This study examines the moderating effects of a situational factor (i.e., text type) and an individual factor (i.e., subject-matter knowledge) on the relation between depth of processing and performance. One-hundred and fifty-one undergraduates completed measures of subject-matter knowledge, read either an expository or persuasive text about the…

For the past few decades, composition researchers have devoted critical attention to studying the ways that African American students employ Africanized linguistic and rhetorical patterns successfully in expository writing situations. More recently, research has focused on the use of African-based rhetorical patterns, since the use of African…

The present studies test 2 hypotheses: (1) that pedagogical contexts especially convey generic information (Csibra & Gergely, 2009) and (2) that young children are sensitive to this aspect of pedagogy. We examined generic language (e.g., "'Elephants' live in Africa") in 3 studies, focusing on informational versus narrative children's…

This work examined how adjunct displays influence college readers' moment-by-moment processing of text and the products of reading, using reading time (Experiments 1 & 2), and think-aloud methodologies (Experiment 3). Participants did or did not study a diagram before reading a text. Overall, the reading time data, think-aloud data, and recall…

The aim of this research is to discover and compare the effects of writing prompt and expository writing from an educational perspective in the light of student opinions. The study was conducted according to qualitative research approach and content analysis was conducted. Two activities which were prepared with respect to objectives of writing…

Within the past 20 years, the arts have gained increasing prominence in educational discourses as well as public arenas. At the same time that traditional genres of art (e.g., music, visual art, and performance) are being taught as part of school curricula, the study of the arts in education has taken on new venues in supporting learning and…

In this study we argue that narrative storytelling and expository discussion, as 2 distinct discourse genres, differ both in linguistic expression and in their underlying principles of organization--schema-based in narratives and category-based in exposition. Innovative analyses applied to 160 personal-experience narratives and expository essays…

Gray-Rosendale continues a project begun with "Investigating Our Discursive History: "JBW" and the Construction of the "Basic Writer's" Identity" ("JBW" 1999) in which she employed a Foucauldian archaeological perspective to trace the dominance of as well as the disruptions within the three major metaphoric allegiances of basic writing studies:…

Examines the effects of various writing tasks (notetaking, answering study questions, and essay writing) on learning, using recall of specific text elements and recall of the theme or gist of expository writing. Finds that students' topic knowledge, passage content structure, and the nature of the task influence students' text comprehension. (MM)

Describes a reader response heuristic which approaches expository texts on a feeling and experiential level. Focuses on the work of one student writer to show how the student's interpretations of a text on Arab-Israeli relations was mediated by the student's feelings and experiences. (MM)

This article examines ways in which more explicit connections might be forged between students' experiences as humanities students, and their experiences as part-time workers. The purpose is to connect particularisations of meaning with the development of a coherent whole, by using Van Oers' (1998) framework for contextualisation. It is argued…

Reports the results of a cross-sectional study of 67 short autobiographical essays by U.S. students of Russian at 4 levels. Linguistic measures differentiating the groups included fluency and syntactic fluency, but not accuracy. The article recommends further research into second- and foreign- language learning writing that accounts for different…

The contexts and purposes for civic writing may influence the composition process as well as text features, and an analysis of the purposes and audiences for civic writing might yield an insight into the way that such writing stimulates the personal and moral development of both its readers and writers. An examination of two related pieces written…

A zoo outreach program led to placing animals in classrooms where those animals became foci for numerous learning activities such as writing, observing, and care. Systematic debriefings suggested uniqueness to learning outcomes connected to zoo animals. Subsequent analysis of student writing indicated that students responded to situational…

To investigate how writing might be affected by composing aloud and computer composing--two factors that are increasingly being used either to study composing processes or to alter the typical context in which students write--a study described the composing process of five junior high school students. The students wrote four compositons, one in…