Herrington & Curtis (2000), building on Goldblatt's (1995) idea of the "sponsoring institution," (p. 48) showed students' need for a personal sense of connection with a "sponsoring discourse" when writing in the academy. As Herrington and Curtis, as well as Goldblatt point out, these "sponsoring discourses" often come from outside the academy.…

The present study was an attempt to probe into the feasibility and effectiveness of a reading instructional approach called MCSR--Modified Collaborative Strategic Reading. Based on a pretest-posttest design, MCSR was implemented with 42 university-level EFL freshmen. They met once a week and received EFL reading instruction according to MCSR for…

Working from a cognitive perspective, a range of studies have supported the relationship between study strategies and academic performance of college students (e.g., Peverly, Brobst, Graham, & Shaw, 2003). In particular, self-regulatory processes comprised of learner-directed activities geared toward promoting academic achievement have been…

This study had two purposes. One was to investigate the effect of text format on underachieving first-year college students' self-efficacy for reading; the second was to compare self-efficacy ratings with subsequent reading comprehension. Seventy-six students in a university learning support services program at a large Northeastern university…

Little research has discussed how writing center tutors can help postsecondary students develop skill in reading. Via individual interviews, this investigator collected data from eleven writing center tutors at a large urban public university. Analysis of this data suggests that while nearly all of the tutors lacked specific knowledge of how…

Upon entering college, some African American students experience difficulty with literacy tasks requiring text analysis, active problem solving, and critical thinking. Many of these difficulties can be traced to the high school as the source. To understand some of the underlying causes for this situation, phenomenological interviews were conducted…

This study compared 34 lower-achieving (developmental) first-time college students' self-reported self-regulation strategies from a Likert scale to those they reported in structured interviews. Likert scales have offered convenient administration and evaluation and have been used to identify what and how learners study. The reported study activity…

Interviews 11 self-defined underachieving college freshmen. Synthesizes 13 definitions of achievement by students. Analyzes the interviews repeatedly to produce a list of the students' concepts of achievement, arranged from the most common to the least common. Finds each student held more than one definition of achieving, some definitions in the…

Examines affective influences on male student attitudes toward peer tutoring. Indicates that gender-specific sociolinguistic characteristics as well as cultural pressures impacted male students' willingness to seek academic assistance. Finds that both male developmental mathematics tutors and male developmental mathematics students admitted to…