Sooner or later, every educator hears the following plea from a current or former student: "Will you write a letter of recommendation for me?" Usually, the student is seeking employment or applying to a college or university for additional education. Many times instructors--taken off guard and unprepared for these requests--find themselves staring…

Two types of sentence-level writing problems are often observed in student writing: (1) those that violate conventions of standard written English, such as subject-verb agreement errors and comma splices; and (2) those that involve a stylistic choice, such as beginning a sentence with an expletive structure like "There are" or using "if" rather…

This article explores student views on writing as shown by the metaphors they use when asked to reflect on their own writing-to-learn tasks in the science classroom. The study examines the metaphors and metaphoric themes of 97 eighth grade students, discusses how they compare to important theories on writing to learn, and explores how student…

The claim that writing facilitates students' learning, although widely accepted, has little support from empirical research. A possible explanation for the lack of empirical evidence is that writing-to-learn research has disregarded that students use different writing strategies. The purpose of the present experimental study is to test whether it…

Students who engage in the writing process learn to write. Period. And yet many teachers, including Lain when she was a beginning teacher, don't know how to make the time for it, how to structure it, and how to evaluate it. Here, Lain offers us the help we need by focusing on the teaching tools for introducing students to this format, the…

The aim of this article is to show that a better awareness of the relationship between written and spoken communication can help the writer to improve his/her effectiveness. The focus will be on written texts that precede (formal and informal) discussions. The analysis will start with a description of the differences between orality and literacy.…

Course designs for Basic English Writing classes vary from one course to another. The objective of this study was to investigate the semantic misinterpretation of English words found in the English compositions written by native-Chinese-speaking undergraduate students and to overcome if such a barrier occurred in the process of writing. First,…

It has long been established that self-assessment and goal-setting are regular features of the writing process of experienced writers. It has also been demonstrated that students develop more power and control over their writing when they are encouraged to become their own evaluators. Therefore, to help beginning writers think and act more like…

As a symptom of globalization and the marketization of the universities, more and more scholars, many or most, of whom use English as an additional language (EAL), are being required to published in English. This article presents some qualitative data which highlights some of the difficulties encountered by such writers. It first discusses a…

For teacher educators, genre-based pedagogies offer a valuable resource for assisting both pre- and in-service writing instructors to assist their students to produce effective and relevant texts. Instead of focusing on the process of composition, the content of texts, or the abstract prescriptions of disembodied grammars, genre pedagogies enable…

Honoring students' home dialect is a complex task when preparing them to take state writing tests that require the use of Standard English. Working with students who had failed the test and were in danger of not receiving a diploma, Michelle Crotteau created a supportive learning environment in which students could develop linguistic and…

Writing samples were examined from 42 post-secondary students with or without writing difficulties. Guided by the Simple View of Writing (Berninger et al., 2002), the samples were examined for evidence of difficulties with lower-order transcription processes and higher-order composition skills. Retrospective reports on writing strategies were also…

Classrooms are filled with students with confident and vibrant voices, and most educators encourage them to use these voices in their writing. Many of the strategies of the process-centered classroom (peer editing, conferences, workshops, in-house publishing) also encourage students to write in real voices to real readers; however, there is still…

Television commercials and print ads have proven to be an effective means of introducing composition students to strategies for analysis and writing. They rely heavily on the eye to interpret images quickly according to fairly reliable habits. They are naturally occurring forms of argument and students have substantial intuitive competence with…

Composition teachers and researchers recognize the difficulty young writers, especially females, face as they enter postsecondary education and attempt to learn the language of the academy. Addressing academic audiences "takes confidence and authority, qualities that are often challenged in women because of their historical exclusion from and…