Drawing from the research methods of three distinct literacy studies, in this piece, we highlight the visualisation approaches integral to our enquiry processes as researchers working to make sense of literacy and learning. We aim to encourage, provoke even, a conversation about visualisation processes in literacy research by sharing the…

The literature review is arguably the place in a thesis where doctoral authors convincingly engage with theory and theoretical perspectives underlying their research, situating their own contribution to knowledge in established and ongoing dialogues in the field. One difficulty doctoral candidates encounter in their learning to be researchers is…

This chapter examines the use of reading and writing activities to promote critical reflection among Asian students in higher education settings.

Picture a group of classroom teachers gathered around a table late one afternoon discussing the results of the statewide writing assessment, the returned scored papers scattered across the table top. This article details research exploring which rhetorical elements are associated with statewide assessment scores and considers the role and…

"Let's keep this in perspective," writes Jeff Anderson." The Common Core State Standards are a guiding document." Anderson cautions readers to look beyond such artificial boundaries and dive into pedagogy, process, content knowledge, and research that reveals best practices for teaching writing. Educators, he notes, need…

This article hopes to bring new insights to the debate about the effect of grammar knowledge on language use, especially writing. It raises the question of the need to look more closely at the following three questions: (1) What is the aim of grammar teaching?; (2) How capable are students of conceptualising about language and how is their…

Like sports, school is a type of performance, and the process of learning and demonstrating knowledge requires mental skills that parallel those of an athlete, such as focus, analysis, memory, and confidence. Marisa Sandoval Lamb, an English teacher and competitive runner explains the parallels that exist between academic and athletic performance…

This study examined the relationship between students' scores on Research Methods and statistics, and undergraduate project at the final year. The purpose was to find out whether students matched knowledge of research with project-writing skill. The study adopted an expost facto correlational design. Scores on Research Methods and Statistics for…

Idea generation is an important component of most major theories of writing. However, few studies have linked idea generation in writing samples to assessments of writing quality or examined links between linguistic features in a text and idea generation. This study uses human ratings of idea generation, such as "idea fluency, idea…

Peer review is an established strategy for improving the quality of students' writing. This study moves beyond the focus on outcomes to assess the peer-review process. In particular, this study focuses on the timing of the peer review, a highly structured feedback form, and student writers' revisions after engaging in peer review. This study draws…

Learning to read and write the Japanese language is not an easy task. For the non-Japanese speaker this can be a struggle and a challenge. Some schools in Western Australia offer children the opportunity to learn Japanese as a foreign language. Consequently, Japanese as a foreign language unit is offered to all undergraduate students in Education.…

This qualitative study had the objective of analyzing the influence of graphic organizers on the development of written argumentative tasks in a group of sixth-grade Colombian L2 English learners. Learners are increasingly required to analyze information presented in languages other than their first critically to form reasoned opinions and solve…

The increasingly widespread use of social software (e.g., Wikis, Google Docs) in second language (L2) settings has brought a renewed attention to collaborative writing. Although the current methodological approaches to examining collaborative writing are valuable to understand L2 students' interactional patterns or perceived experiences, they can…

We studied the processes involved in synthesis writing, focusing on planning, editing and self-regulation strategies. The aims of the study were a) to analyse the temporal distribution of cognitive strategies and self-regulation across the different phases of writing, b) to identify different writing approaches (i.e., profiles), and c) to…

This study examines the question of how the feedback of peers and teachers on a collaboratively written student text, mediated by track changes and commenting functions in Microsoft (MS) Word, can act as a form of socialization into an academic or professional discipline. It focusses on a collaboratively written legal memorandum, authored by…