Artificial intelligence-based Language Tools (AILTs) are being increasingly used in essay writing in higher education. Its application promotes global and multicultural perspectives in education and plays a critical role in advancing scholarly communication and research dissemination. However, these benefits cannot be measured without also considering student perspectives. This study analyzes the positive and negative aspects identified by students regarding the use of AILTs in their written texts at university. A total of 314 undergraduate and graduate education students were surveyed, and results were analyzed using the Reinert method. The results show that positive aspects are linked to the three pillars of text construction (planning, textualization, and revision). The negative aspects highlight concerns about academic integrity and student competencies. These findings can help guide teachers on how they can promote the responsible and beneficial use of AILTs.

Bursts of writing, extracted from online recordings of the writing process, have proved an invaluable vantage point into the cognitive mechanisms at work during written language production. Crucially, they show that writers, much like speakers, produce language through a sequence of small ‘chunks’, patterns-like groupings of words that do not necessarily match the structures of theoretical grammars. As such, they are intriguing objects, whose linguistic properties are yet to be understood. To contribute to this endeavor, we track all instances of French so-called clitic subjects in a corpus of 81 keylogs of short essays written by undergraduate students in experimental conditions. We show that these clitic subjects are attracted to the burst-initial position, favoring resumption of the production after revision events. Moreover, they also act like discursive hubs in that writers are more likely to revise up to a clitic subject and restart from there, possibly relying on an entirely different structure. Therefore, they play the role of landmarks in the writing process, from which information can flow, and to which writers can get back to develop alternative discursive strategies. These results hint that the writing process and the information structure of the product are likely to be intimately intricated.

Metacognitive reading awareness, involving cognitive process control and reading strategies, is linked to better comprehension and performance, but its relationship with intertextual integration strategies and the quality of argumentative essays remains unexplored. This study aimed to investigate the role of metacognition in employing integration strategies when reading conflicting texts. 69 undergraduate students participated in an online reading-writing activity, where they wrote argumentative essays based on conflicting texts about red meat consumption. We examined the students' use of intertextual integration strategies (refutation, weighing, synthesizing) and assessed their metacognitive awareness through their reflections on these strategies. The quality of the argumentative essays served as a measure of multiple text comprehension. The results indicated a lack of metacognitive awareness regarding integration strategies, with students overestimating their ability to employ these strategies. However, they demonstrated better understanding of refutational strategies based on the examples provided in their essays. Interestingly, students who were aware of and utilized these strategies in their essays performed better in the multiple-text comprehension task.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

C-SAW (Computer-Supported Argumentative Writer) is an online authoring software embodying design principles derived from theories on written argumentation, self-regulation and conceptual change as well as feedback from practitioners and users, in line with a design-based research approach. Designed to scaffold writing processes, C-SAW is intended as additional support in instructional designs using argumentative writing for learning. This article presents the results of a mixed-method study comparing undergraduate students writing with C-SAW or a text editor. Outcome measures included the number of arguments and the degree of their completion, knowledge of argument components, topic knowledge and changes in epistemic beliefs. Participants writing with C-SAW elaborated arguments to a greater degree, but there were otherwise no significant differences between conditions for other measured outcomes. Furthermore, results were influenced by informal reasoning skills that outweighed the effects of condition. These results are discussed with respect to the difficulties of studying the effects of digital tools on writing and learning in controlled first-use contexts and the importance of developing instructional designs with explicit learning outcomes that are aligned to the instructional principles embedded in digital tools.

Graduate students often encounter obstacles related to written science communication that can set them back in their path towards degree completion. Efforts to support these students should be informed by what they actually need or desire; yet oftentimes, programs are developed based on assumptions or intuitions. In other cases, proven models from literature are used to develop programs; however, due to a lack of justification for approaches and vague descriptions of daily teaching and learning activities, the intricacies of design are relatively unknown. Thus, in institutes looking to establish research writing resources or build on existing infrastructure, more research is needed to demonstrate how needs assessment can directly transfer to program development. In this paper, I describe how findings from a campus-wide needs assessment of graduate students (N = 310) and faculty (N = 111) informed the development of design principles for a week-long dissertation writing workshop. The complete description of the intervention, including how main elements and content align with socio-cognitive perspectives to writing, can facilitate replication; theory building; and communication about effective writing instruction. This work also offers a springboard for future research and program development and establishes a blueprint.

In this study we investigated which instructional method is suitable for university students to learn how to write an academic text. We have compared observational learning with learning by doing, and we have explored the effects of writing preference (planning versus revising) on academic writing performance. In an experiment 145 undergraduate students were assigned to either an observational learning or learning-by-doing condition. In observational learning participants learned by observing a weak and strong models’ writing processes. In learning by doing they learned by performing writing tasks. Prior to the sessions participants were labeled as either planners or revisers based on a writing style questionnaire. The effects of the sessions were analyzed with a 2x2 between-subjects design with instructional method (observational learning, learning by doing) and writing preference (plan, revise) as factors. To measure academic writing performance the participants wrote an introduction to an empirical research paper.We found no main effects for instructional method and writing preference. Simple effect analyses did reveal that revisers benefitted somewhat more from observational learning than planners. Planners performed equally well in observational learning and learning by doing. However, planners who learned by doing did seem to outperform revisers who learned by doing. Our study suggests that observational learning presents interesting opportunities for academic writing courses. However, more research on the interplay between writing strategy and instructional method is called for.

This study extends previous research on observational learning in writing. It was our objective to enhance students’ motivation and learning in an academic writing course on research synthesis writing. Participants were 162 first-year college students who had no experience with the writing task. Based on Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory we developed two videos. In the first video a manager (prestige model) elaborated on how synthesizing information is important in professional life. In the second video a peer model demonstrated a five-step writing strategy for writing up a research synthesis. We compared two versions of this video. In the explicit-strategy-instruction-video we added visual cues to channel learners’ attention to critical features of the demonstrated task using an acronym in which each letter represented a step of the model’s strategy. In the implicit-strategy-instruction-video these cues were absent. The effects of the videos were tested using a 2x2 factorial between-subjects design with video of the prestige model (yes/no) and type of instructional video (implicit versus explicit strategy instruction) as factors. Four post-test measures were obtained: task value, self-efficacy beliefs, task knowledge and writing performances. Path analyses revealed that the prestige model did not affect students’ task value. Peer-mediated explicit strategy instruction had no effect on self-efficacy, but a strong effect on task knowledge. Task knowledge – in turn – was found to be predictive of writing performance.

Peer assessment is a technique with many possible benefits for instruction across the curriculum. However, the value obtained from receiving peer feedback may critically depend upon the relative abilities of the author and the reviewer. We develop a new model of such relative ability effects on peer assessment based on the well-supported Flower and Hayes model of revision processes. To test this model across the stages of peer assessment from initial text quality, reviewing content, revision amount, and revision quality, 189 undergraduate students in a large, introductory course context were randomly assigned to consistently receive feedback from higher-ability or lower-ability peers. Overall, there were few main effects of author ability or reviewer ability. Instead, as predicted, there were many interactions between the two factors, suggesting the new model is useful for understanding ability factors in peer assessment. Often lower-ability writers benefitted more from receiving feedback from lower-ability reviewers, while higher-ability writers benefitted equally from receiving feedback from lower-ability and higher-ability reviewers. This result leads to the practical recommendation of grouping students by ability during peer assessment, contrary to student beliefs that only feedback from high ability peers is worthwhile.

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.

Research on the texts of apprentice academic writers has found that they often exhibit weaknesses related to presenting an authoritative argumentative stance. This study rendered explicit linguistic resources for stance-taking and engaged advanced L2 writers in exploring stance expressions in published research. Both linguistic and language learning theories informed this study. Seven Mandarin-speaking learners of English from fields in social sciences engaged in three writing sessions in which they consulted a concordance tool organized and created to present genre moves (Swales 1990; 2004) and engagement strategies (Martin & White, 2005) used by academic authors in research introductions. Analysis of their drafts showed improvement in rhetorical move structure and stance deployment after using the tool. They were found to be more accurate in applying and identifying stances that present assertive claims and factual statements than moderately assertive stance expressions that present expansive meanings. Despite some success in learning, close text analysis reveals that more help is needed to support students in deploying appropriately assertive claims, substantiating strong claims, and managing their stance expression across several clauses. Overall, this study found that an explicit approach to learning about authorial stance has the potential to raise L2 writers’ consciousness and improve their writing.

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

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.

In undergraduate natural science courses, two types of evaluators are commonly used to assess student writing: graduate-student teaching assistants (TAs) or peers. The current study examines how well these approaches to evaluation support student writing. These differences between the two possible evaluators are likely to affect multiple aspects of the writing process: first draft quality, amount and types of feedback provided, amount and types of revisions, and final draft quality. Therefore, we examined how these aspects of the writing process were affected when undergraduate students wrote papers to be evaluated by a group of peers versus their TA. Several interesting results were found. First, the quality of the students' first draft was greater when they were writing for their peers than when writing for their TA. In terms of feedback, students provided longer comments, and they also focused more on the prose than the TAs. Finally, more revisions were made if the students received feedback from their peers-especially prose revisions. Despite all of the benefits seen with peers as evaluators, there was only a moderate difference in final draft quality. This result indicates that while peer-review is helpful, there continues to be a need for research regarding how to enhance the benefits.