The study developed a model of linguistic constructs to predict writing quality for college basic writers and analyzed how those constructs changed following instruction. Analysis used a corpus of argumentative essays from a quasi-experimental, instructional study with 252 students (MacArthur, Philippakos, & Ianetta, 2015) that found large…

In the context of ongoing discussions about student costs of non-credit developmental writing, this study reports on the affordances of Basic Writing as a traditional, stand-alone course at a career-focused, four-year university. Participants were students who took Basic Writing and Composition 1 between Fall 2011 and Spring 2013 (N = 2,693) in…

Online learning, according to a recent Department of Education meta-analysis (Means et al. 2009), is equal to and sometimes better than traditional face-to-face instruction, while hybrid education is best of all. Students seem eager to reap those online benefits; the March 2009 "Digest of Education Statistics" reports that the U.S. college with…

This study examined the student-level and instruction-level predictors of narrative writing fluency and quality. Participants included 120 third-grade students from 13 classrooms. Student predictors included measures of reading, handwriting, spelling, IQ, grammatical understanding, and gender. Instructional predictors focused on the amount of time…

This paper presents a qualitative study that used classroom observations, faculty interviews, and student interviews to investigate the meaning and importance of seven non-cognitive variables to a cohort of developmental writing students at an urban community college. The variables studied included finances, study management, college surroundings,…

This study of 118 students who placed into basic skills sections of College English suggests that students' self-beliefs may be a particularly important predictor of success in weak writers in first-semester courses. Two types of writing self-efficacy scales--a writing tasks/skills scale and an approach-to-writing scale--were developed to follow…

Discusses how a five-year longitudinal study of 61 basic writers suggest little correlation between the first-year course and overall success in college. Notes the much lower long-term success rate for African-American basic writers who passed the basic writing course. Suggests that reading is a stronger determinant of college success for at-risk…

A study was undertaken at Willmar Community College (WCC), in Minnesota, to assess the effectiveness of the developmental writing program and to identify which demographic and educational characteristics predicted final grades in college-level English courses. The study sample included all students who enrolled at WCC during the 1992-93 academic…