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A Tagmemic Analysis of Coherence in the Writing of Descriptive Texts by College Students
For this study an attempt was made to bridge the disciplines of linguistics and composition in order to examine factors contributing to textual coherence. Pairs of descriptive texts written by fifty college students were examined in order to identify the factors which differentiate quality and topic. Students were asked to compose a descriptive paragraph on the topic of fall. They were then encouraged to use their five senses, given leaves, and asked to compose a paragraph describing the leaves. The pairs of texts thus elicited were evaluated for preference by readers. The ANOVA revealed a significant difference (p=.001) between the two topics with fall texts preferred over the more specific leaves texts. Results suggest that encouraging students to use their five senses does not improve their writing. It may be more important to move through various levels of abstraction than to merely focus on sensory detail. The texts were also scored holistically by two trained evaluators. Results of this grading were used to choose five high- and five low-coherence texts on each of the two topics. These 20 texts were then analyzed in terms of the tagmemic referential hierarchy. A MANOVA was done to examine the dependent variables of Slot (location in time or space), Role (purpose or reason), and Cohesion (sociocultural context) in relation to quality and topic for these texts. Slot was found to be significant for both quality (p=.025) and topic (p=.004). Role was significant only for quality (p=.001). Cohesion was nonsignificant for either quality or topic. These results suggest that students should: (a) be encouraged to locate their texts in time and space in order to develop an adequate context for readers; (b) be encouraged to include purposes and reasons for the statements they make; and (c) be encouraged, where appropriate, to include a focus on …
"I Like the Name but Not the Soup!": An Ethnographic Study of the Metalinguistic Sentience of Young Gifted Children, Its Reflection of Their Cognitive Ability and its Relationship to Their Literacy Acquisition and Literacy Learning
Metalinguistic sentience refers to the conscious or unconscious apprehension of, sensitivity to, and attention to language as something with form and function that can be manipulated. This includes, but is not restricted to, conscious or unconscious apprehension of, sensitivity to, and attention to the following aspects of language and literacy: pragmatics, syntactics, semantics, phonology, orthography, morphology, figurative, metalanguage, print "carries" meaning, print conventions, book conventions, text conventions, referent/label arbitrariness, purposes of literacy, and abilities. These aspects of language and literacy are part of a morphological model developed by the author for classifying the evidence provided by children of their metalinguistic sentience. The two other faces of the model, displayed as a cube, depict (1) Literacy Acguisition and Literacy Learning and (2) four Prompt States: Self-, Child-, Adult-, Text. This ethnographic study of nine verbally gifted kindergarten and first grade children was conducted with a three-fold purpose: to explore whether young verbally gifted children's metalinguistic sentience coincided with their cognitive ability, to explore whether young verbally gifted children's metalinguistic sentience influenced their literacy acquisition and literacy learning, and to explore whether young verbally gifted children's literacy acquisition and literacy learning enhanced their metalinguistic sentience. The study took place during a full school year, while the author was a participant observer in the informants' classrooms. The evidence from the research indicated that the nine verbally gifted children who served as the informants for the study had a lower threshold for metalinguistic sentience than did their agemates. This lower threshold allowed them to acquire and learn literacy more easily and more efficiently.
The Effect of Teacher Participation iIn Writing Assignments on Children's Attitudes Towards Writing and on Children's Abilities to Write
The purpose of this study was to determine whether students' attitudes towards writing and their abilities to write were affected by their teacher's participation in their writing assignments. The null hypotheses that no significant differences would be found were supported. The control group and two experimental groups were all composed of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders from a racially mixed elementary school in a large metropolitan school district. The two experimental groups received identical instruction in writing skills except that the teacher wrote with one group and not with the other. The attitude scale, constructed for this experiment, proved to be statistically invalid and unreliable.
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