This article draws on examples of student interviews incorporating multiple modalities to explore the writing lives of students as part of a larger project focusing on participants' experiences of writing within and beyond the university. We explain this innovative, iterative research method combining multiple texts and maps, characterizing it as…

This article traces the history of college writing and suggests a different way ahead. To show why we need this approach, the article historicizes the start of postsecondary English as a paradoxical one, committed to egalitarian ideals while privileging narrow and exclusive English usage. To offer an alternative approach, the article synthesizes…

This study investigated the cognitive processes underlying pauses at different textual locations (e.g., within/between words) and various levels of revision (e.g., below word/clause). We used stimulated recall, keystroke logging, and eye-tracking methodology in combination to examine pausing and revision behaviors. Thirty advanced Chinese L2 users…

This article details the material, locational, and time-use dimensions of student writing processes in two networked social spaces. Drawing on case examples, the findings show how composing habits grounded in the materiality of places can build persistence for learning in a mobile culture. Public social spaces support these habits, enabling some…

This study explored patterns in L2 writing development by focusing on one of the linguistic features of texts (fluency) from a complex dynamic systems perspective. It investigated whether two English-as-a-foreign-language university students would experience discontinuous change (phase transition) in their writing fluency through repetition of a…

Technological innovations and the prevalence of the computer as a means of producing and engaging with texts have dramatically transformed how literacy is defined and developed in modern society. This rise in digital writing practices has led to a growing number of tools and methods that can be used to explore second language (L2) writing…

With the recent rise of sociocultural theory in second-language acquisition, attempts have been made to understand L2 learners' uses of different resources in writing, based on their cultural, historical, and institutional contexts. In line with L2 writing research within the sociocultural paradigm, this study investigates the writing strategies…

In contrast to the traditional cognitive view of writing strategies, this study explores English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' writing strategy use within the Activity Theory framework, adding to the growing body of writing strategy research and sociocultural research on writing and second language acquisition (SLA). Drawing on data…

A study investigated whether the narrative writing task is more compatible with the structure of conscious thought than are other writing tasks. If so, composing a narrative text should demand less cognitive effort, occur more fluently, and yield a more coherent document than composing persuasive or descriptive texts. Sixteen college students were…

Ten college students deemed to have above average writing ability and ten basic skills students participated in a study that examined the role of reading in the writing process. The students wrote one personal essay in a timed and videotaped session. During half of this session, the students wrote and planned as they normally would in an impromptu…

A study to determine the effect of audience on student writers' revision strategies involved 13 college students, seven reasonably competent upper-level writers and six basic writers, who were assigned to write for an hour on a uniform essay topic, composing aloud into a tape recorder as they did so. Six of the upper level students and five of the…

Investigates the types of processes used by journalistic writers when producing texts of varying constraints. Finds that news story writers paused more often and carried out more activities per writing session than did editorial writers, suggesting greater monitoring activity by news story writers. (MS)

Investigated university students' beliefs about themselves as writers and about the experience of learning in writing as related to writing approaches measured by the Inventory of Processes in College Composition. Found support for the deep and surface paradigm, and variation in students' conceptions of writing, attitudes about themselves as…

Examines the writing processes of six Navajo college students and graduates during academic writing exercises. Finds that all subjects were concerned with sentence-level mechanics of writing and showed little evidence of recursiveness, the shaping of thought by language. Contains 15 references. (SV)

In a study to determine whether the writing apprehension of college writers is diminished by regular freewriting and whether apprehension affects the quality of writing, two experimental classes spent ten minutes freewriting each day while two control classes spent ten minutes on vocabulary building. The pretest and posttest consisted to two…