Researchers' investment in reader engagement includes the construction of an appealing abstract. While numerous studies have been conducted on abstracts' rhetorical features, scant empirical attention has been paid to negation use in academic writing. The current study seeks to narrow the research gap from a general and diachronic perspective by…

This phenomenological study explored how five participants used their Texas state-approved definition of dyslexia to identify children with dyslexia as different from those with other global reading difficulties. Drawing on theories from disability studies in education and dis/ability critical race theory, I interviewed participants who identified…

In this theoretical paper we explore the authorial voice of black African postgraduate students in their writing and scholarship experience. This includes investigating the undergirding factors that need to be interrogated when it comes to the student-supervisor relationship. Some (if not most) black African postgraduate students experience…

Discussion of the potential of open data for impact -- including in education -- has grown. Open data from Wikipedia, the world's largest open educational resource, is used in a variety of learning contexts. A sociotechnical concern in this data is that it arises in a platform-based social dynamic, governed by norms and conventions, and negotiated…

This book seeks to disrupt the narrative about the process of academic writing and the written products which are currently valued in the university by juxtaposing the messiness and deletions of the writing process with the hegemonic imaginary of what research writing "should" look like. The author uses writing as both a subject and a…

Despite its critical importance in academic writing, effective feedback strategies in undergraduate thesis supervision remains under-researched. This case study aims to address this gap by examining the experiences of five English department students who completed their theses and the strategies their supervisors employed to facilitate timely…

Doctoral supervision is a subtle but complex form of teaching in higher education, where supervisor-to-candidate expectations including support around the literature are important, but supervisory practices and candidate starting points can be disparate and expectations are not always discussed. This paper uses autoethnographic reflections and a…

Purpose: There are many aspects of words that can influence our lexical processing, and the words we are exposed to influence our opportunities for language and reading development. The purpose of this study is to establish a more comprehensive understanding of the lexical challenges and opportunities students face. Method: We explore the latent…

Dependency distance has increasingly become a key measure of interest in cross-linguistic corpus studies from multiple perspectives. Based on a syntactically annotated corpus of 400 PhD dissertation abstracts written by native English (L1) and English as a foreign language (L2) academic writers, the current study investigated the mean dependency…

I have had some success with academic writing. Yet, even after publishing in journals like the Teachers College Record, I still find myself running into moments of doubt about my voice, the purpose of my writing, and how to make my work have the impact it deserves. I offer this commentary to you - the academic writer (at any career stage) - and…

In this article, the author offers suggestions to assist in taming "The Imposter Monster." What is that? Understanding that while academic writing can often be a daunting prospect for an early career researcher there are strategies that help. Author Marie Stewart writes one of the key strategies that her helped navigate this challenging…

The demand for a creative workforce has never been higher, yet schools struggle to teach and assess creativity among students efficiently. Compositions are an effective way to incorporate creativity across the curriculum; however, essays are time consuming to evaluate for quality or creativity. This study explored (a) if high creativity scores are…

Vocabulary is a prominent contributor to reading comprehension. However, little is known about how students with disabilities with lower vocabulary performance respond to Tier 1 instruction, or how their vocabulary knowledge relates to their content acquisition. To examine the differential impact of Tier 1 instruction for U.S. middle school…

In web surveys, no interviewer is present to clarify question comprehension problems, which can be particularly prevalent among respondents with low literacy skills. Although plain language is used in various contexts to improve text comprehensibility, its use in social science questionnaires has not been investigated to date. Using a…

Writing ability is an essential skill for college students to improve their school performance and complete their academic writing tasks. Proficient English writing skills are also highly advantageous for their future career prospects and personal growth. However, many English learners face difficulties in various aspects of English writing. The…