This article presents a pedagogical experience that addresses the use of an instructional strategy called screenwriting aimed at improving the teaching of writing in an educational context. This pedagogical intervention took place in a private English language school, where three adult students willingly participated to create their own short…

This study documented the writing practices of students in a Mexican elementary school and identified participants' attitudes toward different forms of writing. Data included observations in two classrooms as well as interviews with six case-study children and their parents. Results revealed copious writing in the school including dictations,…

This study investigated cognitive factors that might influence Chinese EFL learners' argumentative essay writing in English. The factors that were explored included English (L2) language proficiency, Chinese (L1) writing ability, genre knowledge, use of writing strategies, and working memory capacity in L1 and L2. Data were collected from 136…

The use of a blog as a pedagogical aid for the learning of foreign languages is gaining support among teachers' communities (Soubrie, 2006; Tome, 2007) as it can help students develop online interactions and authentic productions. The current study is analysing the use of such a multimedia setting in a group of Master's students in France,…

Autoethnographers have grappled with how to represent others in the stories they tell. However, very few have written about the need to protect themselves in the process of doing autoethnographic writing. In this paper, I explore the ethical challenges faced when writing about a potentially-ongoing disorder, such as anorexia, when the research…

Much has been made by early childhood educators about the importance of activities that foster early reading--and deservedly so--but studies show that reading and writing are skills that children develop simultaneously. Early reading is supported and improved by early writing. Young children need reading to help them learn about writing, and they…

Composing text is an essential skill for students. Assignments, tests, and emailing are a few examples of the many tasks which require students to generate thoughts and put them into prose. For many students, choosing a topic, creating an outline, generating an initial draft, and making edits to produce a final copy is a fluid process which poses…

This study explored how college freshmen at a mid-sized public university in north-eastern United States used Twitter, an anytime/anywhere writing technology, to support and promote the writing process by using tweets as a pre-writing activity. Two of the authors taught a joint course of First Year Seminar and Basic Reading in which the same group…

Background: In an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course offered to a department in a university in Hong Kong preparing the students for their internship, students were expected to learn to write and engage in spoken activities related to a number of documents over a period of 13 weeks. Having to achieve so many learning outcomes within so…

With the advent of computer technology, researchers and instructors are attempting to devise computer support for effective collaborative technical writing. In this study, a computer-supported environment for collaborative technical writing was developed. This system (Process-Writing Wizard) provides process-oriented scaffolds and a synchronous…

Editing is a powerful tool for writers, but are our methods of teaching it really demonstrating that power for young adolescents? The author, frustrated with students' inability to edit, blames his own approach and, beginning with a grocery store epiphany, works to develop a more effective system. Elements of his successful approach include time…

Revision is recognised as a key and complex element of the writing process. Despite this, research shows that students find it difficult effectively to revise their own writing due to a lack of metacognitive awareness and understanding of the processes they undertake when writing. The first part of this inquiry studies nine students' understanding…

Educational reform initiatives of the last decade have focused on the three R's: reading, writing, and arithmetic, with writing receiving the least attention in the research literature (National Commission on Writing, 2003). Studies of writing performance in United States schoolchildren indicate that many are writing only at basic levels. The…

The ways in which learning graphical representations can encourage the development of creativities in Chinese young children remain to be fully explored. Previous research on children's writing focused on children's symbolization with syllabic languages, providing little information regarding Chinese young children's symbolization and creative…

Studies on second language (L2) learners writing in English have found that composing is a recursive process requiring planning, formulating and revising. Of particular note among the many studies that have explored the composing processes of L2 writers are two characteristics: 1) They examine the composing processes of writers in real-time while…