This discussion article presents practices for designing more supportive and individualized writing tasks for adolescent and young adult students. The practices emerged from a synthesis of findings from a prior study in which we asked 79 undergraduates to talk about moments from their writing histories that made them feel proud of their writing.

Despite the use of various approaches in writing classes, writing is still the most difficult language skill to master for most ESL/EFL learners. To overcome the problem, collaborative writing has been recommended since the 1970's. Since this approach involves learners in the activities of understanding, manipulating, producing, and interacting…

Engaging college students in purposeful academic tasks designed to foster both reading and writing competencies requires calculated decision-making regarding the goals and benefits of the literacy tasks used in college courses. Consequently, we explore text reformulation as a literacy strategy that aims to enrich students' reading and writing…

This study developed a brief training, the Integrative Writing Training (IWT), to introduce students to two types of rhetorical devices (i.e., direct and indirect integration) that can be used to communicate cross-textual connections through writing. The training did not significantly increase the volume of integration included in students'…

Writing is a challenging task for students in language learning. A key question in this challenge is how to exploit the potential of information technology and design effective learning strategies to promote quality writing. This is a question that Chinese teachers need to actively consider in the process of optimizing their writing instruction.…

The United States is undergoing unprecedented religious change, including an increasing diversity of religious tradition, rapid disaffiliation from conventional religious institutions, and a rise in syncretic and sometimes corporatized spiritualties. Given the speed and scope of these changes, all of which affect our students, rhetoric and writing…

As a field, WAC/WID has been called to engage antiracist work as part of the broader reckoning with race in writing studies. However, it is not clear to what extent WAC/WID practitioners have actually taken up these calls. Historically, WAC/WID has failed to engage with race and racial equity, with Anson (2012) calling a lack of attention to these…

For decades, colleges and universities have been grappling with the task of closing the readiness gap for underprepared writers entering the higher education system. Traditional developmental education models are costly and inefficient at best, and detrimental to the matriculation of students at worst. Bridge programs have had moderate success,…

Adolescents today need mental health support (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2024), and schools are a place where a universal approach to positive well-being can be promoted (Weissberg, 2019). While programs exist for social and emotional learning (SEL), there is a call for teachers to find a way for daily SEL integration into the…

This dissertation examines the integral role of identity in first-year composition, a crucial site of writing instruction predominantly taught by contingent, often inexperienced faculty. It explores how identity is manifested in composition textbooks, which are pivotal in transmitting knowledge about writing and pedagogy across various programs…

Writing is a complex activity requiring a wide range of skills. Sentence construction, a foundational writing skill, is necessary for paragraph and composition writing. Unfortunately, many current approaches to teaching writing place a priority on the product--focusing on teaching the process of writing lengthy pieces rather than providing…

According to recent studies, over half of students in 4th, 8th, and 12th grades lack the ability to write proficiently on standardized writing assessments. Revealed in recent studies is that many students enter college and are unable to write at the college level, as well as enter the workforce lacking writing skills. The problem is that most…

Assessing student writing assignments and providing effective feedback are a complex pedagogical skill teacher candidates need to master. Scarce literature has closely examined the type of feedback that pre-service high-school teachers spontaneously deliver when assessing student writings, which is the main goal of our study. In a sample of 255…

In this article, we analyze how linguistic terms have been borrowed and reinterpreted across disciplines. Specifically, we describe how terminology associated with Applied Linguistics (AL) changed meaning as it entered the new disciplinary context of Writing Studies (WS), often resulting in confusion and turbulence between the two fields. As in…

In 2022, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) chatbots like ChatGPT were released to the public and were rapidly embraced by many. Educational stakeholders are divided about whether to incorporate or ban chatbot usage in classrooms. Student engagement, a meta construct comprised of behavioral, cognitive, affective, and social components, is…