This article reports on a study analyzing the digital skills of 91 low-income students enrolled in writing remediation. Findings suggest that technological demands widen the equity dimensions of the college preparation gap by aggravating the academic challenges remedial writers already face. Suggestions to support the compound literacy needs of…

Little is known about the effects of various planning and revising conditions on composition quality in experimental or TESOL education research. This study examined the effects of planning conditions (planning, prolonged planning, free writing, and control), subplanning conditions (task-given, task-content-given, and…

Explicit strategy instruction combined with student-directed self-regulation in conjunction with cognitive strategies has proven effective in supporting low-achieving students' reading comprehension. Experts have extended 1 such approach, self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) for the expository reading comprehension Think before reading,…

This study aimed at developing some writing skills for second year secondary stage students through the direct teacher feedback strategy. Hence, the problem of the study was stated in the following statement: "The students at Al Azhar secondary schools are not good at writing. As a result their writing skills are weak." They need to be…

The definition of literacy is constantly changing and expanding. A sociocultural view of Literacy considers literacy to be multiple, multimodal, and multilingual as situated in and across the social and cultural contexts. As technology, new media and social network has reformed many aspects of writing, they provide ELLs (English language learners)…

This volume addresses the most current perspectives and issues related to learning disabilities and is written by leaders in the field of learning disabilities. The layout of the book and ordering of chapters allows readers to follow learning disabilities in a very logical and thoughtful process from legal issues, identification, and assessment,…

Transforming Writing was a two-year action research project, sponsored by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, which developed a model for the teaching and learning of writing that embedded formative assessment. This report evaluates to what extent the model of writing developed by the teachers during the research period impacted on children's writing…

The present study aimed at identifying the necessary writing performance skills for the first year secondary stage students. These skills are necessary for writing the compositions. In this study, the writing conferences and peer response groups strategies were used to develop the students' writing skills, improve their achievement and performance…

Through an in-depth and detailed analysis of one specific case, this study demonstrated that digital technologies, for example, blogging, wikis and social networking, have a role to play in the development of literacy skills in the primary classroom. The findings from this study suggest, that in this instance blogging was successfully integrated…

Based on a 2-year ethnographic study in an urban secondary school in Toronto, the article presents how a teacher and a researcher teach Grade 11 students through a design-based approach to teaching and learning in English class. Built on research and pedagogy on design, the authors designed a programme of study as an alternative to more…

Critical analysis of the literacy narrative assignment within the context of the other genres in a basic writing course complicates understandings of the political import of the assignment. While several advocates of the literacy narrative have argued that it has the power of what Jean-François Lyotard has called petits récits, the authors argue…

This article examines the use and benefits of communities of practice (CoPs) in academic settings. In the 2010-2011 academic year Teaching Support Services at Wilfrid Laurier University introduced four theme-based CoPs for faculty and academic support staff after a successful pilot initiative. This article explores our motivation for focusing our…

In this article, we analyze a broad range of factors that affect the sense of belonging of undergraduate students taking a first-year academic literacy course (ALC) at a multicultural, multilingual university in Vancouver, Canada. Students who fail to meet the university's language and literacy requirements are required to pass ALC before they can…

The 10 articles in this 7th volume comprise the refereed proceedings of the 2011 ATLAANZ (Association of Tertiary Learning Advisors Aotearoa/New Zealand) conference. In Chapter 1, Cath Fraser and Pam Simpson ("Offshore-onshore: How international students' expectations of the New Zealand academic environment compare to their lived…

This action research study examines the impact instruction informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) with a particular focus on tenor and socio-cultural theory has on sixth, seventh and eighth grade English language learners in an urban school. Over the course of seven and 1/2 months I used Systemic Functional Linguistics with a focus on…