This bibliography cites and summarizes essays and reports research on second and foreign language writing and writing instruction that became available to its compilers during the period of August 1, 2000 and March 31, 2001. (Author/VWL)

Notes that finding time for skills instruction without replacing literature discussion and writers' workshop requires a strong organizational framework for literacy instruction. Suggests that teachers need principled, conceptual frameworks to guide their thoughts and actions. Describes a framework, Book Club Plus, designed by a practitioner…

Various authors have shown the first person to play a key role in the construction of the writer's persona in research articles. This paper compares the use of first person in a corpus of biology articles produced by native English-speaking (NES) writers and a corpus of research article manuscripts produced by non-native English-speaking (NNES)…

The language arts classroom is largely about leading students to become literate in their own voices and to see writing as a tool for thinking. I come to know my students through their writing and through class discussions about the texts we read and the texts we write. The challenge of good writing instruction is leading students to view their…

In many classrooms across North America, teachers face the challenge of how to help the growing number of children who are not native English speakers. This article describes several strategies teachers can use for approaching beginning reading of English with second-language learners. These include: (1) A comprehension-centered curriculum; (2) A…

The present study investigated the effects of speech recognition technology (SR) and advance planning on children's writing processes. Fluent and less fluent writers, ages 11 to 14, composed 4 narratives, via handwriting and SR, both with and without advance planning. Less fluent children's handwritten narratives were significantly inferior to…

Clearly, writing works differently online. How it is produced, how it is distributed, how it is accessed, how it is read--all of these processes are changed when writing becomes virtual. However, the processes we use to write at "the print interface" and the ways we read print documents are not obsolete by any means--but they certainly…

This article promotes the use of paraphrasing exercises as add-ons to information literacy instruction in order for students to gain proficiency in thinking critically about a source and expressing their own voice with the convention of parenthetical citation. Examples are provided for development and assessment of a paraphrasing exercise to…

Instructional rubrics can help students to improve their writing skills and become self-regulated writers. Clear, accessible instructional rubrics give students repeated practice with planning, revising, and editing. It is also noted that using rubrics for self-assessment and peer assessment will help the students navigate the writing process in…

Effective writing teachers act as models, coaches, assessors, planners and consultants when they establish common objectives and activities, build social bonds, and support students as they grow in their abilities. Managing five roles is very challenging for the writing teachers, but with patience and perseverance, they can help students to become…

Although much has been written recently about prison "writing" in general (Wally Lamb's Couldn't Keep It to Myself, Mark Salzman's True Notebooks), far less has been written about the efforts and challenges involved in helping prisoners. In this case, females in a maximum-security prison in Westchester County, New York, learn the kind of writing…

This article presents the results of a quasi-experimental study of whether there exists a causal relationship between spoken language and the initial learning of reading/writing. The subjects were two matched samples each of 24 preschool pupils (boys and girls), controlling for certain relevant external variables. It was found that there was no…

The purpose of this study was to analyze the satisfaction levels of Silicon Valley employers with the communication skills of newly hired college graduates. Employers reported that oral and written communication skills needed improvement in several areas, including the use of vocabulary and self-expression. College graduates' skills are not always…

The author describes his experience teaching a writing group in Martin Tennessee jail. The faces of most of the inmates showed curiosity. Each was saying not in words, but by gesture, "help make better this boring existence." The first essays the inmates wrote were about themselves and other members of their family. Some have written…

This study examined whether the graphemic structure of words modulates the timing of handwriting production during the acquisition of writing skills. This is particularly important during the acquisition period because phonological recoding skills are determinant in the elaboration of orthographic representations. First graders wrote seven-letter…