The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the degree to which register knowledge, register-specific motivation, and diverse linguistic features are predictive of human judgment of writing quality in three registers--narrative, informative, and opinion. The secondary purpose is to compare the evaluation metrics of register-partitioned…

Over the past decade, educational policy trends have shifted to a focus on examining students' growth from kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12). One way states can track students' growth is with a vertical scale. Presently, every state that uses a vertical scale bases the scale on a unidimensional IRT model. These models make a…

A mixed methodological approach was used to examine the effect of a cross-age tutoring writing program among second- and fourth-grade students in a rural elementary school in Delaware. Pre-test and post-test writing prompts were administered and evaluated using the 6+1 traits writing assessment rubric. Students were assessed qualitatively through…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of reading a model written assignment, generating a list of criteria for the assignment, and self-assessing according to a rubric, as well as gender, time spent writing, prior rubric use, and previous achievement on elementary school students' scores for a written assignment (N = 116).…

Thai school age students as young as eight years old are increasingly being immersed in the Internet world, and as a result, they are accelerating their learning and communication skills in English even without noticing. For educators, the ICT (information communication technology) revolution that has occurred in the last few decades needs to be…

Teachers and administrators of Ogden Elementary School (Ogden, Kansas) had a problem--the school had had a pattern of poor student performance at least since 1991, when the Kansas State Assessment was implemented. Ogden had failed to reach the state standard of excellence (25% of tested students scoring in the "exemplary" category; 5% or…

This study examined the effects of parental training on students' writing scores. Six classes of fourth grade students from three schools were randomly assigned to three experimental and three control groups. Parents of the students in the experimental group attended training sessions and received instruction in the stages of the writing process…