Integration of technology which includes the use of a smartphone is currently one of the trends in ESL writing classes. Particularly in collaborative activities, it is assumed that the use of smartphones contributes to the attitude of the learners towards writing and their writing performance as well. Consequently, the present study investigated…

This report discusses AERO's 2022 analysis of student writing data -- the most extensive investigation into this area ever conducted in Australia. AERO's researchers analysed more than 10 million NAPLAN writing results, spanning 2011 to 2021, and 366 samples of students' NAPLAN writing. Overall, our research suggests that students' writing skills…

In 2022 Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) researchers analysed more than 10 million NAPLAN writing results, spanning 2011 to 2021, and 366 samples of students' NAPLAN writing. Overall, the research suggests that students' writing skills have declined over 7 years (2011 to 2018), with many high school students significantly behind…

Writing is a key area of literacy in the early years, however writing receives less research attention than reading despite its impact on students' learning generally, and literacy development specifically. Writing skills have also been shown to be quite stable--good writers in the early years stay good writers in the later years. Therefore it is…

The Common Core State Standards for the English Language Arts, together with the new tests being developed to assess them, are placing a greater emphasis on writing in elementary schools than in the recent past. This article explores similarities and differences of the standards with past state standards, explaining the reason both for why things…

This study examined whether or not fourth-graders could fully demonstrate their writing skills on the computer and factors associated with their performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) computer-based writing assessment. The results suggest that high-performing fourth-graders (those who scored in the upper 20 percent…

Nine 2nd-grade students who struggled with writing learned the Ask, Reflect, Text (ART) strategy to help them better address the content that should be included in narrative stories. After asking the questions that address what should be included in their text, students used art media as they reflected to illustrate their answers. They used this…

In this high-accountability era--one in which there is an expanding movement to condemn teachers for the failures of their schools--teachers teach students who believe writing is primarily an act of complying to a prompt, likely for a state accountability assessment or the troubling 25-minute essay that constitutes less than half of the writing…

This official scoring guide for writing presents details of the 6-point scoring system used in Oregon schools for the 1989-99 school year. It list attributes of students' responses to merit a score from 1 (lowest) to 6 (highest) in the areas of ideas/content, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and citing sources. (RS)