Over the past 40 years, second language educators and assessors have come to the realization that investigating the process of writing can shed light on language teaching, learning and assessment practices (Odendahl & Deane, 2018). What L2 writers do and think while writing can provide links between the task, the related construct and the…

This article proposes that two processes are involved in the generation of content during writing: (a) an active, knowledge-constituting process in which content is synthesized by constraints within semantic memory representing the implicit structure of the writer's understanding, and (b) a reflective, knowledge-transforming process in which…

This paper offers a retrospective narrative review of research on L2 writing strategies and a prospective discussion of potential theoretical and pedagogical relevant lines of inquiry to be explored in future research agendas. The retrospective analysis will synthesize the main trends observed in the conceptualization of writing strategies as well…

In the L2 writing literature, there has been a rich history of scholarship in theory, research and practice since the 1960s. Two of the most prominent L2 writing approaches are process and portfolio pedagogy. The former approach promotes the use of diverse writing strategies (e.g. pre-writing) to enhance student writers' expression and fluency.…

We compared 56 eighth-grade students who, 28 months previously, had received instruction in strategies for planning and revising their writing, with 21 students of similar academic ability from the same school who had not experienced the intervention. Both groups wrote an expository essay whilst logging their writing activities and completed…

Reports observations made to explore sixth grade students' changing awareness of the characteristics of text, self as reader and writer, and monitoring strategies during the reading and writing of narrative and expository text. (SR)

The development of narrative competence is an important part of the English curriculum in the early secondary school years. A study examined how four seventh-grade girls (two novice and two expert writers) responded to computer-based metacognitive guidance in the form of procedural facilitations. The facilitations were designed to assist the…

Reviews cognitive research on writing, focusing on differences between expert and novice writers. Discusses a study of verbal comments made during writing by four developmental and four college-level writers. Indicates that college-level writers expressed more context-based knowledge and more positive self-evaluations than developmental writers.…

A study investigated whether computers would enable students to develop individual working writing environments. The programs that the fourth-grade students used were Hypercard, Clip Art, and MacWrite. Students worked with each of the programs and talked about what they were thinking while using the computer. A constant flow of teachers, staff,…

A study examined 3 grammar teaching methods to understand why some methods may carry over into writing better than others. E. Bialystok and E. B. Ryan's (1985) metacognitive model of language skills was adapted to plot traditional grammar, sentence combining, and the functional/inductive approach according to the amount of analyzed knowledge and…