This research investigates students' performance while writing Chinese essays using an interactive online writing system. Participants include students from two seventh-grade classes of a junior high school in Taoyuan County, Taiwan. The experimental group uses the conditioned writing interactive online system, while the control group receives…

This article is a collaboration between WAC/WID and second language acquisition (SLA) specialists. It examines alternate disciplinary notions of the place of writing among other skills and adapts concepts from SLA theory and pedagogy with the goal of providing new interdisciplinary options for WAC/WID research and classroom practice.

While programs have been established to support secondary level English Learners (ELs) in their transition to institutions of higher education (IHEs), limited attention has been given to how to support adult ELs who struggle with the academic language demands of their college or university content-area courses. Research indicates that many EL…

Post-secondary writing teachers in composition and English as a second language (ESL) writing programs are likely familiar with multi-draft composing. Both composition and ESL writing programs share nearly identical multi-draft models despite the very unique and different cultures of each group. We argue that multi-draft composing as it is…

This article explores aspects of early language and literacy that may predict later literacy development. It explores a range of assessment procedures used for oral language, vocabulary, sentence structure and phonology and early reading and writing. The article then describes a small-scale study which highlights the disconnections between the…

This article presents student and faculty ratings of electronic editing (EE) functions (i.e., track changes, insert comments, highlighting) as used for "e-feedback" on written assignments. Students reported increased convenience, clarity of expectations, amount of feedback, and writing ability as well as substantial improvement in EE skills…

Literature is an expression of life through the medium of language and in the ESL classroom it is often seen as an authentic means of learning the target language. A literature-enriched curriculum not only helps learners improve their reading and writing skills but more importantly helps them internalise grammar and vocabulary. The many benefits…

Data from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy were examined to determine if non-native-born adults in the US differ from their native-born counterparts in (1) participation in work-related training or education, and (2) perceptions that specific skills limit their job opportunities. Results indicated that non-native-born persons were…

Writing is an essential component of young children's early literacy development, and active participation in writing instruction contributes to their growth as writers. Providing engaging writing instruction to meet the academically diverse needs of young learners, however, can challenge early childhood teachers. The purpose of this study was to…

Extensive research indicates that there are more boys than girls who are struggling readers, although considerable variation in gender ratios has been reported as a result of a lack of consensus in defining and measuring poor reading. The purpose of this study was to establish stable and consistent gender ratios for poor reading using a single…

The author describes the challenges of a four-year, open-admission institution where equality of access has not equaled equality of success for basic writers. While there is a good deal of scholarship on student departure by compositions and experts in student retention and persistence, some models of student departure and success offered by these…

The ways in which learning graphical representations can encourage the development of creativities in Chinese young children remain to be fully explored. Previous research on children's writing focused on children's symbolization with syllabic languages, providing little information regarding Chinese young children's symbolization and creative…

We argue that the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers, with its dual emphasis on literacy and occupational skills, can serve as a new model for writing classrooms and writing program administrators. We further contend that the "contact zone" classroom should be replaced with community-based "federations."…

This study examined the preschool predictors of elementary school narrative writing skills. The sample included 65 typically developing African American children, ranging in age from 5.0 to 5.5 years, and was 44.6% male. Targeted preschool predictors included measures of phonological processing, core language abilities, prereading skills, and…

Young adolescents' low scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) force the question of whether these students will be ready for college in four years. Our efforts to build a college-going culture emphasize strengthening students' writing skills by using preservice teachers to lead writing marathons for at-risk middle school…