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This version of SharkBytes has been archived as of February 28, 2019. To search through archived articles, visit nova.edu/search. To access the new version of SharkBytes, visit sharkbytes.nova.edu.
NSU Research Spotlight: Star Medzerian Vanguri, Ph.D.
Star Medzerian Vanguri, Ph.D.
Star Medzerian Vanguri, Ph.D., assistant professor of writing, Division of Humanities, Farquhar Colleges of Arts and Sciences, is currently working on a multi-institutional study that investigates whether/how explicit instruction in sentence fluency and style in composition courses influences students’ writing over time and across various contexts. The study contributes to current conversations in the discipline of composition studies on the transfer and transformation of knowledge.
“While an interest in the relationship between students’ learning in composition courses and their performance in later courses may seem to be a given in this field, it has remained largely under theorized until recently, perhaps because transfer has been assumed,” said Vanguri. This study adds to the research on writers in transition by examining students’ experience of two transitions, first from exercises to extended original prose and then from composition classes to other rhetorical contexts. The study also corresponds to a resurgence of disciplinary interest in writing style. As such, it seeks to understand how students engage with classroom instruction on sentence types, sentence variety, and rhetorical schemes and incorporate these stylistic devices into their writing.
Two types of data are being collected and analyzed for the study: student participants’ written work, produced in the courses Vanguri teaches, and from multiple interviews with students. The project, The Effects of Explicit Instruction on Sentence Fluency and Style, is funded by a $10,000 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Research Initiative grant.