This article is concerned with how developing writers use grammar knowledge to make choices in writing and the extent to which this knowledge is conscious and the choices deliberate. Drawing on case study data with 24 school-aged writers involved in a three-year longitudinal study, the article reports the pattern of conscious and unconscious…

The current two studies examined the effects of an instructional unit on synthesis writing for 9th grade students on holistic text quality. Because students' writing routines have been shown to affect the effectiveness of writing instruction, we designed a unit that aimed to be equally effective for all writers, regardless of their routines. On…

Previous research findings suggest that multiple factors contribute to writer's block and that blocking may occur at any part of the writing process. The aim of this study was to investigate different causes of blocking and discover the most effective solutions for writers. 146 writers completed an online, mixed-method survey about their…

Inspired by Rebecca Oxford's thought-provoking reflections on language learning strategies, and particularly her orchestra metaphor on how the strategies work together, I conducted a study that seeks to understand how non-native writers employ, configure, sequence and combine individual writing strategies when creating a text in the target…

This paper develops the pedagogical implications of xenolexia, a concept introduced as a phenomenon in the learning and teaching of academic writing (Beighton, C. 2020. "Beyond Alienation: Spatial Implications of Teaching and Learning Academic Writing." "Teaching in Higher Education" 25 (2): 205-222.). Complementing this…

The act of writing involves decision-making that can be challenging for elementary students as they choose ideas, organization structures, and audiences for whom to share their messages. Teachers can support students in their decision-making through providing explicit explanation of the metacognitive decision-making that occurs at each stage of…

Effective professional development (PD) in teaching writing involves supporting teachers' knowledge of the writer's craft, including their thinking processes, linguistic knowledge and practical strategies for teaching these. Grammar-for-writing approaches support teachers' knowledge of how grammar creates meaningful effects in writing. While…

Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) is a method designed to explicitly teach students self-regulation skills and help them implement them. While SRSD's beneficial effect on writing quality has been confirmed in a large body of literature, the questions of why, how, and for whom SRSD works remain unclear. To investigate the underlying…

Writing is a crucial, interdisciplinary skill that incoming college students need to successfully complete many of the tasks assigned within their coursework. While teaching self-regulation skills for writing has become more commonplace in writing curricula, and research has investigated how students have been impacted by a writing-about-writing…

Problems in developing writing often comes from creative processes in developing ideas to write. Outlines are often recommended as a tool to help students organize their thoughts and structure their writing. This study aims to find out students' perceptions and the challenges the students encountered when writing an exposition text using provided…

This article draws on examples of student interviews incorporating multiple modalities to explore the writing lives of students as part of a larger project focusing on participants' experiences of writing within and beyond the university. We explain this innovative, iterative research method combining multiple texts and maps, characterizing it as…

Instructor modeling of metacognitive processes has been shown to support student learning. Teacher educators have leveraged this research to support teacher candidates in framing, decomposing, and explaining disciplinary thinking and decision-making, particularly in reading development. However, little work has focused on supporting teacher…

This article studies the growing and changing cultural identifications of one early adolescent Mexican American girl as represented by her engagements with literacy. Her writing behaviors in particular manifested a changing cultural identity that reacted to and represented her response to a changing world. Her bilingualism and biculturalism…

In this study, we focused on one particular challenge in argumentative writing based on multiple texts: evidence use. Specifically, we first examined undergraduate students' strategy reports when processing evidence presented in conflicting and comparably trustworthy texts. Both surface-level (i.e., restating) and deep-level (e.g., evaluation,…

Over the past two decades, writing studies scholars have continually stressed the importance of fostering the development of student metacognition in the writing classroom. Not only does the development of a metacognitive awareness of the writing process help students to become stronger writers, it also allows them to more successfully transfer…