While social networking sites (SNSs) have attracted growing scholarly interest in uncovering L2 learners' participation within these sites, the impact of writing on SNSs upon students' writing performance and learner autonomy remains underexplored. This study reported on a college EFL writing course participated by two groups of Chinese first-year…

The quality of writing in a second language (L2) is one of the indicators of the level of proficiency for many college students to be eligible for departmental studies. Although certain software programs, such as Intelligent Essay Assessor or IntelliMetric, have been introduced to evaluate second-language writing quality, an overall assessment of…

Contributing to academic literacies research, this study investigates how counselors at university writing centers in Sweden and Finland handle the micro-level management of knowledge in advice-giving. While writing counselors are experienced in academic writing, they are not necessarily familiar with students' subject areas and may also lack…

Until now, geography teaching has only touched upon the way in which students write argumentations focused on geographical topics, and the challenges of doing this. In order to shed light on this process, this study considers the problems and challenges students face when using material-based written argumentation in geography lessons. The results…

The present study examines effort in narrative creative writing (operationalized as time-on-task) using a new assessment approach, the storyboard task. Participants (N = 125) completed alternate forms of the storyboard task in two sessions five weeks apart. They also completed measures of divergent thinking and self-reported ideational behavior.…

Current high school instructional practices trending across our nation primarily focus upon providing content to students and lack content-area literacy strategies or higher-order metacognitive reflective writing practices. Educational research consistently demonstrates the need for increased skill development in American secondary schools, so why…

A child's handwriting fluency may have implications on his or her quality of writing. The same may be true of typing fluency. The current study examines the effects of handwriting and typing practice on early elementary school children's transcriptional fluency and written product outcomes. Three classrooms of second-grade students were assessed…

This article provides three major contributions to the literature: we provide granular information on the development of student argumentative writing across secondary school; we replicate the MacArthur et al. model of Natural Language Processing (NLP) writing features that predict quality with a younger group of students; and we are able to…

Ambiguities are naturally found in languages and largely categorized into lexical and syntactical ambiguities. They are responsible for ambiguous expressions and may cause confusion in readers; therefore, accurate evaluation of them is critical for clear writing which is one of the prominent prerequisites for academic writing. The literature shows…

Studies of early writing recognize that learning to write is a complex process requiring students to attend to the composition of the text and the transcription of the ideas. The research discussed here examined six dimensions of early writing--text structure, sentence structure, vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, and handwriting--and how each…

Students in K-12 settings experience poor writing outcomes, with less than 30% of students writing at the proficient level. Coupled with the pressure to improve academic outcomes with limited resources, schools are in dire need of efficient, universally provided instructional activities that promote writing skills. Performance feedback on writing…

This case study shows how three Master's students engage affectively, behaviourally and cognitively with supervisor feedback on thesis drafts. The data sources are students' drafts, supervisor's oral and written feedback, and student interviews. Six themes of student engagement are identified in the data, namely (1) "gaining reassurance from…

Several empirical studies of Content-Based Instruction (CBI) have concluded that this approach has positive impacts in improving language learning skills including writing in foreign language learning environments. However, many of them carried out this approach within the traditional setting; face-to-face interaction instead of the e-learning.…

As a reflection of the value attached to interaction in L2 learning, pair and small-group activities have been integrated into different phases in the writing process. Focusing specifically on peer interaction during the planning and revision phases, this "In the Classroom" study explores the relationship between peer interaction and…

This study examines the implementation of "Criterion," an automated writing evaluation system developed by ETS, as a source of diagnostic feedback on learners' linguistic performance in a Vietnamese EFL writing classroom. Thirty-eight second-year English majors had access to "Criterion" for a five-month period. Data include…