This study contributes to the emerging research on generative AI and writing pedagogy by exploring how college writing students make use of GAI when offered instruction in a range of responsible uses and latitude to integrate it into their writing process as they see fit. We analyzed chat log data and papers from participants recruited from six sections in which students were guided in experimenting with ChatGPT Plus and permitted to use it to produce up to 50% of submitted work. Through a combination of AI and human thematic content analysis of student chat logs, we found that in 18.6% of prompts, students asked ChatGPT to write for them. The rest of the prompts involved work leading up to or in support of the writing process. Human thematic content analysis of papers showed that students used ChatGPT to generate 8.2% of the writing they submitted. The most common rhetorical purpose of the AI-generated text they included was discussion/analysis/synthesis. English as a foreign language students (EFLs) in the sample prompted ChatGPT to clarify understanding less often than non-EFLs and integrated less AI-generated text into their papers, with a particularly notable difference in their use of AI-generated summaries. This unexpected finding merits further research, but it suggests that EFLs may use GAI for somewhat different purposes than non-EFL peers.

Since the launch of ChatGPT, the use of and debate around generative AI has grown rapidly. Professionals whose work depends on writing have expressed concern about the potential impact of such tools on their roles. But are these concerns justified? Can ChatGPT truly take on the responsibilities of a professional writer? This study investigates that question by comparing the performance of ChatGPT with that of professional editors tasked with optimizing business communication. We conducted two studies, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. In the first, three experienced editors were asked to rewrite four business letters. Their editing processes were recorded using the Microsoft Snipping Tool, and immediately afterward, we conducted retrospective interviews using stimulated recall. These interviews were transcribed and analyzed. Insights from the observations and interviews informed the design of the prompt instructions used in the second study. In the second study, we asked ChatGPT to revise the same four letters using three different prompt types. The Simple prompt instructed the model to “make this text reader-focused.” The B1 prompt referred explicitly to the CEFR B1 language level, requiring ChatGPT to tailor the text for intermediate readers. Finally, the Process prompt simulated the editing steps observed in the professional editors’ workflows. To evaluate outcomes, we conducted both a qualitative comparison of the revised texts and a quantitative readability analysis using LiNT, a validated tool developed for Dutch texts. Our results show that the human editors substantially improved the readability of the original letters, reducing the use of unfamiliar words, shortening complex sentences, and increasing personal engagement through pronoun use. Among the AI outputs, ChatGPT B1 achieved results most comparable to the editors, both in readability and accuracy. In contrast, ChatGPT Simple fell short in terms of clarity and introduced errors through faulty inferences. Surprisingly, ChatGPT Process also underperformed compared to ChatGPT B1 and the human editors. Only the editors' and ChatGPT B1versions were free from errors. In the discussion, we reflect on how generative AI is reshaping the concept of writing within organizations, the skills required to produce effective written communication and the impact on writing pedagogy. Rather than replacing human editors, we argue that generative AI can play a valuable role as a collaborative tool in the organizational writing process.

With the emergence of generative artificial intelligence, dialogue systems like chatbots are redefining traditional concepts of authorship and impacting critical aspects of writing. In educational contexts, previous research has pointed out new opportunities associated with using chatbots for writing instruction and support. This study involved 108 students across 10 classes in Norwegian K-12 education, examining how they employed educational chatbots as a support tool in L1 writing assignments. Through an inductive, data-driven thematic analysis of 895 student prompts, five recurring patterns emerged: information requests, structural guidance, example requests, content creation, feedback on text, and follow-up clarification. Aggregated results show that information requests were the most common pattern, particularly among younger students, whereas content creation and feedback on text were more prevalent among secondary and upper secondary students. Illustrative examples from the conversations revealed that generative AI extensively produced content on student’s behalf, even when students primarily sought scaffolding. The study proposes that effective scaffolding of writing through educational chatbots requires not only refining students' prompting strategies but also enhancing system designs that better support pedagogical use of generative AI.

This study investigated the impact of using ChatGPT 3.5 as a prewriting brainstorming tool on the overall quality of persuasive writing among five gifted seniors majoring in Arabic at the College of Education, Kuwait University. Giftedness, in this study, was not defined by innate advantages such as intelligence quotient (IQ) but was instead viewed from a multidimensional perspective, focusing on academic performance, writing skills, and personal traits that reflect intellectual engagement. Four participants were typically developing gifted students, while one participant was twice exceptional, both gifted and autistic. An integrated single-subject design with multiple probes across multiple baselines was used, with each participant serving as their own control. Repeated measures were used throughout the baseline, intervention, and maintenance phases to monitor intraindividual variability and examine the effectiveness of the intervention. The results indicated a significant increase in mean scores for persuasive essays from baseline to intervention for all participants, with continued improvement during maintenance for all but the twice-exceptional student, whose mean maintenance score remained unchanged from the intervention. While promoting ChatGPT 3.5 as a valuable brainstorming tool for persuasive writing, this study emphasizes its complementary role and recommends that writers engage in brainstorming using multiple resources before writing.

This paper investigated the impact of direct unfocused written corrective feedback (WCF) on EFL students’ writing improvement, self-efficacy, and anxiety. To this aim, 52 Iranian male learners were selected as participants by using the Oxford Placement Test and randomly placed in an experimental and a control group. The participants completed a pre-test that included a writing task, the writing self-efficacy questionnaire (WSEQ), and the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI) to assess their writing skill, writing self-efficacy, and writing anxiety, respectively. Having attended 15 sessions of writing instruction in which only the experimental group received WCF, the participants again completed a writing task, the WSEQ, and the SLWAI in the posttest procedure. The results showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in all three constructs, indicating that WCF has a positive impact on EFL students’ writing performance, self-efficacy, and anxiety. Implications of the study are presented.

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.

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.

Poor writing skills are problematic in today’s society where writing expertise is essential in personal, academic and professional contexts. Students struggle most with argumentative writing. To write a good argumentative text, students need genre knowledge on this type of text. After all, genre knowledge has been proven to be related to writing quality. Considering its relevance, in this study we investigated whether learning from (comparing) text exemplars could be an effective method to enhance genre knowledge. This study aims to investigate whether learning from (comparing) text exemplars can enhance genre knowledge. A quasi-experimental study with 77 11th grade students was carried out to test the effects of four conditions on genre knowledge of argumentative texts. Findings show that genre knowledge increases through single and analogue text examples. In addition, learning from comparing text exemplars does not seem to increase genre knowledge more than learning from single, sequential exemplars.

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.

Academics are increasingly engaged in writing genres with purposes and for readers outside of academia—a variety of science-based communication practices that fall under the term science communication. These practices often span different modes, genres, and even languages, requiring high degrees of rhetorical flexibility, strategic knowledge, and regulation of writing. In this study, we probe the self-regulation and specifically the metacognitive strategy knowledge (MSK) of seven senior scientists who regularly and actively engage with writing for science communication. We argue that understanding their MSK can illuminate how strategic knowledge is transferred across written genres, and importantly offer useful insights for the training of future scientists. Using data derived from in-depth, narrative interviews with a recall component, we identify a variety of strategies for task conceptualization/analysis, planning and goal setting, monitoring, and evaluating the writing of different genres. Task analysis appears particularly crucial in science communication writing, due to the great variety of purposes and readers that fall under this umbrella. Interestingly, our participants underscore storytelling strategies, and seem to transfer language and style monitoring strategies to and from science communication and publication. We map the strategies identified and discuss the implications of our study for further research and science communication pedagogy.

Within the sociocultural theory of writing, texts are seen to result from cultural and social practices that affect the structure, content, and production of them in different knowledge communities. Accordingly, writing is not the same across subjects or contexts. Focusing on writing in subjects other than Language arts, this special contributes to understanding subject-specific writing involving both discipline specific knowledge, knowledge of representation, and production of knowledge in different, subject specific writing contexts. The issue advocates that disciplinary writing can start at an early age in primary school, that students have a range of preparedness for it, and that writing skills can be developed to support the learning objectives of the subject. The introduction considers the perspectives of writing to learn and learning to write as the underpinnings of writing across and in subjects. Consequently, the studies in the issue are related to these perspectives. The content areas scrutinized are Craft Education, Civics, Environmental studies, Science and Science orientation. This issue reflects the multifaceted, contextual, and hybrid forms writing can take, and, how writing can support learning in changing contexts and with different contents.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

The case analysis, a prominent genre within business and information systems (IS) programs, is challenging for students because there are competing demands to perform both academic/learner and professional/mock-consultant roles. Drawing on design-based research data from four different IS courses at our institution, in this paper we aim to map a pedagogical to professional case analysis genre continuum. We examine the expectations for student roles in these four different courses, where and how the case analysis assignments in these courses fit into the continuum, and whether they facilitate an effective developmental trajectory as a whole. Our analysis shows that our institution's trajectory is mostly effective in moving students from pedagogical to professional roles, but could be enhanced with extra support for case analysis writing that falls in the middle of the continuum. We offer recommendations for how academic programs could leverage the value of the developmental trajectory to create a cohesive sequence across the four-year student experience.

All writing involves complex linguistic knowledge and thoughtful decision-making. But where do students acquire the linguistic tools needed to write effectively? Many students come from diverse backgrounds and may need additional support and/or instruction in language and grammar. In order to better understand this situation, we conducted a qualitative multiple-case study to examine the experiences of 12 students in a first-year university-level composition course to understand the extent of their diverse learning backgrounds and language needs and expectations. We synthesized information from surveys, interviews, and written texts into narratives about each student's attitudes toward language and writing and also examined the actual language in their texts. The findings reveal wide diversity in linguistic backgrounds and experiences and that students need and want attention to their language skills in first-year writing. Findings further suggest that instructors should consider the backgrounds and abilities of individual student writers and listen carefully to students' perceptions about their own writing and language needs in order to build students' writing self-efficacy levels.

Keystroke loggers facilitate researchers to collect fine-grained process data and offer support in analyzing these data. Keystroke logging has become popular in writing research, and study by study we are now paving the path to a better understanding of writing process data. However, few researchers have concentrated on how to bring keystroke logging to the classroom. Not because they are not convinced that writing development could benefit from a more process-oriented pedagogy, but because 'translating' complex and large data sets to an educational context is challenging. Therefore, we have developed a new function in Inputlog, specifically aiming to facilitate writing tutors in providing process feedback to their students. Based on an XML- logfile, the so-called 'report' function automatically generates a pdf-file addressing different perspectives of the writing process: pausing, revision, source use, and fluency. These perspectives are reported either quantitatively or visually. Brief introductory texts explain the information presented. Inputlog provides a default feedback report, but users can also customize the report. This paper describes the process report and demonstrates the use of it in an intervention. We also present some additional pedagogical scenarios to actively use this type of feedback in writing classes.

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.

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.

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.

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to examine the level of authorial voice strength among Iranian second language (L2) writers; and (b) to investigate the relationship between L2 learners’ authorial voice strength and the quality of their argumentative written task performances. Argumentative writing samples were elicited from 129 upper-intermediate L2 learners in writing courses. To quantify learners’ voice strength, these samples were scored by two raters using an analytic voice rubric. Raters also provided a holistic rating of the overall authorial voice strength in written argumentations. The quality of argumentations was measured using the TOEFL scoring rubric. While descriptive results indicated that learners demonstrated a low level of voice strength in their argumentations, results from Multiple Regression Analysis (MRA) suggested positive associations between voice strength along with two of its dimensions and the quality of writings. Moreover, results from Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) pointed to the association of low and mid-level of writing quality and low voice strength, and the prevalence of high and mid voice strength in learners with high proficiency in writing. Finally, while an Item Response Theory (IRT) analysis revealed that the ‘presence’ dimension of authorial voice was the most difficult one for L2 learners, a Differential Item Functioning (DIF) analysis showed that the difficulty of the three voice dimensions did not differ significantly across genders. The findings were discussed regarding English L2 writing within the Iranian context.

In clinical nursing simulations, a group of students provide care for a robotic patient during a structured scenario. As care is transferred from one group to another, they participate in a patient handoff, with outgoing students passing key information onto incoming students. In healthcare, the nursing handoff is a critical and perilous communication moment that is mediated by a range of participants and texts. Drawing on observations and video recordings of 52 simulation handoffs in the United States, this article examines how two student-designed texts – a collaborative patient chart and individual notes – are leveraged during the handoff. I also consider how handoff talk and writing changes as student nursing knowledge increases over the course of a year. By focusing on textual mediation of the simulated nursing handoff, this article contributes to existing research on professional writing pedagogy and to nursing scholarship on the handoff. Ultimately, it argues that a textual mediation framework can help bridge classroom and professional contexts by evaluating student writing not for how successfully it meets a set of imposed criteria but for how effectively it supports classroom activities.

The current study examined the impact of adapting an evidence-based instructional approach to develop ninth-grade students’ argumentative writing and self-regulated strategy use. Following the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model, strategies to plan and write argumentative texts were implemented in two Portuguese classrooms. The model relies heavily on the use of mnemonic strategies to support instruction. Thus, incremental effects of using dual-coding mnemonics (i.e., visual and verbal mnemonics) were explored when implementing SRSD instruction. For the first group (n = 23), SRSD instruction included verbal and visual mnemonics; for the second group (n = 25), SRSD instruction included verbal mnemonics alone. Groups were compared with a control group (n= 25) receiving standard writing instruction.The following findings were significant: a) SRSD instruction increased writing quality, organising, and spontaneous planning; b) dual-coding mnemonics enhanced writing quality, development of ideas, organising, language clarity, and spontaneous planning; c) national exams completed 15 weeks after instruction reinforced the effectiveness of the adapted SRSD strategies. The process of culturally adapting and implementing SRSD instruction to teach argumentative writing will be discussed, including the potential incremental effects of adding visual mnemonics to the SRSD instructional routine.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In two experimental studies, we examined the effects of types of written production mode (hypertext writing versus linear writing, Study 1 and 2) and learning mode (performance versus observational learning, Study 2). Participants in Study 1 (Grade 10) were initiating the more formal academic argumentative text, while in Study 2 students (Grade 11) were familiar with the genre. Dependent variables were students’ content knowledge, self-efficacy for writing and text quality. For the independent variable written production mode both studies did show interaction effects between learning condition and pretest scores. For content knowledge, students with lower prior content knowledge performed best in the hypertext condition; students with higher prior content knowledge in the linear condition. For self-efficacy, linear writing was most effective for students with initial high self-efficacy (Study 2 only). For text quality, students with relatively very strong initial writing skills performed best in the hypertext condition, students with weak initial writing skills in the linear condition (Study 2 only). For the independent variable learning mode for the hypertext text learning activity (performing versus observing), almost no differences in effects could be observed: performing the hypertext learning activities or observing these performances did not make a difference, except to students with relatively low initial topic knowledge: students with low prior knowledge performed better in the performing condition. These complex patterns of interactions between learning conditions and pretest variables are discussed.

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.