The study aimed at investigating the effects of peer feedback on students' English writing ability in L2 writing class. A mixed-methods research, an embedded experimental design was employed, making use of a writing pretest and post-test and self-written reflection in the experiment. Data were quantitatively analyzed through a dependent simple…

Lecturers are challenged when creating safe, dialogic-educative spaces for first-year students (freshman), where optimal teaching-learning of academic writing can be accomplished. This paper reports on a project aimed at creating a safe, dialogic-educative space in which first-year students may attain and practice academic writing skills providing…

Facetiously examines heuristics in mumbling, staring, moving, doodling, and noise that can be used by writing teachers to help their writing students with rhetorical invention. (RL)

A study was conducted to investigate the relationship between the intellectual maturity of college students and evidence of rhetorical maturity in their writing--specifically, why some students write better than others, since general language abilities cannot account for all the differences between good and poor writing. By focusing on college…

A series of three studies looked at argument across significant contexts to understand what students must learn to "argue" in these contexts and carry out their practices. Study 1 involved 19 pre-college minority writers who were asked to take a "rival hypothesis" stance to their source texts that discuss issues in minority…

Scholars in the communications field rarely have discussed speech composition, and this conversation is long overdue. Reconceptualizing the basic course as advanced composition can enhance the integrity and reputation of the course. Several noteworthy implications emerge that suggest the desirability of operationalizing such a conception,…

Describes the cooperative learning activities and writing process techniques used in writing classes that include students from 14 different countries. Most students report greater confidence and comfort learning writing through group work. Teaching the process of writing helps the majority of students to recognize and appreciate the value of…

An exploratory study was conducted to define broadly some indices of student writing development. Student essays prepared by high school seniors and third-year university students outside the classroom were collected for analysis. The essays were drawn from four disciplines--English literature, history, geography, and biology--and represented the…

Reports on two case studies of writing development in the primary grades. Notes the impact of teacher's questioning techniques, both on student development as writers and on teacher ability to evaluate student progress. (RL)

This book is designed to help students in elementary school identify core literary concepts such as character development, setting development, and plot development in the books they read, then integrate what they have learned into their own writing. The underlying assumption is that the reader is somewhat familiar with the 5-step writing process:…

A study examined the analytic writing development of high school seniors and college students. Subjects, approximately 50 high school seniors and 100 college students, performed two writing tasks on the same topic, one for an audience in agreement and one for a hostile audience. About a third of the subjects made taped protocols of their writing…

This article describes the experience of grade one through two students with language disorders as they put together the parts of literacy knowledge necessary for each to discover a writing process that produced readable work. Included are perspectives of how to help students make sense of the literacy code. (Author/SW)

This booklet is one of a series of teacher-written curriculum publications launched by the Bay Area Writing Project, each focusing on a different aspect of the teaching of composition. After a brief introduction in which the writing concepts of fluency, shape, and correctness are defined, the rest of the booklet presents the work of three…

Stretch 107 is a version of English 107 (a first-year composition course for international students at Arizona State University), designed to provide those with low proficiency in English with various strategies for writing acceptable prose in English. Since it is a 2-semester course, Stretch 107 gives students more time to work on their…

A comparative study examined the extent of growth in overall writing quality of college freshmen to determine whether feedback from the instructor during planning and the composing process (especially on the computer) was more effective than another instructor's feedback during conferences on each final, graded writing product in the students'…