This study focused on the use of anticipation guides (AG) as a reading strategy to support science reading and explored the level of students' scientific written arguments as a result. An AG consists of four components that address the topic of the reading activity: statements about the content, what I think, what the texts say, and evidence in…

This paper describes the collaboration of a Writing Center director and a professor of a Fisheries Biology course in support of a research paper entitled, "The World Without," which asks students to convince readers of the likely ecological consequences associated with the extinction of a finfish species or aquatic habitat. Opportunities…

The writing of three attainment groups of 10- to 11-year-old children was used to investigate their use of ludic (playful) punctuation in the composition of an advertisement for a new dessert. Framed within a consideration of language play in general, and children's use of punctuation in particular, the investigation revealed the ways in which…

This study examines the extent to which verb argument construction (VAC) based indices of syntactic complexity could predict four different writing task conditions: a simple task with no repetition (S + NR), a simple task with repetition (S + R), a complex task with no repetition (C + NR), and a complex task with repetition (C + R). Ninety-six…

This article explores how arguments are made in student essays through the use of writing and visual resources. The data set comprises 54 essays with a passing grade from students in their final year of upper secondary school in Sweden. The data is analysed using a multimodal approach to knowledge representation on arguments in essays, involving…

Given the complexity of dialogic argumentative writing and the requisite instruction needed to support student writers, we describe the instructional practices of an English language arts teacher and her culturally and linguistically diverse classroom of 10th graders' writing during key moments in two instructional units during school year…

This study investigates the extent to which (a) Spanish heritage (HL) and second language (L2) writers' linguistic complexity differs across register contexts and (b) Spanish proficiency and writing motivational beliefs differentially affect HL and L2 writers' performance. Participants were 58 HL and 54 L2 Spanish learners who completed two…

This My Favorite Assignment (MFA) article features 11 teaching innovations first presented at the 2023 Association for Business Communication Annual International Conference held Denver, Colorado, USA. These assignments are designed to boost students' writing, persuasion, crisis management skills, and personal and professional development.

While many studies have investigated the effect of task complexity on L2 writing, little has been reported on the effects of intended task complexity manipulations on task-generated cognitive demands in L2 writing. This study, therefore, was designed to examine the relative effects of task complexity and cognitive demands on students' L2 writing.…

Performing complex tasks such as writing an argumentative essay and providing high-quality argumentative peer feedback are challenging for higher education students. This study aims to explore whether and how students' argumentation performance during peer feedback activities and essay writing is related to their culture and gender. In this…

Teacher feedback is of little use without student engagement. Few studies have, however, empirically considered how direct interventions may enhance student engagement with feedback. This study explored whether and to what extent the use of a rebuttal-writing task can serve as a learning tool to promote student engagement with teacher feedback.…

The Dialectical Map (DMap) is an open-source, web-based argument visualization tool developed and used at a Canadian University to scaffold argument construction. To illustrate the ways that argument mapping can be used in undergraduate courses, this article presents five cases selected from courses in biology, psychology, computing science, and…

According to the literature, students' motivation and satisfaction can influence their perceived learning outcomes. However, little is known about what kind of a role do motivation and satisfaction play in the context of online peer feedback. This exploratory study aims to examine the relationship between students' motivation and satisfaction with…

Written scientific argumentation is a common practice among scientists, yet it is relatively absent from science K-12 classrooms (Applebee & Langer, 2013). However, recent research shows that opportunities to engage in collaborative discourse and argumentation provide students enhanced conceptual understanding and reasoning. Since one of the…

In science education, the improvement in students' ability to construct arguments at the primary school level has been reported. Although these studies have identified difficulties in arguments written by primary school students, they do not indicate areas that require improvement in teaching methods. This study aims to explore the possibility of…