Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item Meeting the Needs of the Nontraditional Student:: A Study of the Effectiveness of Synchronous Online Writing Center Tutorials(2010) Hawkinson Melkun, Cheryl Lee; Donawerth, Jane; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the fall of 2007, 3.9 million students took at least one online course, reflecting an online education growth rate of 12.9 percent. Many online students are nontraditional, possessing one or more of the following characteristics: delayed enrollment, part time attendance, full-time worker, financially independent as related to financial aid, dependents other than a spouse, single parent, a GED or did not finish high school. While these students bring diversity and life experience to the classroom, they are often ill-prepared for college writing. Though they need help, hectic schedules make it difficult to meet with a writing consultant. This study investigates whether synchronous writing center tutorials can effectively address this client population's needs. Currently, there is a dearth of scholarship relating to online writing tutorials, particularly synchronous tutorials. This two-year study of 189 face-to-face clients and 90 online clients employs quantitative and qualitative research to determine (1) the demographic profile of online users, (2) reasons clients meet online, (3) help sought online, (4) online client preparation, (5) client perceptions of online sessions, and (6) advantages and disadvantages of online sessions. Data were culled from a client questionnaire, online session logs, and consultant and client interviews. Statistically significant differences in client demographics between face-to-face and online users were found in age, ethnicity, and gender: online clients are younger, are more likely to be white, and are more likely to be male. Clients meet online primarily for convenience; however, there is no correlation between distance from campus and online client usage. There were no significant differences in client preparation. Spelling was the only statistically significant category in help sought: online clients seek more spelling help than their face-to-face counterparts. Face-to-face and online clients both viewed their sessions as successful with no statistically significant difference between the groups. Over one-third of clients reported technical problems during their session, and some clients expressed a preference for the emphatic cues found in face-to-face consultations. Advantages of online sessions included assistance with word processing features, the ability to make revisions to the working document, and the ability to record the session.Item A grounded theory of deaf middle school students' revision of their own writing(2010) Yuknis, Christina; Hultgren, Francine; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study used a grounded theory methodology to examine the experiences of deaf middle school students attending a program for deaf children in a public school to answer the following question: How do deaf children in middle school construct meaningful texts? The students were in one of two self-contained classes taught by a teacher of the deaf. The eight students and two teachers were each interviewed at least once. Classroom observations of the students engaged in writing an essay were conducted, and writing samples from each student were provided by the teachers. All of the data were analyzed, and a grounded theory that describes the experiences of the deaf students emerged. The theory consists of one core category and four key categories, which encompass three parts of writing: Knowing, Experiencing, and Doing. The core category, which captures the essence of what revision is to the students, is Living in Language and is the sole category in Knowing. Three key categories fall under the Experiencing heading: Interacting with the Text, Interacting with Instruction, and Interacting with Self as Reviser. The final key category is the sole category in Doing: Fixing Wrongs. This research contributes to the literature by illustrating how deaf students who are in one middle school understand, experience, and approach revision tasks. A significant understanding is that the students in this study are not given many opportunities to construct meaningful texts independently in their classes. Despite the lack of control over their own texts, the students have developed strategies to successfully “play the game” of writing in school. In addition, recommendations for future research and ways to improve instruction are offered. The greatest implication for instruction is that teachers need to step back and consider how instruction impacts the students. Students especially need to be empowered to control their own writing and develop metacognition of their own work. Future research can be done to test the theory using a broader scope of participants in other settings. It could also examine the writing process from the teachers’ perspectives to provide information about what informs their instruction of writing and revising.Item INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN DOMAIN-SPECIFIC BELIEFS ABOUT WRITING, WRITING SELF-EFFICACY, WRITING APPREHENSION, AND WRITING PERFORMANCE IN UNDERGRADUATES(2010) Sanders-Reio, Joanne; Alexander, Patricia A.; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Writing has been called the "neglected `R'" in the traditional trilogy of reading, `riting, and `rithmetic (National Commission on Writing, 2003). Writing performance continues to languish, despite societal expectations that students should be able to write clearly and precisely. Sociocognitive theory predicts that writing beliefs are related to writing performance. Much research has focused on writing self-efficacy beliefs and their link to writing apprehension and writing performance, while research exploring another type of belief, domain-specific beliefs about writing itself, is sparse. This study examined the relations between these beliefs about writing, writing self-efficacy, and writing apprehension, and their links to writing performance. This research was a three-phase study. Phases I and II involved instrument construction and validation, while Phase III examined the relations among the research variables. Two hundred eighty-seven Hispanic women students completed a test battery in class measuring demographics, beliefs about writing, writing self-efficacy, and writing apprehension. Writing performance was measured separately on an authentic writing task, a take-home paper, by both an overall grade and six component grades. Inter-rater agreements on these grades ranged from r = .83 to .91. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that beliefs about writing independently predicted writing performance and that some beliefs about writing (e.g., Good writers adapt their message to their readers) are adaptive and associated with strong writing performance, while other beliefs about writing (e.g., Readers are impressed by big words) are maladaptive and relate to weak writing performance. In addition, apprehension about making grammatical and other mechanical errors had a stronger negative effect on writing performance than the more traditional concept of writing apprehension, which concerns sharing one's writing with others and having it critiqued. After controlling for domain-specific beliefs, writing self-efficacy weakly predicted writing performance as well. These results support the need for future research examining the relations among the research variables and writing performance in samples that are more balanced with respect to gender and ethnicity, and with other writing tasks. Because beliefs about writing demonstrated the largest beta weights in the regression equations, these beliefs may have the most promise for promoting both writing research and practice.Item The Theme Of Nature In Victor Hugo's Contemplations(2009) Khavari, Nazanin; Brami, Joseph; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Title of Thesis: THE THEME OF NATURE IN VICTOR HUGO'S LES CONTEMPLATIONS Nazanin Khavari, Master of Art, 2009 Thesis directed by: Professor Joseph Brami Department of French & Italian School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures In Les Contemplations collection, Hugo is a real contemplator of nature: he describes it with all its immensity, beauty and ugliness, in different seasons and in different moments of day and night. For the description of this nature, mineral, vegetal and animal, he applies many stylistic procedures. In demand of describing everything, he becomes an admirer of mankind with all its greatness and weakness. Description of nature is often accompanied with the ones of love. It can be paternal or of any other kind. This permits him to speak about woman, adolescence and especially of his daughter. This desire to say everything about grandiose and fearsomeness of nature makes Hugo a liberator of words and the creator of the aestheticism of totality in which sublime and grotesque are intermingled, an aestheticism which announces Surrealism.Item Entre lettres et portraits: Madame Du Deffand, auteur?(2009) Zaghdoun, Eva; Benharrech, Sarah; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My subject is about a famous woman who lived during the eighteenth century, Marie Du Deffand (1696-1780). During the eighteenth century, Madame Du Deffand was well known mostly because she was an important "salonnière". Her "salon" was one of the most frequented by the philosophers, and the scholars who wanted to be well seen in society. Also, during this century, letters were very important in the `'salon'' because they were both a way of social communication and a way for literary creation. In my thesis, I will show how Madam Du Deffand was a remarquable woman of the eighteenth century whose story needs to be told. In fact, even though she always refused to publish, her perceptive portraits of her contemporaries and her correspondence with Voltaire and Horace Walpole could be considered as work which distinguish her and give her the status of an author.Item The Effects of Metaphor and Blending Theory-Centered Instruction on Secondary English Students' Ability to Analyze Shakespearean Sonnets(2009) McHugh, Thomas Edward; Slater, Wayne H.; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of metaphor and blending theory-centered instruction on Secondary English students' ability to comprehend and analyze Shakespearean sonnets. Students in three intact British Literature and Composition classes located in a high school in a suburban county received an Advanced Placement (AP) pretest poetry prompt. The treatment class received instruction in metaphor and blending theory applied to Shakespearean sonnets. The comparison groups received two variants of instruction in the language arts model, a standard and accepted curriculum focused on textual, thematic, and cultural contexts for the Shakespearean sonnets. After the three intact classes completed the instruction, students completed an AP poetry posttest. Results suggest that the inclusion of metaphor and theory-centered instruction may have positive effects on secondary students' abilities to understand complex figurative language, infer theme, and respond effectively to AP-style prompts. These results, however, will need to be validated by further research that allows for randomization and other sample treatments.Item Critical Engagements: Adolesents African American Girls and Urban Fiction(2009) Gibson, Simone; Wiseman, Donna; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Although one of the ultimate goals of teaching English is to instill a love of reading, motivating students' engagement in texts poses a problem for many teachers. Despite research which suggest that adolescents, generally, do not read voluntarily (Strommen, 2004), adolescents, indeed, are often engaged with texts during their leisure time that are very different from those found in traditional classrooms that emphasize classical literature (Schultz & Hull, 2002). Creating bridges between their leisure reading interests and those presented in schools is one way of ideally bolstering more traditional forms of reading achievement within schools. Urban fiction is a form of text that is capturing the leisure reading interests of growing numbers of adolescent African American girls. Within this exploratory investigation, six adolescent African American females engaged with an urban fiction text to unveil their complex engagement with the genre. Through the use of a literature circle format that took place over two months, participants' relayed insights about why they engage with the texts from the urban fiction genre and how they process those images found within the texts. Participants responses reveal several findings that help inform current understandings about adolescent African American girls' engagement with urban fiction. Extending beyond a culture of reading texts from the genre at participants' school, each participant suggested varying reasons for engaging with texts from the genre that extend beyond the hyper sexualized and violent content. Next, participants demonstrated that they used engagement with the text to explore their conceptions of beauty and gender roles for Black women, relationships, and sex. Finally, participants suggested that exposure to content from the texts serve as a demotivator for engaging in similar behaviors as the protagonists. Implications, based on students responses, are presented for in-service and preservice teachers, teacher educators, curriculum writers, and policy makers.Item Picturebooks as Visual Literacy: The Influence of Illustrations on Second-Graders' Comprehension of Narrative Text(2008) Gerrard, Emily Elizabeth; O'Flahavan, John F; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study poses the following research question: "How does change in text type as text contains more illustrations and fewer words influence second-graders' comprehension of narrative text?" Eleven second-graders read three texts each and completed a series of oral reading comprehension tasks. The three text types varied in terms of the proportion of words to illustrations available in the text: written-only text, combination of written and illustrated text, and illustration-only text. The researcher interviewed each participant three times, once for each text type. Participant scores from the retelling and comprehension questions portion of the interview were analyzed in addition to participant's responses to the retrospective think aloud portion of the interview. Quantitative results from the retellings and comprehension questions suggest an overall trend indicating that illustrations have a positive effect on second grader's comprehension. Qualitative data for individual participants from their retrospective think alouds confirm this trend.Item Cross-Language Transfer of Sub-Syllabic Units in the Acquisition of L2 Phonological Awareness: Semivowel Placement Differences between Korean and English(2007-06-03) Baek, Seunghyun; Kushner, Millicent I; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study investigates the language-specific sub-syllabic awareness of two groups of eighty-six Korean-English speaking kindergarteners learning English as a foreign language or English as a second language and examines the effects of transferred sub-syllabic units from children's first language on their phonological awareness in a second language. The relationship between oral language proficiency and sub-syllabic units was also explored. Children were assessed in Korean/English on experimental tasks of sub-syllabic discrimination and production of semivowels in non-real words and a test of verbal ability. In addition, one group of ten monolingual English speaking kindergarteners as a reference group was tested only in English. Results suggest that Korean-English as a foreign language speaking children have an implicit and explicit sensitivity to body structure in Korean that is highly correlated with their Korean language dominance, and which is transferred to their second language, English. On the other hand, Korean-English as a second language speaking children have an idiosyncratic sub-syllabic preference for rime in English and both rime and body in Korean, presumably resulting from both their English language dominance and dual language exposure. These results have implications for the availability of language-specific sub-syllabic awareness, the transfer of sub-syllabic units from one dominant language to the other language, and the possible influence of oral language proficiency on early reading and spelling. Furthermore, these findings suggest that the incorporation of sub-syllabic awareness measures into phonological assessments will result in a more accurate assessment of English language learners with diverse phonological representations and help guide early reading instruction for children at risk for difficulty learning to read, speak and spell in English as a second language.Item The Effects of Honors Ninth-Grade Students' Strategic, Analytical Reading of Persuasive Text Models on the Quality of their Persuasive Writing(2007-01-22) Beach, Jennifer Anne; Slater, Wayne H.; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the analysis and imitation of persuasive text models on the persuasive writing quality of ninth-grade honors students. Two intact ninth-grade honors classes participated in an instructional treatment of thirteen lessons designed to teach persuasive writing strategies through explicit instruction and collaborative learning. The experimental group examined, analyzed, and imitated persuasive models as part of the instructional unit. The comparison group studied the same persuasive writing strategies through explicit instruction and collaborative learning, without the analysis of text models as part of their instruction. Both qualitative and quantitative data was collected during the study. Pre- and posttest persuasive writing samples were compared using two persuasive writing scoring instruments, the NAEP Grade 12 Persuasive Scoring Guide, and a researcher-designed persuasive trait analytic scale. Additionally, four purposefully selected students from each class were interviewed for the study, and their pre- and posttest writing samples were examined in conjunction with their interview responses. An analysis of the scores on the pre- and posttest writing samples revealed that the mean score for each group increased on the holistic scale. The experimental group had a higher mean gain on the holistic scale than the comparison group, but the results were not statistically significant. Of the six persuasive strategies measured by the researcher-designed persuasive trait analytic scale, only the audience awareness category showed significant results. The students' attitudes toward persuasive writing instruction, as determined by the interviews, were overwhelmingly positive. One surprising finding was that students held misconceptions about the concept of text models and their use in writing instruction. The interviews also revealed that students found explicit instruction in persuasive strategies to be helpful to them as they completed persuasive writing tasks. The findings from the present study indicate that the analysis and imitation of persuasive models has a significant positive impact on students' ability to appeal to an audience in their writing. The results of this study indicate that more research is needed on the use of writing models as an instructional tool for teaching persuasive writing at the secondary level.