Recent research has established that 5- to 6-year-old typically developing children in a left-right writing culture spontaneously reverse left-oriented characters (e.g., they write a [reversed J] instead of J) when they write single characters. Thus, children seem to implicitly apply a right-writing rule (RWR: see Fischer & Koch, 2016a). In…

Both undergraduate and graduate students face similar challenges when tasked with writing literature reviews. Breaking down the literature review into a four-part process helps students decrease frustration and increase quality. This article provides usable advice for anyone teaching or writing literature reviews. Tips and illustrations illuminate…

In this case study, I am discussing my recent PhD research project aiming to examine the development of spelling skills from different angles: the universality of dyslexia and the role of language in the developmental trajectories of spelling skills. To date, the number of studies comparing different types of spelling errors of children with and…

Utilizing data from the 2012 University of California Undergraduate Experience Survey (UCUES), the following question was addressed: "What are the direct and indirect effects of writing proficiency on cognitive development among international students?" Because many international students have chosen to study in the United States to…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the "knowledge of cognition" and "regulation of cognition," which are processes of the metacognitive strategy for improving learners' writing skills. The working group for the present study, in which a sequential explanatory design was employed, included 44 pupils (21…

This paper presents a case study of how librarians can situate themselves as pedagogical partners by bringing their unique information literacy perspective and expertise to the programmatic assessment process. This report resulted from the Thun Library and the Penn State Berks Composition Program's collaboration to assess the institution's…

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) is an invaluable resource for students and faculty members in the social sciences. However, many students and researchers fail to recognize the value of APA style in supporting writing excellence. In this research note we describe an innovative pedagogical approach to APA style…

The overarching purpose of writing is to communicate. As such, the intended audience is a critical consideration for writers. However, elementary school writing instruction commonly neglects the role of the audience. Typically, children are asked to compose a piece of text without a specific audience in mind that is usually evaluated by the…

The development of language skills is important at both the individual and social levels. Writing, which is one of these skills, enables individuals to express themselves both aesthetically and permanently. This importance of writing requires special attention to the training for its development. In this research, screening model which is one of…

Students living in poverty struggle to achieve academic success and pursue careers that require post-secondary training. Students coming from families with low socio-economic status enter kindergarten with lower literacy levels than their peers. Educators can initiate a change by increasing opportunities for students to build strong literacy…

Writing in English is often claimed as the most complex skills compared to the other three skills. Due to its complexity, feedback is seen to be an important part in writing process since it can lead to the students' better writing performance. It has been a consensus that teacher feedback is not practical to be given in a class with a big number…

Accounting instructors can embed effective writing into the curriculum, but how much instruction is enough to make a significant improvement in students' written products? In this quasi-experimental study, we compare the effect of three levels of minimal instructional intervention: all students in the study received a rubric outlining the…

Assistive technologies can be a game changer for students with learning disabilities/differences as they struggle to master grade-level content and concepts. Redford gives examples from her classroom of how tools like audio books with text-to-speech features and even simple predictive spelling apps enable students with reading or writing…

Peer feedback is frequently implemented with academic writing tasks in higher education. However, a quantitative synthesis is still lacking for the impact that peer feedback has on students' writing performance. The current study conveyed two types of observations. First, regarding the impact of peer feedback on writing performance, this study…

Grade 4 represents a critical juncture in the literacy development of young students. This article explores the role of handwriting in unlocking the higher order psycholinguistic and metacognitive resources needed to compose quality text. In particular, we investigate the threshold of control over handwriting needed to unlock vocabulary that…