ONLINE ACADEMIC LANGUAGE MODULE

A Self-Regulated Approach toAcquire LexicalGenre Conventions in Academic Writing

Nicole Schmidt

University of Arizona

11/1/2016

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1. Abstract...... 3
  2. Project Overview...... 4
  3. Description of project...... 4
  4. Setting...... 4
  5. Target audience...... 4
  6. Overall goal...... 5
  7. Rational & benefits of the project...... 5
  8. Method of delivery...... 5
  9. Needs Assessment...... 6
  10. Need for the project...... 6
  11. Desired performance...... 6
  12. Current performance & contributing factors...... 7
  13. Tools & approaches...... 7
  14. The results...... 8
  15. Proposed solution & rationale...... 10
  16. Goals and objectives...... 11
  17. Front End analysis...... 12
  18. Primary learners...... 12
  19. Learner strengths ...... 13
  20. Learner weaknesses...... 13
  21. Areas of potential difficulty...... 13
  22. General description of learning context...... 14
  23. Advantages...... 14
  24. Limitations...... 14
  25. List of teaching strategies...... 14
  26. Task Analysis...... 15
  27. materials Development...... 15
  28. Existing materials...... 15
  29. Instructional materials...... 16
  30. Student materials...... 18
  31. Justification...... 20
  32. Instructional Plan...... 23
  33. Assessment...... 27
  34. Informal/formal assessment...... 27
  35. Pre- and post-assessment...... 27
  36. Objectives assessed...... 27
  37. References...... 31

Abstract

This paper proposes the implementation of an online module that will enhance the development of academic vocabulary through the application of self-regulation strategies. The three-unit module will be offered to freshmen composition students through a university course management system. It consists of a Forethought, Performance, and Reflection module, and each unit focuses on specific lexical skills while simultaneously asking students to perform self-regulation activities. Although each individual teacher may decide exactly how to use the module, it is designed as a self-paced learning platform which students can navigate to suit their particular learning style or goals. Upon completion of the unit, students will be able to revise their papers for appropriate language usage; they will also understand how to create and monitor learning plans to achieve educational goals. Self-assessment will be undertaken to evaluate learner progress throughout the module.

Project Overview

Description of the Project

… reading, analyzing, and discussing the texts upon which the course rests are unlikely to leave room for any actual teaching of writing. So we get a ‘writing’ course in which writing is required and evaluated, but not taught (Fulkerson, 2005, p. 665).

The genre based pedagogy, currently applied in first year English writing courses at the University of Arizona, encourages student development of academic vocabulary through analysis of linguistic data in authentic texts. Innoticingthe linguistic conventions representing a particular genre, students theoretically learn how to apply those conventions to their own writing (Troyan, 2016). However, despite this training, many first year writing students still struggle to adapt their writing to the target genre.The process of self-regulation has been suggested as a means to systematize the development of metacognitive knowledge (Ebner and Ehri, 2016), potentially enhancing the development of genre awareness. Therefore, the proposed project constitutes the development of an online module intended to supplement the English composition courses at the University of Arizona’s Writing Program. This online module willdevelop students’ ability to not only notice but also use appropriate language within selected academic writing contexts. The module implements a genre approach to writing and offers a three stage recursive process of self-regulated learning, as described by Zimmerman (2000).

Setting

The proposed module will be implemented as a supplement to the first year English courses (English 101, 102, 106, 107, and 108) at the University of Arizona. These courses are nested within the Writing Program in the Department of English. All courses are taught at the main campus in Tucson, Arizona. These credit-bearing courses are part of the mandatory General Education curriculum that all first year students are obligated to take. All classes meet either bi-weekly (Tuesday and Thursday) for 75 minutes, or tri-weekly (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) for 50 minutes. The courses are conducted in a blend of face-to-face meetings and online instruction via D2L, the University of Arizona’s course management system. The precise level of multimodal blending, however, depends on the preferences of the individual instructor.

Target Audience

The participants in this project will be instructors in the Writing Program who teach first year composition courses, and their students. Because the module will supplement the regular curriculum, it is intended as an extra tool for students who need extra support in the area of lexical genre conventions. Both teachers and students will elect to participate of their own volition. The students are university freshman, and the teachers aremostly Graduate Teaching Assistants. Needs analysis data will determine which students are likely to benefit most from the online instruction module.

Overall Goal

The overall goal will be to develop an online module which facilitates student’s development of appropriate lexicalconventions withinparticular academic writing contexts. Students who use the module will have the freedom to decide which academic subgenre they would like to explore. The intention behind the creation of this tool is to supplement formal writing instruction delivered in the English 101 course.

Rationale and Benefits of the Project

The project combines two approaches which are not always taught together in a classroom setting. First, the genre approach derives from the 1999 statement given by the Council for Writing Program Administrators, which defined four major outcome categories to be achieved in first year university writing programs: Rhetorical Knowledge, Critical Thinking, Processes, and Knowledge of Conventions (Fulkerton, 2005). This approach implies a pedagogy in which students are trained to notice lexical conventions, but they may not receive explicit strategy instruction which helps them transfer this metacognitive knowledge to the actual writing task. Procedures which are outlined in the theory of self-regulated learning have been linked to an increase in metacognitive strategy usage and have been shown to lead to more successful, autonomous learningand vocabulary acquisition (Bilican and Yesilbursa 2015; Ebner and Ehri, 2016; Liu, Lan, and Ho, 2014; Negretti, 2012; Zimmerman, 2000). Specifically, Zimmerman (2000) describes a three phase recursive model of self-regulation involving forethought, performance, and self-reflection. These phases teach students how to scaffold their learning procedures. Therefore, the pairing of a genre approach with a process of self-regulated learning is predicted to enhance students’ ability to transfer developing awareness of textual features to their own writing.

Method of Delivery

The online module will be developed within D2L, the University of Arizona’s CMS, so that teachers can easily copy the module into their own courses. It will consist of educational links and activities that students can use to develop strategical competence in producing texts within a particular genre. These links and activities will be categorized into separate units of self-regulation. The Forethought Unit will focus on self-assessment activities in which the student learns how to self-assess while comparing their writing to several model texts. The Performance Unit will comprise lessons on goal setting and monitoring for which the student will use self-assessments to create and execute a plan of action. Finally, the Self-Reflection Unit will give students strategies they need to reflect on their own writing process, including successes and future goals. A space for collaboration will also be available to both teachers and students to share ideas, ask questions, and respond to questions which have been asked. For each activity in the module, students will have the option to develop a text on which they are currently working in their regular class. The knowledge and skills gained from the module will allow student to enhance their performance in the writing class.

Needs Assessment

Need for the Project

The need for additional support navigating lexical genre conventions has surfaced in student reflective writings and a teacher questionnaire. According to needs analysis data, many students enter the freshman composition class without confidence or awareness of academic language, and many composition instructors acknowledge this performance gap.

In the current study, the perceived need for this educational intervention was monitored in two groups. First, student commentary was evaluated for signs of anticipated need to learn and use a more formal version of English in their writing. The first journal assignment of the school year asked them to reflect on their high school writing and to set goals for the current academic year. These journal entries were analyzed and coded for language reflecting the anticipated need for lexical development. In addition to the student journal data, a brief online teacher survey was delivered to instructors in the first year writing courses in the Writing Program. This was a simple four question, Likert-based survey which targeted teacher’s personal beliefs about teaching lexical genre conventions for academic writing. It also analyzed teacher beliefs about students’ mastery of formal language, and the utility of an online module which would train these skills.

Desired Performance

The aim of this educational intervention is twofold. First and foremost, following the steps provided in the online module should give students the skills and strategies they need to effectively revise their papers to achieve a style, register, and tone that is appropriate within an academic context. This intervention goes beyond procedural knowledge, however, in that is also intended to enhance the self-efficacy and identity of students as independent writers. This desired performance will be achieved by following an online module, incorporating a series of activities aligning a genre approach to academic writing and a self-regulated approach to learning. By the end of the module, students should feel capable of assessing their own work, making revision goals, and designing a plan to reach those goals. They should also be able to execute and evaluate their plan and reflect on the progress they have made.

Current Performance and Contributing Factors

Within the current genre-based curriculum, first year writing students at the University of Arizona are guided to notice writing conventions in the kinds of papers they produce. Through text analysis assignments, students become acquainted with rhetorical features such as purpose, audience, speaker, and genre conventions. However, with the multifaceted demands placed on the writing instructor, it is difficult to allocate enough class time to meet the needs of all students with regard tolexical genre conventions. Additionally, because incoming freshman come from diverse academic backgrounds, some students enter the university with more knowledge of this feature of writing than others.As a result, there is an expressed and anticipated need for many students to find extra support.

The online genre-based writing module will provide a digital space for students to explore and develop their own writing in comparison to other texts. It will also provide activities involving relevant links, readings, and strategies to increase their knowledge of academic writing conventions. Because the module is developed according to the principles of genre, it is well aligned with the first year writing program curriculum. Because it is aligned with the theory of self-regulation, it will be student centered and focused on individual development in a way that might not be provided in class.

Tools/Approaches

A document analysis of 50 student’s journal writing was undertaken to analyze students’ perceptions of their knowledge of lexical genre conventions. Specifically, comments pertaining to the ability to communicate within formal, academic genres were identified and evaluated. Additionally, a short online qualitative survey, shown below, was administered to 26 Writing Program instructors to assess their beliefs their students as effective communicators in academic environments.

Table 1 Genre Conventions Teacher Survey

Genre Conventions in Academic Writing: Needs Analysis Survey
  1. My freshman composition students began the year with a solid grasp of formal register in their writing, demonstrated in assignments and emails.
/ Strongly Agree / Agree/ Somewhat Agree / Somewhat Disagree / Disagree / Strongly Disagree
  1. My freshman composition students have expressed a desire to improve their ability to communicate in the formal register.

  1. As a teacher, I think there is a need to develop student acquisition of formal academic language.

  1. As a teacher, I welcome an online module that trains students to develop formal vocabulary and language use on their own with little intervention on my part.

The Results

A document analysis of student journal writing revealed that 27 out 50 freshman undergraduate students (54%) perceive appropriate language use as a pedagogical need that should be addressed in their first year writing course. Examples of such comments are as follows:

  • (Student Example 1) “In college I expect how to learn to write with a higher amount of diction and to evaluate a text with more understanding rather than just trying to get it done.”
  • (Student Example 2) “In college, I expect to learn more about how to go in to better detail in my essays and how to use better word choice as well as better thesis statements and concluding ones.”
  • (Student Example 3) “I expect to learn how to type papers with a deeper personal understanding and elevate my diction and creative flow to a higher intellectual capacity.”
  • (Student Example 4) “What I expect to learn about writing in college is how to become a better writer using more advanced vocabulary. I would like to learn vocabulary that is more intellectual to create better writings for myself.”

These results suggest that students see the development of academic vocabulary as a genre convention which is prerequisite to being a good writer. However, it is not only students who hold this perception. As can be seen below, the online teacher survey results show that formality is a genre convention which is also of pedagogical value, and which they perceive to be important in students’ development as writers.

Figure 1: Q1My freshman composition students began the year with a solid grasp of formal register in their writing, demonstrated in assignments and emails.

As demonstrated in Figure 1, teachers were neither in strong agreement nor disagreement over the abilities of their students at the beginning of the academic year. Instead, 30% agreed somewhat, 26.9% somewhat disagreed, and 26.9% disagreed with this statement. This reveals that teachers were not completely confident about their students’ abilities to uphold appropriate lexical genre conventions at the start of the year.

Figure 2: Question 2 My freshman composition students have expressed a desire to improve their ability to communicate in the formal register.

Similar trends in teacher response can be viewed in Figure 2 above, where 42% of the teachers surveyed agree that their students desire to learn formal writing conventions. This strengthens the notion that not only teachers but also students interpret formality as a desirable writing convention within an academic context.

Figure 3: Question 2 As a teacher, I think there is a need to develop student acquisition of formal academic language.

Perhaps the strongest evidence of the need for this intervention can be seen in the data for Figure 3 above, where no disagreement has been expressed. On the contrary, 46% of teachers surveyed agree, and 30.8% strongly agree that formal academic language is a necessary element in the first year composition class.

Figure 4: Q4As a teacher, I welcome an online module that trains students to develop formal vocabulary and language use on their own with little intervention on my part.

Again, the majority of teachers would welcome the proposed online module. Perhaps the naysayers are turned off by the digital rather than the pedagogical aspect of the project. Because space for commentary was not provided, their reasoning remains to be seen. From the fact that 23% of the teachers strongly agree and 43% agree that they would welcome this module, its utility as a possible way to supplement the Writing Program curriculum has been effectively validated.

Proposed Solution and Rationale

In response to the needs analysis data, the most feasible solution seems to be the addition of a supplementary online module to offer extra support to students who need to improve their writing strategies. Neither the teachers nor the students participating in this analysis were 100% in favor of the online module, although strong support was expressed among both groups. It seems, then, that such an intervention would be most useful when it is exercised at the volition of its stakeholders. Such a module could assist developing writers increase their proficiency, self-efficacy, and self-sufficient in any genre that they choose to navigate.

Goals and Objectives

Goals

Upon completion of this online training module, learners will be able to identify the weaknesses in their lexical choices when writing academically and make effective plans to strengthen these choices. They will be able to use the tools provided in the course to execute and monitor their plans, adjusting them when needed. By following this process, they will be able to reflect honestly on their progress and transfer these skills to other academic writing assignments.

Objectives

  1. Remembering level
  2. Through self-assessment activities, the learner will define learning goals.
  3. The learner will find examples of appropriate lexical usage in model texts.
  4. The learner will find examples of inappropriate lexical usage in their own texts.
  5. Understanding level
  6. The learner will explain theoretical concepts of self-regulated learning.
  7. In reflective writing, the learner will interpret methods for selecting appropriate academic language.
  8. In the development of their educational plan, the learner will outline strategies for effective lexical usage.
  9. Applying level
  10. The learner will make use of a variety of readings and digital tools to develop an educational plan.
  11. The learner will experiment with a variety of strategies for improving lexical usage in academic writing.
  12. Through reflective writing, the learner will identify strengths and weaknesses in their educational plan.
  13. Analyzing level
  14. The user will analyze model texts for appropriate lexical usage in terms of formality, clarity, conciseness, preciseness, and syntax.
  15. The learner will compare lexical usage in model academic texts with their own academic texts.
  16. The learner will analyze reflective writing to develop a plan for achieving their lexical usage goal.
  17. Evaluating level
  18. Through self-assessment activities, the learner will assess the effectiveness of their plan.
  19. The learner will evaluate the appropriateness of lexical usage in a variety of academic texts.
  20. Through self-assessment activities, the learner will measure their own learning progress.
  21. Creating level
  22. After evaluating their progress, the learner will adapt their plan to meet their educational goals.
  23. The learner will integrate lexically appropriate language, in terms of formality, variety, conciseness, preciseness, and syntax, in their academic writing.
  24. The learner will design an educational plan to achieve lexical usage goals without the instructor’s assistance.

Front End Analysis