This article presents work undertaken with a class of Scottish Primary Six children (aged 10) to investigate the use of interactive whiteboard technology and interactive talking books in whole-class writing lessons. The paper reports on a research project with three aims: to investigate how the use of an interactive whiteboard to reflect on the…

The effects of a secondary academic intervention, embedded in the context of a positive behavior support model, on the writing of second-grade students at risk for emotional and behavioral disorder and writing problems were examined in this study. Students were taught how to plan and draft a story using the self-regulated strategy development…

This article discusses the use of computer logging as a means of investigating aspects of the second language (L2) writing process as writers are engaged in producing text at the keyboard. The observation of writing by means of this method provides researchers with detailed information concerning aspects of the planning, formulation, and revision…

Students who engage in the writing process learn to write. Period. And yet many teachers, including Lain when she was a beginning teacher, don't know how to make the time for it, how to structure it, and how to evaluate it. Here, Lain offers us the help we need by focusing on the teaching tools for introducing students to this format, the…

The aim of this article is to show that a better awareness of the relationship between written and spoken communication can help the writer to improve his/her effectiveness. The focus will be on written texts that precede (formal and informal) discussions. The analysis will start with a description of the differences between orality and literacy.…

Two types of sentence-level writing problems are often observed in student writing: (1) those that violate conventions of standard written English, such as subject-verb agreement errors and comma splices; and (2) those that involve a stylistic choice, such as beginning a sentence with an expletive structure like "There are" or using "if" rather…

This article explores student views on writing as shown by the metaphors they use when asked to reflect on their own writing-to-learn tasks in the science classroom. The study examines the metaphors and metaphoric themes of 97 eighth grade students, discusses how they compare to important theories on writing to learn, and explores how student…

The claim that writing facilitates students' learning, although widely accepted, has little support from empirical research. A possible explanation for the lack of empirical evidence is that writing-to-learn research has disregarded that students use different writing strategies. The purpose of the present experimental study is to test whether it…

Course designs for Basic English Writing classes vary from one course to another. The objective of this study was to investigate the semantic misinterpretation of English words found in the English compositions written by native-Chinese-speaking undergraduate students and to overcome if such a barrier occurred in the process of writing. First,…

An instructor of a composition and computers writing course (designed for economically and culturally disadvantaged students) at the State University of New York at Buffalo, developed electronic conferences which combine the capabilities of the computer with the conference approach. The instructor reads students' papers while sitting at the…

This book is designed to be a how-to-write-fiction guide that is long on specifics and short on theoretical material. Each section of the book deals with a separate element of fiction--characterization, dialogue, point of view, plot, etc. Every exercise in the book is introduced in an opening paragraph, followed by instructions for completing the…

This paper uses three nuances of "informs." Firstly, it argues that writing forms (or shapes) science and science learning through the textual practices that are available to interpret and allowable to produce. These writing genres shape science discourse and must be challenged because available texts construct science as a rational…

Perhaps writing is equated with process. But, there are too many complicating factors that make it difficult to evaluate the success or failure of prewriting and drafting assignments--the process and the value of each step is different for each individual. By teaching students to recognize the cultural contingencies of textuality, the status of…

Studying the life of Langston Hughes in the context of how to teach freshman composition can shed light on two sometimes conflicting pedagogies, the expressivist and the social-constructionist. A discouraging period of fierce criticism, illness, depression, and financial woes coincided with Hughes' 39th birthday, which his biographer Arnold…

A feminist composition classroom concentrates on undermining the Platonic view of invention as the private act of an atomistic individual and replacing it with inventional strategies that heighten students' awareness of the social, political, and economic factors which make writing and reading a gendered activity. These alternate strategies allow…