategies into four broad types and thirteen smaller ones: (1) artifact-mediated (the Internet-, native language (L1)-, and target language (L2)-mediated), (2) rule-mediated (self-constructed rules-, good writing criteria-, plagiarism rule-, and time-mediated), (3) community-mediated (native speaker-, prior experience- (foreign language learning, study-abroad, & L1 writing experiences), classroom community-, and imagined community-mediated), and (4) role-mediated (author- and language learner-mediated) strategies. The findings corroborated the claim that L2 writing is a mediated activity occurring from interactions of learners and environment: the learners' interactions with the environmental mediators were themselves an important component of L2 writing processes. Also, the study found that the KFL learners' strategic and agentive selection of the resources was strongly rel (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela PhD (Advisor); Leslie Moore PhD (Committee Member); Chan Park PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Foreign Language

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2010, EDU Teaching and Learning

Most foreign/second language (L2) teachers invest a significant amount of time and effort in responding to student writing by providing written feedback. Despite the considerable number of experimental studies in the field of L2 writing on effectiveness of written feedback, correction of grammar errors in particular, our understanding of the nature of teacher feedback on student writing or on teachers' attitudes toward providing feedback is limited. The descriptive studies which have been undertaken in the field of L2 written feedback predominantly investigated teacher feedback from student perspectives. Therefore, little is known about the perceptions of L2 teachers on written feedback. Since most studies on the topic have been conducted in the English as a second language context, studies conducted in foreign language contexts are rare. Recently, research in the field of L2 writing has increasingly acknowledged the influence of contextual factors on teacher feedback, in turn creating a need for comparative studies on written feedback involving multiple populations with different linguistic/cultural backgrounds in diverse settings to fill a gap in the current research base. This comparative study explored teacher feedback on college L2 student writing from the teacher perspective by investigating the similarities and differences in perceptions of written feedback between teachers of a foreign language (Korean) and teachers of a second language (ESL) in North America. Using an online survey, the study investigated the perceptions of a total of 153 college instructors of ESL and of KFL (Korean as a foreign language) across North America. The 46-item questionnaire inquired about perceived types of written feedback, perceptions of the use of written feedback, perceptions of selected approaches to responding to student writing, and perceived written feedback practices. Descriptive and correlational statistics were used for the data analysis. Major differences between (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Advisor); Chan Park (Committee Member); Larry Miller (Committee Member) Subjects: Education

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2013, Linguistics (Arts and Sciences)

This research study reports on a mixed-methods study about potential learning gains with collaborative writing using web-based word processing software (Google Documents). It seeks to determine whether web-based collaborative writing helps English language learners improve their individual writing scores. Participants were 59 learners in a large Midwestern university in a fundamental writing skills class. The study examines if the experimental group students, after completing four in-class collaborative assignments, achieve better gain scores than the control group, which completed four in-class individual writing assignments. Qualitative data explores teacher and student attitudes towards web-based collaborative writing as well as class observation data. The findings of the study show that learners of the experimental group showed better mean score gains than learners of the control group. Data also indicates that the overall attitude towards in-class collaborative writing was positive among learners and teachers.

Committee: Greg Kessler Dr. (Committee Chair); Dawn Bikowski Dr. (Committee Member); Abraham Reshad Mr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Language; Linguistics

PHD, Kent State University, 2019, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

Scholars writing in translingual studies view language boundaries as fluid, consider multilinguals to have options that include shuttling back and forth between languages in order to achieve their rhetorical goals, and argue that monolingual ideologies are harmful. Translingual studies is part of a movement away from structuralist conceptions of language, and within translingualism language is viewed as “flexible, unstable, dynamic, layered, and mobile” (Blommaert, 2016, p. 244). This dissertation focuses on the translingual literacy practices of multilingual members of the Japanese/English school community at this university. I analyze writing processes, speech, and media usage of members of this community (English L1/Japanese L2 and Japanese L1/English L2) through the lens of translingualism. I find that the ways the participants move across English and Japanese is a dynamic and negotiable process. This study aims to contribute to the movement in translingual studies that changes the focus from mixed-language products to mixed-language processes. The movement to process, I argue, takes into consideration the goals of many learners of a second language, which is to gain a strong, native-like command of dominant varieties of foreign languages. My dissertation demonstrates specific methods that writing studies researchers may use to document translingual literacy practices. In addition, this study discusses detailed ways in which the participants use both English and Japanese in their literacy practices through multiple case studies. I conclude with a turn that focuses on pedagogical applications of the translingual framework, which I argue benefits both monolingual and multilingual students in writing classrooms.

Committee: Derek Van Ittersum (Committee Chair); Pamela Takayoshi (Committee Member); Keith Lloyd (Committee Member); Judy Wakabayashi (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; English As A Second Language; Literacy; Multilingual Education; Multimedia Communications

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, EDU Teaching and Learning

An important component of academic writing in English is the word combinations or collocations writers use while expressing meaning and performing various rhetorical functions. It is essential for second language (L2) writers to gain command of these lexico-grammatical combinations (Cortes, 2004; Hyland, 2008a, 2008b) as they develop their L2 academic writing ability. The main purpose of the current study was to examine students' experiences with lexical bundles (i.e., frequently occurring combinations of words) under different instructional conditions in an L2 academic writing course. The lexical bundles were extracted from a corpus of learner English. In the study's first phase, the most frequently occurring lexical bundles contained in a corpus of L2 students' placement test essays were identified and then analyzed to develop an understanding of students' lexico-grammatical needs. In the second phase, students' (a) learning from and (b) responses to corpus-aided instruction featuring lexical bundles were investigated. The study employed a multimethod research design that gathered and analyzed both quantitative and qualitative sources of data (Creswell, 2015). The current study produced a number of findings during its two phases. The Phase One results showed that the placement test essays included relatively few discourse-organizing lexical bundles compared to stance and referential lexical bundles. These results provided insights into the lexico-grammatical needs of L2 writers, and these insights created a foundation from which to develop the subsequent instructional phase of the study. In Phase Two, the results of the quasi-experiments revealed a significant effect of both of the instructional modes (intentional and semi-intentional) employed as reflected in the students' post-test and delayed post-test lexico-grammatical writing gains. The semi-intentional instructional mode was effective in terms of the immediate post-test gains, while the intentional instru (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Advisor); Dorinda Gallant (Committee Member); Youngjoo Yi (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; English As A Second Language; Foreign Language; Language; Linguistics; Social Research; Teaching

PHD, Kent State University, 2018, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies

This study explores the effect of translation strategies on undergraduate students' second language writing in three French composition classes. After the grammar translation method was used in foreign language teaching, translation in the foreign language classroom was banned for a long time. It is now reappearing in those language classrooms and several studies, such as Karoly (2014) and Gonzalez Davies' (2014) show its benefits in the foreign language classroom for enhancing students' grammar as well as their cultural understanding of the language (Machida, 2011). The current study seeks to determine if translation, as informed by translation studies has an impact on students' second language writing, and in particular on the naturalness of their writing. There were eight participants in each group of Fall 2014, 2015, and Spring 2016. The distribution of translation interventions per group was as follows: no intervention in the 2014 class, one in the 2015 class with the transposition translation strategy based on Vinay and Darbelnet's (1995) indirect translation procedures, and several in the Spring 2016 class including formal lessons on Vinay and Darbelnet's indirect translation strategies (e.g. transposition, modulation, and explicitation), approaches such as Skopos theory, as well as translation activities. Students' writings were coded for wrong lexical/grammatical choice, grammatically and semantically deviant sentences, and naturalness before and after the interventions—at the beginning and at the end of the semester for the Fall 2014 class. Three native speakers, concordance search using Concordancier Corpus francais (https://lextutor.ca/conc/fr/), and Google.fr searches with quotes—results specifically included trusted websites or books—were used to evaluate the naturalness of students' writings. Three repeated measures ANOVAs were performed, one for each dependent variable. Due to the small sample size, post-hoc one-tailed paired sample t-tests were r (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Washbourne (Advisor); Erik Angelone (Committee Member); Brian Baer (Committee Member); Sarah Rilling (Committee Member); Sara Newman (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Education; Foreign Language; Higher Education; Language; Linguistics; Multilingual Education; Pedagogy

PHD, Kent State University, 2017, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies

The purpose of this multicase study was to examine how English as a second language (ESL) teachers teach writing to English language learners in grades 5-8. A qualitative multicase study design was used to explore the participants' teaching by addressing the following questions: (a) How do ESL teachers teach writing to English language learners in grades 5-8? (b) How do ESL teachers explain their pedagogical decisions for second language (L2) writing instruction? This study used Lantolf's Sociocultural Theory of Second Language Acquisition to understand how the teachers used mediating tools toward the goal of teaching second language writing. Participants were two ESL teachers in Ohio. Multiple sources of data were collected: a qualitative survey, classroom observations, fieldnotes, three semi-structured interviews with each participant lasting between 45-75 minutes each, instructional artifacts, and analytic memos. Findings revealed that these two ESL teachers only spent 11-12.5% of their instructional time in ESL on writing. In addition to receiving nominal time, writing tasks were limited in length and scope; students did not write anything longer than a paragraph in length and often only wrote individual sentences. Participants cited several obstacles they cited as impeded their writing instruction. The implications of this research point to the need to include writing pedagogy in ESL endorsement programs, the need for districts to implement defined goals and writing curricula for English learners, and the need to expand writing instruction beyond basic skills in order to prepare English learners for education, vocation, and everyday life.

Committee: Denise Morgan Ph.D. (Committee Chair) Subjects: Composition; Education; English As A Second Language; Teaching

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2017, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

Although a substantial body of research exists with respect to the digital literacy practices of the “traditional” American college student, research relevant to the English Language Learner (ELL) population in American institutions of higher education has not developed as extensive a corpus. Some, like Aisha Walker and Goodith White, advocate for greater integration of digital tools in ELL instruction, but only look to convince instructors to consider new methods. Others, Bruce Horner, Cynthia L. Selfe, and Tim Lockridge, call for more acceptance of non-standard communication practices, but focus more on institutional pushback to change. Still others, like Dana R. Ferris, take a more traditional approach and advocate for strict adherence to grammar instruction. Those researchers who advocate for greater use of digital instruction and communication often do not consider the student perspectives on digital literacy, multimodal composing practices, or the technological preferences of ELLs. This study aims to address this gap by seeking to better understand how ELLs use and interact with technology to help them write, and to explore how the digital literacy preferences of ELLs influence their understanding and use of multimodal composing practices. The ultimate goal of this project is to help those instructors who work with ELLs better understand the needs of this student population. I attempt to address this goal by introducing student voices into the conversation surrounding their digital literacy practices through the collection and analysis of survey and interview data.

Committee: Kristine Blair PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Lee Nickoson PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Tracy Huziak-Clark PhD (Other); Sheri Wells-Jensen PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Composition; Curriculum Development; English As A Second Language

Master of Arts in English, Youngstown State University, 1998, Department of Languages

As an educator of first and second language learners, I have implemented an expressivistic approach to the writing of composition. Expressivism is one manifestation of the process theory of writing. While the research on first language learners and second language learners, or L1 and L2, remains a bit uneven, I have considered what has been researched and have attempted to draw connections from there. After implementing some of these expressivistic approaches in both classrooms, I have dedicated a section of my thesis where these responses are included. These responses represent my willingness as an educator to show rather than just tell readers about my research. The first chapter of my thesis contains existing research on both L1 and L2 learners. I outline four principles of expressivism in the introductory section. These principles are short-circuiting; embracing the authentic, personal voice; the physicality of writing; and showing not telling. It is important to note that these four principles only represent some of the many principles lying underneath the umbrella of expressivism. This section chronicles what has been tested and found to be true of both first language learning and second language learning. The second chapter of my thesis contains student responses from L1 and L2 learners illustrating their written reactions to these four principles of expressivism. The last section of the second chapter provides an arena where conclusions are drawn and introspection occurs.

Committee: Steven Brown (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2007, Teaching and Learning

Based on their U.S. K-12 schooling experiences, most Generation 1.5 students enter college with some foundation in academic literacies. However, many Generation 1.5ers have difficulties with the more complex and more language-intensive reading and writing tasks they encounter in college. This case study presents findings of the academic literacies experiences of three Generation 1.5 students during their first year of university study. With the use of the Academic Literacies Model (Lea & Street, 2000) as the theoretical frame, the study focuses on the academic literacies difficulties these students experienced as well as the strategic practices they utilized to overcome these difficulties and complete the academic literacies tasks. Data for the study was collected using semi-structured participant interviews, transcription, member checks, literacies logs, course artifacts, and literacies samples. Analysis of the data collected was done with the use of a systematic coding scheme to identify emergent themes and patterns and determine frequency counts in the data. The results of this study highlight four important characteristics of the academic literacies experiences of first year Generation 1.5 learners. First, the situatedness of academic literacies is the cause of some difficulties Generation 1.5 learners have with them, rather than their Generation 1.5 learner status. Second, the Generation 1.5 learners in this study possessed notions of academic literacies which revealed a less linear approach to and interpretation of the academic socialization process than their instructors. Third, the differences among the participants' levels of academic literacy proficiency, as indicated by their difficulties with and strategic practices of academic literacies, point to the diversity within this group of learners. Finally, the U.S. K-12 schooling experience that the Generation 1.5 learners in this study had served as an advantage to them in different ways as they negotiated n (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Advisor) Subjects: Education, Higher

Master of Arts in English, Youngstown State University, 2024, Department of Languages

The rise of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) technologies accessible to everyday users has attracted significant attention, including in education. For instance, ChatGPT attracted over 1 million users in less than a week after its release, marking one of the fastest-growing forms of AI. These technologies have the potential to transform the products and processes of writing, especially those of L2 writers who face challenges with composing. However, scholars and instructors have raised concerns about the potential ethical issues surrounding their use, especially in cases of accusations of cheating or plagiarism. At the same time, less is known about the perspectives of students, including international and L2 students, who have the most to lose in instances of accusations of lack of academic integrity or plagiarism. To respond to this gap, my study uses sociocultural theory to examine multilingual university students' perceptions of ChatGPT as a scaffold for writing academic essays. Participants were 11 international students enrolled in a developmental composition course for undergraduate L2 writers at a mid-sized U.S. university in the Midwest. Data collection included a classroom intervention utilizing ChatGPT, a pre-intervention questionnaire, a post-intervention questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews. Overall, findings include that these students' perceptions are divided, and individual students may be torn about how useful ChatGPT is. Specifically, in various areas, students rated ChatGPT as less helpful than what other scholars have found (e.g., word-, sentence- and some discourse-level scaffolds; Sumakul, 2023). Additionally, students' perceptions of using ChatGPT as a scaffold were not as positive as getting feedback on their writing from a peer. However, students also became less concerned about the accuracy and trustworthiness of ChatGPT after being exposed to it. Theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed.

Committee: Nicole Pettitt PhD (Advisor); Cynthia Vigliotti MA (Committee Member); Jay Gordon PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Educational Technology; English As A Second Language; Linguistics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, EDU Teaching and Learning

In higher education, students are expected to present their knowledge through reading-to-write tasks such as synthesis writing (i.e., multisource-based writing), which is challenging for many L2 students. Research on L2 students' composing process during multisource-based writing has mostly been conducted using relatively controlled tasks written in decontextualized settings (e.g., integrated writing assessments or experimental design studies), and little research has been conducted in naturalistic contexts, such as English for academic purposes (EAP) writing classes, where this kind of writing is commonly assigned. Given the significance and complexity of multisource-based writing and the paucity of relevant research guiding our understanding of L2 students' composing process for completing such writing, the present qualitative multiple case study examined three L2 undergraduate students' understanding of and approach to composing a multisource-based argumentative essay in an EAP writing course. Data sources for this reading-to-write study included participants' writing samples (outline, first draft, and final draft of their argumentative essay), reading-to-write logs, semi-structured interviews, stimulated recall protocols, instructor's written and oral feedback, and pretest and posttests on synthesis writing. To depict how the participants approached a reading-to-write composing task, the data were primarily analyzed using category construction analysis guided by Stein's (1990a) cognition of reading-to-write model and then Lenski and John's (1997) patterns for reading-to-write. Textual analysis was also conducted for use of source integration types (Sole et al., 2013), purposes (Harris, 2017), and strategies (e.g., quoting and paraphrasing). The findings revealed that, in this naturalistic context, the participants adopted varied composing approaches to this reading-to-write task that fit their individual needs and experiences despite sharing the characte (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Advisor); Leslie Moore (Committee Member); Melinda Rhoades (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Education; English As A Second Language; Pedagogy; Teaching

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, EDU Teaching and Learning

Source-based writing is considered as a significant strand of academic literacy that focuses on how individuals read, understand, create and produce texts. At the doctoral level, synthesizing a candidacy examination essay is an example of a particularly demanding task in source-based writing that is based on the meticulous selection, organization, and combination of voluminous source texts at a sophisticated and advanced level. Due to the importance of synthesizing in displaying ESL students' academic literacy skills in English at a highly advanced level, this study explored synthesizing through the lens of the doctoral candidacy examination experience at a Midwestern university. Adopting a multifaceted perspective of literacy and writing, I carried out qualitative multiple case studies where I examined how ESL doctoral writers dealt with the sophisticated reading-to-write challenges associated with such writing. Influenced by Spivey's (1990, 1997) discourse synthesis framework (i.e., organizing, selecting and connecting) from existing research on L1 composition, I researched the students' challenges with synthesizing, their task representation of synthesizing, and reading-to-write processes in synthesizing while approaching the task of writing an exam essay. Through the course of one academic semester, I obtained several sources of data, including semi-structured interviews, stimulated recall protocols, exam writing artifacts, my research notes, and past coursework-related documents and artifacts. I analyzed the data inductively and triangulated them to examine the different avenues the students utilized in approaching this advanced synthesizing writing task (i.e., the challenges encountered, how they represented the task, and the read-to-write process they followed). Findings of this research indicated that the participants' essays and processes of synthesizing entailed using the three sub-processes of selecting, organizing and connecting to varying extents. (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Advisor); George Newell (Committee Member); Cory Brown (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; English As A Second Language; Multilingual Education

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2020, English

In the Saudi graduate classes, recently, using second language writing has been placed in most of the majors, which leads the graduate students to face enormous pressure to master writing skills. Indeed, learning and practicing second language writing require a valuable effort to master all the writing skills and achieve professional performance. Writing skills have various aspects such as micro-skills (grammar, vocabulary, punctuation, spelling) and macro-skills (content, organization, coherence, cohesion), which need specific strategies to facilitate practicing writing and enhancing performance. This research studies the effect of using metacognitive strategies (planning, monitoring, and evaluating) on the L2 writing output. Planning strategy refers to identify the genre, design writing style, gather information, and organize materials. Monitoring strategy refers to control and monitor the organization, content, grammar, word choices, or spelling. Evaluating is used after the writer finished the text to assess the performance altogether. The researcher did a case study with four Saudi graduate students who use English writing as a medium of instruction. The kind of case study was the participant observation in a controlled setting and think aloud protocol was applied with each participant. Plus, there were interview questions asked to the same participants regarding the three metacognitive strategies. The results show that metacognitive strategies help L2 writers to focus more on their writing abilities and writing skills, which lead them to enhance their performance. Planning and monitoring have a massive influence on the students' output, and the students were more comfortable using these two strategies because they understood how these strategies work. On the other hand, most students ignored using evaluating strategy, and they stated that they do not know how to assess their writing outcome, and they always depend on their teacher for this process. The finding (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jennifer Haan Dr (Advisor) Subjects: Adult Education; English As A Second Language; Language