Previous research has shown the effectiveness of peer reviewing on the improvement of writing quality. However, the fact that students themselves, arguably novices, judged the improvement leads to concerns about the validity of peer reviewing. We measured writing quality before and after peer reviewing using Coh-Metrix, which computationally…

The purpose of this best-evidence synthesis was to identify promising interventions that align with a theoretical model of early writing development, targeting three components of early writing: transcription, text generation, and self-regulation. We determined the extent to which these interventions are "effective" for children who…

This article shares what the author has learned as a high school English teacher and researcher from speaking with teachers and high school and college students over the past five years about what sort of feedback has been most helpful in students' development as writers. When examining the data and looking for overlapping themes in responses, six…

This investigation examined the approaches bilingual education elementary teachers implemented to develop student science and English language understanding. In this investigation, teachers used Proficiency Level Descriptors (PLDs) to assess bilingual-ELs' (BLs) English writing understanding. Teacher interviews, student writing samples, and the…

The increasing number of English language learners (ELLs) in U.S. schools have made it so school professionals need to both ensure ELLs' academic success while also developing their English language skills. Accordingly, several issues related to assessment, identification, and disproportionate representation of ELLs in special education services…

Once writers complete a first draft, they are often encouraged to evaluate their writing and prioritize what to revise. Yet, this process can be both daunting and difficult. This study looks at how students used a semantic concept mapping tool to re-present the content and organization of their initial draft of an informational text. We examine…

In this mixed-methods research study, the author investigated a group of first-year college students' responses to and uses of their teachers' written feedback on their draft writing in a First-Year Composition (FYC) course. The author also examined, through corpus analysis, these students' definitions of "useful written teacher…

Assessment literacy remains one of the most unexplored and untaught dimensions within teacher training. Writing assessment, moreover, is an even more overlooked facet of assessment literacy. Without the proper training, teachers in all disciplines may struggle with properly assessing student writing and providing timely and accurate formative…

A thesis abstract is an essential part of a thesis since it represents the content of the thesis. In Indonesia, where the abstracts need to be translated into English, a number of translation errors may occur. This study aims at analysing the translation errors in the thesis abstracts and classify the errors into major and minor errors. The data…

This article provides an update to the author's overview of developments in second language (L2) online writing that he wrote in 2008. There has been renewed interest in L2 writing through the wide use of social media, along with the rising popularity of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and telecollaboration (class-based online exchanges).…

Purpose: The validity of any performance assessment depends substantially on the rating scale used in the assessment procedure. It delineates the theoretical construct being measured and influences how performances are judged and interpreted. This study examined the factorial validity and invariance of the rating scale used for the assessment of…

We discuss a component-based, developmental view of text writing fluency, which we tested using data from children in Grades 2 and 3. "Text writing fluency" was defined as efficiency and automaticity in writing connected texts, which acts as a mediator between text generation (oral language), transcription skills, and writing quality. We…

Since Ure (1971) and Halliday (1985), different measures have been proposed in the research literature as a proxy for investigating lexicon advances. They are called lexical richness measures and are an important tool in assessing advance of the lexicon (Johansson, 2009). This article evaluates three lexical richness measures of progress in the…

The present scenario fact that the English is a language of modern technological and scientific developments, text is a primary tool for students to gain the knowledge in writing skills. However, most male Saudi students show minimum efficient in L2 writing skill and do not have sufficient competence for writing the authentic English passages. To…

Although the concept of contrastive rhetoric has received considerable attention in research on second language writing, it has not been adequately examined in a linguistically complex context such as Tunisia. This study is an attempt to contribute to the growing body of research on second language writing through investigating the validity of the…