Background: Learning to write the complex academic language (AL) associated with a discipline (like science) is a critical task in education, with middle school being a key developmental period. However, we need more research to guide how we assess students' learning to write AL, especially if we want to create assessment that guides more…

Depending on the nature of comments made during peer review of academic writing, students may be able to evaluate and revise their performance. Therefore, it is essential to explore how the content of comments affects student writing. Since peer review is a process of interaction, it is critical to understand how comments affect student academic…

Students are expected to interpret the complexities and nuances of literary texts yet might struggle with interpreting texts in ways that are valued in literary studies. Examining students' language choices can support instructors and students with developing concrete, explicit understandings of the ways language creates meanings in discourse.…

In this article, I make sense of my encounters with the language of objectivity as a student, tutor, mentor, and researcher. I rely on Dorothy E. Smith's conceptualisation of the ethic of objectivity, a practice that requires the student to devalue their embodied experience while ripping it from their experiential knowledge, which in turn they…

Dynamic assessment (DA) integrates assessment and instruction between the instructor and learners. It emphasizes the learning process. DA was introduced to 24 undergraduates and 9 graduate students in two academic writing courses in Taiwan. The analysis of the pre- and post-tests, writing portfolios, observations, and interviews reached the…

Background: Writing is integral to educational success at all levels and to success in the workplace. However, low literacy is a global challenge, and many students lack sufficient skills to be good writers. With the rapid advance of technology, computer-based tools that provide automated feedback are being increasingly developed. However, mixed…

Higher education initiatives to support students from low socioeconomic backgrounds are widespread. However, there is pervasive concern within public discourse that such widening participation efforts have contributed to a 'dumbing down' of higher education. There are classed dimensions to evaluations of (dis)advantaged students' university…

The theory of language socialization and its subfield academic discourse socialization consider how newcomers are socialized into the practices and identities of communities through interaction with various communicative partners. Drawing on the framework of individual networks of practice, this case study considers the academic writing practices…

A common diagnosis in the literature is that the writing of Spanish speakers is generally a structural problem. The writing of 81 university students was analysed by classifying the teacher's comments based on 11 variables that were recorded once during a continuous evaluation that supported the assessment. The techniques used were Content…

Purpose: This paper aims to show how an Academic Literacies lens can contribute to a deeper understanding of writing for a professional doctorate (PD) by focusing both on the language of supervisors' written feedback and on student and supervisor perspectives on feedback throughout Year 1 (Y1). Design/methodology/approach: Firstly, written…

Broadly defined, academic language (AL) is a set of lexical-grammatical norms and registers commonly used in educational and academic discourse. Mastery of academic language in writing is an important aspect of writing instruction and assessment. The purpose of this study was to use Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools to examine the extent to…

Language immersion programs seek to develop multilingual, multiliterate individuals able to engage with academic content. Studies of immersion students' language development provide details regarding language proficiency and accuracy, yet they generally do not address how features of written, academic language, for example, syntactic and lexical…

Research on how peer feedback affects second language (L2) writing in higher education has been limited. This study examines the impact of peer feedback on revision and literature review writing in learners of Chinese as an L2 at a university in mainland China. The study analyzed feedback, revisions, and writing performance of 30 students. The…

One aim of this article is to shift mindsets from the traditional identification of written language abilities that are "missing" in students with specific learning disabilities (SLDs) to writing assessment as the discovery of more complex language strengths foundational to success across disciplines. The multiple language-levels (MLL)…

While the importance of feedback in education is well established, the effects of structured knowledge in collaborative academic writing remains uncertain. This study introduces an academic writing feedback tool that combines structured knowledge mining, analysis, and visualization. An empirical experiment was conducted in a second-year university…