This study tested an instructional design to improve students' synthesis performance in a specific academic subject, Science Orientation, which aimed to teach students how to critically evaluate scientific debates. The design included three components: 1) students construct a task definition via a learning strategy based on comparing and contrasting texts and processes, 2) students comprehend source information via a read-stop-think-note strategy, and 3) students connect source information critically via a semantic-textual transformation strategy. After several design iterations, the instructional design was tested in a quasi-experimental experiment with a pretest-posttest. Seven 10th grade classes participated in the intervention (n=129), four in the control condition (n=86). The design seemed feasible for teachers, students completed most learning tasks as intended and evaluated the course positively. Furthermore, texts written in the experimental condition at posttest were rated significantly higher than those written in the control condition on the instructed aspects: representation of source information, intertextual integration, and critical stance. This instructional design appears to have potential for helping students improve their comprehension of scientific debates and comprehensive writing. In the discussion we propose that the instructional design might be a general format for learning to synthesize domain specific information from contrasting sources.

Students need support through intentional writing instruction to develop their discipline-specific writing skills outside of Language Arts. Yet, we argue not all writing instruction provides the same opportunities for student learning. In this study, with the support of professional development, teachers engaged students in civic perspective-taking through writing, focusing on locally relevant public issues. Drawing from disciplinary literacy and genre pedagogy, our research team conducted a descriptive study where thematic analysis was applied to examine second and third graders’ civics writing samples. Our findings indicate that students’ engagement with key civic concepts became more complex and purposeful as they practiced argumentative writing. Development continued from second to third grade in both the sophistication of their civic perspective-taking as well as their writing. Additionally, we found that student motivation to engage in argumentative writing increased in all classrooms across both grade levels when engaging with locally relevant public issues. This article provides details about the elementary civics writing curriculum and the students’ writing outcomes as well as includes the two graphic organizers used in the curriculum.

This study focuses on disciplinary literacy in primary craft education. Disciplinary literacy refers to the specialised ways of reading, writing, and speaking in a particular discipline. In Finland, crafts is an obligatory school subject, and pupils are supposed to conceive and manage a complete crafts process, including documentation. However, disciplinary literacy in crafts has rarely been studied, let alone at the primary level. In this study, we explored the quality of a sample of work descriptions produced by third-graders. The data included digitally produced work descriptions (N=79) written by 42 third-grade pupils in a Finnish primary school. Based on a qualitative analysis, six main dimensions of work descriptions as a textual genre emerged: word count, crafts vocabulary, structure, spelling, multimodality, and self-assessment. The quality of work descriptions was analysed quantitatively according to scoring criteria based on these dimensions. A cluster analysis indicated that there were three groups of work descriptions with respect to their level of disciplinarity: limited, emerging, and advanced descriptions. The results show that the structure of the disciplinary texts develops first, and subject-specific vocabulary stabilises after that. The paper discusses the foundation for disciplinary literacy in primary craft education.

Upper elementary students face conceptual and linguistic challenges when writing in science. One way to scaffold science writing is the explicit teaching of cross-disciplinary language. Limited research has explored the dynamics of these language changes in instructional contexts. This study examines the micro-developmental changes in cross-disciplinary language skills and their contributions to the quality of 191 science explanations written by 65 fourth graders that participated in language and literacy-based instruction. The instruction’s pedagogical design was focused on writing-to-learn and learning-to-write the scientific explanation genre. Each student wrote an initial, a scaffolded draft, and a final explanation that was scored for scientific quality and productive cross-disciplinary language skills. Students’ prior and final scientific knowledge was also measured. The results showed large instruction size effects on the scientific quality (0.71), productive cross-disciplinary language skills (0.46), and explanation length (0.64). Stepwise regression analysis showed that prior and final science knowledge and productive cross-disciplinary language skills significantly predict the quality of the final explanation (R2 = .704, F(11,38) = 9.03, p < .000). This research offers evidence of the dynamic relationships between language, literacy, and science in contexts of explicit cross-disciplinary language instruction for disciplinary literacy and learning.

Much attention has been paid to the complexity underlying writing, but the versatile roles that collaborative writing can encourage in elementary students remain scarcely understood. In this exploratory study, we developed a framework for observing the participatory roles that elementary students spontaneously adopt as they engage in collaborative writing in environmental and social studies classrooms. To concretize the applicability of the framework, we illustrate how five students shift between the roles across task types. We identified 18 participatory roles and allocated them into six categories: content-, literacy-, performance-, process-focused, expressive, and off-task roles. While these generally align with previous research on participatory roles, literacy-focused and expressive role categories emerged as new data-driven findings. The concrete examples provided for illustrating how these roles are reflected when students engage in collaborative writing deepen the understanding of the variety and flexibility in roles adopted across the students and task types. We expect the framework to be beneficial for both teachers and researchers, to observe how flexibly students adopt roles from different categories when writing collaboratively. This can provide insights into designing instruction and selecting task types to effectively promote flexible and meaningful participation among all students when writing collaboratively in subject-area classrooms.

There is an assumption in education that allowing students to choose their writing topics and positions is beneficial; however, there is little research to support this belief, particularly from the students’ perspectives. In the present study, we conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with students at a large university in the Southwest of the United States after they completed two in-class argumentative writing assignments in a course on exceptional children, one where they chose their writing position and one where they were assigned their writing position. As a group, these 20 students (13 female, 7 male) were above average writers in their first to third year of study, and the majority of them were education majors (70%), followed by arts and sciences (25%), and design and the arts (5%). The interview protocol focused upon their shifting perspectives on the underlying motivational construct of choice related to this and other writing assignments. Taking a grounded theory approach to thematic analysis, findings indicated that having choice in writing was important because it allowed students to write about topics that they find easier, more interesting, and possess greater knowledge. Choice also allowed students to demonstrate their autonomy, which they believed, influenced their motivation and writing quality/grades. While the university students in this study generally preferred choice, a majority of them identified benefits of not choosing, including opportunities to improve writing tenacity, enhance their writing skills, and achieve new perspectives.

This qualitative study examined recounted experiences of nine faculty Academic Writing Fellows who participated in a year-long writing initiative that sought to foster productive academic writing practices. The initiative (including weekly writing groups, national writing mentors in each Fellow’s discipline, and two-weekend writing retreats) was designed to encourage habits and attitudes for successful academic writing through a community-based approach. Using Positioning Theory as an analytical lens, this study explored Fellows’ enactment of rights and duties and their evolving identities as academic writers. Our analyses indicate that the program functioned as a displacement space that allowed Fellows to explore their self-positioning as writers and to re-story themselves in productive ways. We argue that both spatial and temporal displacement contributed to participants’ opportunities for meaningful repositioning.

To verify and extend the previous research claim that L2 students from collectivistic Asian cultures are resistant to criticizing others’ work due to a desire to preserve group cohesion, this study explored whether anonymity helps ameliorate their alleged reluctance to give negative feedback. Nineteen Japanese L2 students reviewed essays in the face-to-face and anonymous modes, and their feedback comments were comparatively analyzed according to the types, levels of negativity, and mitigation strategies implemented. The results showed that Japanese L2 students adopt an extremely polite interpersonal rhetorical stance regardless of the peer review mode. Criticism almost always assumes a mitigated form, and it is not uncommon to employ multiple mitigation strategies or lexical hedges in a single comment. The pragmatic competence with respect to hedging disagreement or requests did not correlate with the language used or the reviewer’s L2 proficiency. These observations suggest that the use of mitigating devices is transferred from learners’ L1 repertoire, indicating that cultural attributes might not be a major factor influencing Asian students’ reluctance to provide negative feedback in peer interactions.

Much of the research that has examined the writing knowledge of school-age students has relied on interviews to ascertain this information, which is problematic because interviews may underestimate breadth and depth of writing knowledge, require lengthy interactions with participants, and do not permit a direct evaluation of a prescribed array of constituent knowledge elements. For these reasons, our goal in this study is to report the development, piloting, and field testing, using a sample of 335 students from grades 4 and 5, of four alternate versions of a writing knowledge assessment—the Student Knowledge of Writing Test (SKOWT)—that uses forced-choice responses to evaluate students’ knowledge of writing processes, genre elements, and linguistic features of written language. All versions of the SKOWT demonstrated adequate internal consistency reliability and construct validity based on exploratory factor analyses following deletion of some items. In addition, there was acceptable predictive criterion validity based on associations of SKOWT scores with subtests from the Test of Written Language-4 and measures of narrative, opinion, and informative essay quality. We discuss how the SKOWT might be used in future research and educational practice.

Writing is challenging for international students, who often possess inadequate writing skills and are required to adapt to the new learning environment. Students’ approaches to learning have been shown to relate to some constructs of writing conceptions. Nevertheless, little research exists on the relationship between such conceptions and approaches to learning. This study explores writing conceptions, approaches to learning, and their interrelationship among international students. The data were collected from 162 international students at a research-intensive Finnish university using the HowULearn Questionnaire and the Writing Process Questionnaire. Data analysis included bivariate correlations, confirmatory factor analysis, t-test, latent profile analysis, and ANOVA tests. The results demonstrated how approaches to learning correlated with the writing conceptions of the participants. Three profiles were identified: deep and organised students (72.8%), deep and unorganised students (14.2%), and unreflective and unorganised students (13.0%). These profiles were statistically different in all writing conceptions, including blocks, procrastination, perfectionism, innate ability, knowledge transforming and productivity. Overall, students’ ability to reflect on their learning and organise their studying played an important role in their writing conceptions. Based on the findings, the study provides strategies for developing writing for international students and suggestions for enhancing teaching in host universities.

Designing writing assignments for pupils is a complex task. The teacher must make a lot of choices regarding what type of text to write, what the purpose of the writing should be, which audience the texts should have etc. Although formulating assignments is important for writing instruction, there has been limited insight into teachers’ choices regarding these aspects or the significance of the different school subjects when making such choices. We explore findings from a Norwegian intervention study on writing in primary school. The data includes 687 writing assignments designed by teachers for pupils in grades 3–7. Gee’s concept of semiotic domains forms the theoretical scope. Our research question is: What opportunities and challenges arise in teachers’ assignment design regarding different functional dimensions and semiotic domains? We show examples of how semiotic domains can collide, and that the combination of acts of writing, purpose, and audience can lead to assignments that are almost impossible to answer in a good way. We visualize the complexity of assignment design in a model which also is transferable to other contexts of assignment design.

National assessments yield a description of the proficiency level in a domain while accounting for differences between tasks. For instance, in writing assessments the level of proficiency is typically evaluated with a variety of topics and multiple tasks. This enables generalizations from specific tasks to a domain. In (quasi-)experimental research, however, writing skills are often evaluated with a single task. Yet, conclusions about the effectiveness of the treatment are formulated on the level of the domain, which is, euphemistically put, quite a stretch. Although conclusions drawn about the effect of the treatment are specific to the task administered, they are often generalized to the domain without any form of reservation. This raises the question whether we can use the results of national assessments about differences between tasks in the analyses of experimental studies. In this paper, we demonstrate how the information of a baseline data set can be used as a kind of control condition in the analysis of an experimental study.

In this study, we examined how the explicit instructional use of paraphrasing guidelines can help international graduate students who are non-native English speakers to paraphrase information in text sources. This case study involved 14 graduate students enrolled in an academic writing class at a university in the northwest United States. Data were collected through seven sources: a background questionnaire, video of instruction, pretest, posttest, student task documents, stimulated recall interviews, and teacher interviews, which together addressed the three research questions. The data show that the participants’ perceptions of using the guidelines were positive and that their paraphrases in the posttest had improved according to the guidelines. The study concludes that the use of the guidelines should be accompanied by meaningful support through explicit instruction and sufficient practice over time. The implications of this study include recommendations for paraphrasing instruction and future research.

In 1966, more than 50 scholars from the UK, US, and Canada convened at Dartmouth College to discuss the state of the profession of English teaching, ultimately proposing a “growth” model of language learning which contrasted with the skills-based models of curriculum sequencing prevalent at the time. While debates about the impact of the 1966 Dartmouth conference on the teaching of English continue to ebb and flow, from contrasting early accounts by seminar participants (Muller, 1967; Dixon, 1969) to more modern work which situates the conference as a harbinger of the process movement (Trimbur, 2008) or Writing Across the Curriculum (Palmquist et al., 2020), its continued provocation of scholarly discussion has become a legacy in its own right. Even if the Dartmouth Seminar didn't change anything happening in the classrooms of its era and thereafter, which is unlikely (Harris, 1991), it would remain a rare moment of international, professional collaboration and consideration virtually unparalleled in our field's history.

This study investigated the effect of a four-week socioscientific issues (SSI)-based intervention on sixth-grade students’ argumentative writing and transferability of argument skills across topics. Students in three treatment classrooms engaged in an SSI unit on space exploration while students in three comparable classrooms continued regular space science lessons. Argumentation skills were assessed by individual decision letters about space exploration. Argument transfer was assessed by an essay to address a novel SSI. Treatment students wrote more elaborated decision letters with stronger arguments, relied less on personal ideas, and transferred argument skills to a novel SSI after the intervention. The implications of using SSI as a promising approach to integrating science and literacy learning for diverse adolescents were discussed.

In this study, we investigated which spelling cues are used in word-medial consonant spelling by learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Previous research has shown that native speakers of English rely on different cues to decide whether a single (“diner”) or double consonant (“dinner”) needs to be used in word-medial consonant spelling. These cues include phonology, orthography, morphology and lexical frequency. We investigated whether these cues play a similar role in Dutch spellers who are EFL learners, next to similarity of the English target to Dutch. We analyzed dictation task data that was part of an unsupervised digital learning environment for EFL learning. The error analyses revealed that novice EFL spellers mainly used phonological and cross-linguistic cues in consonant doubling. In contrast, more proficient spellers relied less on phonological cues, and relied on morphological cues instead. The EFL spellers did not rely on orthographic cues. Furthermore, spelling difficulty was influenced by the frequency of a word and its similarity with the native-language equivalent, in terms of cognate status (non-cognate/cognate) and consonant doubling. Together, our findings indicate that a higher number of converging cues facilitates spelling for EFL spellers and that their reliance on cues changes as spelling proficiency increases.

Master’s thesis writing is a challenging endeavor, requiring students to engage in deeper learning processes and apply several academic competences. This study investigates the associations between students’ approaches to master’s thesis writing, the perceptions of the thesis as a teaching-learning environment, self-efficacy for thesis writing, and thesis grade. The data consist of engineering students’ answers (N=283) to a survey and their thesis grade, gathered from the study register of a Finnish university. The findings indicate a positive association between the thesis grade, deep and organized approach to thesis writing, self-efficacy as well as levels of interest and relevance for thesis writing. This study identified three groups of thesis writers who differed from each other in their approaches to thesis writing: 1) Students applying a dissonant approach; 2) Students applying a deep and organized approach; 3) Students applying an unorganized approach. Students applying a deep and organized approach to thesis writing differed significantly from the other two groups as they scored higher in their experiences of the elements of the thesis as a learning environment, self-efficacy for thesis writing and thesis grade. This study highlights its results in conjunction with previous research and offers practical implications for master’s thesis writing support. 

The book Spelling and Writing Words: Theoretical and Methodological Advances, edited by Cyril Perret and Thierry Olive (2019), is an insightful and thorough state-of-the art of the research on written word production and spelling. The works included in this volume are based on the premise that investigating cognitive processes extends our understanding of lexical writing skill. For this purpose, the editors have brought together various researchers that explore many aspects of written word production, so as to provide the reader with updated and in-depth insights on this topic.

The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Writing is a collection of research papers edited by Rosa M. Manchón and Charlene Polio. They aim to create a compendium that serves to contextualize and synthesize the development and research practices of the connection between second language (L2) writing and second language acquisition (SLA). The chapters of the collection feature theoretical perspectives and current empirical development on how and why L2 writing can be a meaningful site for language learning. Three reasons are formulated to articulate the significance of the volume concerning SLA-informed L2 writing studies: (1) research outcomes in this research domain are theoretically and empirically fruitful; (2) the theoretical contributions to the SLA knowledge are newly achieved; (3) L2 writing plays an indispensable role in instructed second language acquisition (ISLA) settings. By taking into account the socially situated nature of L2 writing teaching and learning, Manchón and Cerezo (2018) highlighted the substantial value of integrating L2 writing with SLA theories and research for both boosting the L2 learning process and advancing present and prospective SLA research agendas. Such an academic viewpoint appears to be predominant and invaluable in this collection with its theoretical advancements and practical insights contributed by authors from diverse educational settings.

Twictée, a portmanteau of Twitter and dictée (French for dictation), is a collaborative method for teaching spelling that promotes the metacognitive reasoning needed to understand and assimilate the morphosyntactic features of French spelling. The present study evaluated Twictée’s impact on spelling performance in 40 classes of 4th-, 5th-, and 6th-grade students (N = 893 students). Mixed-model analyses showed a significant improvement in global spelling performance over time, but the impacts of the interaction between time and condition reached significance for only four specific aspects of spelling performance. Nevertheless, further analyses showed that Twictée’s overall impact on spelling performance was significantly greater in schools in disadvantaged urban areas and in large classes. We discuss these results in the light of previous qualitative analyses carried out on this corpus

Based on the theory of automated and controlled processing of fluency and Levelt's theory of speech production, writing fluency and reading fluency were each defined as two-dimensional constructs. Writing fluency is composed of automatised transcription and attention-demanding translation, while reading fluency is composed of automatised reading speed and controlled prosodic reading. The study investigates how these constructs can be measured, how they interact and what influence they have on higher hierarchical processes of writing and reading. For this purpose, different measurement instruments were developed and existing instruments were used. Using these instruments and different variables on cognitive resources such as memory and motor skills, we applied a structural equation model to the data of a total of 145 fourth, sixth and ninth graders. The model showed a good fit to the data. Furthermore, the instruments showed high factor loadings on the respective latent factors. With the use of the model, a medium correlation was found between the two factors of writing fluency as well as between the two factors of reading fluency. There was also a strong influence of writing fluency and reading fluency on higher order skills. The understanding of these relationships is particularly important for the creation of training programs for writing and reading fluency.

In popularization discourse, insights from academic discourse are recontextualized and reformulated into newsworthy, understandable knowledge for a lay audience. Training in popularization discourse is a relatively new and unexplored research topic. Existing studies in the science communication field suffer from under-utilized baseline assessments and pretests in teaching interventions. This methodological problem leads both to a lack of evidence for claims about student progress and to a gap in knowledge about baseline popularization skills. We draw the topic into the realm of writing research by conducting a baseline assessment of pre-training popularization skills in first-year undergraduate students. Undergraduate science communication texts are analyzed to identify instances of popularization strategies using a coding scheme for text analysis of popularization discourse. The results indicate a lack of genre knowledge in both academic and popularized discourse: textual styles are either too academic or overly popularized; the academic text is misrepresented; and the essential journalistic structure lacking. An educational program in popularization discourse should therefore focus on the genre demands of popularization discourse, awareness of academic writing conventions, the genre change between academic and popularized writing, the role of the student as a writer, and stylistic attributes.

Phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge are commonly considered the most powerful literacy predictors at the beginning of schooling. Our aim was to analyse the contribution of invented spelling in kindergarten to reading and spelling in Grade 1 beyond the effects of those two variables. Participants were 92 Portuguese 5-year-old children. Phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, and invented spelling were assessed in kindergarten and were used to predict word reading and spelling at the end of first grade, using correlation statistics, sequential regression analyses, and path analysis models. General cognitive ability and parents’ educational level were control variables. The results showed that invented spelling predicted reading and spelling performance beyond phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge, with a statistically significant improved prediction in both cases. Alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness influenced invented spelling, which in turn influenced reading and spelling results in the first year of primary school. Additionally, alphabet knowledge directly influenced reading and spelling. Phonological awareness also had a direct influence on spelling but its effect on reading was only mediated by invented spelling. These results are in line with those of other linguistic contexts and provide insightful findings towards the importance of invented spelling at the onset of literacy learning.

Preparing preservice teachers (PSTs) as teachers of writing has gained attention in recent years, but little is known about their preparedness when engaging with student writers over extended periods. We examine PSTs’ preparedness to teach writing within a structured literacy tutoring experience to better understand the skills and knowledge of PSTs related to teaching writing. Results indicate PSTs contextualized writing instruction, considered clients’ affect around writing, and used data to inform writing lessons. PSTs were also grappling with specific pedagogical considerations related to writing instruction, offering implications for teacher educators and researchers.    

This study examines links between human ratings of writing quality and the incidence of argumentative features (e.g., claims, data) in persuasive essays along with relationships among these features and their distance from one another within an essay. The goal is to better understand how argumentation elements in persuasive essays combine to model human ratings of essay quality. The study finds that, in most cases, it is not the presence of argumentation features that is predictive of writing quality but rather the relationships between superordinate and subordinate features, parallel features, and the distances between features. This finding has not only theoretical value but also practical value in terms of pedagogical approaches and automated writing feedback.

Teachers navigate ongoing accountability pressures that target writing in each content area, yet little is understood about their experiences with or their rationales for integrating writing into content area lessons. While previous research describes writing in U.S. secondary classrooms and explains barriers to writing integration, this study investigates teacher decision making to determine why teachers in various content areas are integrating writing. Using a multicase study design, we explored teacher reflections to discern the reasons why teachers chose to integrate writing frequently. Four teachers, one from each primary content area (mathematics, English language arts, science, social studies), reflected on their writing integration over one quarter. Findings revealed that teachers who integrate writing frequently value the substantial benefits of regular writing for their students. Teachers saw that frequent writing led to students both producing written products more independently and deepening their disciplinary understandings. Teachers also saw benefits to their own pedagogy; specifically, they better understood students’ learning processes and planned more attentively. This research suggests that committing to frequent writing integration can (1) enhance students’ writing and disciplinary knowledge, and (2) enrich teacher knowledge related to supporting students’ writing practices and using writing as a tool for learning in the content areas. Our findings also highlight the complex relationship between teacher beliefs and teacher practice. By looking at the instructional decision making of teachers who integrate writing frequently, we offer guidance on how pre- and in-service teachers might use reflection in and on action to develop a commitment to writing instruction.

This study aimed to provide evidence for continuing the innovation of writing instruction in Grades 7-12 of Chilean public schools. Teachers' beliefs influence their curricular interpretations; therefore, these beliefs play a key role when aiming for educational innovation. Hence, we investigated the relations between Language teachers’ current practices of implementing the national curriculum and their beliefs regarding five paradigms of Language instruction. While beliefs on writing instruction are possibly embedded in beliefs on the broader topic of Language instruction, we took this broader category into account. We obtained 182 completed surveys from teachers of all Chilean regions (response rate: 47%). Teachers reported a rather strong adherence to four curricular paradigms both in terms of practices and beliefs, while the fifth, the communicative paradigm, demonstrated a low level of adherence. The strength of the implementation of teachers´ practices of writing instruction seemed to be related to teachers´ beliefs, about writing and more general aspects as well. The results suggest that policymakers must focus public efforts on reinforcing teachers’ beliefs regarding writing instruction, especially regarding communicative writing and on the connections between the five paradigms. In addition, we recommend that public efforts prioritize improvements in Grades 9-12 over Grades 7-8.

In Dutch L1 classrooms, style in non-fictional genres is typically taught by means of normative exercises in which students are tasked to identify stylistic lapses. Not much is known about the effectiveness of such exercises when teaching style. Unknown factors include  what kinds of stylistic shortcomings are found in Dutch students’ writing, and how the occurrence of certain stylistic lapses relates to writing quality. The current study empirically explores these scarcely investigated issues. Teachers rated 125 argumentative texts written by tenth-grade pre-university students by means of comparative judgement. Additionally, these texts were manually analyzed to investigate the occurrence of stylistic lapses, taking into account stylistic lapses that are common in text books (‘standard category’) and other types of style related errors (‘other category’). Multilevel regression analyses revealed that only one of the stylistic lapses from the standard category negatively influenced text quality as evaluated by teachers, namely the use of detached phrases. In the other category, only mistakes in question marks negatively predicted text quality. A final model including those two predictors explained 11.1% of the variance in text quality. The article discusses the implications of these findings for non-fictional style education, suggesting that it might need to be refocused.

A pervasive finding in learner corpus research is that advanced EFL learners tend to overuse interactional features of writer/reader visibility (WRV) in their written academic texts, including first- and second-person pronouns, I think, modal adverbs, modal auxiliaries, and questions. Very little research has been done on younger learners, however. The present study is a mixed-methods investigation of WRV features in argumentative and expository genres in the TRAWL longitudinal corpus of learner texts from Norwegian lower secondary school. Comparisons are made with more advanced levels (undergraduate university students) using the Norwegian component of ICLE, ICLE-NO. The results show that the TRAWL pupils use many WRV features in their writing, first-person reference being especially frequent (with I dominating). Compared to the advanced learners in ICLE-NO, the TRAWL learners overuse some, but not all, features. One explanation for the high frequency of WRV features in TRAWL is that the prompts – both argumentative and expository – often request a personal style. Some expository prompts and texts are more impersonal, but overall there is little distinction between the genres. The pedagogical implications are that instructors need to be more specific about genre requirements, and create more obligatory prompts that do not request a personal style.

Written composition has long been regarded as a cognitively challenging task. It simultaneously makes significant demands on language, memory, and thinking. For lengthy compositions, the writing process entails multiple work sessions extending over days, weeks, months, and even years. The diligence required can be challenging emotionally as well as cognitively. At the heart of meeting these demands is the capacity for self-regulation. Not surprisingly, then, the psychological research on executive functions has much to say about writing skill-both its successes and failures.

Doctoral students in the natural sciences who are writing research for the first time and also writing in an additional language (L2) need to acquire knowledge of the genre of the research article (RA). This knowledge can be elusive. One instructional activity that can mediate genre knowledge is students acting as reviewers to peers' RA texts. However, mediation of genre knowledge is contingent on reviewers' focusing on genre features of peers' texts. To explore the focus of L2 doctoral students' peer review, this study examined online feedback provided by 24 L2 doctoral reviewers on 73 texts written by their L2 peers. To determine the potential relevance of the feedback to the scientific research article, review comments were thematically coded, and the categories of comments were then compared with descriptions of text features of RAs in the natural sciences. Findings showed that review comments focused on precision, organization, cohesion, voice and stance, and research knowledge, categories that reflect key aspects of scientific RAs.

Writing in history places high demands on students and is a skill that requires explicit instruction. Therefore, teachers need to be able to teach this in an effective way. In this study, the writing-instruction was designed by a teacher, instead of researchers, as part of a professional development program in the Netherlands. The lessons combined writing and historical reasoning instruction, based on principles of effective writing instruction, including strategy-instruction, modeling, prewriting, and peer-interaction. The effects of these lessons were investigated in a small-scale pilot study, which consisted of a pre-test post-test quasi-experimental design, in which eighty-nine 11th grade students participated (39 in the treatment condition and 50 in the comparison condition). Dependent measures included text quality, writing process measures, students' knowledge of writing and their self-efficacy. Students in the treatment condition wrote longer and higher quality texts, spent more time writing, paused more while writing and their knowledge of writing was higher at post-test than for students in the comparison condition. No effects were found for self-efficacy. Furthermore, significant correlations were found between text quality and writing process measures, but not for knowledge of writing and self-efficacy. Overall, the effectiveness of this teacher-designed intervention seemed satisfactory, as it resulted in greater knowledge of writing and better-quality writing in his history classes.

Manchón, R. M. (Ed.). (2020). Writing and language learning: Advancing research agendas. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company | 432 pages ISBN: 9789027207746 | https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.

Modeling, by demonstrating and explaining the cognitive processes involved in writing, has been shown to support writing development. Less often have specific disciplinary aspects of teaching with models been investigated. We draw on research in English Language Arts and apply it in social studies inquiry contexts to propose a framework for teaching models of thinking and writing that offers teachers and researchers new perspectives on the discipline-specific work of modeling. This framework accounts for three modes of instruction – use of models (a tool or a text), demonstrating and explaining, and co-constructing model texts with students – and describes eleven instructional practices that support instruction across these modes. We analyze data from three years of social studies instruction to show how two teachers enact these practices across the three modes to highlight the disciplinary thinking and processes that support writing social studies arguments with sources, highlighting the ways students can actively participate in teaching writing with models. In addition, we consider the role of the curriculum in this work. We show how writing instruction can address disciplinary ways of thinking in social studies and illustrate the potential of the framework for guiding researchers’ and practitioners’ work on writing instruction across disciplinary contexts.

This article presents a new intervention for improving first-language writing fluency and reports an empirical study investigating the effects of this intervention on process and product measures of writing. The intervention explicitly encourages fluent text production by providing automated real-time feedback to the writer. Participants were twenty native-English-speaking undergraduate students at a large Midwestern university in the United States, all of whom were proficient writers. Each participant composed two texts (one in each of the control and the intervention condition) in an online text editor with embedded keystroke logging capabilities. Quantitative data consisted of product and process measures obtained from texts produced by participants in the control and the intervention condition, and qualitative data included participants' responses to an open-ended questionnaire. Linear mixed-effects regression models were fit to the quantitative data to assess differences between conditions. Findings demonstrated that there were significant differences between the intervention and the control condition in terms of both the product and the process of writing. Specifically, participants wrote more text, expressed more ideas, and produced higher-quality texts in the fluency-focused intervention condition. Qualitative findings from questionnaire responses are also discussed.

While the literature on the effect of comprehensive corrective feedback (CF) on
\noverall accuracy is abundant, the body of work employing such a scope to explore error
\ntreatability is not, especially when it comes to blended (cf. Ferris, 2010) design studies.
\nConsequently, this investigation extends the analyses from the data set of Bonilla et al.
\n(2018) to report on individual linguistic features. Specifically, to address crucial amenabilityrelated questions in need of perusal, the present blended design study explores the effect
\nof two types of comprehensive CF (with direct correction and metalinguistic codes) on the
\ntreatability of separate grammatical and non-grammatical structures. To this end, a group of
\nEFL learners (N = 139) were required to do editing that involved error-correction, deferred
\n(on a draft), and focused on language as well as to produce two independent essays (in an
\nimmediate and a delayed posttest). Main results from logistic regression (to test the effect
\nin revised essays) and mixed-effect models (to test the effect on independent essays)
\nrender seven variables that can explain correctability differences: out of those, three have
\nalso explained overall accuracy gains (cf. Bonilla et al., 2018), one has not been identified
\nthus far, and three consolidate themselves as relevant factors under other conditions as
\nwell. Theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed.

The book “Writing motivation research, measurement and pedagogy”, written by Muhammad M. M. Abdel Latif (2021) and published by Routledge, summarises and integrates literature on the role of motivation in writing over the last four decades. This book emerges out of the author’s experience and interest in writing motivation research—including a doctoral thesis on writing self-efficacy and apprehension—and out of his experience in teaching writing courses at the university level. Throughout six chapters, the author delves into research focused on eight main writing motivation constructs: writing apprehension, attitude, anxiety, self-efficacy, self-concept, achievement goals, perceived value of writing, and motivational regulation. Specifically, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 are devoted to the conceptualization and measurement of writing motivation constructs. Chapter 3 focuses on the correlates and sources of students’ writing motivation. Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 describe the effectiveness of different instructional practices and provide clear guidelines on how to motivate students to write. Finally, Chapter 6 presents directions to advance writing motivation research, measurement, and pedagogy. The book closes with a glossary of writing motivation constructs and other relevant concepts. The contents of all six chapters are reviewed below.

In keyboard writing, typing skills are considered an important prerequisite of proficient text production. We describe the design, implementation, and application of a standardized copy-typing task in order to measure and assess individual typing fluency. A test-retest analysis indicates the instrument’s reliability. While the task has been developed across eleven different languages and the related keyboard layouts, we here refer to a corpus of Dutch copy tasks (n = 1682). Analyses show that copying speed non-linearly varies with age. Bayesian analyses reveal differences in the typing performance and the underlying distributions of inter-key intervals between the different task components (e.g., lexical vs. non-lexical materials; high-frequent vs. lowfrequent bigrams). Based on these findings it is strongly recommended to include copy-task measures in the analysis of keystroke logging data in writing studies. This supports a better comparability and interpretability of keystroke data from more complex or communicatively-embedded writing tasks across individuals. Further potential applications of the copy task for writing research are explained and discussed.

This paper examines whether use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and non-standard informal written language therein harms youths' literacy skills.An experiment was conducted with 500 Dutch youths of different educational levels and age groups to assess if social media use affects their school writings.It was measured if chatting via WhatsApp directly impacts youths' performance on a narrative writing task, in terms of writing quality and spelling, or their ability to detect and correct deviations from the standard language in a grammaticality judgement task.WhatsApp use had a direct effect on the story writing task, but only on participants' spelling: adolescents who were primed with WhatsApp immediately beforehand produced significantly fewer misspellings in their narratives.The present study thus gives no cause for concern about negative transfer from social media to school writing: if anything, CMC use may provide youths with greater orthographic awareness and positively affect their spelling performance.

Doctoral students face many challenges when writing research articles. However, little is known about how they regulate their writing process in a natural context, due partially to the lack of methods to explore writing regulation from a situated perspective. The present study aims at demonstrating a method to explore doctoral students’ writing regulation processes within their context of occurrence in ecological conditions. To do so, we focus on the writing process of Natalia, a second-year doctoral student, while she writes and revises an extended abstract for her first scientific article under natural conditions. Screen-recorder and keystroke logging software, writing logs, an open-ended questionnaire and drafts of her text were used to collect data about the processes and products, and about both her actions and perceptions. Analysis combining these different data allowed us to identify two types of episodes: production and regulation episodes, and six subtypes of regulation episodes, and link them to the section of the text and the challenges the writer addressed with each episode. Results also showed that regulation processes vary between sessions, in terms of frequency and in their goals, and that feedback promoted a problemsolving approach to writing.

This ethnographic case-study examines the impact of asynchronous written feedback comments on the peer feedback process within one doctorate writing group. The doctorate students were interviewed retrospectively about their perceptions of effective feedback comments. Affective components (e.g. hedging devices) and effective components (e.g. revision comments) within the reviewers’ feedback comments, and external components (e.g. reviewer competency) that influence the peer feedback process were induced from the interview transcripts using a grounded theory approach. Further evidence that these identified components impact the feedback process appreciably was triangulated from the analysis of two other datasets; the participants’ asynchronous written feedback comments and revision plans. The results show that the participants used much affect in their written feedback exchanges, and this affect had a strong impact on the effect of their feedback process. Thus, written affective language can play a significant role in how an author interprets and implements feedback comments. This suggests that affect can play a prominent role in helping to develop more effective feedback practices within writing groups. Helping writing communities develop a better understanding of affect within asynchronous written feedback comments can only help them to develop more useful feedback practices.

Most time spent writing in schools is typically in the form of writing practice, often in short-form writing assignments, and focused on the mechanics and cognitive approaches to writing, rather than motivation. Research has only recently begun to document a direct relationship between writing achievement and writing motivation, but so far concludes that the two constructs do inform each other. Therefore, for the present study, we independently examined the impacts of motivation to write, students’ perceived value of writing achievement, and students’ self-belief as writers on their writing outcomes. Focusing on middle and high school classrooms, we triangulated data through students’ writing samples, students’ writing scores from the Test of Written Language-IV (TOWL-4), and students’ writing achievement provided by teacher ratings. Our study adds support to previous work on writing motivation by demonstrating that middle and high school students’ motivation to write is correlated strongly with their writing achievement. To expand on our results from this study, additional research is needed to better understand the relationships between writing motivation and the complex, intersecting identities students bring with them into their writing.

This study examined the relationships between writing anxiety, writing self-efficacy, and perceived use of revision strategies in high school students with different achievement goals as they learned argumentative writing in English Language Arts classrooms. Three achievement goal orientation profiles emerged from a sample of 307 American high school students on the basis of their mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goal orientations: Low on All, Average on All, and High on All. These three profiles of students significantly differed with respect to their writing anxiety and their perceived use of revision strategies. Writing self-efficacy mediated the effect of writing anxiety on the perceived use of revision strategies for students in the Average on All profile only. The findings suggest that students are diverse in their motivational and affective experiences with respect to argumentative writing, and caution against using a one-size-fits-all approach for teaching argumentative writing to students.

The aim of the present study is to bring new momentum into research on students’ understanding of academic writing. Drawing on the idea that metaphors give insight into implicit conceptions of abstract entities and processes, we developed a detailed and differentiated set of conceptual metaphors that can be used to study student ideas about writing in research, teaching, and interventions. A large sample of undergraduates produced their everyday understanding of writing in short texts beginning with a self-generated metaphor. Based on theories from cognitive linguistics, the conceptual metaphors in their texts were analyzed in terms of their action quality (transitivity) and spatiality (spatial primitives). The undergraduates’ conceptualizations were very heterogeneous. Most metaphors depart strongly from scientific approaches to academic writing within cognitive psychology and sociocultural theory. Roughly half of the metaphors could be collated to one of four metaphor systems. Depending on the desired degree of abstraction or concreteness, conceptual metaphors or metaphor systems can be employed in further studies to illuminate thinking about writing.

Efforts to accelerate the pace of adoption of writing-to-learn (WTL) practices in undergraduate STEM courses have been limited by a lack of theoretical and conceptual frameworks to systematically guide research and empirical evidence about the extent to which intrapersonal attributes and contextual factors, particularly faculty beliefs and disciplinary cultures, influence faculty use of writing assignments in their teaching. To address these gaps, we adopted an ecological systems perspective and conducted a national survey of faculty in STEM departments across 63 research-intensive universities in the United States. Overall, the findings indicated that 70% of faculty assigned writing. However, the assignment of writing differed by faculty demographics, discipline, and beliefs. More specifically, faculty demographics accounted for 5% of the variance in assignment of writing.  Faculty discipline accounted for an additional 6% increment in variance, and faculty epistemic beliefs and beliefs about effectiveness of WTL practices and contextual resources and constraints influencing the use of writing in their teaching together accounted for an additional 30% increment in variance. The findings point to faculty beliefs as salient intervention targets and highlight the importance of disciplinary specific approaches to the promotion of the adoption of WTL practices.

Theoretical models of early writing support the importance of discourse knowledge to writing (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987; Berninger & Winn, 2006). However, there is limited research on the relationship between discourse knowledge and writing among beginning writers. This study explored whether fall, spring, and change in discourse knowledge predicted first-graders' end-of-year writing. Three hundred eighty first-graders were given a discourse knowledge interview in the fall and spring assessing knowledge of writing production procedures, substantive processes, story elements, and writing motivation. Additional fall assessments included handwriting fluency, spelling, reading, and vocabulary. Students' narrative and descriptive writing was assessed at the end of the year. Hierarchical linear modeling showed that fall discourse knowledge and knowledge gain variables were not consistent predictors for writing outcomes. However, a more consistent relation was found between spring discourse knowledge and writing achievement, where production procedures predicted writing in both genres while substantive processes and story elements only predicted narrative writing. This study extended findings from earlier research by examining the discourse knowledge and writing achievement of young students.

Since 2010, efforts have been made in Chile to support students' writing skills development, in order to better prepare them for participation in modern society. However, more knowledge about current practices of writing instruction in Grades 7-12 is needed to guide future improvements in these educational levels. We aimed to provide a context-based picture of paradigms of writing instruction which are currently being implemented in Grades 7-12 of Chilean public schools. With this goal, we surveyed teachers of Spanish (n= 182) from all Chilean regions.

Corpus linguistic methods can provide detailed and statistically robust information about how children's written language develops as they progress through their education. Such data can inform both models of written language development and curricular policies and practices. To this end, the current paper focuses on subordination as a key site of syntactic complexity. Using a corpus of 240 texts written by children aged 6 to 16 in England as part of their regular school work, it quantifies how the most common type of subordinate clause (the adverbial clause) varies across year groups and genres in terms of frequency, internal complexity and semantic function. A complex developmental picture emerges with length and frequency of finite vs. non-finite clauses changing in distinct ways across primary vs. secondary education. These patterns are found to be closely related to discipline- and genre-specific developments in the main functions for which adverbial clauses are used.