Reflection is considered as a mental process of an individual's internal problem-solving activity and rarely observed in face-to-face instruction. As a consequence, students have few opportunities to observe and learn from each other. This study aimed to arouse students' reflection on both self-correction (one's own problem-solving process in…

The paper first describes a web-based essay critiquing system developed by the authors using latent semantic analysis (LSA), an automatic text analysis technique, to provide students with immediate feedback on content and organisation for revision whenever there is an internet connection. It reports on its effectiveness in enhancing adult EFL…

Rubrics are an integral part of many writing programs, and they represent elements of good writing in essays, stories, poems, as well as other genres and forms of text. Although it is possible to use rubrics to teach students about the processes underlying effective writing, a more common practice is to use rubrics as a means of assessment, after…

This study examined the relationship between teacher written feedback and change in the disciplinary writing of tertiary students in their final year of undergraduate study. The student texts and teacher written feedback examined arose naturally out of a third year disciplinary-based unit in which each student submitted a text three times over the…

Writing courses are increasingly popular in higher education. This paper presents a pedagogic approach that combines theory and practice, in an accessible way, to help students appreciate the interrelation of styles and contexts, and develop skills for writing in a range of genres. The approach is characterised as "adaptive application".…

The issue of school failure at the 9th grade level is of great concern to educators. In this study, the author examined the use of cognitive, affective, and metacognitive questioning strategies in a 9th grade world history class as a means to increase student engagement and academic success. Through the use of structured journal questions over a…

Writer's workshops provide students with the appropriate processes they need to learn about publishing and First Amendment freedoms when collaborating on a school newspaper. High school teacher and journalism adviser Janet Ewell outlines the structures students can use for learning to find, research, develop, respond to, and reflect on story…

Teachers are faced with a dilemma when they know what good teaching is but feel pressure from their colleagues and administrators to use published test preparation materials to teach reading and writing. However, effective instructional practices and mandated testing demands can coexist if teachers choose methods that not only provide authentic…

Two scales of mothers' mediation of their children's writing based on Aram and Levin (2001) were developed and tested in 67 mother-child Hong Kong Chinese dyads in three grade levels--second-year kindergarten, third-year kindergarten, and first grade. With children's ages, grades, and non-verbal IQs, as well as mothers' education levels…

Notes that guidelines for the curriculum in English published by the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association have been criticized by a number of publications. Proposes a new guideline--for writing to convey factual information only. (PA)

Discusses William Zinsser, a former newspaperman and current essayist and teacher, who has spend decades encouraging people to write "warmly and clearly." Writing is a craft, a necessary skill for professional advancement, but not a mysterious form of artistry, he strongly believes. (EV)

Presents a compilation of classroom writing strategies designed for students and selected from readings and classroom experiences. (RS)

Discusses briefly some ways professional writers create fine titles, using allusions, puns, rhyme, alliteration, and paradox. (SR)

Discusses and illustrates how technical communicators can read and write complex documents dialogically by using a new/old strategy to help them in three activities: breaking down complex documents and data into components; solving problems by locating and describing causal components; and following and organizing sequences of components. (SR)

Discusses documenting object-oriented projects from the technical writer's perspective. Suggests that writers prepare themselves by becoming educated, getting comfortable with object-oriented concepts, understanding reuse, defining a development process with the rest of the project team, and defining document requirements using rapid prototyping.…