Generative AI has the potential to transform writing in schools and universities. This makes it necessary to develop training programmes for writing with AI, especially for students in teacher training. So far, however, little is known about the students' initial preconditions on which the trainings can be based upon. Evidence so far has come mainly from observational studies and questionnaire studies examining the frequency and type of AI use. However, the students themselves were not considered, nor the extent to which they can be categorised into groups. In other words, the focus has been on the writing rather than on the writers. To address this gap, the present article analyses data from a survey of N=505 students. To identify writer profiles, i.e. groups of students with comparable characteristics, we apply two-step cluster analysis. The students are clustered based on their use of AI for writing, as well as their level of awareness of AI applications, AI literacy, digital media literacy and writing-related self-concept. The results reveal four clusters, the two largest of which are characterised by the fact that students tend not to use AI, sometimes because they apparently have no awareness of AI, sometimes despite having such awareness. Merely one cluster, which describes 20% of the students, is characterised by regular use of AI for writing. The results therefore provide a useful insight for planning training in the context of university teaching.

Meta-analyses indicate that explicit writing instruction (EWI) is an effective method for improving student writing self-efficacy and writing performance. EWI relies on explicit instruction of writing strategies through modeling, scaffolding and self-regulation. Most EWI-based interventions have been conducted by researchers, generally with subgroups of students or on a one-on-one basis, and very few have been conducted in other languages than English. Our quasi-experimental study aims to address these limits by testing EWI’s effects when teachers themselves intervene using peer feedback during the writing of opinion letters. We used practice-based professional development to teach teachers how to use EWI, and compared two experimental conditions (EWI with and without peer feedback) to a control group (Business as Usual). A total of 483 French-speaking 5th grade students participated in the study. Results from repeated measure analyses showed that, with or without peer feedback, the EWI intervention produced better writing performance and higher self-efficacy compared to the control group. We discuss the role of EWI for writing performance and self-efficacy.

As project-based learning (PjBL) has become very popular in education over the past few years, this study conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis to synthesize the effectiveness of PjBL in EFL/ESL writing by examining 11 articles based on databases of Scopus and Google Scholar from 2013 to 2023. The result reveals that PjBL had a significant positive effect size in EFL/ESL writing. Moreover, the effect sizes of some moderating variables were analyzed, including educational levels, sample size, research design, intervention duration, and group size. It was found that the most important moderating variable that affects the effectiveness of PjBL in EFL/ESL writing is intervention duration. The significant overall effect of PjBL on ESL/EFL writing implies the need for educators to consider using PjBL in language teaching and learning. Meanwhile future researchers might consider applying other moderating variables such as research design, instructional strategies, and student characteristics, to identify the best practices for implementing PjBL in ESL/EFL writing.

In this design study, we designed an instructional unit open to contextual modifications with the aim of fostering secondary school students' philosophical writing. Three philosophy teachers developed innovative source-based writing tasks and provided discipline-specific writing strategy instruction in their 10th grade class. In this study, we focused on change. We explored teachers' interaction with the instructional design and studied teachers' views on how the intervention had changed their practice since a change of beliefs is crucial to successful, durable innovation of teaching. Moreover, we studied the effects of the changed practice, by exploring change in students' writing. An external jury analyzed students' texts to determine students' actual learning achievements. Teachers' insights into student progress were obtained from reflective interviews that featured comparisons between the observed and expected results. The results showed that teachers judged the design to be feasible, valid, and effective for students' philosophical writing development. After the intervention, students' texts showed similar or even more independent philosophical thinking than before, while the tasks became more complex. Implementation drove teachers to contemplate writing instruction, indicating a change in their belief system, which is necessary for genuine improvement in teacher practice.

This study aimed to delve into the under-explored domain of early handwriting performance among Arabic-speaking kindergarten children, focusing on the potential factors influencing early handwriting competency. The research encompassed 218 children from diverse socio-economic backgrounds in Israel. The underlying skills assessed were divided into linguistic skills (phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge) and graphomotor and fine-motor skills. Hierarchical regression analyses were utilized to evaluate the contributions of these skills. Results indicated that, within the Arabic orthographic context, orthographic knowledge stood out as a paramount contributor to early handwriting performance, more so than phonological awareness. Furthermore, graphomotor and fine motor skills significantly influenced letter-copying speed and legibility, but not the accuracy of letter-writing to dictation. In conclusion, while orthographic knowledge is paramount, the importance of graphomotor and fine motor skills for early handwriting performance in Arabic cannot be understated. The study suggests that a focused approach to these skills can lead to more effective interventions and teaching methodologies tailored for Arabic-speaking kindergarteners.

Advanced technology has brought about great changes to language teaching and learning, such as significant shifts and requirements in the field of writing, which is considered as a complex ability to acquire, especially for second language (L2) learners (Hyland, 2021). Writing in this digital era has been shaped by various new technologies, resulting in more attention paid to technology use in L2 writing instruction and research. A new collection of papers titled Technology in second language writing: Advances in composing, translation, writing pedagogy and data-driven learning has been timely published to illustrate how the L2 writing field embraces the integration of technology in teaching and researching students with various cultural backgrounds. This fascinating book was edited by Jingjing Qin and Paul Stapleton who gathered scholars with different pedagogical experiences to provide a comprehensive detour from original research orientations to pedagogical applications.

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.

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.

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.

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 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

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.

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.    

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This article introduces a Special Issue that gathers a collection of effective tools to promote the teaching and learning of writing in school-aged and university students, across varied contexts. The authors present the theoretical rationale and technical specificities of writing tools aimed at enhancing writing processes (e.g., spelling, revising) and/or at providing writers with automated feedback to improve the implementation of those processes. The tools are described in detail, along with empirical data on their effectiveness in improving one or more aspects of writing. All articles conclude by indicating future directions for further developing and evaluating the tools. This Special Issue represents an important contribution to the field of technology-based writing instruction, in a moment in which online teaching and learning tools have shifted from being an instructional asset to a necessity. We hope that in the future the validation of each tool can be expanded by reaching out to different populations and cultural contexts.

Teaching the craft of written science communication is an arduous task that requires familiarity with disciplinary writing conventions. With the burgeoning of technological advancements, practitioners preparing novice research writers can begin to augment teaching and learning with activities in digital writing environments attuned to the conventions of scientific writing in the disciplines. The Research Writing Tutor (RWT) is one such technology. Grounded in an integrative theoretical framework, it was designed to help students acquire knowledge about the research article genre and develop research writing competence. One of its modules was designed to facilitate revision by providing different forms of automated feedback and scaffolding that are genre-based and discipline-specific. This study explores whether and how the features of the RWT may impact revision while using this module of the tool. Drawing from cognitive writing modeling, this study investigates the behaviors of a multidisciplinary group of 11 graduate-student writers by exploring how they interacted with the RWT's features and how this interaction may create conditions for enhanced revision processes and text modifications. Findings demonstrate promising potential for the use of this automated feedback tool in fostering writers' metacognitive processing during revision. This research adds to theory on cognitive writing models by acknowledging the evolving role of digital environments in writing practices and offering insights into future development of automated tools for genre-based writing instruction.

There is increasing evidence that automated writing evaluation (AWE) systems support the teaching and learning of writing in meaningful ways. However, a dearth of research has explored ways that AWE may be integrated within different instructional contexts and examined the associated effects on students’ writing performance. This paper describes the AWE system MI Write and presents results of a mixed-methods study that investigated the integration and implementation of AWE with writing instruction at the middle-school level, examining AWE integration within both a traditional process approach to writing instruction and with strategy instruction based on the Self-Regulated Strategy Development model. Both instructional contexts were evaluated with respect to fostering growth in students’ first-draft writing quality across successive essays as well as students’ and teachers’ experiences and perceptions of teaching and learning with AWE. Multilevel model analyses indicated that during an eight-week intervention students in both instructional contexts exhibited growth in first-draft writing performance and at comparable rates. Qualitative analyses of interview data revealed that AWE’s influence on instruction was similar across contexts; specifically, the introduction of AWE resulted in both instructional contexts taking on characteristics consistent with a framework for deliberate practice.

Expertise research spanning a variety of domains has established the central role that deliberate practice plays in developing expertise. This type of practice demands time, internal motivation, effort, feedback, and determination to surpass existing levels of performance. To leverage the rigors of deliberate practice, the two expert textbook writers who participated in this study deployed the writing processes of reviewing, writing it down, and incubating while developing textbooks for English language teaching (ELT). Data collected mainly via concurrent verbalization—whereby the participants expressed their thoughts aloud while engaged in textbook writing—and pre- and post-concurrent verbalization interviews revealed that the participants called upon these processes in purposeful ways as metacognitive strategies used to maximize writing effectiveness, with metacognition operationalized here as the participants’ knowledge and recognition of how they thought and worked. This study provides insight into how textbooks are written in practice and thus has implications for the research field of materials development; the findings also point to practical strategies that might be utilized by those who write language learning materials.

Expertise research spanning a variety of domains has established the central role that deliberate practice plays in developing expertise. This type of practice demands time, internal motivation, effort, feedback, and determination to surpass existing levels of performance. To leverage the rigors of deliberate practice, the two expert textbook writers who participated in this study deployed the writing processes of reviewing, writing it down, and incubating while developing textbooks for English language teaching (ELT). Data collected mainly via concurrent verbalization—whereby the participants expressed their thoughts aloud while engaged in textbook writing—and pre- and post-concurrent verbalization interviews revealed that the participants called upon these processes in purposeful ways as metacognitive strategies used to maximize writing effectiveness, with metacognition operationalized here as the participants’ knowledge and recognition of how they thought and worked. This study provides insight into how textbooks are written in practice and thus has implications for the research field of materials development; the findings also point to practical strategies that might be utilized by those who write language learning materials.

The present study investigated the effects of applying cumulative group dynamic assessment (G-DA) procedures (Poehner, 2009) to support EFL writing development in a university context in Iran. It focused on learner achievement, patterns of occurrence of mediation incidents, and learners’ and teachers’ perceptions towards G-DA. Quantitative data was collected from learners’ performance on writing tests and the frequency of occurrence of mediation incidents involving EFL writing components based on Jacobs, Zinkgraf, Wormouth, Hartfield, and Hughey’s (1981) scale. Findings revealed that G-DA was more effective than conventional explicit intervention for supporting EFL writing development. Also, it worked best for low ability learners as compared to mid and high ability ones. Besides, the number of mediation incidents declined from 27 in session one to 8 in the final session, confirming the efficacy of G-DA in promoting both EFL writing and learner self-regulation. Most teacher mediation involved language use, vocabulary, and organization and fewer incidents involved content and mechanics. Qualitative data analysis indicated that most learners and teachers held positive attitudes towards the efficacy of G-DA for supporting EFL writing development. However, a few participants asserted that the procedures were unsystematic, stressful, time consuming, and inappropriate for large classes.

This paper reports on an exploratory study that investigated the relationship between English as a foreign language (EFL) writers’ reported metacognitive strategy knowledge and their English writing performance in multimedia environments in a Chinese tertiary context. A self-report questionnaire was used to collect data on 126 participants’ metacognitive strategy knowledge and EFL writing scores. Mann-Whitney U Tests were conducted to explore differences between high (n = 65) and low (n = 61) EFL proficiency groups. Analysis of the data revealed that the participants’ metacognitive strategy knowledge was correlated significantly with their writing performance. The high EFL-proficiency group reported having statistically significantly more metacognitive knowledge about three clusters of metacognitive strategies (planning, monitoring, and evaluating) than their low EFL-proficiency counterpart. These important findings point to pedagogical implications that there is a need to integrate metacognitive strategies into teaching and researching EFL writing.

This paper extends our research into a novel Story-Writing-Coding engine, where Primary School children produce animated stories through writing computer code. We first discuss the theoretical basis of our engine design, drawing on Systemic Functional Grammar, embodied cognition and perceived animacy. This design aims to help children draw on the appearances of characters, props and scenery to evoke linguistic constructs leading to the emergence of stories. The second part of this paper reports on an empirical study where we aim to answer two research questions. First can compositions so produced be seen as valid compositions? To answer this question we conducted a linguistic analysis of coded stories and those written in an English classroom, and also using teacher ratings of these stories. Results indicate that while there are no significant linguistic differences between coded and English stories, coded stories are impoverished and should be seen as a first-draft to be revised in the English classroom. The second question was to probe our observation that while coding, children spontaneously told stories. Here we draw upon theories of embodied cognition and of perceived animacy. Our analysis suggests that these theories, taken together, help to explain the spontaneous emergence of stories.

There is no shortage of research on learner preferences and teacher perceptions of the value of feedback in L2 writing. However, studies comparing opinions from both sides are rare. Moreover, little is known whether L2 proficiency impacts learner preferences for feedback. To bridge these gaps, this study surveyed 70 students and 16 teachers from an intensive English program in the U.S. on their preferences concerning six dimensions of L2 writing feedback: source, mode, tone, focus, scope, and explicitness. The findings suggest that (1) students overall regarded teachers as the most credible source of feedback and wanted teachers to mark all errors in their writing and correct them directly; (2) higher proficiency students showed more positive attitudes towards peer feedback and inclination towards written, comprehensive, and indirect correction; (3) students at the two ends of proficiency (high and low) favored feedback in a mixed tone; (4) while teachers and students were allies on the usefulness of oral feedback, feedback on both rhetorical and language issues, and feedback in a balanced tone, teachers were nonetheless neutral about the benefits of peer feedback and preferred focused, indirect feedback. Suggestions are offered for ESL writing instructors to adapt their feedback for its maximum effects.

This study aims to explore effective ways in which students can learn to write synthesis texts. First, through a systematic literature search we found 16 (quasi-)experimental studies from 6th grade to undergraduate level in the field of learning to write source-based synthesis texts, that met our inclusion criteria. Second, we formulated a general instructional design principle, that included three main processes: (a) selecting relevant/important information from sources, (b) organizing, and (c) connecting that information. Bottom-up analyses of the six most effective studies yielded a set of learning activities that contribute to the improvement of students’ performance on writing synthesis texts. Subsequently, we supplemented our general design principle with relevant learning activities obtained from these effective interventions. One effective intervention differed considerably from the others due to its divergent nature, but its content was considered valuable enough to warrant the inclusion of an additional design principle. The design principles formulated in this study can be used as guidelines for future interventions in synthesis writing or as a means of support for teachers who want to develop educational materials for teaching synthesis writing.

There is abundant research evidence on the effectiveness of explicit writing instruction and peer-assisted writing. However, most of the research articles investigating these evidence-based writing practices fail to include clear and detailed descriptions of the interventions. Consequently, researchers and educational practitioners have no perception of the crucial ingredients underlying these interventions, hindering replication, dissemination, and implementation of evidence-based writing practices. In the present study, we provide in-depth insight into two instructional writing programs via an analytic description of both programs. More particularly, EI+PA students received explicit writing instruction and practiced their writing collaboratively, while EI+IND students received the same explicit writing instruction; however, they practiced by writing individually. Both interventions were analytically described by means of a reporting system. Following this procedure, the writing lesson programs were more particularly described by defining design principles, instructional teaching activities, and student learning activities.

This paper gives an analytic description of why and how an instructional writing program on the improvement of cross-genre writing skills in German secondary grade level has been designed and implemented. From a diagnostic research phase, and according to theoretical expectations, coherence management and perspective taking proved to be ability components that substantially contribute to text quality across different genres. To train these two abilities in a didactical setting, two 11-unit writing courses were analogously constructed and administered in 5th and 9th grades. There were 12 intervention classes and 12 control classes in each grade, forming 48 classes with 1.145 participants. The decisions that lead to the design of the intervention study and the corresponding didactical settings are explained and justified in detail, and the developed self-learning materials are described in terms of their assumed learning potentials and the underlying didactical principles. Based on the obtained empirical experiences, the intervention is critically evaluated with respect to good intervention research and its proper description.

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.

This article is an introduction to the special issue on how to report writing interventions in research publications. The six contributions included in this special issue systematically describe a broad range of writing interventions aimed at learning to write in primary, secondary, and higher education. Based on these contributions and on earlier recommendations of scholars in the field of writing intervention research, we established a set of recommendations for reporting key elements of writing interventions. These elements include characteristics of the context of the intervention, theories and/or empirical studies of writing, learning to write, and teaching writing, and design principles of the intervention at both a macro and micro level. These recommendations can be considered as a checklist for authors, reviewers, and editors when reporting or reviewing intervention studies.

To enable a proper evaluation of the results of writing interventions for scientific replication and theory building, it is of vital importance that the design principles underlying an intervention and operationalization thereof are clearly described. A detailed description of a writing intervention is also important from a practical point of view, to foster dissemination and successful implementation of the intervention into practice. In this paper we propose a framework for reporting on the design principles of multifaceted intervention programs in a systematic manner. Unique features of this framework are that we (1) separate the design principles for the focus and mode of instruction, (2) systematically describe how these principles are integrated and operationalized into learning and teaching activities, (3) systematically describe the professional development teachers need to be able to execute the teaching activities. We demonstrate how this framework can be applied, with a worked example of an intervention that we designed, implemented and tested in elementary schools in the Netherlands. The framework provided in this paper makes core features of writing interventions transparent to reviewers, other scholars, and educational practitioners, and warrants that an intervention includes all necessary elements in the most optimal way. Moreover, this type of framework facilitates the comparison of interventions across contexts and countries.

This article presents the design principles underlying the instruction provided in a Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) study that resulted in substantial improvements in the opinion writing of second and third grade students. The analysis focused on the SRSD instruction students received in the classroom as well as the practice-based professional development (PBPD) teachers received on how to implement SRSD for opinion writing. A newly developed model of writing that draws on both social/contextual and cognitive conceptualizations was used to identify the theoretical aims, instructional focuses, and corresponding instructional activities for (1) creating a PBPD community where teachers learned to apply SRSD for opinion writing, (2) reshaping teachers’ classrooms so that these writing communities were conducive to SRSD instruction, (3) strengthening the capabilities and motivations of teachers to provide SRSD instruction for opinion writing, and (4) improving the capabilities and motivations of students to compose more convincing opinion essays. This analysis is the most comprehensive examination of SRSD instruction presently available, providing greater clarity for researchers and practitioners on how this instructional approach operates and achieves its aims. Our analyses also demonstrated that there is a high degree of interconnectivity among the instructional activities underlying SRSD, as many of them are designed to meet multiple aims, cutting across professional development, classroom instruction, and student and teacher development.

This preliminary study examines the rating behavior of five composition and five ESL writing teachers while evaluating a text from a university-level non-native (L2) English speaking student. Using an eye tracker, we measured raters’ dwell times and reading behaviors across four areas of interest—rhetoric, organization, vocabulary, and grammar. Results indicate that raters with differing disciplinary backgrounds read the text differently. L2 writing teachers tended to spend more time on and re-read the rhetorical, lexical, and grammatical features of the text while skipping over more of the grammar errors, while composition teachers read the text more deliberately. The findings suggest L2 writing teachers were more prone to skim and scan for information on which to base a grade while composition teachers delayed rating decisions until after reviewing the entire text, which is corroborated in previous research. These findings can expand our understanding of how disciplinary background can influence rating processes, which can inform rater training procedures, especially in disciplinary writing contexts where L2 writing is judged by individuals with and without expertise in composition or second language writing. Moreover, it demonstrates the utility of eye-tracking methods to examine the cognitive processes associated with reading and scoring student writing.

After an overview of several directions of research on cognitive and social processes in writing, this article presents a model of “co-regulation” of writing activities in the classroom. Co-regulation is defined in a situated perspective as the joint influence on student writing of sources of contextual regulation (structure of the teaching/learning situation, teacher interventions and interactions with students, peer interactions, tools and artifacts) and of processes of self-regulation. This conception is illustrated by the results of research on a writing activity in 5th and 6th grade classrooms. The research concerns two aspects of the co-regulation of students’ writing: (1) the role of whole-class discussions in the emergence of taken-as-shared meaning regarding the writing task and the influence of these discussions on the revisions subsequently carried out by students; (2) the articulations between self-regulation (reflected in revisions students carry out individually on their own drafts) and regulations resulting from peer interaction (reflected in revisions made during dyadic interaction). The conclusions drawn from this research are discussed with respect to their implications for writing instruction.

The present book addresses strategy-focused instruction in writing.This type of instruction proposes a global package of content and components, which together have shown effects in improving writing competence in children.Strategy instruction has been proven to be one of the most effective teaching practices for improving writing skills, as well as writing to learn in different content domains.The book starts with an introduction by the editors about the importance of strategy-focused instruction to promote writing in the school context, both as a content and as a learning tool.This book has a total of 12 chapters, divided in four sections.The first section includes an introduction and three chapters that approach writing instruction from different perspectives.The second section presents well-validated intervention programs for learning to write.This section includes two chapters presenting two specific instructional programs that can be used with full-range students in classrooms, across different educational contexts.The third part is composed of three chapters that address instructional programs focused on writing-to-learn.Finally, the fourth section includes the conclusion, as well as three chapters that discuss the strategy-instruction models presented in the previous sections.

This study examined the effects of an innovative comprehensive writing program in upper primary education on students’ writing performance and on teachers´ classroom practices, beliefs and skills. The program focused on the communicative nature of writing, on writing as a process, and on explicit teaching of five genre-specific writing strategies. It was implemented by 43 teachers in their regular classrooms (Grades 4 to 6, N = 1052), with three conditions: (1) a writing program condition, (2) the same program complemented by professional development sessions and coaching, and (3) a control condition in which teachers taught their usual writing lessons. Students’ writing performance was measured three times with multiple writing tasks. Data on teachers’ practices, beliefs and skills were collected through lesson observations, interviews, questionnaires, teacher logs, and a text assessment task. The comprehensive writing program had a beneficial effect on students’ writing performance and the extent to which teachers taught writing strategies. The complementary professional development and coaching had a direct effect on the number of lessons implemented, and an indirect effect on students' performance. Overall, the innovation proved to be effective for improving students’ writing performance in the upper grades of primary schools.

It is well established that students’ beliefs in skill malleability influence their academic performance. Specifically, thinking of ability as an incremental (vs. fixed) trait is associated with better outcomes. Though this was shown across many domains, little research exists into these beliefs in the writing domain and into the mechanisms underlying their effects on writing performance. The aim of this study was twofold: to gather evidence on the validity and reliability of instruments to measure beliefs in skill malleability, achievement goals, and self-efficacy in writing; and to test a path-analytic model specifying beliefs in writing skill malleability to influence writing performance, via goals and self-efficacy. For that, 196 Portuguese students in Grades 7-8 filled in the instruments and wrote an opinion essay that was assessed for writing performance. Confirmatory factor analyses supported instruments’ validity and reliability. Path analysis revealed direct effects from beliefs in writing skill malleability to mastery goals (ß = .45); from mastery goals to self-efficacy for conventions, ideation, and self-regulation (ß = .27, .42, and .42, respectively); and from self-efficacy for self-regulation to writing performance (ß = .16); along with indirect effects from beliefs in writing skill malleability to self-efficacy for self-regulation via mastery goals (ß = .19), and from mastery goals to writing performance via self-efficacy for self-regulation (ß = .07). Overall, students’ mastery goals and self-efficacy for self-regulation seem to be key factors underlying the link between beliefs in writing skill malleability and writing performance. These findings highlight the importance of attending to motivation-related components in the teaching of writing.

In recent years, embedding writing into subject teaching through genre-based writing instruction (GBWI) has been advocated in tertiary education. However, little is known about how this approach can be shaped and implemented in this context. In a design-based research study in Dutch higher professional education, we aimed to explore how GBWI can be used to scaffold students’ writing within the subject of Event Organization and to what extent students learned to use the typical features of the genre ‘event proposal’. A 5-week subject-specific writing intervention was designed and subsequently enacted by a subject lecturer in a first-year class involving 13 students. Using a coding scheme for interactional scaffolding strategies, five interaction fragments were analyzed against the background of designed scaffolding and learning goals. The fragments indicated that the interplay of designed scaffolding (instructional materials and activities) and interactional scaffolding (teacher-student interactions) promoted students’ writing performance over time. Comparison of students’ pre- and posttests by means of an analytic scoring scheme pointed to statistically significant growth in the use of typical genre features (d=1.41). Together, the results of this design-based research study indicate the potential of GBWI for scaffolding and promoting tertiary students’ writing.

This study investigates the move-step structures of Japanese and English introductory chapters of literature Ph.D. theses and perceptions of Ph.D. supervisors in the Japanese and UK higher education contexts. In this study, 51 Japanese and 48 English introductory chapters of literature Ph.D. theses written by first language writers of Japanese or English were collected from three Japanese and three British universities. Genre analysis of 99 introductory chapters was conducted using a revised “Create a Research Space” (CARS) model (Swales, 1990, 2004). Semi-structured interviews were also carried out with seven Japanese supervisors and ten British supervisors. The findings showed that the introductory chapters of literature Ph.D. theses had 13 move-specific steps and five move-independent steps, each of which presented different cyclical patterns, indicating cross-cultural similarities and differences between the two language groups. The perceptions of supervisors varied in terms of the importance and the sequence of individual steps in the introductory chapters. Based on the textual and interview analyses, a discipline-oriented Open-CARS model is proposed for pedagogical purposes of teaching and writing about this genre in Japanese or English in the field of literature and related fields.

One hundred and three (N=103) peer review studies contextualized in L2 composition classrooms and published between 1990 and 2015 were reviewed. To categorize constructs in research studies, this researcher used Lai’s (2010) three Ps dimensions (perceptions, process, and product). Perceptions are the beliefs and attitudes of peer review. Process refers to the learning process or implementation procedures of peer review. Product is the learning outcomes of peer review. A thematic analysis of the studies’ constructs showed that perception studies examined learners’ general perceptions/attitudes, Asian students’ perceptions/attitudes (cultural influences), and learner perceptions of peer feedback in comparison to self and/or computerized feedback. Process studies discussed the effects of training, checklists/rubrics, writer-reviewer relationships, the nature of peer feedback, communicative language, timing of teacher feedback on peer feedback, grouping strategies, as well as communicative medium. Product research, on the other hand, investigated peer feedback adoption rates and ratio of peer-influenced revisions, effects of peer review on writers’ revision quality, effects of peer review on reviewers’ gains, and effects of peer review on writers’ self revision. In light of this review, research gaps are identified and suggestions for future research are offered.