The purpose of a prominent feature analysis is to describe the stylistic flexibility that a young writer, or a group of young writers, exhibits on a given day, with a given prompt. In prominent feature analysis, there are no guidebooks, no rubrics--just student papers and the expertise of teachers. Teachers come to the papers individually and yet…

This paper explores automated methods for measuring features of student writing and determining their relationship to writing quality and other features of literacy, such as reading rest scores. In particular, it uses the "e-rater"™ automatic essay scoring system to measure "product" features (measurable traits of the final…

The Discover Summer School was a four-week programme which aimed to improve the reading and writing skills of children during the summer between Year 6 and Year 7. The programme was targeted at pupils who had been predicted to achieve below Level 4b in English by the end of Key Stage 2. Pupils meeting the eligibility criteria for the study, and…

"Spelling Mastery" is designed to explicitly teach spelling skills to students in grades 1 through 6. One of several Direct Instruction curricula from McGraw-Hill that precisely specify how to teach incremental content, "Spelling Mastery" includes phonemic, morphemic, and whole-word strategies. The What Works Clearinghouse…

Past experiences influence how teachers identify as teachers, writers, and teachers of writing and impacts what they do in their classrooms, including their motivation and effectiveness in teaching writing. When teachers fail to identify as writers, they tend to spend less time teaching writing and may find it difficult to model a genuine passion…

"Race and Writing Assessment" brings together established and up-and-coming scholars in composition studies to explore how writing assessment needs to change in order to account for the increasing diversity of students in college classrooms today. Contributors identify where we have ignored race in our writing assessment approaches and explore…

The factors determining foreign language abilities have received copious attention from foreign language studies, and these research findings provided highly converging pedagogical implications for language teachers. However, not many studies have focused on non-academic learners especially with respect to their literacy skills. To fill this gap,…

The nature of peer feedback and its impacts on writing in English has attracted much attention of researchers and educators. Recent studies have indicated various types of peer feedback and its positive effects on writing development. This paper presents the results of an investigation into the nature of peer feedback and its effects on learners'…

This correlational study, conducted in intermediate English as a second language (ESL) high school classes in Quebec, investigated the relationship between instructor feedback and student anxiety. The participants were 53 ESL students in their last year of secondary school who were required to take an integrative-writing exam as part of their…

Today's students are disengaged, disenfranchised, and dropping out in record numbers. If this trend continues, educators and academic institutions everywhere are in jeopardy of exacerbating the wide chasm that separates students from learning. This was a quasi-experimental, causal-comparative, action-research study. The researcher implemented…

The present study aimed at developing the memoir writing skills as a creative non-fiction genre of second year distinguished governmental language preparatory school pupils using the a WebQuest model. Fifty participants from second year at Hassan Abu-Bakr Distinguished Governmental Language School at Al-Qanater Al-Khairia(Qalubia Governorate) were…

Over three days, 180 junior and senior high school English teachers, postsecondary (university and college) writing instructors, workplace (corporate and small business) writing instructors, and government officials who are responsible for portfolios related to workforce training and literacy met to understand from a broad systems-level…

The purpose of this study was to provide preliminary evidence of the criterion-related validity of curriculum-based measurement (CBM) for reading, mathematics, and written expression with postsecondary students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (ID). The participants included 41 postsecondary students with ID enrolled in a 2-year…

The purpose of this study was to examine the Exit Exam of Writing Proficiency (EEWP) and the variables that may impact the probability of a student passing the EEWP. The EEWP is one of the graduation requirements for all undergraduate students at a mid-sized four-year university in the mid-Atlantic region. The purpose of the EEWP is to ensure that…

When writing an argumentative essay, writers develop and evaluate arguments to embody, initiate, or simulate various kinds of interpersonal and textual interaction for reader consideration (Wu & Allison, 2003). This is quite challenging for English as a second language (ESL) learners. To improve the quality of their writing, students need to…