New Member Introduction

[Jacqui Cyrus]

Hello Co-Members:

Although I have been connected to the Internet since January 1995, I have
only recently subscribed to this listserv.  Permit me to introduce myself.

About 20 years after completing my BA in Linguistics from UC Santa Cruz, I
returned to school whereby  I received my MA in TESOL (teaching English to
speakers of other languages).  As of August 1997, I have been a PhD student
in Applied Linguistics at Northern Arizona University.

My current interests involve basic writers, usually defined as native
English speakers (NES) with limited academic writing proficiency, and
developing writers, defined as writers for who English is not their
original (native) language.  Within these populations, I am very interested
in computers and composition.  I am in the process of completing my first
empirical research project for my program that involves looking the
academic markers used by first-year composition students in three different
computer writing environments (CWEs): e-mail, newsgroup, and discussion
forum (aka bulletin boards).  Using texts factored by a 'tagger' program
and then a concordancer, I have 40+ linguistic features marked for each
text, a total N of 129.  Preliminary results suggest that there are more
academic markers for newsgroup communications.  The least academic
linguistic features appear in the discussion forum.

My second area of interest is with basic writers and the possibility of
using discourse analysis to help define who basic writers are and what is
it that they do when they write.  I have used a concordancer to examine one
longitudinal case study to suggest what kinds of linguistic features this
writer used and what pedagogical implications there might be.

I appreciate the opportunity for new members to introduce themselves.
Thank you.

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Jacqui Cyrus, M.A. in TESOL
PhD Student in Applied Linguistics
Macintosh Computer Literacy Instructor
English Language Teacher/First-Year Composition Teacher
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