We present a new approach to investigating student reasoning while writing: real-time capture of the dynamics of the writing process. Key-capture or video software is used to record the entire writing episode, including all pauses, deletions, insertions, and revisions. A succinct shorthand, "S notation," is used to highlight significant…

This article draws on a pedagogical case study in order to reflect on the value of using a Humanities disciplinary practice (the "close reading" of literary studies) as a method of educational enquiry and to provide a worked example of this approach. We explore the introduction of a pedagogic strategy--students writing abstracts for…

This study examined the number of writing samples needed to obtain a reliable estimate of young struggling writers' capabilities. It further assessed if performance in one genre was reflective of performance in other genres for these children. Second- and third-grade students (81 boys, 56 girls), who were identified as struggling writers in need…

Many students struggle with writing; however, curriculum-based measures (CBM) of writing often use assessment criteria that focus primarily on mechanics. When academic development is assessed in this way, more complex aspects of a student's writing, such as the expression and development of ideas, may be neglected. The current study was a…

This exploratory study investigated the effect of assessing both process and product compared to assessing written products alone. Two groups of students received teacher feedback over a one-year period. One group was assessed on their revisions in addition to the quality of final drafts, while a second group was assessed on the quality of final…

Reflective practice is an important skill that teachers must develop to be able to assess the effectiveness of their teaching and modify their instructional behavior. In many education programs reflective narratives, which are often part of teaching portfolios, are intended to assess students' abilities in these areas. Research on reflectivity in…

This paper explored the effects of the amount of extensive reading (ER) on writing ability. Participants were 157 first and second-year non-English majors at a private university in Japan who took a writing test in class. Some of them were reading extensively, while others had no experience in ER. The outcomes of Pearson's correlation indicated…

The present study discusses the relevance of measures of lexical diversity (LD) to the assessment of learner corpora. It also argues that existing measures of LD, many of which have become specialized for use with language corpora, are fundamentally measures of lexical repetition, are based on an etic perspective of language, and lack construct…

In this study, I explored the interactions among genre, task complexity, and L2 proficiency in learners' writing task performance. Specifically, after identifying the lack of valid operationalizations of genre and task dimensions in L2 writing research, I examined how genre functions as a task complexity variable, and how learners' perceptions and…

Current writing research emphasizes the teaching of disciplinary literacy, attending to the privileged ways of writing in each subject area. However, as the traditional space for generic literacy instruction, the ELA classroom has not assimilated this shift. This study used qualitative content analysis to examine feedback on writing about…

Aim/Purpose: The current case study aimed to investigate the engagement of nine English as foreign language (EFL) learners in online peer feedback on writing in a Facebook group. Specifically, the study focused on the issues of writing addressed in peer feedback and the learners' perception of peer feedback in the Facebook group. Background: Peer…

The research reported here suggests that raters, when involved in writing assessment, are more concerned with their own criteria to set a basis for their judgment rather than the standards provided by scale descriptors. This study sampled think aloud of eight raters who scored 15 essays in accord with Test of Written English (TWE) holistic scoring…

This research attempts to discuss the validity of introducing the evaluation of students' critical thinking skills (CTS) into the assessment system of college English writing through an empirical study. In this paper, 30 College English Test Band 4 (CET-4) writing samples were collected and analyzed. Students' CTS and the final scores of collected…

Developed to evaluate secondary school students' writing fluency skills, this study is descriptive in nature and uses a mixed method approach. During the research, the researcher attempted to identify students' abilities to write in terms of quantity and complexity, on the one hand, and also attempted to identify findings on accuracy, the…

The aim of this research is to examine graduate students' needs and preferences for written feedback on academic writing from their lecturers and thesis supervisors. Quantitative method via survey questionnaire was used to collect data from 21 respondents. The data collection involved Master and Doctorate students at a tertiary level institution…