Helping elementary students with learning disabilities (LD) prepare for the rigor of middle school writing is an instructional priority. Fortunately, several standards-based skills in upper elementary school and middle school overlap. Teachers in upper elementary grades, specifically fourth and fifth grades, have the opportunity to provide…

Early childhood writing curriculums typically focus on skills and encouraging interest. What children are asked to write is rarely closely examined. Through a self-study of my first and second grade classroom, in this paper I look at the implications of genre when teaching young children. I first identify some of the problems of a popular personal…

This study investigated young children's preferences for books to read aloud. Participants included 142 children enrolled in 4 public kindergartens in the Sanliurfa province of Turkey, their parents (142 parents), and teachers. Forty-nine 4-year-olds and 93 5-year-olds and their 9 teachers participated in the study. Parents filled out surveys;…

In this formative experiment, we examined interventions in and modifications to literacy instruction in a first-grade classroom with the aim of cultivating a love of reading among the students. Consistent with the design of formative experiments, the teacher established a pedagogical goal of building a love of reading, and throughout the year…

This paper explores a process-genre approach to teaching academic writing skills to advanced English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) students. The 'reading-to-writing' tasks and procedures were designed to examine the feasibility of the approach for a doctoral English-for-academic-purposes (EAP) program in the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 academic years.…

This qualitative study explored the impact of reading on writing in a collegiate French culture course that emphasized genre-based writing pedagogy. In particular, the study focused on how 19 advanced collegiate learners of French used model text resources in writing a letter-manifesto and what their perceptions were of participation in…

French science students do not read much in English. Does this reflect their reading habits in their native language? A study in the form of online questionnaires was conducted at Toulouse university which compared their reading habits in French and in English. A further study examined the way one particular group of students conducted their…

This study explored how 14 foreign-language writers at a university in Japan changed their genre awareness of discussion genre texts (particularly argumentative essays) during a 15-week systemic functional linguistics course consisting of text-based writing lessons assigned as part of a teaching and learning cycle. To obtain in-depth quantitative…

The use of writing models with nonnative English speakers has received a certain amount of criticism--especially from teachers whose students copy models in their entirety or follow them too closely. The misuse of models has brought some teachers to the point where they believe that the best kind of pedagogy is to abandon writing models…

In the face of the worldwide ecological crisis, ecocriticism, "the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment" as "an earth-centered approach to literary studies" has become an important part of contemporary literary theory (Glotfelty in "The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary…

Aidan Chambers' "Breaktime" (1978) is famous for its unique narrative style and sexual content. This focus has obscured another significant aspect of the novel: the role of social class in "Breaktime" and Chambers' working-class background have rarely been explored. Chambers was an example of what Richard Hoggart calls…

Leisure reading behavior is a key predictor of educational success. Transportability is a trait that determines how likely an individual is to become involved in a story, and past research has suggested that involvement may be related to leisure reading behavior. However, available measures of transportability have not been validated with children…

The article explores several perspectives on the interconnection between genre and identity, an issue that has generated significant scholarship in rhetorical genre studies. It suggests that current work in neuroplasticity--that is, changes in the brain that can occur through learning and experience--complicates and problematizes the issue and is…

This article reviews the developments in significant pedagogical and research domains in TESOL during the 50-year history of "TESOL Quarterly." It situates these developments in the shift from a modernist to postmodern orientation in disciplinary discourses. The article also considers the changes in modes of knowledge dissemination in…

Scholars have recently begun to conceive of literacy practices as drawing from resources that are simultaneously situated and extracontextual. In particular, studies of transnational literacy affirm the importance of both locality and movement in literacy studies. Continuing this inquiry into the situated and dispersed nature of transnational…