This post-qualitative inquiry project investigated subjectivity (sense of self) among graduates of creative writing Master of Fine Arts (MFA) programs. The project asked how subjectivity is involved in the creative writing process and how that process fuels further writing after a creative piece (such as the MFA thesis) is completed. A…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the causes, processes of writer's block experienced by a group of classroom teacher candidates and its impact on them. Design/methodology/approach: The phenomenological design, which is a qualitative research design, was preferred in the research since it was aimed to investigate the causes,…

This study aims to examine qualitatively a new approach to teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) writing based on the learner's context model. It investigates the context model-based approach in class and identifies key characteristics of the approach delivered through a four-phase teaching and learning cycle. The model collects research…

Theories of writing process have informed the teaching of writing for the past forty years, providing writing mentors with a language of prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing that broadens ways to invite young writers to approach composition. In the past forty years, new technologies for composition have impacted the products,…

Research on authorial identity has focused almost exclusively on the attitudes and beliefs of students. This paper explores how academics understand authorial identity in higher education. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with professional academics and analysed using thematic analysis, identifying themes at two levels. At the semantic…

Verbal protocols are usually used to study cognitive processes involved in various activities, as it is argued that they could make implicit processes of thinking visible and thus reportable. Here, it is proposed that verbalisations can also be approached from another angle, namely as a discourse that contains linguistic markers of writers'…

This paper reports on the results of a two-year study into threshold concepts (TCs) in doctoral writing. The findings informed the development of a thinking to write strategy (the 4x4) that has been implemented as part of a pan-university doctoral writing programme at a New Zealand university.

The writing process has traditionally been seen "as a lonely journey" to typify the lack of support that students experience for writing outside the classroom. This paper examines an attempt of The Writing Portal (TWP), a supplementary online writing platform, to support students' writing needs throughout the five stages of the writing…

This qualitative case study explored the perceived experiences and outcomes of writing in a hybrid model of instruction in a large suburban high school. In particular, the impact of a hybrid model on the writing process and on future writing performance were examined. In addition, teacher expectation and teacher attitude and their impact upon…

This paper depicts the results from a qualitative research study focused on finding out the effect of interaction through social media on the development of second language learners' written production from a private school in Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia. The study was framed within concepts such as "social interaction," "digital…

Background/Context: Founded in 1974 by James Gray and a group of teacher colleagues who came together as the Bay Area Writing Project in California, the National Writing Project is a professional development network that has spread from one site to 197 university-based sites across the U.S. After such a long period of time in operation, it becomes…

Many of today's adolescents are constantly engaging with information through texting, watching videos, listening to music, and even writing papers. Learning to interact properly with information through writing presents a challenge for the students because they are employing all of these applications at once and believe that they are multitasking…

Writing is one of the most challenging skills for many EFL learners to master. It is also considered to be the most difficult to teach. To motivate students to write more without burdening teachers with additional rating work, college English teachers at a university in China introduced a journal project. Peer learners were paired anonymously and…

Literacy activities in which children invest in and understand literacy creates spaces for them to construct their identity as readers/writers and build their personal theories of literacy. This study presents the identity construction of second grade students who identified as successful, average or struggling in their first time engagement with…

This dissertation is a qualitative study of a curriculum I designed for composition students in the Fall of 2012. The curriculum I created is informed by the Freirean edict that a self-generated desire to "create knowledge" is far more likely to result in meaningful, holistic learning than simply "banking" information. In the…