Canada's social and educational policies have always involved immigrant settlement and English/French bilingualism. Research on writing in second languages emerged in the 1980s from graduate programs of education and applied linguistics at major universities in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and Vancouver, particularly done by scholars investigating…

Although English teachers have implicitly been aware of the functions of writing, they may not always have explored the ways writing can be used to enhance learning: learning of content, of skills, and of self. Arthur Applebee noted that English teachers were most likely to stress personal and imaginative experiences in their writing assignments,…

British students in four age groups--4 to 5, 7 to 8, 11 to 12, and 15 to 16 years old--were observed in their classrooms in order to explore the relationships among the learner, knowledge, and thinking, and the role that writing plays in what is learned. In the infant classroom, writing was quite visible in the form of labels, questions,…

Focusing on the relationship between learning oral language and learning about written language, this book discusses the emergent literacy (EL) of children growing up in a Western, print-oriented society, as well as findings of research conducted during the past 15 years on how children make sense of the way in which literacy works in their…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 25 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) basic writers in the community college; (2) the power inclusion model and the politics of voice in the teaching of composition; (3) lay and professional…

A study investigated how a teaching approach that emphasized literature would affect children's writings and help them to apply elements of form and content. Six first grade classes in a rural Newfoundland school district participated in the study; the students performed similarly on overall readiness. The class randomly selected as the…