This study aims at gaining more insight in effective writing instruction to promote historical reasoning. In an experimental study, two types of instructions were compared; a general writing instruction and a discipline-based writing instruction. In addition, the effects of these instructions for students with a different initial writing ability were explored. Participants were 42 students (11th-grade), who followed a unit on the development of Dutch democracy and had to write an argumentative letter in which they argued the historical significance of a self-selected event or person. Students received a short writing instruction, based on the principle of learning from text models, in two versions: a general writing instruction or a discipline-based writing instruction. Analyses focused on historical reasoning and global text quality. Results showed a positive effect of discipline-based instruction on the quality of historical reasoning, but no effects were found on text quality. No differences were observed for good and weak writers. A pre- and post knowledge test showed improvement of students' knowledge, but no differences between conditions were found. The outcomes add to earlier studies that found positive effects of discipline-based writing instruction and provide teachers with directions for designing discipline-based writing instructions based on learning from text-models.

This study investigated students' practice of philosophical thinking through collaborative writing in secondary education. A philosophy course was developed following the rationale of the learning communities in which writing was used as an epistemic tool. 45 students organized into 13 teams participated in the course. In this study, a subsample of six students working in 2 teams during one collaborative argumentative writing activity were analyzed. These groups were selected on the basis of their output (high and medium quality) and because both followed an integrating construction strategy for collaborative writing. Data collected included audio, video and computer screen recordings of both groups' discourse and writing activity during collaborative writing (using Camtasia and Atlas-ti software). Analysis focused on collaborative writing interaction (types of talk; evidence of philosophical competences - problematization, argumentation and conceptualization; regulation of the collaborative writing activity and group dynamics) and the quality of individual and collaborative texts.Results indicate that quality of the interaction was related to text quality. Collaborative writing helped the students: 1) to transform abstract ideas into more concrete and appropriate philosophical concepts using examples related to their experiences, 2) to use these philosophical concepts in their own discourse and 3) to problematize their own ideas and provide arguments to support them. From these results, the importance of a structured context of learning to promote critical thinking through writing is discussed as well as the need to train students to develop efficient peer discussion for learning through collaborative writing.

Writing-to-learn assignments typically foster deep comprehension of learning contents. Journal writing, in particular, promotes the application of learning strategies, which promote learners’ comprehension, interest in a topic and ability to critically reflect on learning contents. Against this background, we conducted two longitudinal field studies. In Study 1, twenty-one students wrote learning journal entries after their biology lessons. After the intervention period, they showed better scores in comprehension, interest and critical reflection than the control class, in which students (n=25) completed other homework assignments. Mediation analyses revealed a domino effect: Journal writing improved comprehension, which led to raised interest, which resulted in superior critical reflection. Study 2 further investigated the role of learners’ interest in improving critical reflection. Students in the experimental condition (n=13) received a personal-utility prompt in addition to cognitive and metacognitive prompts to support journal writing. In the control group (n=11), students only received cognitive and metacognitive prompts. The experimental group showed higher interest scores after the intervention period and a better quality of critical reflections on a bio-ethical issue than the control group. Together, these studies illustrate the potentials of journal writing for improving learners’ comprehension, their interest and ability to critically reflect on complex scientific issues.

Research on writing to learn is conceptually rich and pedagogically important. This special issue contributes to our growing knowledge about the variables that mediate and moderate the effects of writing on learning. One group of studies addresses individual writing; it adds to the growing evidence for the effects of several moderators, including cognitive, metacognitive, and personal utility prompts in journal writing (Wäschle et al.); and discipline-specific prompts for argument writing (Van Drie et al.). The individual-level studies also suggest moderator roles for discipline-general strategies of argumentation (Smirnova); and open-ended informational writing assignments (Wilcox et al.). Additionally, the Wäschle et al. study provides the strongest evidence for a specific sequence of mediation: Prompted journal writing to comprehension to interest to critical reflection. The second set of articles focusses on collaborative writing (Corcelles & Castelló; Ortoleva and Bétrancourt). It suggests moderating roles for discipline-specific analytic strategies, and peer interaction; and suggests mediating roles for exploratory discourse and group regulation. Further experimental research on collaborative writing is needed to conclusively test hypotheses about specific mediator and moderator variables. The studies in this special issue, like many recent studies, are incommensurable with some influential theories of writing to learn. Rather, individual and collaborative studies converge to suggest that writing to learn may be conceptualized as a guided process of cognition and self-regulation.

This paper is a response to an invitation from the editors of the special issue to comment on the ingredients of effective writing to learn interventions as reflected in the contributions to the special issue. The six papers in the issue vary widely in approach and underlying theoretical frameworks but share the broad common theme of writing to learn. Within this, they vary along three main dimensions: (i) how learning is defined and assessed, and in particular whether they assess effects of the writing intervention on content knowledge; (ii) related to this, whether they are primarily focussed on discipline specific skills or on more general effects of writing; and (iii) whether they are designed to carry out a controlled evaluation of the writing intervention or rather are concerned with describing the design and purpose of a specific intervention. In what follows, I will first consider the general characteristics of the papers in relation to these three dimensions. I will then reflect on the findings of the individual papers, and then conclude by relating the papers to my personal understanding of writing to learn in terms of a dual-process model of writing.

Increasing attention has been paid in recent years to the ways writing may engage adolescents in higher levels of epistemic complexity (i.e., postulating causes, reasons and other relations or theories related to scientific phenomena), yet in secondary science classrooms, writing has primarily been used for assessing students' content knowledge. Embedded in a larger national study of secondary writing in the United States, this study investigated the qualities of science writing samples collected from 33 adolescents attending schools identified for exemplary writing performance. We asked: How is epistemic complexity reflected in adolescents' writing?; How does the level of epistemic complexity differ by adolescents' language background, grade level, and school context?; What is the nature of the relationship of types of writing and higher or lower levels of epistemic complexity? We found the majority of writing adolescents produced did not show evidence of high levels of epistemic complexity. Notable exceptions were reading reflections and lab reports. Implications for adolescent science writing instruction are discussed in light of higher standards for disciplinary writing in secondary schools.

Although handwriting is typically taught during early childhood and keyboarding may not be taught explicitly, both may be relevant to writing development in the later grades. Thus, Study 1 investigated automatic production of the ordered alphabet from memory for manuscript (unjoined), cursive (joined), and keyboard letter modes (alphabet 15 sec) and their relationships with each other and spelling and composing in typically developing writers in grades 4 to 7 (<i>N</i> = 113). Study 2 compared students with dysgraphia (impaired handwriting, <i>n</i>=27), dyslexia (impaired word spelling, <i>n</i>=40), or oral and written language learning disability (OWL LD) (impaired syntax composing, <i>n</i>=11) or controls without specific writing disabilities (<i>n</i>=10) in grades 4 to 9 (<i>N</i>=88) on the same alphabet 15 modes, manner of copying (best or fast), spelling, and sentence composing. In Study 1, sequential multilevel model regressions of predictor alphabet 15 letter production/selection modes on spelling and composition outcomes, measured annually from grade 4 to grade 7 (ages 9 to 13 years), showed that only the cursive mode <i>uniquely</i>, positively, and consistently predicted both spelling and composing in each grade. For composing, in grade 4 manuscript mode was positively predictive and in grades 5-7 keyboard selection was. In Study 2 all letter production modes correlated with each other and one's best and fast sentence copying, spelling, and timed sentence composing. The groups with specific writing disabilities differed from control group on alphabet 15 manuscript mode, copy fast, and timed sentence composing. The dysgraphia and dyslexia groups differed on copying sentences in one's best handwriting, with the dysgraphia group scoring lower. The educational and theoretical significance of the findings are discussed for multiple modes and manners of letter production/selection of the alphabet that support spelling and composing beyond the early grades in students with and without specific writing disabilities.

Test writers sometimes complain they cannot perform to their true abilities because of time constraints. We therefore examined differences in terms of process and product between texts produced under test and non-test conditions. Ten L2 postgraduates wrote two argumentative essays, one under test conditions, with only forty minutes being allowed and without recourse to resources, and one under non-test conditions, with unlimited time as well as access to the Internet. Keystroke logging, screen capture software, and stimulated recall protocols were used, participants explaining and commenting on their writing processes. Sixteen writing process types were identified. Higher proportions of the processes of translation and surface revision were recorded in the test situation, while meaningful revision and evaluation were both higher in the non-test situation. There was a statistically significant difference between time allocation for different processes at different stages. Experienced teachers awarded the non-test texts a mean score of almost one point (0.8) higher. A correlational analysis examining the relationship between writing process and product quality showed that while the distribution of writing processes can have an impact on text quality in the test situation, it had no effect on the product in the non-test situation.

We examine the explanatory weight of child-related and contextual factors on first graders’ achievements in spelling and separation between words. The participants were 215 kindergartners, 113 boys and 102 girls (M = 5 years 4 months, SD = 4 months) from both monolingual and bilingual communities in Spain. They were native speakers of Spanish in the monolingual communities and bilingual Spanish/Catalan or Spanish/Basque speakers in the bilingual communities and had Catalan and Basque, respectively, as the language of instruction. The three languages have shallow orthographies. Children were first examined in kindergarten in a number of literacy related abilities (e.g., knowledge of letters, writing) to detect predictors of spelling and separation between words that were, in turn, evaluated at the end of first grade of elementary school. All the participants were assessed in their language of instruction. The best explanatory models were those including interactions among child-level factors and between these factors and contextual variables. Only knowledge of writing in kindergarten appeared as the common explanatory factor for first graders’ attainments. Attainments in spelling were predicted by children’s level of literacy and knowledge of letters moderated by parent’s education; performance in word separation was predicted by phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge moderated by parental education. Teaching practices affected spelling performance but not learning to separate between words.

This research analyzes the discourse functions of grammatical subjects used in results and discussion sections of research articles across four disciplines. To this end, sixteen results and discussion sections from four disciplines, namely, English Language Teaching, Economics, Biology and Civil Engineering (four from each discipline), were analyzed using the categorizations of discourse functions of grammatical subjects established by Gosden (1993). There were marked disciplinary differences in terms of the discourse functions served through the application of the grammatical subjects in the four sets of the results and discussion sections. These disciplinary differences were clearly shown in all the four domains of the discourse functions of the grammatical subject along with their subcategories. This result suggests that the discourse functions of the grammatical subject are strongly related to the public aims, norms and conventions of specific disciplines as well in the contexts in which it is realized.

Writing intervention research can enhance our knowledge about writing, its development, and how to teach it effectively. Despite the importance of such research, many of the writing intervention studies conducted previously were of poor quality, as documented by Graham and colleagues in a series of meta-analyses (Graham, McKeown, Kiuhara, &amp; Harris, 2012; Graham &amp; Perin, 2007; Rogers &amp; Graham, 2008). In this article, we offer 12 recommendations for conducting high quality intervention research, recommendations that draw on those meta-analyses as well as previous work on improving the quality of intervention research (Pressley &amp; Harris, 1994a, 1994b) and our experiences as writing intervention researchers and editors of journals that publish intervention research (including the Journal of Writing Research) . The recommendations address issues and actions involved in designing, conducting, and reporting such research.

This study examined 164 freshman undergraduates' epistemological and writing beliefs, and rhetorical writing performance, in a first-year writing course. Students completed epistemological and writing belief scales early and late in the semester. In addition, their end of semester rhetorical writing assignment was collected. Correlational analyses indicated significant relationships between students' epistemological and writing beliefs across a 16-week semester. Results of MANOVA show a significant shift in students' epistemological beliefs regarding fast learning and certain knowledge across the semester, as well as significant changes in their view of writing as a product and writing's purpose to avoid disagreement. Correlational analyses link students' writing beliefs to their rhetorical writing performance. The study includes a discussion of qualitative features of students' writing relative to their writing beliefs.

Efficient coordination of the different writing processes is central to producing good-quality texts, and is a fundamental component of writing skill. In this article, I propose a general theoretical framework for considering how writing processes are coordinated, in which writing processes are concurrently activated with more or less overlap between processes depending on their working memory demands, and with the flow of information cascading from central to peripheral levels of processing. To support this view, I review studies that investigated effects of handwriting skills on concurrent activation of higher order processes, and research on word production that explored how information cascades between levels of processing in the writing system. I argue that a parallel and cascading model makes it possible to combine different findings in a common integrated framework and thus constitutes a heuristic for further understanding coordination of the different levels of processing involved in writing.

Abstract: In this paper, I report the effects of explicitly teaching five technical genres to English first-language students enrolled in a multi-major technical writing course. Previous experimental research has demonstrated the efficacy of explicitly teaching academic writing to English first-language adults, but no comparable study on technical writing exists. I used a mixed-method approach to examine these effects, including a control-group quasi-experimental design and a qualitative analysis to more fully describe the 534 texts produced by 316 student writers. Results indicated the genre participants constructed texts demonstrating a significantly greater awareness to audience, purpose, structure, design, style, and editing than participants taught through more traditional approaches. Within the technical genres, participants demonstrated greater awareness to audience, purpose, and editing in the job materials text type than with correspondence or procedures text types.

By analyzing two drafts of a single written piece, we open windows into that document's evolution that may not be knowable otherwise. However, existing document comparison tools generally do not facilitate scientific inquiry, as they are generally low-throughput and lacking in visual accessibility. Here, we introduce sequence homology analysis (SHA) as an alternative approach to measuring changes between two documents. SHA is a technique common to molecular biologists viz. studies of amino acid- and DNA sequences, and has been extensively validated. Whereas there is no known application of sequence homology analysis in writing researches, we give overview to its implementation and interpretation, and present a novel algorithm which incorporates SHA into the study of any number of documents in a semi-automated fashion. Additionally, we propose a method for visualization based on standard network analytic conventions. We illustrate SHA, the algorithm, and the network visualization via a publicly accessible dataset of historical significance: consecutive drafts of United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell speech (EFS). Additionally, we describe the parameterization of this routine, its potential for further automation, and its extension into other areas of writing research.

Spontaneous writing observed in chats, instant messengers, and social media has become established as productive modes of communication and discourse genres. However, they remain understudied from the perspective of writing process research. In this paper, we present an empirical study wherein keystrokes made by chat users in a game were recorded. The distributions of the inter-key intervals were analyzed and fitted with ex-Gaussian distribution equation, and an argument for psycholinguistic interpretation of the distribution parameters is presented. This analysis leads to establishing a threshold of 500 ms for the identification of pauses in spontaneous writing. Furthermore, we demonstrate that pauses longer than 1.2 s may correspond to higher-level linguistic processing beyond a single propositional expression (functional element of the discourse).

Given the widespread use of English for the international dissemination of scholars’ research results, numerous intercultural analyses have been undertaken in the field of English for Academic Purposes in diverse genres. Rhetorical and discursive conventions across languages and cultures have been studied to help non-native English scholars to be successful in the difficult endeavour of being granted publication in international English-medium publications. The increasing competition to get one’s research published in international journals in English has resulted in the authors’ need to clearly spell out what their contribution to their discipline is, a rhetorical convention which seems to be currently crucial especially in some fields. It is the aim of this paper to trace statements of contribution in the Introduction and Conclusion sections of research articles published in two international journals in finance and to compare the results with those obtained from an analysis of three manuscripts written in English by a team of Spanish scholars sent to the same journals but which received major revision or rejection reports. Reference to these statements made by reviewers in their reports will also be analysed to explore to what extent (non) compliance with this rhetorical convention may influence their final decision (not) to recommend publication.

Lonka, K., Chow, A., Keskinen (née Stubb), J., Hakkarainen, K., Sandström, N. &amp; Pyhältö, K. (accepted)

In today’s workplaces professional communication often involves constructing documents from multiple digital sources—integrating one’s own texts/graphics with ideas based on others’ text/graphics. This article presents a case study of a professional communication designer as he constructs a proposal over several days. Drawing on keystroke and interview data, we map the professional’s overall process, plot the time course of his writing/design, illustrate how he searches for content and switches among optional digital sources, and show how he modifies and reuses others’ content. The case study reveals not only that the professional (1) searches extensively through multiple sources for content and ideas but that he also (2) constructs visual content (charts, graphs, photographs) as well as verbal content, and (3) manages his attention and motivation over this extended task. Since these three activities are not represented in current models of writing, we propose their addition not just to models of communication design, but also to models of writing in general.

Despite the fact that a considerable proportion of today’s writing programs operate according to the principles of genre-based instruction, research has not adequately dealt with the teaching of various genres (e.g., job application letters). Nor has research, to date, attempted to address the issue of written corrective feedback in conjunction with genre-based instruction. This study, therefore, aimed to investigate the impact of written corrective feedback in the context of genre-based instruction on job application letters. To this end, 120 Iranian advanced-level EFL learners at Kish Institute of Science and Technology participated in the present study. After administering the TOEFL test, 80 students scoring within ±1 SD of the mean score were randomly assigned to one of two experimental groups?namely, Direct Feedback Group or Indirect Feedback Group. Having sat a writing pretest, the participants received genre-based instruction on how to compose job application letters. Meanwhile, they were supplied with direct or indirect feedback on their writing. Following this instruction, a writing posttest was administered, the results of which showed that direct corrective feedback was more effective than indirect corrective feedback in the context of genre-based instruction on letters of job application.

Various authors argue that invented spelling activities with preschool-age children help them to analyse the oral segments of words and to discover the relations between those segments and the corresponding letters. Several studies have shown the impact of invented spelling programmes on early spelling, but few experimental ones have looked at the impact of invented spelling on early reading. Our aim was to assess the impact of an invented spelling programme on children’s early spelling and reading. We worked with 108 five-year-old Portuguese children who were not able to read or write. Their initial cognitive ability, knowledge of letters and phonological awareness were controlled. Children were randomly divided into an experimental and a control group. They were evaluated in a pre- and a post-test in which they were asked to write and read a set of words. The experimental group participated in a 5-week invented spelling programme. We expected the experimental group to have better post-test scores than the control group. Data analysis showed statistically significant differences between the two groups, with the experimental one having better results in spelling and reading than the control group, supporting the idea that the acquisition of spelling and reading may be mutually facilitative.

A model of how working memory, as conceived by Baddeley (1986), supports the planning of ideas, translating ideas into written sentences, and reviewing the ideas and text already produced was proposed by Kellogg (1996). A progress report based on research from the past 17 years shows strong support for the core assumption that planning, translating, and reviewing are all dependent on the central executive. Similarly, the translation of ideas into a sentence does in fact require also verbal working memory, but the claim that editing makes no demands on the phonological loop is tenuous. As predicted by the model, planning also engages the visuo-spatial sketchpad. However, it turns out to do so only in planning with concrete concepts that elicit mental imagery. Abstract concepts do not require visuo-spatial resources, a point not anticipated by the original model. Moreover, it is unclear the extent to which planning involves spatial as opposed to visual working memory. Contrary to Baddeley’s original model, these are now known to be independent stores of working memory; the specific role of the spatial store in writing is uncertain based on the existing literature. The implications of this body of research for the instruction of writing are considered in the final section of the paper.

Writing is a necessary skill for success in the classroom and the workplace; yet, many students are failing to develop sufficient skills in this area. One potential problem may stem from a misalignment between students' and teachers' criteria for quality writing. According to the evaluative misalignment hypothesis, students assess their own writing using a different set of criteria from their teachers. In this study, the authors utilize automated textual analyses to examine potential misalignments between students' and teachers' evaluation criteria for writing quality. Specifically, the computational tools Coh-Metrix and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) are used to examine the relationship between linguistic features and student and teacher ratings of students' prompt-based essays. The study included 126 students who wrote timed, SAT-style essays and assessed their own writing on a scale of 1-6. Teachers also evaluated the essays using the SAT rubric on a scale of 1-6. The results yielded empirical evidence for student-teacher misalignment and advanced our understanding of the nature of students' misalignments. Specifically, teachers were attuned to the linguistic features of the essays at both surface and deep levels of text, whereas students' ratings were related to fewer overall textual features and most closely associated with surface-level features.

The contribution of linguistic, reading, and transcription processes to writing in kindergarten English as a second language (ESL) children and their native-English speaking peers (EL1) were examined. ESL and EL1 performed similarly on one of the two measures of phonological awareness (PA) and on measures of early reading, spelling, and writing. EL1 outperformed ESL on a pseudoword repetition task and on the English vocabulary and syntactic knowledge tasks. ESL outperformed EL1 on a writing fluency measure. Correlation and hierarchical regression results varied as a function of the writing tasks (procedural or generative) and language status. Across language groups, writing tasks that captured children's developing graphophonemic knowledge were associated with a breadth of cognitive, linguistic, and early literacy skills. PA, reading, and transcription skills, but not oral vocabulary and syntactic knowledge contributed the most variance to writing irrespective of language status. The results suggest that parallel component skills and processes underlie ESL and EL1 children's early writing when formal literacy instruction begins in kindergarten even though ESL children are developing English oral and literacy proficiency simultaneously.

This article seeks to formulate translator profiles based on process data from keylogging and eye-tracking, while at the same time identifying features which are shared by all translators in a sample consisting of both students and professionals. Data have been collected from 12 professional translators and 12 graduate students translating three texts of varying complexity. We found that individual behavioural characteristics with respect to initial orientation in the source text (ST), online ST reading, and online and end revision remained relatively constant across texts of varying complexity, supporting our hypothesis that translator profiles can be observed which are independent of the difficulty of the translation task. The analysis of the data also indicated that translators could be grouped into broad categories of locally-oriented and globally-oriented translation styles, which are partly, though not entirely, comparable to styles known from writing research. We also identified shared features with respect to reading and revision behaviour during drafting. Common to all translators was that they looked beyond the source text word they were about to translate, and that they made revisions while drafting the translation.

This study of 29 teachers from four states in the US investigated teachers' orientations towards writing and the influences on their beliefs. Through interviews about writing instruction, the researchers found significant differences between teachers in high and low-income schools. While teachers in high-income schools valued rhetorical style, developing voice, and reading-writing connections, teachers in low-income schools focused on grammar, mechanics and sentence structure. Teachers in high-income schools appear to be exercising more choice in curricular materials and valuing quality of writing beyond grammar and mechanics, whereas teachers in low-income schools are using specific curriculum mandated by the districts. Influences on teachers' orientations included school context, programs and materials, and assessments. The study raises concerns that students in low-income schools are missing out on authentic, challenging, and meaningful writing opportunities since the focus is on skills-based instruction. The findings point to the need for teachers to provide all students with opportunities to develop rhetorical style, voice, and reading-writing connections in addition to grammar, mechanics, and sentence structure.

Writing and translation are traditionally addressed as two different objects of study. However, they also share many characteristics - as revealed by the research carried out in the two fields, which often uses the same methods to investigate both areas. In this introduction, it is suggested that writing and translation can be studied as types of text production. Different dimensions of text production are sketched as examples of research topics at the interface between writing and translation. The two articles that follow this introduction explore two such dimensions: competence and profiles.

The parallels between writing research and translation process research range from the objects of study (text producers and texts) to the methods employed in investigating them. Similarly to writing research, translation studies has recently moved from an almost exclusive focus on products towards considering workplace and cognitive processes and the effects of those processes on the quality of products. In this paper, we outline how the methods common to both fields can be applied to the investigation of translators' understanding of their roles and responsibilities as text producers and their treatment of the specific problem of title translation. The data are drawn from a corpus built up in an longitudinal research project about the relationship of translation competence and the translation process. The multi-method approach we use combines keystroke logging, screenshot recording, eye-tracking, retrospection, and interviews. It allows us to monitor translators at their workplace in as controlled and non-invasive a manner as possible. It also provides rich data that make it possible to infer the practices and metalinguistic awareness that characterize the translation competence of translators with different levels of experience.

The effects of writing format (handwritten (HW) versus word processor (WP)) were examined in a sample of college students with and without learning disabilities (LD). All students wrote two essays, one in each format, scored for quality and length. Groups did not differ in age, gender, ethnicity, mathematical calculation, writing fluency, essay length or essay quality. The "interaction hypothesis" was not supported, in that the use of a word processor as a writing accommodation did not provide a differential boost to students with LD. Both groups produced longer essays in the WP versus HW condition. The best predictor of essay quality was essay length regardless of writing format. Most students in each group preferred the WP format. Interestingly, a smaller percentage of students in the LD group (72%) than NLD group (91%) used the available time for writing. Keywords: accommodations, learning disabilities, college students, writing, word processor

Do the quality and the quantity of arguments have an impact on the evaluation of bad news messages? To answer this question, two experiments were carried out using bad news letters in which the quality and the quantity of the arguments were manipulated in a contextually realistic way. The results of both experiments show that adding argumentation has a positive impact on the perceived politeness and the persuasive force of the letters. Furthermore, the studies show that the impact of strong arguments is greater than that of weak arguments. The effect of adding successive arguments is positive as well. However, the results indicate that one or two arguments are sufficient. Adding a third argument only minimally contributes to better evaluations.

This study examined the role of word-level reading proficiency and verbal working memory in grade 4 and 5 students’ (N = 42; 23 boys) performance on a curriculum-based measure of narrative writing. Two outcomes were measured: correct minus incorrect word sequences (CMIWS; accurate-production of spelling and grammar in-text), and composition quality. CMIWS scores were moderately correlated with the holistic quality score. Word reading proficiency predicted CMIWS above and beyond the variance accounted for by gender, grade, handwriting automaticity, and working memory. Word reading proficiency also predicted composition quality controlling for gender and handwriting automaticity. Working memory, as measured by an updating task, was not a significant unique predictor of CMIWS or composition quality. Grade (5 > 4) and gender differences (girls > boys) were also found for CMIWS scores. Although handwriting automaticity was correlated with CMIWS scores and writing quality, it was not a unique predictor of either measure. The results provide further evidence of the sensitivity of the CMIWS index. They also highlight the importance of considering reading proficiency and handwriting automaticity when assessing children’s writing abilities and planning instruction for children with writing difficulties. Keywords: written expression; curriculum-based measures; reading; handwriting; gender

This study investigated situational and writer characteristics that influence the revision process. Thirty-four students who scored high on print exposure and 32 students who scored low on print exposure had 10 or 70 seconds to think about each of 2 prompts before beginning to write (prewriting time) the essays on a computer. A keystroke-logging program captured writing and editing behavior, including pauses, edits (deletions, substitutions, insertions), and prompt reviews. Quality was measured using an 8-factor, 3-point analytic scoring rubric. Results indicated that high print exposure students wrote longer and higher quality essays than low print exposure students. In addition, the short prewriting time increased prompt reviewing and average pause lengths. High and low print exposure writers showed differential responses to the prewriting time manipulation in terms of total pause-associated edits during writing. The complexity of the revision process and the importance of understanding multiple immediate variables in the writing situation are discussed.

The inclusion of peer feedback activities into the academic writing process has become common practice in higher education. However, while research has shown that students perceive many features of peer feedback to be useful, the actual effectiveness of these features in terms of measurable learning outcomes remains unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the linguistic and review features of peer feedback and how these might influence peers to accept or reject revision advice offered in the context of academic writing among L2 learners. A corpus-based machine learning approach was employed to test three different algorithms (logistic regression, decision tree, and random forests) on three feature models (linguistic, review, and all features) to determine which algorithm offered the best predictive results and to determine which feature model most accurately predicts implementation. The results indicated that random forests is the most effective way of modeling the different features. In addition, the feature model containing all features most accurately predicted implementation. The findings further suggest that directive comments and multiple peer comments on the same topic included in the feedback process seem to influence implementation.

Peer review is a family of instructional techniques. Historically, these have been employed in writing and many other educational domains. Modern computer technologies facilitate the use of peer review, which is especially relevant to educational settings where it is not practical to administer peer review manually. The use of computer support for peer review has shed light on many important scientific questions, some of which we summarize. These findings set the context for the papers in this special issue, which demonstrate how computer support for peer review enables research on peer review itself and on its pedagogical significance.

Computer-supported peer review systems can support reviewers and authors in many different ways, including through the use of different kinds of reviewing criteria. It has become an increasingly important empirical question to determine whether reviewers are sensitive to different criteria and whether some kinds of criteria are more effective than others. In this work, we compared the differential effects of two types of rating prompts, each focused on a different set of criteria for evaluating writing: prompts that focus on domain-relevant aspects of writing composition versus prompts that focus on issues directly pertaining to the assigned problem and to the substantive issues under analysis. We found evidence that reviewers are sensitive to the differences between the two types of prompts, that reviewers distinguish among problem-specific issues but not among domain-writing ones; that both types of ratings correlate with instructor scores; and that problem-specific ratings are more likely to be helpful and informative to peer authors in that they are less redundant.

The object of this research is a learning method that uses email correspondence to promote the development of narrative writing skills in year 4 and year 5 students. Focusing on the written production of episodes of adventure novels and peer review, this learning method was applied to four classes in the Paris region over a 1-year period. The classes were paired in such a way that some students were required to read and analyze texts produced by correspondents (advice givers) while others carried out revisions using peer advice and suggestions (advice receivers). To describe the dynamics of writing, revision and learning, a qualitative analysis of the texts and suggestions given or received by the student partners is carried out. A statistical analysis comparing the texts produced by students in both groups is used to corroborate the findings of the initial analysis. Students showed an increasing awareness and consideration of the key characteristics of the practiced genre, resulting in an improvement of the quality of the texts in the course of the revision process and throughout the year. The texts produced by the advice givers improved more than the texts produced by the advice receivers. The findings are attributed to greater self-reflection and successive reformulations fostered by the elaboration of advice and suggestions.

Peer review has been viewed as a promising solution for improving students' writing, which still remains a great challenge for educators. However, one core problem with peer review of writing is that potentially useful feedback from peers is not always presented in ways that lead to revision. Our prior investigations found that whether students implement feedback is significantly correlated with two feedback features: localization information and concrete solutions. But focusing on feedback features is time-intensive for researchers and instructors. We apply data mining and Natural Language Processing techniques to automatically code reviews for these feedback features. Our results show that it is feasible to provide intelligent support to peer review systems to automatically assess students' reviewing performance with respect to problem localization and solution. We also show that similar research conclusions about helpfulness perceptions of feedback across students and different expert types can be drawn from automatically coded data and from hand-coded data.

This paper uses critical discourse analysis to examine the language used in the teaching and learning of writing in a composition program in a public university in the United States. The objective was to identify metaphors and metonymies employed to construct an official standpoint of writing and the teaching of writing within the program, to identify the ideological position of the views conveyed in the documents and to analyze how this perspective is passed down hierarchically from the official documents to those actually developed and used by the instructors in the classrooms. The metaphors and metonymies used in the documents construct writing as an important commodity and college writing as more valuable than writing in other places. Metaphors and metonymies stood out as important semiotic devices for instructors to stay within a given pedagogical and educational perspective in ways that may normally be largely unnoticed by them.

This paper examines a unique reflective writing assignment used in an undergraduate social work course on human sexuality. We ask what new understandings reflective writing mediates (Vygotsky, 1978) regarding sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender relations—oft-neglected topics within pre-professional academic programs. One goal for this assignment was to mediate future social workers' abilities to differentiate between thoughts and feelings, and we evaluate the degree to which students did so in their writing. By adapting Hatton and Smith's (1994) framework for analyzing reflective writing, we also distinguish between descriptive and dialogical reflection, identifying and analyzing examples of both within the students' writing. Findings suggest that students engaged primarily in descriptive reflection, but also engaged in some dialogical reflection. We argue that both are useful but that the latter mediates deeper and more useful learning. We present recommendations for enhancing reflective writing assignment design in pre-professional academic programs.

When students are composing a collaborative text together and share responsibility for the writing task, cognitive and metacognitive processes become external and visible and thus amenable to research. The aim of this study was to clarify how students interact and how the different student roles and activities are divided up when students engage in collaborative writing face-to-face. In this study 19 university students performed a collaborative writing task in 6 groups consisting of 2-4 students each. The purpose of the task was to assist students in learning the theories of development presented in their course book. The most frequent activities observed during the collaborative writing task were discussing concepts (31%), writing and revising (25%), planning the text (16%) and steering the group's performance (9%). The students engaged rather seldom in evaluative activities and the proportion of off-task talk was also small. Cluster analyses revealed four participant profiles: Cognitively versatile thinkers, Cognitively focused thinkers, Performance steering writers, and Textbook consulters. The participant profiles were the same for all the group members in four groups out of six.We conclude that participant profiles are not individual roles but are dependent on the discursive interaction through which collaborative groups approach the writing task.

This article reports on part of a study investigating a new writing assessment, the Writer's Craft, which requires students to read a stimulus passage and then write a continuation adopting the style of the original. The article provides a detailed analysis of stimulus passages employed within this assessment scheme and students' written continuations of these passages. The findings reveal that this is a considerably more challenging assessment writing task than has previously been recognised; and that questions arise concerning the nature of the stimulus passages and the extent to which the assessment criteria captured what the students had achieved in their writing. The implications of these findings are discussed and recommendations are made.