An Analysis of the Overt Teaching of the Monitor to Students of English as a Second Language (open access)

An Analysis of the Overt Teaching of the Monitor to Students of English as a Second Language

The overt teaching of the Monitor, or conscious rule awareness, to native Spanish-speaking ESL students was examined to note possible benefits to the students' oral English production. Native Spanish-speaking students of English (the experimental group) were taught an awareness of their ability to self-correct their spoken English. They were then compared to another group of native Spanish-speaking ESL students (the control group) in four areas: Ilyin Oral Interview score, total words produced, errors produced, and interference errors produced. The results of the study lend support to the theory that overt Monitor teaching could be beneficial to native Spanish-speaking students of English. The experimental group showed a significant gain in Ilyin scores and a significant reduction in the number of errors produced.
Date: August 1983
Creator: Conway, Jean (Priscilla Jean)
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Composition Program for Accelerated High School Students (open access)

A Composition Program for Accelerated High School Students

Since so many aids are available to help the teacher in the actual process of writing, this study will concentrate on the various ways in which other benefits, such as heightened awareness, educated imagination, increased self-esteem, and improved critical judgment, can be integrated into a composition class for accelerated students.
Date: August 1969
Creator: Reynolds, Grover A.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Utopia : An Idea-centered Activity for Accelerated Twelfth Grade Students (open access)

Utopia : An Idea-centered Activity for Accelerated Twelfth Grade Students

Through the ages dissatisfaction with his environment has provoked man to envision the ideal or "utopian" setting which would be more to his liking. The discontent of today's youth with the world it has inherited echoes the complaints of past generations and yet is of particular significance and relevance to the twelfth grade student soon to enter the college community where protests are becoming increasingly more articulate and effective. Established institutions and behavior codes are challenged with impunity although critics charge that such dissent is irresponsible and unsupported by positive, alternative proposals for improvement.
Date: January 1970
Creator: Hull, Mary F.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Some Innovations in an Oral Approach to Teaching English to Spanish-Speaking Students: Eighth Grade Level (open access)

Some Innovations in an Oral Approach to Teaching English to Spanish-Speaking Students: Eighth Grade Level

The aim of this thesis is to suggest how some of the trends mentioned above may be incorporated into a program to help the eighth grade Spanish-speaking student in a predominately English-speaking school, to help the student who has not only given up the idea of getting an education himself, but is considered by his teachers "too late" to reach.
Date: January 1970
Creator: Woolsey, Normada L.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Teaching the College Freshman to Write (open access)

Teaching the College Freshman to Write

This thesis will deal with five points of emphasis--content, logic, organization, demon errors, and style. Not a complete manual for teaching freshman composition, this thesis will serve as a simplified guide. This thesis is written for the inexperienced teacher of freshman English who may need guidance, but it should also be of interest to the experienced teacher who wants to confirm his own practices or to find new approaches for teaching the college freshman how to write.
Date: August 1969
Creator: Harris, Pamela Matheidas
System: The UNT Digital Library
Derivation: Excerpts From a Novel (open access)

Derivation: Excerpts From a Novel

The dissertation consists of a critical preface and excerpts from the novel Derivation. The preface details how the novel Derivation explores the tension between the artist and the academy in the university, as well as the role memory plays in the construction of fictional narratives. The preface also details how narrative voice is used to expand the scope of Derivation, and ends with a discussion of masculine tropes in the novel. Derivation traces the path of a woman trying to rebuild her life in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, returning first to her blue collar roots before pursuing a career as an academic.
Date: August 2015
Creator: Davis, Matthew
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Attitude of Mexican-Americans Toward Their Texas Spanish (open access)

The Attitude of Mexican-Americans Toward Their Texas Spanish

"The purpose of this study is to examine the attitude of Mexican Americans toward their Texas Spanish in order to determine if present educational policies are successful in promoting high self-concepts for Mexican-American students..the conclusion of this thesis [is] that a sizable number of Mexican-Americans do not have a positive self-image as speakers of their native language. It is suggested that the rejection of Spanish dialects which are different and distinct from the school standard is a major factor in causing a low self-image on the part of the speaker of a non-standard dialect."-- leaves 1,3.
Date: August 1973
Creator: McDonald, Bobby Gene
System: The UNT Digital Library
Laying the foundation for successful non-academic writing: Professional communication principles in the K-5 curricula of the McKinney Independent School District. (open access)

Laying the foundation for successful non-academic writing: Professional communication principles in the K-5 curricula of the McKinney Independent School District.

Traditionally, K-5 students' writing has had a primarily academic aim-to help students master concepts and express themselves. Even if students take a professional writing course later, they typically do not have the opportunity to practice-over the long period of time mastery requires-the non-academic writing skills they will be required to use as part of their jobs and in their civic life. Based on a limited K-5 study, Texas' McKinney Independent School District is doing a good job of preparing students at the elementary-school level in the areas of collaboration and presentation. A fair job of helping elementary-school students understand the communication situation, define audience, clarify purpose, gather and evaluate resources, and test usability. [And] a poor job of helping elementary-school students with analysis and organization. With their teachers' help, K-5 students eventually grasp the communication situation and can broadly identify their audience and purpose, but they do not appear to select words, format, communication style, or design based on that audience and purpose. Their writer-based focus affects their presentations as well, although they do present frequently. If teachers routinely incorporated audience and purpose considerations into every aspect of communication assignments (format, communication style, design), students would be better prepared for …
Date: December 2009
Creator: Treviño, Marlea
System: The UNT Digital Library
Constructing Taiwan: Taiwanese Literature and National Identity (open access)

Constructing Taiwan: Taiwanese Literature and National Identity

In this work, I trace and reconstruct Taiwan's nation-formation as it is reflected in literary texts produced primarily during the country's two periods of colonial rule, Japanese (1895-1945) and Kuomintang or Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) (1945-1987). One of my central arguments is that the idea of a Taiwanese nation has historically emerged from the interstices of several official and formal nationalisms: Japanese, Chinese, and later Taiwanese. In the following chapters, I argue that the concepts of Taiwan and Taiwanese have been formed and enriched over time in response to the pressures exerted by the state's, colonial or otherwise, pedagogical nation-building discourses. It is through an engagement with these various discourses that the idea of a Taiwanese nation has come to be gradually defined, negotiated, and reinvented by Taiwanese intellectuals of various ethnic backgrounds. I, therefore, focus on authors whose works actively respond to and engage with the state's official nationalism. Following Homi Bhabha's explication in his famous essay "DissemiNation," the basic premise of this dissertation is that the nation, as a narrated space, is not simply shaped by the homogenizing and historicist discourse of nationalism but is realized through people's diverse lived experience. Thus, in reading Taiwanese literature, it is …
Date: August 2018
Creator: Lu, Tsung Che
System: The UNT Digital Library
Superior Mirth: National Humor and the Victorian Ego (open access)

Superior Mirth: National Humor and the Victorian Ego

This project traces the wide and varied uses of patriotic (and, at times, jingoistic and xenophobic) humor within the Victorian novel. a culture’s humor, perhaps more than any other cultural markers (food, dress, etc.), provides invaluable insight into that nation’s values and perceptions—not only how they view others, but also how they view themselves. in fact, humor provides such a unique cultural thumbprint as to make most jokes notoriously untranslatable. Victorian humor is certainly not a new topic of critical discussion; neither is English ethno-cultural identity during this era lacking scholarly attention. However, the intersection of these concerns has been seemingly ignored; thus, my research investigates the enmeshed relationship between these two areas of study. Not only do patriotic sentiment and humor frequently overlap, they often form a causational relationship wherein a writer’s rhetorical invocation of shared cultural experiences creates humorous self-awareness while “inside” jokes which reference unique Anglo-specific behaviors or collective memories promote a positive identity with the culture in question. Drawing on and extending the work of James Kincaid’s Dickens and the Rhetoric of Laughter, Harold Nicolson’s “The English Sense of Humor,” and Bergson’s and Freud’s theories of humor as a social construct, I question how this reciprocated …
Date: May 2012
Creator: Stober, Katharyn L.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Patrol: Excerpts From a Novel (open access)

Patrol: Excerpts From a Novel

The dissertation consists of a critical preface and excerpts from the novel Patrol. The preface explores how the novel Patrol utilizes characters that engage with tropes of the Romantic Genius in order to establish their subjectivity while navigating the standardizing mechanisms of twenty-first century information technologies. The preface analyzes how the rise of the organic food movement, the usage of biotech genetic engineering, and the tactics of Big Data-era marketing all inform the critical underpinnings of Patrol, situating the novel in conversation with works of fiction and nonfiction that also explore the interplay of these topics with contemporary American culture. Set primarily in Cincinnati, Ohio, the bifurcated narrative of the novel Patrol enlists the perspectives of both a science-tech father from the Boomer generation, Tim Smith, and his millennial public relations-major daughter, Sarah Smith. Both work in industries that seek to utilize the concept of the individual genius in service of quantification. Tim and Sarah’s interactions with Alexandra Smith, a family member who transitions from female to male over the course of the novel, cause both protagonists to recognize that their own identities are malleable, and this discovery goads each into reexamining their career choices and personal relationships. The plot …
Date: August 2014
Creator: Stringer, Hillary
System: The UNT Digital Library
Outer Edges of the Middle Kingdom (open access)

Outer Edges of the Middle Kingdom

Outer Edges of the Middle Kingdom is a narrative by the author about his two years as a teacher in the People's Republic of China. Organized chronologically, the account begins in August, 1985, and ends in June, 1987. The narrator describes meeting students at Tianjin University, Tianjin, China, designing English classes for English majors, daily episodes in the classroom, and interaction with Chinese colleagues. The narrative alternates between life on a university campus and extensive trips the narrator made to various cities in China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Kunming, Guilin, Harbin, Hohot, and Guangzhou. Also recounted are the narrator's reactions to the student demonstrations of December, 1986, and the resulting anti-bourgeois liberation campaign of January-April, 1987.
Date: December 1987
Creator: Lilly, Charles N.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Contemporary Women Poets of Texas (open access)

Contemporary Women Poets of Texas

As a teacher of American literature in high school, I have become conscious of the importance of teaching students of that age level the lore and poetry of their native state. Poems of nature or local color in their own country will hold their interest when material from more distant points seems dull and uninteresting. Through my teaching I have become interested in the poetry of the Southwest and have enjoyed reading the poetry and knowing the poets through personal interview or correspondence.
Date: August 1942
Creator: Heatly, Katherine Stafford
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Problem of Spelling Reform (open access)

The Problem of Spelling Reform

Spelling is a tool by which one records his thoughts and ideas; therefore it is a vital part of life. To fulfill its task successfully, spelling must be accurate. Spelling is that tool by which the happenings of the past are revealed to the present and are preserved for the future. For any individual who attempts to transfer his thoughts and words by symbols onto paper, correct spelling is a prime essential. It follows, then, that to develop perfect habits of spelling in order that perfect transcriptions of thoughts might be made is the duty of the teacher. This duty has been attempted by teachers for many generations. But it is an established fact that the goal has not been reached, for there is a stupendous number of misspellings in the written work of students in high schools. Many methods have been advanced for correcting this incompetence in spelling; when these were tried, they have failed to secure the coveted goal. In some instances the cure has aggravated the disease. Successful abolishment of this handicap baffles the teaching profession. In a course in American pronunciation recently conducted at North Texas State College, the teacher presented the fact that there are …
Date: August 1950
Creator: Lacey, Vera B.
System: The UNT Digital Library
"Goodness and Mercy" (open access)

"Goodness and Mercy"

The stories in this collection represent an increasingly transcultural world by exploring the intersection of cultures and identities in border spaces, particularly the Mexican-American border. Characters, regardless of ethnicity, experience the effects of migration and deportation in schools, hometowns, relationships, and elsewhere. The collection as a whole focuses on the issues and themes found in Mexican-American literature, such as loss, separation, and the search for identity.
Date: May 2016
Creator: Craggett, Courtney, 1986-
System: The UNT Digital Library
"Stealing Dreams" and Other Stories (open access)

"Stealing Dreams" and Other Stories

The critical preface, "Learning to Break the Rules" discusses workshop rules as guidelines, as well as how and why I learned to break them. The creative portion of this thesis is made up of eight short stories: "The Many Incarnations of Blazer Chief," "Anna's Monsters," "The Pecan Tree's Daughter," "When the Seas Emptied," "The Umbrella Thief," "How to Forget," "Fracture," and "Stealing Dreams."
Date: December 2014
Creator: Matthews, Elise
System: The UNT Digital Library

Collected Stories

A collection of short fiction stories that fixate on the role of the strange and the imagined.
Date: May 2020
Creator: Flannery, Brendan Conor
System: The UNT Digital Library
Emerson's Ideal of Education (open access)

Emerson's Ideal of Education

This paper discusses what Ralph Waldo Emerson believes to be the aim of education and how he thinks the aim is to be reached.
Date: 1941
Creator: Hildebrand, Oneita
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Distribution of Prepositions in English Adverbial Phrases (open access)

The Distribution of Prepositions in English Adverbial Phrases

This thesis describes the rules of prepositions in English adverbial phrases.
Date: June 1966
Creator: Patton, Judy S.
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Sampling of Variant Idiomaticity in Freshman Composition at North Texas State University from 1958 to 1968 (open access)

A Sampling of Variant Idiomaticity in Freshman Composition at North Texas State University from 1958 to 1968

"The object of this thesis is neither to uphold the sacred cows of traditionalist grammar nor to forge a way for a liberal philology. It does, however, examine "the kind of English that most people use most of the time," that is, the idiom of the language, and specifically the phrases and expressions that compose idioms."--1.
Date: June 1970
Creator: Fuller, William H.
System: The UNT Digital Library

Stories: Spain, Lovers and Crazy Old Ladies

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Stories: Spain, Lovers and Crazy Old Ladies is a collection of short stories about relationships, traumas, memories and change.
Date: May 2005
Creator: Franco, Sally
System: The UNT Digital Library
Bureaucratic Writing in America: A Preliminary Study Based on Lanham's Revising Business Prose (open access)

Bureaucratic Writing in America: A Preliminary Study Based on Lanham's Revising Business Prose

In this study, I examine two writing samples using a heuristic based on Richard A. Lanham's definition of bureaucratic writing in Revising Business Prose: noun-centered, abstract, passive-voiced, dense, and vague. I apply a heuristic to bureaucratic writing to see if Lanham's definition holds and if the writing aids or hinders the information flow necessary to democracy. After analyzing the samples for nominalizations, concrete/abstract terms, active/passive verbs, clear/unclear agents, textual density, and vague text/writers' accountability, I conclude that most of Lanham's definition holds; vague writing hinders the democratic process by not being accountable; and bureaucratic writing is expensive. Writers may humanize bureaucracies by becoming accountable. A complete study requires more samples from a wider source.
Date: May 1993
Creator: Su, Donna
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Effect of Journalism on Modern American Writing (open access)

The Effect of Journalism on Modern American Writing

This paper is an analysis of the relationship between journalism and formal literary usage in America. It is the purpose of this study to define and illustrate characteristics of modern journalese and to make a comparison of standards of correct usage advocated by recent textbooks in English composition and journalism. Particular attention will be given to diction, structure and length of sentences, capitalization, abbreviation, and punctuation. The conclusion will be a brief evaluation of modern journalism, a succinct resume of its impact on modern language and literature, and a simple prediction of future tendencies in journalistic and literary language. And to give a better perspective to the analysis of journalism and American English, the paper begins with a description of the American linguistic heritage.
Date: August 1956
Creator: Estes, Dorothy Southerland
System: The UNT Digital Library
English Utopias (open access)

English Utopias

This thesis discusses Utopian thought and compares the Utopias of Plato, Sir Thomas More, Sir Francis Bacon, and Jonathan Swift in the areas of government, education, and social problems.
Date: 1940
Creator: Smith, Stella Parker
System: The UNT Digital Library