Compares the quality and syntactic complexity of 2 types of essays written by 44 college freshmen in a basic writing course. Essays dealing with group-phenomenon events (intensification) had more words per clause, but received lower quality scores than essays dealing with individually experienced events (initiation). (PAA)

Reports the results of an analysis of science-related writing tasks of boys and girls. Indicates there were gendered differences in writing style and content, but similarities in quality. Reveals a narrower gender gap than that found when observing science and writing separately. Discusses practices for minimizing gendered differences in the…

Describes a one-year research project in a Western Australia primary school in a low socioeconomic area, which has a Khmer-English bilingual program to develop and extend children's English and Khmer language and literacy. Discusses findings concerning the children's written progress in both languages, and children's perceptions of their identity…

A biographical sketch of award-winning brothers Christopher and James Lincoln Collier discusses their early writing influences and research pursuits. In 1974 they began coauthoring novels of historical fiction for middle school readers. The profile describes their collaborating technique and their plots, which incorporate history of the American…

Non native speakers of English wishing to study at tertiary level in English speaking countries are increasingly required to prove their English language competence by taking an internationally recognised test such as the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the International English Language Testing Systems (IELTS). This article…

A challenge for many EAP teachers working on pre-sessional programs is to find ways to reconcile the dual aims of preparing students for university study and for the IELTS test. The study described here seeks to provide some guidance on this issue through an analysis of the type of writing required in the two domains. We compared the standard…

Via a Speak Aloud and Write protocol methodology, this study investigated the characteristics of the wording formulation process of a select group of 7 African American students in freshman composition who claimed nonstandard features were active at least 30% to 40% of the time while they composed their papers. Control of rhetorical context was…

In this article Sarah Guth describes an online course for writing research articles in English she developed for engineering students at the University of Padua in Italy. Designed to overcome time-space constraints as well as to provide both linguistic and discipline-specific feedback, the course integrated peer editing as a key component of…

A study investigated the effectiveness of a program for increasing students' abilities to self-assess writing. The targeted population consisted of a class of second-grade students in an upwardly mobile community located in the suburban Chicago area of Arlington Heights, Illinois. The inability to self-assess writing was documented through teacher…

Learning styles have been identified as an important variable in the school success or failure of ethnic minorities in America. Whole language is compatible with the style of Native American children. Nebraska's Winnebago Public School teachers of Native American students use a method of writing instruction that is compatible with their preference…

A study determined if cross-age pairing of first-grade and sixth-grade students would have an effect on writing achievement. For 6 weeks, one group of beginning first-grade writers was paired with more able sixth-grade developing writers, while another group of beginning first-grade writers and sixth-grade developing writers was not cross-age…

Describing how the experiences of nine cognitive researchers have influenced college writing classrooms, this book demonstrates the critical role of the learner in interpreting and responding to the texts they read, the tasks they are assigned, and the feedback they receive from instructors, readers, and collaborators. Growing out of a project at…

A study explored the role of peer collaboration in literacy development as a case study in the broader inquiry on the social nature of learning and cognitive development. Fourteen low-achieving 7- to 9-year-old children in a third-grade urban classroom used a word processor to write four stories individually and three stories collaboratively with…

What difference should sociocultural difference make in early literacy theory and practice? In response to this question, this paper argues that such differences should lead to a reconceptualization that highlights the social nature and cultural meaning of child literacy development. Drawing on a recent ethnographic study of child composing in an…

An ethnographic study examined the experiences of Karim (a member of the Ismaili cultural community in Canada), enrolled in an urban grade two multi-lingual classroom comprised of Canadian-born children who are second generation immigrants and whose daily lives are conducted in a language other than English. A researcher participated in the…