In the past, several assessment reports on writing repeatedly showed that elementary school students do not develop the essential writing skills to be successful in school. In this respect, prior research has pointed to the fact that cognitive and motivational challenges are at the root of the rather basic level of elementary students' writing…

There is a call for enabling students to use a range of efficient mental and written strategies when solving addition and subtraction problems. To do so, students should recognise numerical structures and be able to change a problem to an equivalent problem. The purpose of this article is to suggest an activity to facilitate such understanding in…

Learning how to write is a challenging process, typically developed in schools. Teachers' practices in teaching writing, however, have been under researched. The aim of this study was to survey a sample of teachers from Portugal (n = 96) and Brazil (n = 99) about their practices for and perceptions about writing instruction. Teachers reported on…

Students of all ages struggle with the multiple processes involved with writing, including planning, practice, and drafting multiple revisions. This article describes four structured writing assignments in an introductory college course, as well as eight specific strategies for helping students enhance their writing abilities.

Strategies instruction has improved the writing of high school struggling writers in previous studies, including students with disabilities. This study examined the effectiveness of argumentative writing instruction for the ACT writing exam using the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model with high school students with disabilities or…

Writing allows access to venues often limited by poverty, disabilities, and geography. Promoting writing skills can create bridges to overcome the isolation that often keeps communities from engaging with one another. However, most of the students in the nation's schools are not capable writers and find the persuasive genres challenging. In this…

The ultimate goal of scientific research is publication so as to showcase the research outcomes. Scientists, starting as graduate students, are measured primarily not by their dexterity in laboratory manipulations, not by their innate knowledge of either broad or narrow scientific subjects, and certainly not by their wit or charm; they are…

We argue for a course in which students analyze writing about a common topic--in this case World War I--from multiple genres (e.g., poetry and technical manuals). We address the divide between instruction in pragmatic and literary writing and calls to bridge that gap. Students working in disparate areas of English learn the strengths and the…

In the current research-focused climate, academics are facing increasing pressure to produce research outputs. This pressure can prove particularly daunting for early career (EC) academics, who are simultaneously attempting to master new teaching and administrative demands while establishing their own independent research trajectories. Previous…

This study investigates the extent to which microfeatures -- such as basic text features, readability, cohesion, and lexical diversity based on specific word lists -- affect Chinese EFL writing quality. Data analysis was conducted using natural language processing, correlation analysis and stepwise multiple regression analysis on a corpus of 268…

Vocabulary and spelling are two of the most important skills to achieve success in an academic setting. This review of 15 articles highlights classroom interventions that successfully enhanced vocabulary and spelling skills among ESL, English Only, English language learners (ELL), and learning disabled (LD) students. The strategies that enhanced…

While the importance of considering the wide variation among language learners has been brought to the forefront in recent years, the impact of such individual differences on the process of second or foreign language writing has been largely neglected. This paper aims to explore the ways in which individual students develop and transfer strategies…

We designed and investigated the first set of instructional procedures we are aware of to teach 4th and 5th grade students how to write a persuasive essay following close reading of a source text. Eight boys and girls attending a diverse, low income school who were having difficulty learning to write participated in an experimental…

Writing is a critical skill for graduate students, but few studies in the literature describe how it is supported in the training of biomedical graduate students. The Initiative for Maximizing Student Development program at Loma Linda University aims to develop this important skill in its students through an integrated, structured writing…

The course the author describes here, WRTC 426: Rhetorical "Ethos" and Personal Disclosures: Explorations in Trauma Writing and Writing as Healing, asks students to explore the "writing as healing" movement in English studies and beyond in order to evaluate the efficacy of claims that writing personal narratives can heal…