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.

While previous research on peer feedback in L2 writing has stressed the importance of training in giving useful comments on peer’s writing, very few studies have specifically explored metacognitive training in peer review interaction in terms of the perception and actual reviewing practices of L2 learners. This mixed-methods study employed a 12-week intervention course in L2 writing, in which eighteen Secondary One students, aged 12–13 years, received metacognitive training in peer review interaction. The training focused on metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive regulations. The results showed that, first, metacognitive training in peer review interaction helped change the perception of these young learners and increased their level of engagement and collaboration during the five peer review tasks. Second, metacognitive training appeared to encourage students to provide more content-related feedback than language-related feedback during dyadic interactions. Finally, it was found that the students were able to seriously consider their peer feedback when revising the peer-reviewed drafts, but written feedback had a much higher chance of being incorporated than did oral feedback. The pedagogical implications of these findings were discussed.

This paper offers a description and analysis of a genre-informed intervention that supported elementary-grade ELs to write arguments in response to narrative text. Instruction engaged students with the target genre's purpose, structure, and some key language features. The analysis offers an examination of the classroom discourse and materials, as well as the students' written responses. The paper offers evidence that lessons often supported students to actively engage in classroom conversations that highlighted some of the natural constraints and choices consistent with the target genre. The student writing samples provide evidence that young students are capable of writing analytical responses to literature with support. Students were able to write in ways that served the purpose of the genre and are highly valued in ELA classrooms. In addition, the analysis found significant variety among the student products: they took varied evaluative stances in response to prompts, modified their interpretations of character attitudes using nuanced lexis, and provided differing, but relevant evidence in support of their claims. Many students were likewise able to provide elaborated analysis of evidence from literary texts in a variety of ways.

This qualitative study investigates an approach to mentoring that offers guided practice in authentic disciplinary activities prior to the dissertation stage. The mentoring project under investigation was unique in that it was designed to double as an authentic collaborative research study and as an opportunity for professional development. Starting from the assumption that writing is a function of the activities that underlie it, this article examines the embedded practices out of which writing emerges—namely, the forms of participation taken up by the doctoral student participants during their research and writing, as well as the mentoring practices enacted alongside. Findings show that participants devoted considerable attention to negotiating individual roles and responsibilities throughout the project and to negotiating emerging research objectives in response to a variety of unexpected obstacles posed by the research environment. Additionally, participants encountered significant difficulties constructing claims in the collaborative setting, owing in part to their status as disciplinary newcomers. Findings also show that the design of the collaborative project helped facilitate and distribute mentoring across the diverse research team in productive ways.

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.

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.