Donald Graves's early professional books inspired Koshewa to look more deeply into student writing during the 1980s, and to value all phases of the writing process. Graves's perspective on uncovering and celebrating voice elevated Koshewa's writing instruction to a new plane. In this article, he writes about the impact that Donald Graves's work…

The purpose of this article is to introduce a 12-step approach for an abbreviated research project to promote research writing in an undergraduate measurement course. This 12-step approach assumes a 14-week semester schedule that is common among many colleges and universities. The steps for the proposed research project include selecting a topic,…

Pressure for students to produce writing perfection in the classroom often eclipses the emphasis placed on the need for students to practice writing. Occasions for students to choose, challenge, and reflect--to actually risk risking--are too often absent from conversations among students and teachers in countless English classrooms. Tom Romano…

Feedback in writing has in recent years attracted the attention of an increasing number of writing researchers. While much feedback research focuses on the act of feedback per se, little attention has been paid to the issue of teacher readiness to implement change in feedback. Using data gathered from Hong Kong secondary teachers attending a…

The writing skills of 286 children (157 female and 129 male) were studied by comparing name writing and letter writing scores from preschool to kindergarten with letter and word reading scores over the same time period. Two rubrics for scoring writing were compared to determine if scores based on multiple components (i.e., letter formation,…

The idea of process based writing has been in vogue since the seventies in which students compose essays in drafts and are able to reflect on past weaknesses and strengths. The teacher's role in facilitating this reflection is often referred to as "error correction." In ESL, the effectiveness of this role has been under debate because teachers…

Connecting reading and writing has important implications for all readers, but particularly for those who struggle in learning to read and write. Based on their work with children who struggle, the authors focus on reciprocal cognitive operations or strategies that draw on sources of knowledge used in both reading and writing. Their aim in this…

This article reports the results of an experimental study on the effectiveness of mobile technology (WhatsApp) in improving the critique writing skills of English as a Foreign Language learners and increasing their motivation for learning. The participants (n = 52) are Average-English proficient learners enrolled in two writing courses given at…

Writing is an essential skill for participating in modern American society. Although it is crucial to careers and civic engagement, student writing falls far short of national expectations (College Board, 2004; NCES, 2012; Persky, Daane, & Jin, 2003). The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) seek to increase the rigor of writing instruction…

Directive feedback is one of strategy to check students' grammatical error in writing. This strategy is used by the lecturer in PETA (Principle of Effective Teaching and Assessment) course during third semester. This research used case study to investigate whether directive feedback could improve students' writing skill. Besides that, it also…

Writing is a complex task. The development of students' writing skill depends on the teacher's teaching strategy and also the materials used in the writing lesson. In the present study, the effectiveness of a creative writing module was examined that was designed to improve the writing skill of a group of excellent students. It was added with…

This study examines how high-quality professional development can promote the diffusion of effective teaching strategies among teachers through collaboration. Drawing on longitudinal and sociometric data from a study of writing professional development in 39 schools, this study shows that teachers' participation in professional development is…

English writing instruction is an important part in college English pedagogy. Traditional way of teaching English writing lays much emphasis on word, grammar and sentence rather than the level of discourse. Under the traditional way, the students have difficulties to yield well-organized and coherent compositions. Theme Theory provides a…

It is inevitable that learners make mistakes in the process of learning a foreign language. Despite this fact, what is questioned by language teachers is why students go on making the same mistakes even when such mistakes have been repeatedly pointed out to them. Yet, not all mistakes are the same and sometimes they seem deeply ingrained, but at…

This paper aims to examine how to promote university students' engagement in learning by means of instructor-initiated EFL writing groups. The research took place in Rwanda and was undertaken as a case study involving 34 second year undergraduate students, divided into 12 small working groups and one instructor. The data were collected by means of…