Students with and without learning disabilities struggle to engage in effective written expression. Despite challenges in written expression, written expression can be supported through pre-writing strategies such as procedural facilitators. Using a quasi-experimental design, eighth grade students with and without learning disabilities in written…

While many empirical studies demonstrate the effects of instruction on enhancing second language (L2) learners' pragmatic competence (Rose, 2005), few have attempted to gain an understanding of the quality of classroom life in addition to instructional efficacy. Drawing on the framework of Exploratory Practice (Allwright, 2005), the present study…

This study examined the relationship between students' scores on Research Methods and statistics, and undergraduate project at the final year. The purpose was to find out whether students matched knowledge of research with project-writing skill. The study adopted an expost facto correlational design. Scores on Research Methods and Statistics for…

Various instructional approaches have been laid out for conceptualizing argumentation talk and writing in English classrooms. One prominent, and historically durable, approach is formalist--teachers slot the teaching of argument into a form-based approach, usually using the 5-paragraph theme. This model too often fails to persuade students of the…

This article asks us to consider what the process of healing and composition pedagogy have to learn from each other. More specifically, it identifies how the therapeutic potential of writing, which has been largely neglected in the academy in recent years, can influence the ways we teach transferable writing skills. The article considers how…

As a dance teacher in public elementary schools for the last 25 years, Janet Adams has always recognized the creative link between dance and writing, and offered her students structured opportunities to combine the two. She has also honed her management skills and kept a pretty tight ship. Creative expression, though, be it through dancing or…

In today's educational climate, in which preparing all K-12 students to succeed in college and career is paramount, a prominent concern is to ensure that students leave high school with "college level" writing skills. Notably, these discussions revolve around ensuring students are ready to "cross the threshold" between high…

Through using the framework of sociocultural theory, this study examined the ways in which students were initiated into an academic discourse community at a public college through the required courses of first year composition (FYC). The purpose of the study was to see how instructors assisted students to become part of the academic discourse…

The emphasis on college and career readiness has transformed secondary classrooms into sites for innovative explorations in disciplinary literacy. The exigencies of valuing classroom experiences as preparation for students' future involvement in their careers has created teaching spaces that invite cross- disciplinary, cross- level collaboration.…

This article shares our experience designing and deploying writing assessment in English Composition I: Achieving Expertise, the first-ever first-year writing Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). We argue that writing assessment can be effectively adapted to the MOOC environment, and that doing so reaffirms the importance of mixed-methods approaches…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe the ways in which hip-hop pedagogies and literacies encouraged middle school students to explore performance poetry as a tool to "(w)right" the truth(s) about learning and living in their local and global communities. Design/methodology/approach: Collaborative self-study research…

This study explored the processes of utilization of resources in secondary students' self-regulated strategic writing for academic studies in an English as medium of instruction context in Hong Kong. Drawing on multiple data sources collected through the observation of lessons, stimulated recall and semi-structured interviews, the study examined…

Writing is considered varied with context and cannot be distilled down to a set of abstract cognitive or technical abilities. It always involve a combination of talent and skill and that makes it complex yet writing becomes more complex for ESL learner when they write using the second language in the academic context. With the growing interest in…

Writing argumentative paragraphs is challenging even in one's first language (L1) since in order to fulfil their goals writers need to carefully choose among the available metadiscoursive tools and skilfully balance their use. Writing in a foreign language (L2) is even more challenging because language learners are usually familiar only with a…

This qualitative study had the objective of analyzing the influence of graphic organizers on the development of written argumentative tasks in a group of sixth-grade Colombian L2 English learners. Learners are increasingly required to analyze information presented in languages other than their first critically to form reasoned opinions and solve…