This study investigated written language production in 10-year-old children with impaired reading comprehension. Despite fluent and accurate reading, these children are poor at understanding what they read. Participants completed a spelling test, and were asked to write an extended narrative, prompted by a series of pictures. Poor comprehenders…

This study charts the terrain of research on writing during the 6-year period from 1999 to 2004, asking "What are current trends and foci in research on writing?" In examining a cross-section of writing research, the authors focus on four issues: (a) What are the general problems being investigated by contemporary writing researchers? Which of the…

In this article, the authors argue that evaluation courses grounded in assessment theory and situated within a cultural context of actual workplace practices enhances student learning. Giving students the tools that assessors, both formal and informal, use helps them learn to anticipate and generate those tools for writing situations they will…

Writing assessment essentially juxtaposes two elements: how "good writing" is to be defined, and how "good measurement" of that writing is to be carried out. The timed test is often used in large-scale L2 writing assessments because it is considered to provide reliable measurement. It is, however, highly inauthentic. One way of enhancing…

o complementary experiments analyzed the acquisition of text content linearization in writing, in French-speaking participants from third to ninth grades. In both experiments, a scrambled text paradigm was used: eleven ideas presented in random order had to be rearranged coherently so as to compose a text. Linearization was analyzed on the basis…

Noting that within the area of literacy, writing is a young area of study, this research report looks at the impact of the national Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy's 10 years of sustained research. The paper first considers how Center research projects and activities have been tied together to address three interlocking sets of…

It is a commonly held assumption that Harvard-trained rhetoricians during the late 19th and early 20th centuries were concerned mainly with superficial mechanical correction, and, further, that they dissociated student writing from any meaningful context and contributed to the division between composition and literature. Howard James Savage was…

This thesis describes a study that engaged 2 sections of English Composition I, 50 randomly selected students at Union County College during the fall semester of 1995. The goal of the study was to determine if in this sample population there was a positive correlation between self-concept and writing ability. The variables of the New Jersey…

Supplemental Instruction (SI) has been firmly established as a tool for helping college students succeed in beginning writing courses. The SI model is based on a Piagetian-constructivist theoretical framework, which holds that learning is an active process in which learners "construct" their own knowledge, making it an essential part of…

Brief, impromptu essays written for the 1990 administration of the College Board's English Composition Test (ECT) were randomly sampled for four groups of examinees. These essays were subjected to further holistic ratings beyond those conducted for the ECT, and analytical ratings were also obtained. The holistic scores were correlated with the…

In a letter to her mother, herself a former English teacher, a teaching assistant details impressions of her first year in the Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). During a semester an instructor gets to know writing students individually in a way that pierces deeply through the veneer of stereotype. The class published…

Portfolio assessment can be different in kind from traditional assessment measures: it can provide a fuller picture of the learner; it can be much more than an expanded grade book; but the criteria and language for evaluating and describing the portfolio must be different from those used for evaluating individual products. To describe the fuller…

Intended for teachers of all subjects, grades 3 through 12, this book explains how teachers can build a community of writers in which the students use portfolios to demonstrate progress and accomplishment across the curriculum. The book outlines practical strategies for ensuring that every student explores a variety of meaningful challenges. The…

Intended for teachers of kindergarten through grade 8 who want to improve their students' writing skills, this book is based on existing research findings to serve as a practical guide to procedures, methods, and skills essential for the development of proficiency in written expression of all kinds. The book includes practical, research-based…

Students will be better equipped for college writing if they know how and by what standards their writing will be judged during their undergraduate years. At the college level, measures of writing skills serve the important functions of admission, placement, course equivalency, junior status, exit from courses, or barriers to graduation. Placement…