Although many studies modelled writing quality by analysing basic skills (spelling, grammar, etc.), few focused on top-down compositional strategies at the discourse level. We propose that using both narrative and argument discourse modes in an argumentative essay (a multi-discourse mode [MDM] strategy) capitalizes on their complementary…

We investigated the relationship between the scores assigned by an Automated Essay Scoring (AES) system, the Intelligent Essay Assessor (IEA), and grades allocated by trained, professional human raters to English essay writing by instigating two procedures novel to written-language assessment: the logistic transformation of AES raw scores into…

This paper offers readings of three examples from a photo-essay project undertaken in 2022 by a group of Year 7 pupils in Berlin. Many of the photo-essays centred on locations like schools, parks and shops, but also included places of worship, the graves of ancestors and evidence of family ties in other cities. Mirroring the practices of the…

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…

This essay examines a half-term of Year 9 work on "An Inspector Calls," with a particular focus on group discussion, writing in role and class reading of the text. I argue that extensive talking before writing is an invaluable way to elicit pupil insight; I then argue that this is necessarily a collaborative endeavour. I then go on to…

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been evolving since the mid-twentieth-century when luminaries such as Alan Turing, Herbert Simon, and Marvin Minsky began developing rudimentary AI applications. For decades, AI programs remained pretty much in the realm of computer science and experimental game playing. This changed radically in the 2020s when…

Providing timely and helpful writing feedback for student writers, especially those at the middle and high school level, can present an unwieldy challenge for teachers. Yet, feedback is necessary for students' growth as writers. There is an increased interest and use of automatic writing programs to provide students with writing feedback. However,…

Phraseology has been flourishing in the field of English writing studies in recent years. However, the focus has primarily been on items with less variability, such as ngrams or lexical bundles. To address this gap, this study investigates concgrams (Cheng et al., 2006), which encompass both constituency and positional variations, in advanced…

Grouping individuals according to a set of measured characteristics, or profiling, is frequently used in describing, understanding, and acting on a phenomenon. The advent of computer-based assessment offers new possibilities for profiling writing because aspects can be captured that were not heretofore observable. We explored whether writing…

This article explores how arguments are made in student essays through the use of writing and visual resources. The data set comprises 54 essays with a passing grade from students in their final year of upper secondary school in Sweden. The data is analysed using a multimodal approach to knowledge representation on arguments in essays, involving…

While the merits of dialogic talk for supporting students' learning is well documented, the contribution of specific talk moves on learning outcomes remains less understood. This study was conducted to investigate how student-generated talk moves during whole-classroom discussions, as captured by the Low-Inference Discourse Observation tool,…

Developing students' source-based argument writing skills is a vital educational goal for the 21st-century information society. Consequently, researchers and educators continually seek ways to understand and improve students' capacities for advancing arguments and synthesizing multiple documents, texts, or sources in a range of subject areas in…

Various current trends in education highlight the importance of pedagogies that address societal and environmental questions while preparing and inspiring students to take action. Meanwhile, how we view the future influences how we act, and how we act influences the future. Research on young people's images of the future has shown how technology…

This study explores the performance of two emergent bilingual (EB) learners--a fifth-grade girl from refugee parents and a seventh-grade boy with university professor parents--on Constructed Response Questions (CRQs) in the STAAR test. Using qualitative methods such as interviews and writing sample analysis, the research evaluates their responses…

This study aimed to explore adolescent second language (L2) writers' composition across media (text-based writing and digital multimodal composing). The goal was to investigate how and under what conditions these writers used semiotic resources when they engaged in both text-based writing and digital multimodal composing. Grounded in the concept…