Discourse-based interviews allow researchers to gather data about a writer's understanding of what informs a task. This method was essential for a research team seeking to understand the impact of programmatic learning objectives on student writing development. Three decisions in the approach to this research project sought to center the student…

Writing Studies has flourished as a field in Latin America during the last two decades. Its development has been fostered by an exponential growth of college enrollments and processes of expansion and democratization of the educational offer in the region. The renewed attention received by higher education writing has fueled new research efforts…

Traditional Rhetorical Genre Study (RGS) methods are not well adapted to study exclusion because excluded information and people are typically absent from the genre, and some excluded information is simply unrelated to the genre because of genre conventions or social context. Within genre-based silences, how can scholars differentiate between an…

Academic and scientific literacy experts agree that becoming literate in an academic discipline involves coordinating language learning, and thinking in increasingly sophisticated ways to enable participation in discipline practices of knowledge construction. Despite this knowledge, understanding of writing pedagogies in tertiary science are in…

The study described in this article sets out to understand the barriers and affordances to successful completion of the short research thesis required in many advanced undergraduate courses or Honours programmes. In the study, the genre features of students' research projects and the criteria used to assess them were analysed and both students and…

Given complaints about preparation of international students for their writing-intensive courses, a director of first-year writing and an undergraduate researcher at a Midwestern research university conducted a needs assessment based on Kaufman's model. Instruments used included a survey, interviews, and analysis of commentary on sample papers.…

Students' interpretations of their academic writing tasks has been a central concern in the cognitive-based writing research due to the prominent role such decision-making plays in determining students' subsequent thinking and composing strategies and ultimately in shaping their textual quality. Without a comprehensive understanding of how L2…

One ingredient that may serve as a catalyst for writing development is changes in writing knowledge. This study assessed the veracity of two tenets underlying this proposal: that skilled writers are more knowledgeable than less skilled writers, and that individual differences in knowledge are related to writing performance. Both of these…

This report presents the findings from a 2-stage, multi-method study conducted in 2000 and 2001 on the editing skills and processes which students at two schools in New Zealand used when working with word processors and with pencils. The study's main aim was to examine the influence of the use of a word processor on students' editing processes and…

Discusses Gary Tate's career as a teacher of writing and as an administrator and scholar in the field of composition. Includes questions and responses concerning pedagogy, the state of contemporary composition research, composition publishing, and the changing status of the teaching of writing. (HB)

Presents an interview with James Britton, author of the book "Language and Learning." Discusses poetry and writing, revisions to his book, the relationship between teachers' classroom experiences and the writing of stories, and the practical application of research and theory. (PRA)

Presents a transcript of an interview with the British logician and philosopher Stephen Toulmin. Covers aspects of his various books. Relates his thoughts to the field of composition studies. (HB)

Considers how a feminist rhetoric can engage complicated notions of ownership and intellectual property. Discusses issues of ownership in writing classrooms. Explores the professional life of Andrea Abernethy Lunsford at Ohio State University. Notes that Lundsford suggests composition must be re-imagined as a field in which a radical individual is…

During interviews conducted with Janet Emig, the true identity of "Lynn," the primary subject of Emig's influential 1971 monograph "The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders," was determined. Discovery of Susan Gzech's true identity led to an interview which shed some interesting light on Emig's case study and on composition…

Profiles and interviews Donald Graves--writer, teacher, thinker, researcher, and recipient of NCTE's Award for Outstanding Educator in the Language Arts--about his research on children's writing, his work in the field, his thoughts about directions for the future, and influences on him. (SR)