The simple view of writing suggests that written composition results from oral language, transcription (e.g., spelling/handwriting), and self-regulation skills, coordinated within working memory. The model provides a number of implications for the interpretation of psychoeducational achievement batteries. For instance, it hypothesizes that writing…

If assessment is about improving learning and facilitating better teaching through research and helping students learn what higher education purports to value, then the often-invisible institutional barriers that do not always embrace the ways in which classroom assessment can teach an institution about student learning within individual…

We report on a survey of students and alumni, examining their "rhetorical training"--their writing knowledge and experiences across multiple courses, campus employment, and workplace contexts. The survey asked participants to identify their most often written genres and their most valued type of writing, the rhetorical situations in…

This article focuses on the 2019 National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (NMSSA) assessment of student ability in writing. It begins with an overview of the study and its results, then turns to students' use of planning strategies to support their writing. Drawing on research on the association between planning and achievement in writing,…

Hattie and Timperley's (2007) model of effective feedback, widely used in teacher professional development, provides an easily-applied framework for thinking about the information contained in feedback. However, the model simplifies a complex phenomenon shaped in practice by interpersonal, disciplinary and institutional aspects. Examining the…

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…

Writing is a crucial means of communicating with others and thus vital to success and survival in modern society. This article provides an overview of recent research and key findings about writing, including the roles of cognitive and social processes during writing, and educational research on how to improve writing proficiency. Writing…

This essay brings to light new evidence about the relationship between revision and reflective writing in the first-year writing classroom. Based on a robust study of student work, we illuminate a variety of complex relationships between the writing knowledge that students articulate in their reflections--including how they narrate their course…

In this article, we discuss what it means to learn troublesome "threshold concepts" about writing that cannot be adequately grappled with in a single course or assignment. Here, two faculty members and a graduate of a writing major reflect on elements of the writing curriculum, the writing center practicum, and the learning dispositions…

At the same time that creativity, play, and inquiry are receiving special focus in academic, professional, and educational settings, mandated assessments have never been more prominent, despite public debates that question the value of such testing. In the context of these apparently contradictory developments in literacy education, as a…

The general purpose of this study is to increase, in a classroom environment, formal communication by using reading and writing. Our research focuses on reading as a means to develop the writing of a good précis, which in its turn contributes to improve: 1) memory, vocabulary and grammatical-syntactical structures, in brief, the organization of a…

Disappointed that the use of the "PEEL" writing scaffold had led her Year 11 students to write some rather dreary essays, Claire Simmonds reflected that a lack of specific training on historical writing might be to blame. Drawing on genre theory and the work of the history teaching community, Simmonds attempted to theorise the…

The authors assert that the time that teachers spend providing feedback could better be used to focus on formative assessment systems.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed analysis of how lexical differences related to cohesion and connectionist models can distinguish first language (L1) writers of English from second language (L2) writers of English. Key to this analysis is the use of the computational tool Coh-Metrix, which measures cohesion and text difficulty at…

This paper reports on an analysis of large-scale assessments of Grades 5-8 students' writing across 10 provinces and 2 territories in Canada. Theory, classroom practice, and the contributions and constraints of large-scale writing assessment are brought together with a focus on Grades 5-8 writing in order to provide both a broad view of…