Reading and writing development begin in early childhood and are linked in daily function and in classroom activities from kindergarten or prekindergarten through high school and beyond. There is little research addressing that relationship, or when and how best to integrate these two critical areas instructionally. The report presents an experts…

Skilled writers have at their disposal a range of rhetorical strategies for positioning themselves as competent members of a particular discourse community, including the judicious use of self-referential pronouns (e.g. "I," "she," "he") to overtly signal authorial presence. However, while researchers routinely recommend that second language (L2)…

As the number of international faculty members teaching in U.S. colleges steadily increases, greater attention needs to be given to how 21st-century college classrooms can be shaped by these multilingual teachers' linguistic and sociocultural "funds of knowledge" (Moll, 1990) and how their backgrounds can help native-speaking students to…

The legacy and sustainability of a university education requires student independence and ownership of learning. Adopting a student-centred constructivist approach to teaching and learning allows students to develop a web of self-constructed, interconnected understanding, and supports their development into lifelong learners. The efficacy of this…

Entering into a century of conversations from "English Journal," the authors read, and reread, the words of many mentors, colleagues, and friends, discovering some voices they did not know and rediscovering many voices they did. In surveying "English Journal", the authors highlight voices from the past, of the present, and for the future to offer…

Our pedagogical histories lean on textbooks, institutional records, and the words of famous teachers. Students rarely appear in situ. Here, the voices of two very different Progressive Era students cast spotlights on the shadows of long-ago classroom practices--offering a liveliness that is difficult to recover, but worth seeking. (Contains 5…

The paper describes a case study in which the main objective is to understand how engineering students can improve their writing skills, regarding spelling and syntax, when taught specifically on these issues. The methodology Writing To Learn is applied in two courses and, making use of the written texts, the students' writing skills are assessed…

In spring of 2010, three high school teachers and their students paired with a college teacher and her advanced writing class to collaborate on oral history research and writing. While many people think of oral history as "just stories," the authors introduce it to students as a rigorous method for documenting historical events, cultural…

This paper reports on the development of a prototype tool which shows how learners can be helped to reflect upon the accuracy of their writing. Analysis of samples of freely written texts by intermediate and advanced learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) showed evidence of weakness in the use of tense and aspect. Computational discourse…

This article describes the structure of academic discussions during the implementation of a literacy curriculum in the upper elementary grades. The authors examine the quality of academic discussion, using existing discourse analysis frameworks designed to evaluate varying attributes of classroom discourse. To integrate the overlapping qualities…

In this paper I report the action research I carried out on improving the teaching and learning of academic writing at a university. The action research sprang out of my experiences of learning and teaching academic writing. It sought locality and originality in what students read and write during academic writing courses. The macro and micro…

Although it is a well-known fact that students' preferred learning styles vary, many instructors teach in the way that reflects their own learning style preferences despite the fact that mismatches in teacher-learner styles may result in lower student achievement. In a traditional ESL or EAP writing class, students who prefer to learn by reading…

"Open Court Reading"[c] is a core reading program for grades K-6 developed by SRA/McGraw-Hill that is designed to teach decoding, comprehension, inquiry, and writing in a logical progression. Part 1 of each unit, Preparing to Read, focuses on phonemic awareness, sounds and letters, phonics, fluency, and word knowledge. Part 2, Reading…

The article focuses on using creative play in the developmental writing classroom to enhance student engagement. Theories that support the use of play in the classroom are briefly described. Several teaching techniques are shared, including developing metaphors as part of teaching a grammar unit, acting out readings from novels, and using poetry…

Although the concepts of critical thinking and self-voice have been extensively discussed in a second language writing, little attention has been given, on the pedagogical level, to critical thinking and self-voice in college EFL writing instruction. To fill such a void, this paper attempts to propose some pedagogical tasks namely: persuasive…