Classroom teachers sometimes struggle trying to find time during the typical school day to provide the writing instruction students need to be successful. This study examined 29 fifth through twelfth grade classroom teachers' survey responses about their perception of the effectiveness of using an online blogging tool, Kidblog, to plan and provide…

This study investigates academic staff and student attitudes to style and etiquette of emails. Data were collected through two online staff and student surveys. Reported use and acceptability of particular features of email style were assessed. Open-ended responses yielded four themes: the balance between formality and informality, relationships,…

This study is grounded in three theories of self-­regulation, goal-­orientation, and the act of writing. The authors collected the data from 48 Iranian EFL B.A. level students majoring in English in different universities in Iran. The instruments consisted of two questionnaires: a goal-oriented questionnaire developed and employed by the authors,…

Background: It is well established that the activity of producing a text is a complex one involving three main cognitive processes: Planning, translating, and revising. Although these processes are crucial in skilled writing, beginning and developing writers seem to struggle with them, mainly with planning and revising. Aims: To trace the…

Background: Most psychologists who study children's reading assume that their hypotheses are relevant to children's success at school. This assumption is rarely tested. Aims: The study's aims were to see whether two successful measures of the processes underlying children's learning to read and write are related to their…

Much research has investigated the role of planning time in second language writing; however, the results show that there are inconsistent findings about the effects of planning time conditions on the complexity of the EFL learners' textual output. The current study attempted to consider the differential effects of planning time conditions in…

This paper explores the impact of a Spoken Word Education Programme (SWEP hereafter) on young people's engagement with poetry in a group of schools in London, UK. It does so with reference to the secondary Discourses of school-based learning and the Spoken Word community, an artistic "community of practice" into which they were being…

This study, examines two well-known writing pedagogies from the fields of Composition and Rhetoric, and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) for teaching literacy, or reading and writing skills in order to identify intersections for the English Language Learner (ELL) in an EFL learning environment. In addition, I present both quantitative and…

This study explores teachers' reflections on their learning to compose with new technologies in the context of teacher education and/or teacher professional development. English language arts (ELA) teachers (n = 240) in 15 courses learned to use digital video (DV), completed at least one DV group project, and responded to open-ended survey…

Writing is a great challenge whether performed in the mother tongue or in a second or foreign language (L2/FL). Studies in L2 writing show that writing is a complex cognitive activity comprising a number of processes which includes the use of various strategies. This study aimed to examine strategies used in essay writing among 50…

The purpose of this article is to explore ways in which blogs can support literacy communities while developing a writing community. Examples of how a classroom teacher uses blogs to strengthen the writing process is described. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

By the upper elementary grades, writing becomes an essential tool both for learning and for showing what you know. Students who struggle significantly with writing are at a terrible disadvantage. Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate that only 25% of students can be classified as competent writers; students with…

This research reports a study conducted at Koya University/English Language Department, and it aims at presenting the effect of scaffolding on EFL students' writing ability through the writing process. In this study, the students have taken the role of writers, so they need to follow the same steps that writers apply during their writing process.…

The importance of writing skills in enhancing student performance in language exams and even other subject areas is widely acknowledged. At Jaffery secondary, the approach to the teaching of writing has generally been to use three approaches: product-based approach with focus on what the students composed; process-based approach that is focused on…

This theory-into-practice paper integrates Tomasello's concept of Joint Attentional Frames and well-known ideas related to the work of Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, with more recent ideas from social semiotics. Classroom procedures for incorporating student-created Joint Attentional Frames into literacy lessons are explained by links to…