Offers a list of the grammatical problems and their solutions that crop up most frequently in the personal writings of the technical writer's office fellows. (SR)

Illustrates the challenges and benefits of setting business objectives for a project. Describes three ways that a technical communication product can contribute to the business performance of an organization. Explains how to write a business objective, and the benefits of doing so. (SR)

A process approach to scholarly writing devotes the majority of the time to thinking and planning and to editing and revising the composition. A better balance between writing process and product will increase the likelihood of dissemination through publication. (SK)

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact of feedback on writing accuracy over time and examine the relevance of the students' mother tongue to the feedback effect. To this end, the study compared two groups of Iranian English majors (N = 56) over a period of four months: one with indirect grammar feedback and the other with…

This study was an expanded replication of an earlier endeavor (Shermis, Burstein, & Bliss, 2004) to document the writing outcomes associated with automated essay scoring. The focus of the current study was on determining whether exposure to multiple writing prompts facilitated writing production variables (Essay Score, Essay Length, and Number…

Constructing well-formed sentences is an important element of writing. However, many students struggle with this skill; in particular, writers with learning disability (LD). In this study sentence-combining practice with a peer-assistance component was used to improve the ability of four young students with LD to construct sentences and compose…

Unlike the vocabulary used in language arts and social studies, knowledge of expository text (text written to inform) and the language of science are required for reading and writing in science (Carrier 2005). This vocabulary, along with expository text structures, often is not taught in middle and high school classrooms, thus hindering students,…

This paper presents an empirical evaluation of automated writing evaluation (AWE) feedback used for L2 academic writing teaching and learning. It introduces the Intelligent Academic Discourse Evaluator (IADE), a new web-based AWE program that analyzes the introduction section to research articles and generates immediate, individualized, and…

Although some educators commonly assume that the way to improve the writing of urban students is to provide "more structure," Nancy G. Patterson and Renee Speed argue that this approach can instead be detrimental. In too many cases, structure characterizes control and colonization rather than the freedom for teachers to structure their curricula…

Wikis, as one of the Web 2.0 social networking tools, have been increasingly integrated into second language (L2) instruction to promote collaborative writing. This paper reports on a case study involving 35 university students at the beginning level who contributed to wiki pages over a period of 14 weeks. The affordances and constraints of using…

This article presents a lesson cycle of activities for teaching reading and writing skills for expository text. The lesson cycle consists of four parts: (1) vocabulary words, (2) text structures, (3) modified sentence completion activity, and (4) rewriting text. Sixth- and seventh-grade summer school students were taught to recognize and…

Reflection is considered as a mental process of an individual's internal problem-solving activity and rarely observed in face-to-face instruction. As a consequence, students have few opportunities to observe and learn from each other. This study aimed to arouse students' reflection on both self-correction (one's own problem-solving process in…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress reveals that 37 percent of U.S. fourth graders fail to achieve basic levels of reading achievement. In 1997, the U.S. Congress asked that a review of research be conducted to determine what could be done to improve reading and writing achievement. The resulting "Report of the National Reading…

For more than two decades the California State University (CSU) has been trying unsuccessfully to "reduce the need for remediation" on its campuses, primarily through initiatives aimed at high schools. This article examines a basic writing reform project, San Francisco State's Integrated Reading/Writing Program, in the context of the…

"Blogging for the sake of blogging is fine, but what is the value added?" That's a question educational blogging advocates are now coming around to answer, and the value they're finding may seem preposterous to those who associate blogging with barely literate loudmouths and cyber predators. Can this often belligerent wasteland of poor…