AN EXAMINATION OF STUDENT CONFIDENCE AND SELF-EFFICACY IN
SACRAMENTO STATE UNIVERSITY’S GRADUATION WRITING ASSESSMENT
REQUIREMENT PROCESS
A Thesis
Presented to the Faculty of the Department of English
California State University, Sacramento
Submitted in partial satisfaction of
the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in
English
(Composition)
by
Theresa Nicole Walsh
SPRING
2013
©2013
Theresa Nicole Walsh
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ii
AN EXAMINATION OF STUDENT CONFIDENCE AND SELF-EFFICACY IN
SACRAMENTO STATE UNIVERSITY’S GRADUATION WRITING ASSESSMENT
REQUIREMENT PROCESS
A Thesis
by
Theresa Nicole Walsh
Approved by:
________________________________, Committee Chair
Fiona Glade, Ph.D.
________________________________, Second Reader
Daniel Melzer, Ph.D.
_________________________________
Date
iii
Student: Theresa Nicole Walsh
I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the
University format manual, and that this thesis is suitable for shelving in the Library
and credit is to be awarded for the thesis.
________________________, Graduate Coordinator
David Toise, Ph.D.
Department of English
iv
______________________
Date
Abstract
of
AN EXAMINATION OF STUDENT CONFIDENCE AND SELF-EFFICACY IN
SACRAMENTO STATE UNIVERSITY’S GRADUATION WRITING ASSESSMENT
REQUIREMENT PROCESS
by
Theresa Nicole Walsh
In their junior year at California State University Sacramento (CSUS), students
are asked to engage in a Directed Self Placement (DSP) moment. In that moment,
students decide whether they will take a timed writing test or enroll in a Writing In the
Disciplines (WID) course. The purpose of this assessment moment is to ensure that
students are ready to participate in Upper Division Writing Intensive (UDWI) courses.
Students receive a placement score indicating their variable-credit upper-division writing
requirements, culminating in a UDWI course. Once students have passed a UDWI
course, they have met the Graduation Writing Assessment Requirement (GWAR), and
their writing requirements are complete.
This research study seeks to examine the effects that the placement moment has
on student confidence and student self-efficacy. The theoretical focus of this study is
situated within Student Self-Efficacy, Genre Theory, Rhetorical Motivation, Critical
Consciousness, and Writing in the Disciplines/Writing Across the Curriculum. Student
v
surveys revealed that students who chose to take the timed writing test and were placed
into fewer units of writing coursework had a lower sense of self-efficacy than students
who were placed into more units of writing coursework.
_______________________, Committee Chair
Fiona Glade, Ph.D.
________________
Date
vi
DEDICATION
this thesis is dedicated to
bob, liz, and tim
beth, alison, fiona, amy, and dan
in loving memory of my mother
for david and george
vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Dedication…………………………………………………………………………
vii
List of Tables………………………………………………………………..........
x
Chapter
1. CONTEXT: CSU MANDATE FOR THE GRADUATION WRITING ASSESSMENT
REQUIREMENT AND SACRAMENTO STATE’S JUNIOR YEAR PLACEMENT
MOMENT AND PATHS………………………………………………………
1
The GWAR, an Overview…………………………………………………
1
Composition and the Motivation to Write: English 109W/M and the WPJ
4
The Writing Placement for Juniors………………………………………..
5
The Problem Under Investigation: The Research Questions………...........
6
Development of the Problem Under Investigation: The Review of Literature 8
2. METHODS: DESCRIPTION OF THE PROCEDURES USED TO CONDUCT
THE INVESTIGATION………………………………………………………..
29
The Study………………………………………………………………….
29
Suggestions for Improvements……………………………………………. 34
3. RESULTS: A REPORT OF THE FINDINGS…………………………………. 37
Qualitative Data: Cross Tabulation of Placement and Anticipated Grade
37
4. ANALYSIS: A REPORT IN DESCENDING ORDER OF STUDENT
SELF-EFFICACY………………………………………………………............
45
Students Who Were Placed into English 109M by the WPJ….…………... 45
viii
Students Who Self-Placed into English 109W……………………………. 46
Students Who Self-Placed into English 109M…………………………….
47
Students Who Placed Directly into UDWI………………………………... 48
Students Who Were Placed into English 109W by the WPJ……………… 49
Students Who Earned a 4-unit Placement (UDWI + 109X)………………. 50
5. DISCUSSION: SUMMARY, IMPLICATIONS OF THE RESULTS, AND
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY……………………………………
52
Summary and Implications of the Results………………………………… 52
Suggestions for Further Research…………………………………………. 55
Other Results………………………………………………………………
57
Final Comments…………………………………………………………… 57
Appendix A: English 109 Portfolio Placement Criteria…………..………………. 60
Appendix B: English 109W/English 109M GWAR Program Syllabus,
Fall 2012…………………………………………………………………..
61
Appendix C: English 109 Portfolio Minimum Required Contents……………….
63
Appendix D: English 109 Portfolio Submission Checklist………………….........
64
Appendix E: Sacramento State Writing Placement for Juniors (WPJ)
Placement Rubric………………………………………………………….
65
References…………………………………………………………………………
66
ix
LIST OF TABLES
Tables
Page
3.1
Placement and Anticipated Grade in Current Course………………..…… 38
3.2
WPJ Placed into UDWI…………………………………………………… 39
3.3
Self-Placed into 109W…………………………………………………….. 40
3.4
WPJ Placed into 109M Currently Enrolled in 109M……………………… 41
3.5
Self-Placed into 109M…………………………………………………….. 42
3.6
WPJ Placed into 109W Currently Enrolled in 109W……………………… 43
3.7
WPJ Placed into UDWI + 109X…………………………………………… 44
x
1
Chapter 1
CONTEXT: CSU MANDATE FOR THE GRADUATION WRITING
ASSESSMENT REQUIREMENT AND SACRAMENTO STATE’S JUNIOR
YEAR PLACEMENT MOMENT AND PATHS
The California State University (CSU) is a public university system with twentythree campuses, statewide. The CSU requires every undergraduate student to meet the
Graduation Writing Assessment Requirement (GWAR) before graduating. This writing
requirement was established in 1977, and each CSU campus determines how the
requirement will be met at each specific University (“Writing Programs: GWAR for
Juniors”). In A Review of the California State University Graduation Writing Assessment
Requirement (GWAR) in 2002, the Academic Senate of the CSU reviewed and made
recommendations regarding the “local GWAR policies, procedures, and products”
(Academic Senate of the CSU). As the CSU system allows each campus control over
how GWAR standards will be implemented, the report emphasizes the importance of the
concerns of local communities in establishing GWAR processes. At the time of the
report, “Ten campuses require[d] a writing exam; two campuses require[d] completion of
a course; three campuses require[d] both an exam and a course; and seven campuses
require[d] either an exam or a course” (Academic Senate of the CSU, p. 1).
The GWAR, an Overview
At California State University, Sacramento (CSUS), students meet the GWAR
before graduation by successfully passing an Upper-Division Writing Intensive (UDWI)
course. However, students must first place into the UDWI course by generating a sample
2
of writing, which is assessed and used to place each student on an appropriate path of
coursework. Students have a choice between two writing environments in which they will
generate their writing sample. Trained GWAR student representatives or faculty
members counsel students about their assessment options in Directed Self-Placement
(DSP) moments. Students are counseled regarding which of the placement options will
best suit them. The two placement options from which students may choose to generate
their writing samples are a course—English 109M or W (109M is for multi-lingual
students)—or a timed writing test—the Writing Placement test for Juniors (WPJ).
In the 3-unit English 109M/W course, students dedicate an entire semester to
generating a portfolio of work. Students learn to engage in discipline-specific areas of
interest and to compose in genres and on topics specific to their majors. The course
emphasizes process-driven writing as students receive feedback from peers and from the
instructor throughout. At the end of the course, students submit a portfolio of work that
demonstrates their ability to compose in their disciplines and the progress they have made
as writers. Portfolios are evaluated, and students are given a placement score and a grade
based on a programmatically designed rubric.
In the WPJ placement test, students are required to compose two essays in a timed
environment. The first essay asks that students read several short texts, describe an issue
that arises from those tests, take a position on it, and support that position using evidence
from the texts as well as personal experience. The second essay question asks students to
personally reflect on their writing process. Faculty from departments campus-wide score
3
the test using a holistic rubric. Students receive a placement score a few weeks after
taking the WPJ.
The two possible writing environments that students choose from are very
different from one another. The 109M/W option is a 3-unit, semester-long course.
Students who decide to take the course add three more units of tuition to their expenses,
as well as another full semester of English coursework. The WPJ, on the other hand, costs
$25 and takes a couple of hours on a Saturday morning.
From either of the above writing environments, students may be placed into one
of three possible placements: a 6-, 4-, or 3-unit placement. In the 6-unit placement,
students must first successfully complete English 109M or W and, once that requirement
is met, may then enroll in their UDWI course. Students may also earn a 4-unit placement,
which means they may enroll in their UDWI course but are required to concurrently
enroll in a 1-unit, group tutorial section called 109X; or students may earn a 3-unit
placement from which they may enroll directly in their UDWI course. This process was
established in 2009. A breakdown of the placements and the purposes of the courses
follows:
• A 6-unit placement requires that students successfully complete English
109M/W: A junior-year course designed to develop students’ rhetorical awareness
of generic writing conventions in their disciplines, to introduce discipline-specific
inquiry, and to engage students in collaborative writing processes.
• A 4-unit placement requires that students successfully complete their UDWI
course and English 109X: English 109X is a 1-unit, studio-style tutorial designed
4
to engage students in collaborative writing processes through group workshops of
their UDWI writing assignments.
• A 3-unit placement allows students to enroll directly into their UDWI course.
UDWI courses, a GE requirement for all majors, focus on writing in and about
specific disciplines. Some majors require that students enroll in a UDWI course in
their major. Others do not.
This study seeks to examine students’ perceived self-efficacy as it relates to how they
have placed.
Composition and the Motivation to Write: English 109W/M and the WPJ
English 109 M/W instructors follow very specific guidelines regarding course
outcomes, design, requirements, and assessment (See Appendix B). Program
administrators and faculty designed the course collaboratively in an effort to help
students to better understand and execute writing in the disciplines.
In English 109M/W, students produce multiple drafts of writing assignments, give
and receive peer feedback, engage in discipline-specific inquiry, compose in disciplinespecific genres, and submit at least twelve polished pages of academic work in a portfolio
at the end of the semester (See Appendix C). The portfolio is evaluated according to the
program rubric, and students receive a grade in the class and a placement score (See
Appendix A). The grade in the course tells students how they performed the tasks of the
course. The placement score tells students which course(s) they must still take in order to
complete the GWAR requirement. From the English 109M/W course, students might
earn a 3-unit placement (placing directly into a UDWI course), a 4-unit placement
5
(placing into a UDWI course with the required concurrent 109X section), or a 6-unit
placement (placing back into the 109 M/W course). The students who take English
109M/W may earn any placement from the same range of placements as students who
take the WPJ.
The Writing Placement for Juniors
The WPJ exam is a timed writing exam. Students are given fifteen minutes to plan
and an hour and a half to write two essays1. Calibrated readers from across the disciplines
score the exams using a holistic rubric (See Appendix E). The WPJ is closely aligned
with Ed White’s (1994) description of effective timed writing assessment practices in
“The Politics of Assessment: Past and Future.” The test designers added elements that
further develop the timed writing genre, such as always asking students to reflect on their
writing process in the second essay. Such additions allow students who are processdriven writers to demonstrate and explain that they require more time to produce writing
that they consider indicative of their abilities.
In the WPJ’s second essay prompt, students have the opportunity to discuss
methods of self-efficacy that they apply to their writing. Goal-setting and processes in
which students must engage in order to produce writing they are proud of are the types of
discussions students might explore in this essay. In doing so, students express to their
evaluators that they would typically require more time to compose an effective essay.
Through the student’s essay, the evaluator might see that the student has a high sense of
1
Accommodations are made for students who require them.
6
self-efficacy, and that would provide the evaluator the argument needed to place the
student in a lower unit requirement.
The Problem Under Investigation: The Research Questions
In an effort to better understand students’ responses to their GWAR placement, I
devised a survey that asked a number of questions pertaining to placement, to what
students think of as “good academic writing,” and to what grades students expected to
earn in their courses. The focus of this study emerged as I compared students’ selfreported placements with the grades they expected to earn in the course in which they
were enrolled. It seemed that these values, when examined next to each other, would
reveal something about how placement affected students’ confidence in their ability to
succeed in their coursework. As such, I designed the following research questions to
guide this study:
Research questions:
1. Do those who place into a lower unit requirement express greater confidence in their
ability to earn high marks?
If a student places into a lower unit requirement, he or she has essentially placed
“higher” than others. A 3-unit placement means that the student is required to take the 3unit UDWI course. Upon successful completion of that course, the student has met the
GWAR. As such, I anticipated that those students who placed into lower unit
requirements would have greater confidence in their ability to earn high marks in courses.
7
2. Do those who place into higher unit requirement paths express lower confidence to
earn high marks in their courses?
If a student places into a higher unit requirement, he or she has essentially placed
“lower” than others. A 6-unit requirement means that the student is required to take the 3unit 109M/W course, and upon successful completion of that course take and
successfully pass his or her UDWI course. Then the student will have met the GWAR.
A 4-unit requirement means that the student is required to take his or her UDWI
course with the concurrent 1-unit English 109X course. Then the student will have met
the GWAR. As such, I anticipated that those students who placed in higher unit
requirements would have less confidence in their ability to earn high marks in courses.
3. Do those who self-place express lower confidence in their ability to earn high marks in
their courses?
If a student chooses to take the English 109M/W course, he or she is essentially
opting for the 6-unit requirement. This means that the student feels that he or she needs
more assistance articulating him or herself in writing. As such, I anticipated that those
students who chose to take English 109M/W would have less confidence than those who
took the WPJ, as expressed through their anticipated grades.
Hypothesis:
My hypothesis about what the surveys would reveal was that, overall, students
who scored higher on the WPJ would report that they anticipated higher grades in the
classes in which they were enrolled:
• Students who self-placed into English 109M/W would report that they
8
anticipated lower grades than those who chose to take the WPJ.
• Students who had been placed into English 109M/W by the WPJ would
report that they anticipated lower grades in those courses than those who
were placed directly into their UDWI courses. I expected these students to
anticipate the lowest grades of all groups surveyed.
• Students who placed directly into UDWI courses from the WPJ will
anticipate higher grades.
• Students who placed into English 109X would anticipate lower grades.
This study focused on students’ perceived self-efficacy as it related to how they
placed into the course they were in at that time. If my hypothesis were correct, this study
would prove that student confidence levels are negatively affected as students felt they
had less agency over their educational path. I presumed that students who earned a 6-unit
placement, for instance, would generally express less confidence than students in other
placements because they had the least control over their coursework, and they would
have perceived their placement as remediation.
Development of the Problem Under Investigation: The Review of Literature
In an effort to better understand the principles at work in our GWAR program, I
examined some of the texts that form the theoretical foundations of the CSUS writing
sequence. Throughout the programmatic literature of the English 109M/W course is an
emphasis on learning to compose in different genres, and many of the UDWI courses
emphasize this as well. Therefore, WID, Genre, Rhetorical Motivation, and Critical
Consciousness theories emerged as informing the pedagogical practices in those courses.
9
As the motivation to write comes into focus, concerns for more superficial
elements, such as the application of Standard English, grow fuzzier. David Russell (1995)
described universal educated discourse, or UED, as a “general kind of discourse that all
educated (or truly educated) persons in a culture share” but that instead “create(s) and
preserve(s) the false notion that there can exist ‘good writing’” (p. 62). The test designers
and evaluators of the WPJ de-emphasize Standard English, including it in the WPJ rubric,
but as one among several evaluative elements. The scoring concerns are hierarchically
listed in the rubric, and Standard English is listed last and is only to be considered if
errors arrest the reader or impede understanding. Emphasis is placed instead on the
rhetorical choices writers make throughout their essays. In this way, the WPJ test
designers demonstrate concern for rhetorical motivation. Despite this, the WPJ is a highstakes test that might place students on a path of coursework that is longer than they
prefer or can afford. This creates a high level of stress on students who take the test. The
review of literature, therefore, presents a discussion of the theoretical foundations for
each possible path of coursework (including the WPJ) in CSUS’s writing program.
Writing in the disciplines and CSUS’s 109 M/W and UDWI courses.
The connection between writing and knowledge production is particularly
relevant to the process that places students in their UDWI courses. Janet Emig (1983),
Susan McLeod (2001), Carolyn Miller (1984, 1994), and David Russell (1990, 1997)
argue that writing is essential to the production of knowledge. Students in UDWI courses
engage in writing in their disciplines, and this is often when students are asked to
generate writing in new genres and for a discipline-specific audience.
10
Students who attend CSUS as first-year students (typically entering directly from
high school) receive rhetoric instruction in first- and second-year composition classes.
Students who either place into or opt to take English 109M/W continue to receive
rhetoric instruction into their third or fourth year of instruction. This sequence of
coursework was established and is overseen by the Writing Program Administrators at
CSUS. Whether or not UDWI instructors maintain and apply the rhetorical tools that are
taught in English 1A (first-year composition) and English 20 (a second-year Writing
Across the Curriculum course) remains at the discretion of instructors. UDWI courses fall
under the jurisdiction of departments outside of the English department (except in the
case of the UDWI course in English). The UDWI courses are General Education
requirements, which are overseen by the university, not the English department. Each
individual department decides which UDWI course will satisfy students’ General
Education requirements and allow them to progress to matriculation.
If a student takes the English 109M/W course, he or she will have the opportunity
to learn to communicate effectively within his or her discipline. Once students advance to
the UDWI course those who enter from the 109M/W track should be able to demonstrate
that they can employ writing as a part of their process of knowledge production.
Engaging in the process of inquiry, self-reflection, and application of new knowledge
through writing are skills that Emig (1977) and others have successfully argued are
critically bound to composition and knowledge production. Further, CSUS’s writing
program requires 109M/W students to develop rhetorical skill, which they may then
apply to their participation in and across the disciplines.
11
North (1996) discussed the state of upper division writing assessment in
universities in the 1990s. North’s concern centered on his observation that programmatic
issues in the development of composition programs and an absence of longitudinal
studies that examine the development of student writing had resulted in producing
students who did not possess the tools to develop as writers. North saw a problem with
the “discrete 15 week semester” in which one instructor worked with a group of students
for that period. After the semester was over, students moved on to other coursework,
possibly never receiving explicit writing instruction again, particularly after the first two
years of instruction (North, p. 153).
Arguing that academic writing is best taught by English instructors and received
by English majors and minors, North suggested a fuller development of English
programs, such as offering “writing majors, writing minors, writing tracks through the
English major: institutional structures that generate their student credit hours through
repeat business…rather than through high-volume, one time ‘sale’ of freshman
composition” (p. 156). North essentially suggested that more students should be
encouraged to major or minor in English so that they may be exposed to more
composition courses, implying that these are the only students who learn to write well in
the university. Arguably, English majors tend to engage in explicit writing practice and
receive such instruction with some enthusiasm. However, CSUS ensures that through the
instruction of rhetoric in the first two years of required writing program courses and then
in advanced discipline-specific writing courses, students of all disciplines are able to
become effective writers.
12
Although North did explain that making more English majors and minors was not
the only way to resolve the problems with writing development in undergraduate
students, the above model was the one he suggested. CSUS’s writing program addresses
North’s concerns by establishing a writing program that applies rhetoric as a lens through
which students learn first to become rhetorically aware, and then become rhetorically
motivated composers of texts (Burke, 1969). Through this rhetorical lens, students are
able to first explore composition in English 1A, and then writing conventions and
purposes, as they are unique across the curriculum in English 20. Once students have a
sense of how and why to compose in different disciplines, they engage in writing in their
own discipline (in English 109M/W and/or the UDWI course). General education
programs that require students to develop the rhetorical skills necessary to learn to write
and write to learn in any course that requires composing throughout their education will
better serve the student population. CSUS’s writing program asks students to demonstrate
that they are effective written communicators in disciplinary fields outside of the English
major by requiring UDWI courses across the disciplines.
Building confidence: Writing in the disciplines, genre, and rhetorically
motivated composers of texts.
The concept of rhetorical motive is one that originated with Kenneth Burke
(1969), but is further explored by Carolyn Miller (1984) and David Russell (1997) in
their discussions of genre and activity theories, respectively. In their discussions, Miller
and Russell argued that the awareness and the development of rhetorical tools are
essential to developing writers. Miller clarified the term “genre” by situating her
13
discussion among preexisting definitions of the term. The definition of the term itself is
fraught with disagreement among composition and rhetoric scholars, literary scholars2
and linguistic scholars3. Miller’s (1984) primary argument was that, “a rhetorically sound
definition of genre must be centered not on the substance or the form of discourse, but on
the action it is used to accomplish” (p. 151). She went on to argue that “if genre
represents action, it must involve situation and motive, because human action . . . is
interpretable only against a context of situation and through the attributing of motives”
(p. 152). Here Miller used the terms “motive” and “situation,” terms originally coined by
Burke (1969). Primarily, Miller’s concern was that “genre,” in order to be accurately
described in definition, must be described as an “open form,” while most of the theorists
listed above defined genres by their formal elements, as closed and static taxonomies.
Miller (1984) argued that an accurate description of genre takes into account the
shared goals of a discourse, as articulated through “exigence,” and furthered through
composition (p. 152). Linguists, Miller stated, “have also wrestled with the problem of
classifying discourse, but their efforts have produced systems that are mostly formal” (p.
155). Such formal systems may be seen throughout articles from such journals as English
for Specific Purposes, in which linguists present and discuss genres through templates, or
“taxonomies”. Templates do not engage the learner, or the newcomer to a discourse, in
what Miller described as “rhetorical action” (p. 153). Rather, the template only describes
the “rhetorical moves” another author chose to make in a given genre (Swales, 1987).
2
3
Harrell & Linkugel (1978), Fisher (1970, 1980), Wellek (1949), and Brooks & Warren (1958)
van Dijk (1977, 1980), Halliday (1975, 1978), and Frow (1980)
14
Ultimately, Miller argued against the notion of a taxonomy of genres, as genres
necessarily change over time and a taxonomy suggests that genre does not.
The above discussion of genre is of particular interest in the examination of
CSUS’s junior and senior level writing courses because unless a student places into
English 109M/W, he or she advances to a UDWI course, which is taught by professors
outside of the English Department. If students do not take English 109M/W, they are far
less likely to receive explicit and guided instruction in the processes that will assist them
when researching, drafting, and composing in their disciplines at the advanced level.
Although disciplinary faculty are best suited to instruct students in disciplinary content,
they are less likely to teach students how meaning is made through written language in
their field. That is, they are less likely to teach students how to write in that discipline.
The conversation about teaching students to be motivated to act through writing and in
genres that are specific to their disciplines is one to which such composition and rhetoric
scholars as Russell, Miller, and Burke have devoted themselves, specifically. The
questions then emerge: Are students in UDWI courses learning to engage in composing
within their disciplines as rhetorical actions? Or, are they learning to imitate a closed set
of rhetorical moves, in the manner of taxonomy?
To ask a student to compose in a new genre by imitating another would be fine as
long as the student has a reason, or rhetorical motive, to do so. If the student does not
have a motive, he or she will simply imitate the form, but the form will lack content.
Such is the case when students are taught new genres in linguistic terms, or through a
taxonomy of “rhetorical moves” without what Kenneth Burke (1969), Miller (1984), and
15
Russell (1997) have described as “motive.” This method would leave students with no
reason to produce knowledge in that discipline but with a superficial understanding of
what the genre looks like. It may not be effective to teach students to write a lab report by
saying, “Lab reports have these features, which function in these ways.” Rather, a
student must understand why he or she is composing in a given genre. Once the student
understands the fundamental elements of Kenneth Burke’s (1969) Pentad, “what was
done (act), when or where it was done (scene), who did it (agent), how he did it (agency),
and why (purpose)” (Burke xv), genre becomes a form that a document takes because it
suits the needs of the writer rather than a form into which the writer tries to squeeze his or
her ideas.
In an effort to illustrate the importance of rhetorical motivation prior to a
rhetorical move, we might consider how motivation comes into play when one tells a
simple knock-knock joke. The knock-knock joke is a genre with which almost everyone
is familiar, but to tell a knock-knock joke effectively, one must not only know what he or
she will do, when it would be most appropriate, who will participate in the joke-telling,
and how to tell the joke, but also why. To focus on taxonomy alone, one might think that
he or she could tell a knock-knock joke well just by being familiar with the form.
But
consider how this would work if one were to tell a friend that he or she wanted the friend
to start the knock-knock joke. A good natured friend would certainly be rhetorically
aware of the model when he or she says, “Knock-knock,” but once the real agent of the
joke says, “Who’s there?” the friend would realize that he or she had no purpose for
telling the joke. The friend would not know “who’s there” because he or she, initially, did
16
not have a reason to tell the joke. The friend lacks rhetorical motive. In a similar way, the
student who is told to write a lab report without first engaging in biology scholarship and
research (or generating a “why”), to describe a biological occurrence (what), its cause
(agent), and when it occurred in history (scene) is absent any of the rhetorical motivation
that Burke described.
Although it may sound silly, the above example is meant to illustrate the reasons
why English 109M/W or a UDWI course is more effectively taught using rhetoric as a
means to uncover students’ interests in their disciplines and to guide students into full
engagement in writing in their disciplines. This is not to suggest that all UDWI students
should study Burke, but the elements of Burke’s Pentad described the type of writing in
which UDWI students should engage when composing in discipline-specific
composition. In doing so, students not only write to learn their subjects, but also develop
as writers through a real exploration of academic interests. Concentrating on taxonomy—
that is, the form, the grammar, or what many perceive as the rules of composing—takes
students away from the content that probably drove them to attend a university in the first
place.
In his essay, “Rethinking Genre in School and Society: An Activity Theory
Analysis,” David Russell (1997) explored the problem by defining genre as a static form.
In this piece, Russell identified his tool of genre analysis as the “Activity System”
because “the object of analysis [genre] is neither texts nor minds nor conceptual schemes
per se, but what is in between, the social intercourse” (p. 4). Russell described Activity
Systems as including a subject of analysis, tools (or meditational means), and the
17
object/motive, which all lead to the development and realization of shared objectives of
an Activity System. The Activity System is one to which many participants belong and
are motivated to act toward common goals. Russell’s Activity System emphasizes the
action that a community takes in an effort to further realize the community’s shared
goals. Such is the case in the UDWI course that students are required to take at CSUS.
CSUS students in degree programs share the goal of passing the UDWI course
because unless they do, they cannot graduate. In addition to the incentive of
matriculation, students who are in UDWI courses are nearing the end of their college
careers, and if they are taking their UDWI course in their majors, they might be
motivated to see the culmination of their education in their work. The CSUS GWAR is
designed to ensure that students are proficient meaning-makers either in their disciplines
or in another discipline at the advanced level—an activity that requires students to
compose with rhetorical motive. Teachers of these courses share the goal of leading
students to realize proficiency in disciplinary inquiry through writing tasks. Throughout
his
article, “Rethinking Genre” Russell developed Miller’s “Genre Theory as Social
Action” by expanding on Miller’s concept of the genre as a rhetorical action and further
defining the context of that rhetorical space through a discussion of boundary work and
an overlapping of Vygotsky’s Zones of Proximal Development (ZPDs).
Russell (1997) described ZPDs as zones where external influences complicate the
role of the participant, such as a university researcher who has his or her own goals for
research, but whose development is complicated by the influences of funding parties,
university administration, and the relationship between the researcher and research
18
assistants. Such is the case of the university student who has to graduate and is required
to take a UDWI course. That student must decide between taking the WPJ or English
109M/W. The English 109M/W path offers instruction and help that will benefit the
student in his or her UDWI course, but a course is expensive and takes time. If the
student feels pressure to graduate soon and spend less money, this influences his or her
decision. The student, then, must decide between two ZPDs and two genres that the
student will generate: the timed writing genre, and the portfolio genre.
A brief history of Writing in the Disciplines and how it informs the UDWI
course design at CSUS.
In his article, “Ways of Knowing, Doing, and Writing in the Disciplines,” John
Carter (2007) observed that teachers of specialized disciplinary knowledge have
problems with Writing in the Disciplines. Carter explained that such instructors consider
WID to be a move to turn teachers of specialized disciplinary knowledge into “writing
teachers,” but he attributed this to the history of the “very concept of the university,”
explaining that American institutions of higher learning modeled the university on the
German idea of Wissenschaft, a concept that disassembled the historically unified
American university and instead made discrete categories of disciplines, a model under
which Carter explained, “the new university came to be divided into highly specialized
domains of knowledge” (p. 388).
This move corresponded with the “demise of rhetoric as a generally required
course and the rise of freshman composition as the specific treatment for the poor writing
skills of entering students” (Carter, p. 386). In favor of the WID movement, Carter
19
argued that teaching writing as a generalizable skill is ineffective, but students need to be
taught purposeful writing as a method of making meaning within the disciplines. The act
of writing becomes a generative act of participating in learning across and within the
disciplines, and this became the central focus of Carter’s discussion in an effort to
“bridge the outside/in gap” (p. 387), which referred to the divided university that had
severed writing from learning in the new Wissenschaft model of education. From
Carter’s article, a couple of concepts arise that directly effect the writing program at
CSUS.
The first topic that Carter mentioned is that the rise of the Wissenschaft model
coincided with rhetoric disappearing from undergraduate requirements. In an effort to
problematize this, one must wonder which begot the other. Carter explained that the rise
of first year composition was initially instituted to address declining writing skills in the
university, which is also explored in Russell’s “Writing Across the Curriculum in
Historical Perspective: Toward a Social Interpretation” (1990) when he stated:
Before the advent of the modern university at the close of the nineteenth
century, institutions of higher learning built an intellectual and social
community and guaranteed linguistic homogeneity by selecting students
on the basis of social class (less than1% of the population was admitted)
and by initiating them intellectually through a series of highly languagedependent methods—the traditional recitation, disputation, debate, and
oral examination of the old liberal curriculum. Equally important, most
students shared common values (Christian, often sectarian) with their
20
teachers (primarily ministers). They pursued a uniform course of study
and were then duly welcomed as full members of the nations governing
elite. (pp. 54-55)
From this point, Russell explained, the modern university was born, driven by industry,
shattering the earlier model, compartmentalizing and departmentalizing subjects of study.
Without a coherent and unified system, and the rapidly rising enrollment bringing in
“students from previously excluded social groups,” the result was the destruction of
“linguistic homogeneity” (p. 55). It was at this time that rhetoric was removed from
curriculum, and this removal, coupled with the subsequent disciplinary segregation,
fostered an environment in which students have been absent the tools to navigate everexpanding academic isolation.
Ironically, the expanding diversity of the university has fostered an environment
in which graduates learn to keep quiet, communicating usually with others who share
their worldview. Rhetorical awareness, application, and motive, starting early and
explicitly in university writing programs, hold the potential to break these imagined
boundaries. The writing program at CSUS is designed to include rhetoric in the first two
years of composition instruction, emphasizing the importance of cross-curricular
awareness in English 20 (our sophomore year composition course) and in English
109M/W, in which students are taught Writing in the Disciplines in classes comprised of
students from all disciplines. As such, students teach one another about their disciplines,
speaking across these imagined departmental boundaries. By establishing a writing
21
program with a strong rhetorical foundation, CSUS’s courses revivify the preWissenschaft model that Carter (2007) described.
Critical consciousness and the application of rhetorical motive to the
university writing program.
Throughout the composition and rhetoric community, there is great concern over
whether or not teaching a diverse student population to speak and write Standard English
works to appropriate a student’s original language and identity. Here, “Standard English”
refers to Bizzell’s (1992) definition: “the conventional requirements of standardized
writing instruction” (p. 129). In her essay, “What is a Discourse Community,” Bizzell
(1992) conducted an examination of John Swales’ six-part heuristic, which he developed
to define and describe the fundamental elements of a discourse community.
Working from Bruce Herzberg’s (1986) definition of discourse as being always
epistemic, Bizzell discussed the complicated relationship that composition as a discipline
has with developing a canonical body of work. The problem, as Bizzell explained, is that
composition as a field wishes to sever itself from the notions of “inclusion” and
“exclusion,” but students of the discipline still react to what are considered acceptable
discourse conventions within the composition field. To borrow the language from
Vygotsky and David Russell, Bizzell is here examining a Zone of Proximal Development
where the overlapping interests of the university (teachers, administrators, fellowstudents) complicate the students’ sense of their own personal goals and identities.
Beyond this, Bizzell articulated the identity crisis that composition as a field has suffered
since the loss of “linguistic homogeneity,” which Russell described began in the early
22
part of the 20th century when rhetoric was removed from course requirements at most
American universities.
Bizzell illustrated that the composition and rhetoric discipline observes and
furthers a relatively stable set of goals, expectations, and conventions through her
discussion of Nate, a graduate student of composition and the subject of study by
Berkenkotter et al. Nate abandoned his expressivist style for a more academic style
throughout the first two years of his graduate program at Carnegie Mellon. Ultimately,
Bizzell suggested that composition studies identifies itself as an “interdisciplinary
discipline” (p. 235), in an effort to honor that discursive practices describe
epistemological meaning-making as it is unique to each seemingly discrete discourse
community. Although it naturally holds and expresses political and canonical ideals,
composition is a discipline that is in a unique position to further develop curricula that
reaches across the disciplines to better understand how using language makes meaning,
as long as the application of rhetorical tools is present and its application develops
alongside students’ academic advancement throughout the university.
Drawing on Paulo Freire’s liberatory pedagogical work, Bizzell wrestled with the
notion of whether or not teaching a student to write in academic language is an
appropriation of that student’s personal, or home, language. In the synthesis of her
argument, Bizzell argued that teaching students academic discourse conventions (in
which she included Standard English) is to introduce students to the “common
knowledge” of the discourse communities in which students choose to participate (p.
143). Bizzell was careful to note that to teach students to use this language, is not to
23
indoctrinate the student into one “static” way of thinking, writing, and communicating,
but to teach the conventions of the discourse so that students may participate in the larger
academic conversation, challenging the methods of the discourse publicly when
necessary. Once the student has become a fluent participant in the meaning-making
practices of that community, Bizzell described “The object is not to get people to think
alike, but rather to get them to think together about a challenge that has emerged in
interaction with the world” (p. 144). This community participation in “thinking together
about a challenge” harkens back to Carter’s (2007) discussion of the meetings he held
with faculty across the disciplines in an effort to participate in a collective effort to come
up with solutions to issues that arose campus-wide. While discussing pedagogical
practice as it pertains to student development, Bizzell concurrently called on disciplines
across the academic landscape to acknowledge our overlapping interests in the forward
progress of knowledge and meaning-making. She asked that we identify those
conventions of our seemingly discrete disciplines as constantly subject to change and, in
that interest, required the participation and voices of students and each other for progress.
This is where students become powerful participants in the construction of knowledge.
The evaluative moment: The Writing Placement for Juniors as better
practice.
Ed White (1998) recounted the development and broad acceptance of holistic
scoring in “The Politics of Assessment: Past and Future,” the final chapter in his book,
Teaching & Assessing Writing. White, one of the earliest advocates for holistic scoring,
described the assessment conditions from which holistic scoring emerged, named a few
24
of his contemporaries who also advocated for this scoring method, and delineated some
of the most important dates in the development of more fair, culturally unbiased, and
authentic scoring methods. Holistic scoring emerged in the early 1970s in response to
tests that were designed to circumvent an authentic composition moment with
decontextualized multiple choice and “fill-in-the-bubble” questions (White, 1998, p.
275). The Test of Standard Written English (TSWE) and the College-Level Examination
Program, both developed by Educational Testing Service, sought to determine a student’s
ability to edit in standard academic English. As such, these tests and the methods they
employed reinforced socio-economic and socio-linguistic divisions among students
attempting to enter the academy. Such testing methods examined students “for ‘correct’
answers, according to the school dialect and the test makers’ social perspective,” reifying
positivist notions of composition (White, 1998, p. 275-276), which “presume a stable and
independent reality (in this case ‘writing ability’ or ‘writing quality’) that humans try
more or less successfully to ‘measure’” (Broad, 2003, p. 6).
In an interesting merging of communities throughout the early 1970s, several
administrators from ETS and notable faculty members from a few American universities
combined efforts to develop a more effective writing measurement tool with holistic
scoring. By the mid-1980s, White contended that nearly 90% of English Departments
surveyed by the College Conference on Composition and Communication reportedly
employed holistic scoring methods (pp. 274-282, White).
Throughout his treatment of holistic scoring, White addressed the problems
inherent in the method, which he framed through the lenses of validity and reliability.
25
White argued that administrators who employ holistic measurement must be aware that
timed writing assessment is an inauthentic moment, designed to evaluate a product.
Reliability depends on the test design and designers who must be aware of how the test
connects back to instructional practices at the particular school where the test is
administered.
The WPJ is designed to test a student’s ability to compose an essay in a timed
environment and to give those students who are process-driven writers the opportunity to
explain their process to their evaluators. This design not only affords students the
opportunity to make a case for their needs as writers (a quiet room, a week of planning, a
topic they are interested in), but it also ties back to the instructional practices at CSUS.
The program is process-driven. In lower-division composition coursework, students are
encouraged to learn their writing processes. Therefore, the student who has been through
the CSUS writing program can apply what he or she has learned about his or her needs as
a writer and score well on the second essay.
Student self-efficacy.
A person with a high sense of self-efficacy is one who is capable of setting goals
and perceives that he or she will successfully meet those goals. In his article, “Perceived
Self-Efficacy in Cognitive Development and Functioning,” Albert Bandura (1993)
presented his theory of perceived student self-efficacy and its effects on student ability to
develop and function in academic environments. The article addressed the discipline of
education and previous theories of cognition, which neglected to address the individual’s
self-perceived abilities as important components in cognitive development. Bandura
26
described “four major processes” that he explained are key to understanding, “people’s
beliefs about their capabilities to exercise control over their own level of functioning and
over events that affect their lives”; those four processes are, cognitive, motivational,
affective, and selection (p.118). In his discussion of these processes, Bandura explained
that self-efficacy has an obviously positive impact on one’s ability to learn and solve
problems in an academic environment.
In an attempt to test the role of student self-efficacy, Bandura and Wood (1989)
conducted an experiment in which they set a management task before two groups of
people. They told one group that their ability to complete the task before them would
reflect their “inherent intellectual capacity,” and they told the other group that their
ability to navigate the problem before them reflected “an acquirable intellectual skill”
(Bandura, p. 121). The first group’s efficacy dropped when challenged in the task before
them, and “they became more and more erratic in their analytic thinking,” whereas the
second group “fostered a highly resilient sense of personal efficacy” (Bandura, p. 121).
When presented with a DSP moment like the one offered at Sacramento State,
students are offered a choice between two placement moments somewhat similar to the
experiment described above. Students who choose the English 109M/W path seem to
understand that writing is a learned skill that one must practice, particularly when asked
to compose in genres that are new to them. The students who choose the English
109M/W path seem to have a high sense of self-efficacy, choosing to set attainable goals
that pertain to their writing. Timed writing assessment like the WPJ, however, holds a
different set of preconceived notions about student abilities. The WPJ attempts to
27
measure a student’s ability to write in a timed environment. Although the WPJ does
implement best practices in timed writing assessment, it is likely that students have
learned (erroneously) over time that timed writing assessment reflects an inherent ability
to compose. As such, the students in the timed writing environment might be more likely
to take on the behaviors of Bandura’s first group becoming “more and more erratic in
their analytic thinking” (Bandura, p. 121). When students engage in timed writing, their
confidence plummets, and the opportunity for self-efficacy is erased.
In 1994, Frank Pajares and Margaret J. Johnson published “Confidence and
Competence in Writing: The Role of Self-Efficacy, Outcome Expectancy, and
Apprehension,” testing Bandura’s theory on a group of undergraduate students in a
writing intensive course. Pajares and Johnson (1994) report on a study they conducted
involving thirty undergraduate students over the course of a semester. The study sought
to determine whether student belief in writing ability had an effect on writing
performance.
The methods employed by the researchers consisted of observing a class in which
the students were enrolled (a class in which writing development was not a goal), and an
analysis of student writing from the beginning of the semester and the end of the
semester. These methods were designed to determine the overall effectiveness of
Bandura’s (1993) social cognitive theory of student self-efficacy as it correlates to
writing development in students. The results of the study found that through positive
feedback from the instructor and peers in the class, students’ confidence in their ability to
complete writing tasks did improve, while their confidence in their writing abilities did
28
not. Despite an absence in confidence in their writing skills, and direct instruction about
such matters, student writing skills did improve (as measured by usage, grammar,
composition, and mechanical skills) over the semester.
Pajares and Johnson’s (1994) practical application of Bandura’s theory
demonstrated that although these students did not feel confident about their writing
abilities, their writing did, in fact, improve. Although the students were not in a class that
focused on composition, the instructor did take the time to respond to writing through
feedback and created a space in the classroom for peer feedback. The course, however,
was content-driven, asking students to complete writing tasks with what might be called
rhetorical motive while at the same time, offering some guidance in composition in the
discipline from the instructor.
The work that Pajares and Johnson did to test Bandura’s self-efficacy theory
corresponds to the UDWI course design and the 109M/W course design at CSUS because
in these classes, students focus on the discipline-specific content that they are learning
and begin to write in genres that are common to their academic communities. Student
work is evaluated based on the content and on the students’ development as participants
in that community. The students’ rhetorical moment shifts here from being on the outside
looking at the genres of their disciplines to being on the inside, doing meaningful
research and critical thinking while composing within their disciplines. As such, this
presents a useful moment at which to consider their confidence and on their self-efficacy.
29
Chapter 2
METHODS: DESCRIPTION OF THE PROCEDURES USED TO
CONDUCT THE INVESTIGATION
The Study
In an effort to better understand students’ perceived self-efficacy as it relates to
their placements in CSUS’s GWAR program, I designed a survey that asked students to
describe which placement method they chose, which grade they anticipated in the course
in which they were enrolled, and which features they found most important to academic
writing.
When I first began the research process, I was interested in a few ideas. First, I
was interested in the continuity of the UDWI courses in relation to the writing sequence
that was designed and administered by the Composition faculty. I wondered if UDWI
coursework was designed with rhetorical motivation in mind. Second, I was interested in
who took the WPJ, who took 109M/W, and why. I imagined that confidence might be a
factor in students’ decisions to self-place or take the WPJ. When I examined my surveys,
a series of correlations between the ways that students placed and their anticipated grades
pointed back to confidence, but not in the way that I expected they would. Subsequently,
this second concern with student confidence became the primary focus of my research
and analysis.
This new interest in the research guided me to examine the first and second
sections of the surveys I distributed and to reserve the third and fourth sections for later
study.
30
The surveys, distribution.
With the approval of the Institutional Review Board (IRB), in the spring semester
of 2012, I distributed 276 surveys to a combination of English 109W, English 109M, and
UDWI courses. Of the 276 surveys distributed, 24 were completed in an English 109M
course, and 103 were completed in English 109W. Students in UDWI courses
(Astrophysics, Business Management, Music, Environmental Sciences, and two sections
of Criminal Justice) completed the remaining 149 surveys. Of the 276 surveys
distributed, 258 were useable.4
In order to maintain continuity, each instructor was given a script to read to the
students after distributing the surveys and each survey had a cover letter explaining the
students’ rights. Surveys were distributed by the instructors of English 109M/W courses
and one of the Criminal Justice UDWI courses. I personally distributed surveys to the
remaining UDWI courses.
The surveys, section one.
In an effort to determine whether student placement correlated with student selfefficacy levels, the surveys asked students to describe how they found themselves in their
current class where I was distributing the survey. In other words: did they self place or
were they placed by the WPJ? For each placement option, the survey question provided
the class options that students might have been placed into. The options were as follows:
I have self-placed and am currently enrolled in English 109 W.
I have self-placed and am currently enrolled in English 109 M.
Reasons for discarding the 18 surveys are discussed in “Suggestions for Improvements”
section.
4
31
I took the WPJ and was placed into English 109W. I am currently enrolled in
109W.
I took the WPJ and was placed into English 109M. I am currently enrolled
in109M.
I took the WPJ and was placed into my upper division writing intensive course.
I took the WPJ and was placed into an upper division writing intensive course
with the concurrent tutorial section of 109X.
These options were followed by the question,
If you have taken English 109W or 109M more than once, how many times have
you taken it (including this semester)? _______________
The surveys, section two.
In Section Two of the survey, I asked that students report the grade he or she
earned in “English 109” or what score they received on the WPJ. Students were also
prompted to report the grade they anticipated they would receive in “English 109” or in
their UDWI course.
The surveys, section three.
Section Three of the surveys presented students with a list of textual features and
concerns common to academic writing and asked that students rank each feature on a
Likert scale, with “1” representing “not important at all” and “5” representing “extremely
important.” I did not assign a level of importance to numbers 2-4 on the Likert scale. The
textual features that students were asked to rate were:
Using proper citation methods (MLA, APA, Chicago Style, etc.)
32
Understanding how to create an argument
Being aware of the type of language that will be appropriate for your reader
Being able to imagine the person or people who will read your document
Understanding how to best organize your argument
Using Standard English grammar and mechanics
Establishing your credibility as a writer
Understanding what you are trying to persuade your reader of
Revising work in response to feedback from peers
In designing the survey, I chose this list of features in an effort to address two different
types of concerns that students might have with their own writing. The first were the
more formal elements of texts that students tend to consider important to academic
writing when they first enter the university. Grammar, mechanics, spelling, punctuation,
and accuracy of textual citations all qualified as what I considered to be superficial or
surface-level concerns.
The other category of features that students ranked was rhetorical concerns.
Rhetorical concerns are fundamental in the writing program sequence at CSUS because
they are more appropriate to college writing. By the time students have advanced to
UDWI courses, I expected that they would value rhetorical concerns over the more
formal features that are generally addressed in the revision and editing stages of the
writing process.
Those features that I consider more formal from the list above are “Using proper
citation methods,” and “Using Standard English grammar and mechanics.” I consider the
33
following features to be more rhetorically driven than formal: “Understanding how to
create an argument,” “Establishing your credibility as a writer,” “Understanding how to
best organize your argument,” and “Understanding what you are trying to persuade your
reader of.” “Being aware of the type of language that will be appropriate for your reader,”
“Being able to imagine the person or people who will read your document,” and
“Revising work in response to feedback from peers” are features of academic writing that
express a specific awareness of audience essential to the development of rhetorical
awareness.
Because this project is concerned with the first two sections of the surveys,
Section Three is not applied to this project, but may be used in a future study.
The surveys, section four.
Section Four of the surveys asked that students write in the three most important
characteristics of good academic texts with the following prompt, “What do you think are
the three most important characteristics of good academic writing?”
The results from this section were the most interesting. As I designed the surveys,
I thought that the wording of the prompt for Section Four would prompt students to use
their own language, but many students took language directly from Section Three. Still,
several participants wrote in textual features using their own words and, in some cases,
established interesting arguments for such things as the connection between credibility
and impeccable grammar. Although not relevant to this study, section four is extremely
interesting and will, therefore, be used in a future study that examines the textual features
of good academic writing as reported by students, in their own words.
34
The sections of the surveys that are relevant to my current research focus are
Sections one and two.
Suggestions for Improvements
Section one.
After distributing the surveys to the first UDWI course, I realized that the surveys
did not provide a placement option for all students. To provide such breadth, I would
have had to have offered students who had taken English 109 M/W and then advanced to
the UDWI course an option on the survey. As I did realize this upon distribution, I asked
students in each UDWI course I visited to write that option in if it described their
experience. Many of the surveys on which students wrote this option in, however, did not
articulate whether they had been placed by the WPJ or if they had self-placed into the
109M/W course. Because I overlooked this detail when I constructed the surveys, those
surveys with written in 109M/W placement (while they were in their UDWI course) were
not used in this research.
The surveys also failed to offer an option for students who had transferred to
Sacramento State from a community college or another institution. As students who
transferred during their junior year would have experienced entirely different writing
programs, it would be interesting to know more about them and their previous academic
institutions. I did not realize this when I distributed the surveys, so this was not data that I
was able to gather. All students, whether they started their higher education careers at
Sacramento State or transferred in from another institution, are required to participate in
35
the GWAR process. Therefore, learning which students had transferred in is not
imperative to this study; it would have simply been interesting information to have.
Section two.
In this section of the surveys, I asked students what grade they had earned in
English 109, intending to provide students who had taken English 109M or W a place to
report their grades. What I had intended was for students who were enrolled in English
109M/W to report the grade they anticipated in that class, but because I did not specify
109 M/W, the answers to this question might be problematic. Because I left it ambiguous,
however, students who had placed into and were then enrolled in English 109X could
very easily interpret this question to mean that I wanted them to report whether they
anticipated that they would pass or fail English 109X.
In an effort to rectify the potential issue in reporting for the above problem, I have
disregarded those who reported an anticipated letter grade in English 109 if they had also
reported that they received a 4-unit placement. This placement indicates that the student
was, at the time he or she completed the survey, enrolled in English 109X and the
anticipated grade was for the pass/fail concurrent tutorial section. Those students who
reported that they were currently enrolled in an English 109M/W course were the only
anticipated English 109 grades that I kept.
The other problem I found with this section was that I did not ask students to
report the score that they received on the WPE. The WPJ replaced the WPE, or Writing
Placement Exam, in 2009, and I simply overlooked the WPE placement moment. When I
distributed surveys in the UDWI courses, I asked that the students who had taken the
36
WPE write in their score. As the project continued on, however, I found that the WPE
placement scores were irrelevant to my research here, so I did also omit those surveys
from the study.
37
Chapter 3
RESULTS: A REPORT OF THE FINDINGS
Qualitative Data: Cross Tabulation of Placement and Anticipated Grade
In an effort to gain a sense of students’ perceived self-efficacy as it relates to their
placement in writing courses, I cross-referenced students’ placement with their
anticipated grade in the course in which they were enrolled at the time of the survey. I
specifically looked at the placement moment to see who placed themselves on the English
109M/W track, who was placed into 109W/M through the WPJ, and who earned either a
4-unit placement or a direct placement into their UDWI course. Then I looked at what
each of these groups generally expected in terms of grades in these writing courses. This
became a test of the placement moment, one that sought to determine which students
expressed confidence in their abilities to earn high marks in their courses and which
students expressed little or less confidence in their abilities to earn high marks.
Table 3.1 below demonstrates the raw data that I collected and which correspond
to the grades that students anticipated they would receive by placement in their respective
courses. Questions left unanswered are accounted for in the last column.
38
Table 3.1
Placement and Anticipated Grade in Current Course
Placement
Anticipated Grade
A
No
A/B B
B/C C Answer
3
0
1
0 1
1
WPJ Placed into 109M Currently
Enrolled in 109M
WPJ Placed into 109W Currently
Enrolled in 109W
Self-Placed into 109M
14
6
16
2
4
1
9
1
9
0
0
1
Self-Placed into 109W
27
5
20
0
2
3
2
0
7
0
1
0
43
14
42
3
6
4
WPJ Placed into UDWI+109X
WPJ Placed into UDWI
Eighteen surveys were omitted from this data because students either did not answer the
necessary questions, or they answered in such a way that indicated they did not
understand the questions. Six of the eighteen were omitted because they were completed
by students who reported that they had taken English 109 in the previous semester, and
the placement was either ambiguous or did not fit the model above.
Of the students surveyed, 122 were in UDWI courses and filled out the surveys
correctly. Table 3.2 below illustrates the percentage of students who were placed into
their writing intensive courses by the WPJ test and the grade they anticipated they would
receive in the course. Not all students answered the anticipated grade question; many left
it blank, and others wrote in question marks. Those surveys that were incomplete or
completed incorrectly have been omitted from the data in this section. Table 3.2 reflects
the anticipated grades as reported by students who did answer the question:
39
Table 3.2
WPJ Placed into UDWI
WPJ Placed into UDWI
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
A
A/B
B
B/C
C
No Answer
The graph above charts the data that report the following percentages. Of the students
who placed into their UDWI course, 38.4% (43) expected to earn an A; 12.5% (14)
anticipated an “A or B”; 37.5% (42) expected to earn a B; 2.7% (3) anticipated a “B or
C” ; 5.4% (6) anticipated that they would earn a C; and 3.6% (4) did not answer the
question. The data show that a substantial portion of students who placed into their
UDWI course from the WPJ were confident in their ability to compose documents in
their UDWI course at an A or B level.
40
Table 3.3
Self-Placed into 109W
Self-Placed into 109W
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
A
A/B
B
B/C
C
No Answer
The graph above charts the data that report the following percentages. Of the students
who self-placed into their English 109W course, 47.4% (27) expected to earn an A; 8.8%
(5) anticipated an “A or B”; 35.1% (20) expected to earn a B; 3.5% (2) anticipated that
they would earn a C; and 5.3% (3) did not answer the question. The data show that a
substantial portion of students who self-placed into their English 109W were confident in
their ability to compose documents in their UDWI course at an A level.
41
Table 3.4
WPJ Placed into 109M Currently Enrolled in 109M
WPJ Placed into 109M Currently Enrolled in
109M
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
A
A/B
B
B/C
C
No Answer
The graph above charts the data that report the following percentages. Of the students
surveyed who took the WPJ and placed into English 109M, 50% (3) anticipated an A in
their UDWI course; 16.7% (1) anticipated a “B”; 16.7% (1) anticipated a C; and 16.7%
(1) did not answer. Although the population surveyed was more limited in this group
compared to the others, the confidence level expressed by these students is higher than
any other group surveyed.
42
Table 3.5
Self-Placed into 109M
Self-Placed into 109M
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
A
A/B
B
B/C
C
No Answer
The data show that of the students who self-placed into English 109M, 45% (9) expected
to earn an A; 5% (1) expected to earn an A or B; 45% (9) expected to earn a B; and 5%
(1) did not answer. Those who self-placed into 109M appeared to be very confident that
they would earn high marks in the class. It appears that those students on the multilingual path trust that they require further instruction to prepare them for advanced
composition coursework.
43
Table 3.6
18
WPJ Placed into 109W Currently Enrolled in 109W
WPJ Placed into 109W Currently Enrolled in
109W
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
A
A/B
B
B/C
C
No Answer
The graph above charts the data that report the following percentages. Of the students
surveyed who took the WPJ and earned a 6-unit placement on the English 109W path,
32.6% (14) anticipated an A in their writing intensive course; 14% (6) anticipated an “A
or B”; 37.2% (16) anticipated a B; 4.7 % (2) anticipated a “B or C”; 9.3% (4) anticipated
a C; and 2% (1) did not answer. In previous samples, student confidence levels have been
high and leaned decidedly toward As in courses; this group, however, leans toward
anticipating earning Bs in their courses.
44
Table 3.7
WPJ Placed into UDWI + 109X
WPJ Placed into UDWI+109X
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
A
A/B
B
B/C
C
No Answer
The data show that of the ten students surveyed who earned a 4-unit placement after
taking the WPJ, these students express considerably lower confidence in their ability to
earn an A in their UDWI course, with 20% (2) expecting to earn an A, 70% (7) expecting
to earn a B, and 10% (1) expecting to earn a C.
45
Chapter 4
ANALYSIS: A REPORT IN DESCENDING ORDER OF STUDENT SELFEFFICACY
Students Who Were Placed into 109M by the WPJ
Students in 109M who were placed by the WPJ and were surveyed in the first
month of courses reported the highest level of confidence that they would receive an A in
the course. Fifty percent expected to earn As while 17% expected to earn Bs.
Multilingual students who were placed by the WPJ express the highest level of
confidence in their ability to earn an A in their course. Such confidence suggests that
students have a high sense of self-efficacy, expressing control over the outcome of their
courses. Such efficacy indicates that these students trust that the course will provide them
with what they need in order to be successful in later composition courses. This sense of
efficacy might be attributed to an academic self-awareness on the part of the multilingual
students. Multilingual students may perceive that they need additional help with
composition and understand that the multilingual composition classroom is where they
receive that help.
Confidence, in the multilingual students’ case, appears to take the form of
understanding that they have more to learn and that they are in the correct place to learn
it. The students in this population are not necessarily confident in their current abilities to
compose, but they are rhetorically aware enough to know that they require further
instruction and practice, and they are confident in their abilities to learn the processes that
will make them successful students in the future. This population does not appear to view
46
their placement with the stigma of remediation, but as the placement that provides them
with what they need to become more practiced and effective writers.
Students Who Self-Placed into English 109W
Students who self-placed in English 109W expressed the next highest level of
confidence with 47% reporting that they expected to earn As in the course while 35%
expected to earn a B.
These students chose to enroll in English 109W and were not placed by the WPJ.
Such a level of confidence might not be expected from students who elected to enroll in a
course over taking a timed writing test. Similar to students who self-placed in 109M, the
students who chose to place themselves in this course appear to understand that they will
receive the instruction that they require to be successful in future coursework. This does
not necessarily mean that they are confident in their ability to compose academic texts,
but the confidence that they express in their abilities to earn high marks may imply that
these students are confident in their abilities to learn, and perhaps in the value of the
course they have elected to take.
A 3-unit, semester-long course costs significantly more than the $25 it costs to
take the WPJ. The course potentially pushes back students’ graduation dates, so it is quite
possible that these students are more economically stable than the students who placed
into this course. Many students do not have this luxury. These students might be more
economically stable, or they may feel that the cost (in both time and money) is worth it.
Students who opt to take the class, then, show a high level of efficacy, as they understand
that they require writing instruction and thus enroll in the course.
47
Students Who Self-Placed into English 109M
Students in 109M who did not take the WPJ, but who self-placed and were then
surveyed in the first month of courses, reported the next highest level of confidence that
they would receive an A in the course. Forty-five percent expected to earn an A; 45%
expected to earn a B; 5% expected to earn an A or B.
These students chose to take the 109M course after being informed of their
choices. As a direct result of their awareness of their options, and a possible resulting
sense of agency over their academic plans, these students reported a high confidence
level that they would do well in the course. As in the case of the self-placed native
speakers, economic factors might be at work in this population as well. Choosing to take
a course and push back one’s graduation date might bespeak a comfortable economic
position. It may also indicate that many of these students are, like the students who
placed into 109M and expressed a high level of confidence, rhetorically aware students
and writers who understand that they, although not fully realized composers of academic
texts, are entirely capable as students to learn what they need to successfully advance in
their coursework.
This population was more than twice the size of those 109M students who were
placed into the 109M course by the WPJ, which opens up a new line of questions about
this population. Perhaps the 109M sample size was simply not big enough to determine
this, but it is quite possible that the multilingual population generally chooses more
instruction over the timed writing tests. The size of the population that chose to take the
48
course combined with the overall confidence in this group and the group that was placed
by the test seems to indicate that this group values the additional instruction.
Students Who Placed Directly into UDWI
Those who were placed into their UDWI course by the WPJ largely still expect to
receive As in their courses, but with less overwhelming confidence than those
multilingual and self-placed populations described above. While 38.4% expected to earn
As, 12.5% expected to earn an A or B; 37.5% expected to earn a B; 2.7% expected to
earn a B or C; and 5.4% expected to earn a C.
This population took the WPJ test perhaps hoping to test out of English 109M/W,
and/or hoping to test out of the 4-unit placement. Despite the fact that they tested directly
into their UDWI course, these students express lower confidence levels for potentially a
number of reasons. To be sure, further research is required, but some possibilities do
seem likely. One possibility is that these students felt they had less control over where
they would end up and this has a negative effect on their confidence. Even though they
placed high on the test, or earned a placement that required them to take fewer units,
these students might understand that the testing environment is an inauthentic one and
that placing high from a timed writing test does not necessarily indicate that they will do
well in their UDWI course.
The types of writing that students are expected to do in their UDWI courses do
not resemble the WPJ. If students felt that performing well in the timed writing
environment was in no way indicative of how well they would perform in a UDWI
course, they would probably be correct. Perhaps more students in this group felt that they
49
required further writing instruction, but that after placing high on the WPJ, they would be
expected to do exceedingly well in their UDWI course and that they would be expected
(or expect themselves) not to require any additional help (feedback, workshopping,
drafting, and revision) with their writing. Fundamentally, the timed writing environment
is one with which students are likely familiar. The students who perform well on the WPJ
probably know how to be tested, how to read instructions, manage time, complete the
tasks required in the test, compose a relatively well-organized and linear essay. However,
this, again, does not necessarily indicate that the student is prepared for a course that
requires students to perform in-depth, discipline-specific writing tasks.
Students Who Were Placed into English 109W by the WPJ
Students who took the WPJ and were then placed into 109W show a strong shift
in confidence away from expecting to earn an A in the 109W course. This population
expects to earn Bs over As. 32.6% expected to earn As; 14% expected to earn an A or B;
37.2% expected to earn Bs; 4.7% expected to earn a B or a C; and 9.3% expected to earn
a C.
This population, like the one that earned 4-unit placements, has several factors
working against it that may result in a drop in confidence. Because these students took
the WPJ, perhaps hoping to test out of English 109W, but were placed into English
109W, the drop in confidence is not surprising. In addition to testing into the course they
may have been trying to test out of, students may have viewed English 109W as
remediation. The preconception about the WPJ is that, although it is a placement test, one
can “pass” it or “fail” it. Although this is not the correct way to refer to it, students do.
50
Loaded into this way of referring to the placements is the notion that when a student is
placed by the WPJ onto the English 109M/W path, they have “failed” the test and now
require “remediation.” Further, these students made their DSP choice and, in taking the
WPJ, handed authority for where they would be placed to their evaluators. This is the
gamble inherent in the timed writing moment as it is presented at CSUS. This group
might also feel a certain economic burden related to the extension of the time it will take
them to graduate, which they were perhaps trying to avoid by taking the WPJ.
Students Who Earned a 4-unit Placement (UDWI + 109X)
Students who earned a 4-unit placement—in other words, those who placed into
109X from the WPJ—report the lowest level of confidence in their ability to earn high
marks in their UDWI courses. Twenty percent expected to earn an A; 70% expected to
earn a B; and 10% expected to earn a C.
Although these students have earned a higher unit placement than almost all of
the groups before them, they express the lowest confidence in their ability to earn high
marks. In this 4-unit placement, students must enroll in their UDWI course with the
additional 1-unit tutorial section, as opposed to taking the additional semester required
with the 6-unit placement. The most obvious reason for the sharp drop in confidence
with this group could be that they failed to earn a 3-unit placement. This group, however,
has been placed into their UDWI course at the same time that they must take English
109X, so they have more work to do than those who are only required to take one class a
semester, and this might cause these students a great deal of stress as the 109X course
51
does require that students do work5. Such stress as that which comes from as a result of
additional work might have affected students’ confidence negatively.
These students also probably feel that they are being remediated even though they
are enrolled in their UDWI course. Being required to take 109X might be a source of
shame for those students who earned 4-unit placements, and they might feel that they
need to hide their placement from their peers. In addition to the above possible reasons
that these students might feel less confident in their abilities to earn high marks is the
economic burden that comes with one additional unit of coursework in which these
students must enroll.
5
class meetings, online posts, and two required essay assignments are the main requirements for this
course.
52
Chapter 5
DISCUSSION: SUMMARY, IMPLICATIONS OF THE RESULTS, AND
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY
Summary and Implications of the Results
This study was conducted in February of 2012 and focused on students’ perceived
self-efficacy as it related to how they had placed into their course at the time of the study.
The students who participated in the surveys were enrolled in English 109M, English
109W, a UDWI course with a required concurrent English 109X tutorial, or a UDWI
course. Students had either self-placed into the 109M/W course, or had been placed into
any of the above courses through the WPJ.
The surveys did demonstrate a correlation between student placement and
students’ perceived self-efficacy, but not the correlations I anticipated. My hypothesis
that “Students who placed directly into their writing intensive course from the WPJ will
anticipate a high grade, while students who placed into English 109M/W, or who earned
a 4-unit placement will anticipate lower grades” was incorrect. Students who earned a 6unit 109M placement, for instance, did not express less confidence than students in other
placements but, in fact, expressed the highest level of confidence that they would earn As
in that course. Similarly surprising is that those students who earned higher placements
did not express a higher sense of self-efficacy; in fact, those who placed directly into their
UDWI course were more conservative about the grade they expected to earn, with almost
an equal percentage expecting to earn As and Bs.
53
Students who placed into English 109W fell into the second lowest self-efficacy
level, expressing as a population a relatively low level of confidence that they would earn
an A in their course. This is likely because this population might have assumed that they
understood the expectations of an English composition course. This group was not
tracked to take an English 109M course, so there were probably no noticeable written
accents or patterns of error that arrested the readers, which would have indicated that
these students were English language learners. As such, this population might have had a
higher sense of confidence entering into the WPJ than those who were English language
learners. That is, I assume that this group expected to place higher than they did and the
6-unit placement might have negatively affected this group’s confidence level.
The lowest level of student self-efficacy is expressed by those who earned a 4unit placement from the WPJ. This is interesting because this placement is higher than
the 6-unit placement, but more students in this group expected to earn a B than an A.
Something about the 4-unit placement either makes students feel less confident in their
abilities or collects students who already feel less confident in their writing abilities.
One way to interpret the considerable drop in student confidence with the 4-unit
placers is that this is the only placement that students cannot elect to take besides the 3unit placement. Perhaps students’ who place into 109X feel an absence of agency over
their coursework, and this affects their confidence. Having taught English 109X in the
past, I know that students frequently do not understand the goals of the course when they
start the semester and are often angry that they are there at all. Perhaps their uncertainty
of the course’s purpose upsets student confidence levels, making it difficult for students
54
to gain equilibrium in the course. After several weeks of work in which students realize
the purposes of the course, however, most students in English 109X begin to use and
appreciate the class for its course objectives.
Perhaps a similar explanation would help shed light on why students who placed
directly into their writing intensive courses expressed a lower sense of efficacy than those
who were placed by the WPJ into an English 109M course—lower than those who selfplaced in English 109M and W as well. Despite the fact that they earned the highest
possible placement from the WPJ, these students did not have total control over their
placement, as those who self-placed into 109M/W did. So, while they were successful in
the timed writing moment, they may not entirely trust the test’s effectiveness as a tool to
read their abilities or needs as writers.
Those who have the highest sense of self-efficacy are students who placed
themselves in 109M or 109W courses. The two groups that express the lowest sense of
confidence in their ability to earn As are those who either placed directly into their
UDWI courses or earned a 4-unit placement—the two placements that students cannot
choose without taking the WPJ, but the two highest placements. The concern that then
arises is whether having control over coursework makes students feel a greater sense of
confidence in their ability to earn high marks. If students do feel greater confidence, then
this will become a priority in the development of CSUS’s writing program.
According to the data presented in this study, students’ placement and confidence
levels are correlated. Of course, students may only choose certain paths in this program,
so it is unclear as to whether or not there is a causal relationship between the two.
55
However, students who are able to choose and do choose their paths are allowed the
opportunity to set and work toward their own writing goals and, as such, are likely to
have a higher sense of self-efficacy.
Suggestions for Further Research
In an effort to better understand the circumstances that led students to answer the
surveys as they did it is necessary to gather more data in further research. Because
students in English 109X express the lowest sense of self-efficacy, despite the fact that
they have placed higher than those who placed into 109M and 109W, a few questions
emerge. First, how does economic stress play a role in students’ decisions to take the
WPJ? If students decided to take the test over enrolling in English 109M/W, what factors
led them to take the WPJ? If those factors were economic, then the additional unit might
have been the difference between paying tuition as a full time student rather than as a
part-time student. Such economic stress might lead students to be angry, and economic
pressure leading to frustration and anger might create disengagement for the 109X
students in the beginning of the semester.
Although students in this course are given a syllabus at the beginning of the
semester, it is unclear as to whether or not they understand the purposes of the course and
what they are expected to have achieved by the end. By having students express the
course goals in their own words, or by setting goals for themselves that are aligned with
the 109X course goals, the researcher would understand if the students read,
comprehended, and understood the course goals. A similar survey should be taken of
those who placed directly into their UDWI course. English instructors at CSUS are
56
encouraged to perform midterm evaluations of courses. Perhaps this practice should be
more broadly adopted.
Those who placed directly into their UDWI course expressed a relatively low
sense of self-efficacy as well. As such, that population should be surveyed again to
uncover why this is. Should a follow-up investigation of student self-efficacy be
conducted, 3-unit placers should be asked what they feel is expected of them since they
placed directly into their UDWI course. I suspect that many students might fear that by
testing directly into their UDWI course, they are now expected to be writers who require
little to no help. Once students have a sense of the expectations of the writing they will do
in their courses, they should also be asked how well the WPJ test indicates the kind of
writing they would be performing in their UDWI course.
In addition to the above recommendations, the survey questions should be
corrected to include each possible placement option, and as such should be edited to
remove ambiguities, as mentioned in Chapter Two.
In addition to the above suggestions, data about students’ sense of self-efficacy
should be gathered at three different points throughout the semester in an effort to track
whether or not efficacy develops over time in different placements. Students who earned
a 4-unit placement might, as the semester continues, gain a greater sense of their abilities
as writers, as peer responders, and as students in control of their educational goals. For
the data that still needs to be gathered, the most effective approach would be through a
longitudinal study. The same students should be surveyed three times throughout the
semester and anonymity should be eliminated from the surveys. Students should be asked
57
what does or does not make them better writers, what grades they expect to earn, whether
they are becoming or feel they are becoming better writers throughout the semester, and
what is helping them feel that way.
Other Results
Data gathered from Sections Three and Four of the surveys present interesting
future research possibilities. In Section Three, students ranked a list of features with
which I presented them, on a five point Likert scale, indicating which they considered
most important to academic writing.
Section Four asked students to express what they thought were the most important
features of academic texts. Many students used the language directly from the Likert
scale in the section before, but quite a few students wrote in their own words, and many
also provided their own arguments for their views.
Both Sections Three and Four would be interesting to study on their own, but it
would also be interesting to see how students’ responses correlate to student placement
and self-efficacy.
Final Comments
The undergraduate writing sequence at CSUS is complicated. The placement, the
many possible paths, the inclusion of DSP, all cause students to become confused when
they are first introduced to it. To take a step back and view the findings of this study from
a distance, I find that the overall complexity of this program and what appears to be the
cumbersome extended “remedial” path is saturated with students who do the most work
in revision, workshopping, exploring genres, learning about rhetoric and rhetorical
58
motivation. Essentially, this is the group that learns to write at the advanced college level,
and it is the majority of that population that reports back a high level of confidence in
their abilities to earn high marks. It is not, as I had thought, those who test out of the
English 109M/W courses who report the highest confidence levels. Rather, those students
who are either placed by the WPJ or place themselves in courses that teach writing report
a high level of self-efficacy. Those who sail through the WPJ are likely people who
simply know the trappings of the timed writing genre; but they do not necessarily know
themselves as writers.
I assume that much of the reason for the confidence shift is that it is not until the
109M/W course or the UDWI course (for those who place directly in) that students are
exposed to writing in their disciplines. Not all UDWI courses teach different genres, but
those students who do find themselves in UDWI courses that require writing in genres
common to the discipline might realize that they are not prepared to compose in this way.
Those who placed into 109M/W have been prepared to write in their disciplines and have
been exposed to a variety of genres in their disciplines. Fundamentally, those who placed
lower from the WPJ expressed a high level of confidence in their ability to earn high
marks in their classes perhaps not because they have been remediated, but because they
have been taught, and they have learned how to write in a way that makes them able to
understand the motivations of composers in their fields of study. Practice writing creates
confident writers. Those who place high from the WPJ are less likely to feel confident
because what they have proven from the testing moment is that they know how to write
essays in a timed environment—a skill that is certainly valuable for getting students into
59
programs or schools in today’s academic environment, but a skill that does not
necessarily help them progress through those programs once they have been accepted.
60
Appendix A
61
Appendix B
62
63
Appendix C
64
Appendix D
65
Appendix E
66
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