Considering veterans in the context of research on adult and nontraditional students in college writing classes, this article proposes Malcolm Knowles's six principles for adult learning as an asset-based heuristic for investigating how writing programs and writing teachers might build upon existing resources to support veteran students.

The aim of written expression studies is to have students explain their knowledge, feelings, ideas and imaginations in a correct and effective manner. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of story map on story writing skills of first grade teacher candidates who study at the Department of Elementary Education. The…

This article challenges faculty members and administrators to rethink current definitions of remediation. First year college students are increasingly placed into basic writing courses due to a perceived inability to use English grammar correctly, but it must be acknowledged that all students will encounter the need for remediation as they attempt…

This article offers a rigorous and researched look at how consumer rhetorics form first-year college students' understandings about life at the university. Examined in the context of consumer culture, students' narratives about university life illustrate how they marshal, appropriate, and deploy consumerist metaphors and to what ends. Using…

This article extends the conversation on English education as preparation for democratic participation. The author journeys through a cycle of action research, analyzing one classroom case study to improve her practice of curricular negotiation in a methods of teaching writing course.

This article shares findings from case studies of two eighteen-year-old songwriters, Bradley and James. The study investigated songwriter motivation, writing methods, and school experiences. Data was collected over the course of one year through two in-depth interviews per songwriter, two teacher interviews, and 101 songwriting artifacts. Grounded…

Learning to write is critical in today's world, yet many students are not developing the writing abilities they need to use writing as a powerful tool for learning and for showing what they know. Research indicates that failure to acquire strong writing abilities restricts opportunities for both post-secondary education and employment. This…

When, why, and how do college students come to value their writing as intellectual property? How do their conceptions of intellectual property reflect broader understandings and personal engagements with concepts of authorship, collaboration, identification, and capital? We address these questions based on findings from the Stanford Study of…

The present study investigates the effectiveness of integrating RCampus in EFL freshman classrooms in developing EFL students' reading and writing skills. Two groups of freshman students majoring in translation participated in the study. Before instruction, pretest results showed no significant difference between the experimental and control…

The purpose of this study was to use a phenomenological perspective aimed at description analysis to gain a deeper understanding of the writing attitudes and experiences preservice teacher bring to the student teaching semester. A questionnaire was used to gather information about student teachers at a regional university. Based on the responses…

This dissertation is a bounded case study that examines the attitudes and perceptions of Teaching Assistants (TAs) in Composition about their TA preparation in an independent writing program at a large public research university in California. Specifically, this study focuses on TAs who were pursuing Ph.D.s in either English Literature or…

Writing is an essential skill that students need in order to become successful in school and beyond. Within a school district in the southwestern United States, student writing scores were not at proficient levels, and students were not prepared for graduation or employment. The purpose of this quasi-experimental research study was to compare the…

The goal of the study is to develop an equity-minded theory of college writing readiness. An estimated third of incoming students are academically underprepared for college writing. The majority of these students will not earn a baccalaureate. Because rigorous pre-college preparation is a chief indicator of postsecondary achievement, improving…

This article examines the relationship between literacy and play in six- and seven-year-olds' engagement with non-fiction writing. I draw from a year-long ethnographic study (Erickson, 1986) of a US classroom's "writing time", intentionally structured on children's own interests and enquiries. Rather than strict adherence to monolithic…

Bruce Pirie offers the following criticism about formula essays: "What does a five-paragraph essay teach about writing? It teaches that there are rules, and that those rules take the shape of a preordained form, like a cookie-cutter, into which we can pour ideas and expect them to come out well shaped." He goes on to discredit such essays as being…