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ChatGPT and other LLMs are at the forefront of pedagogical considerations in classrooms across the academy. Many studies have spoken to the technology's capacity to generate one-off texts in a variety of genres. This study complements those by inquiring into its capacity to generate compelling texts at scale. In this study, we quantitatively and qualitatively analyze a small corpus of generated texts in two genres and gauge it against novice and published academic writers along known dimensions of linguistic variation. Theoretically, we position and historicize ChatGPT as a writing technology and consider the ways in which generated text may not be congruent with established trajectories of writing development in higher education. Our study found that generated texts are more informationally dense than authored texts and often read as dialogically closed, "empty," and "fluffy." We close with a discussion of potentially explanatory linguistic features, as well as relevant pedagogical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, five researchers, who are also English educators, describe the research they have crafted to improve the quality of classroom literacy education. They begin by describing their common perspective afforded by linguistics, discourse analysis and related social theory. Their framework and studies describe their action-oriented epistemology for studying key issues in novice English teacher education, experienced English teacher continuing education, writing textbook production, and Standard English teaching. The authors argue for teaching teachers and students the linguistic and discursive tools through which they can create and exercise their own grammars to generate productive social practices. (Contains 6 footnotes.)

Language instruction in secondary education is dominated by standard language ideology--a view of language that sanctions one ("standard") variety at the expense of other ("nonstandard") ones. While it is clear that students need access to privileged rhetorical forms, it is similarly clear that most current pedagogies do not facilitate such access for many students, and, in fact, may work to alienate some students from academic processes. Some instructional approaches have been proposed in the past (i.e., linguistically informed instruction and genre) that offer strategies for more effectively teaching linguistically diverse learners. What is needed is not only a synthesis of the strengths of such approaches, but also an understanding of the fluencies students already possess. Language curricula in secondary schools should intentionally build from the micro- to the macro-level, from the existing linguistic knowledge of students to increased facility with academic and other privileged genres and registers.

The proliferation of the term 'celebu-' as an extremely productive combining form in blogs, message boards and entertainment sites is discussed. Derived from 'celebutante' that describes stars such as Paris Hilton and Brenda Frazier, the widespread use of 'celebu-' reveals linguistic demands for such terms, and also highlights blogs' contribution to linguistic innovation.

This case study explores the academic writing practices of some African American English-speaking high school students, focusing in particular on interactions of dialect and register. In some instances, students appear to draw from a range of dialect and register resources and to deploy them in hybridized forms in their compositions. One implication of this hybridity is that it suggests the need to include register analysis as part of linguistically informed approaches to writing instruction (i.e., approaches that apply variationist research and methods to educational settings). Additionally, this case study examines some of the reasons that motivate the production of hybridity, analyzing how the linguistic tasks in which students are asked to engage and students’ metalinguistic understandings play a role in the creation of hybridized texts. Finally, this study presents analytic methods that, while not new, are applied in a mixed way that attempts to systematically examine both dialect and register in texts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this essay, five researchers, who are also English educators, describe the research they have crafted to improve the quality of classroom literacy education. They begin by describing their common perspective afforded by linguistics, discourse analysis and related social theory. Their framework and studies describe their action-oriented epistemology for studying key issues in novice English teacher education, experienced English teacher continuing education, writing textbook production, and Standard English teaching. The authors argue for teaching teachers and students the linguistic and discursive tools through which they can create and exercise their own grammars to generate productive social practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]