Abstract
This thesis examines the effects of an assignment where students write about a literacy of their choice. The assignment was constructed around James Paul Gee’s concept of semiotic domains, an expansive theory that offers a wide definition literacies and which allows students a breadth of writing topics. In response to the assignment’s liberal parameters, students often choose literacies of deep knowledge and interest. The study was conducted at California State University, Sacramento over two successive semesters in English 1A (first-year composition), one class per semester. Forty-two students completed the study, 22 for the first semester, 20 for the second. The assignment, successful and popular with students, is essentially a funds of knowledge assignment, where students’ outside-of-school knowledge skills are validated and then employed to scaffold the learning of in-school knowledge and skills. The assignment’s effectiveness was measured using a variety of research methods: grades, questionnaires, discourse analysis of essays and reflective essays. Among the more interesting results are students’ reports of writing fluency. These and other results suggest that using a funds of knowledge approach at the outset of first-year college composition courses enables students to attend to the rhetorical qualities of their compositions sooner into the writing process, thus facilitating the learning and development of college-level writing skills.