Search

This study investigates the use of DO, HAVE, MAKE, GIVE and TAKE in light verb constructions (LVCs) and their corresponding simplex verb forms in British L1 and Malaysian L2 students' writing. The students' essay sub-corpus of the International Corpus of English (ICE) of Great Britain (ICE-GB) and Malaysia (ICE-Malaysia) formed the data of this study. The analysis revealed that most LVCs in the L1 and L2 student writings are basic in structure, comprising indefinite article, no modifier, and in the active voice. The analysis also showed that although LVCs are common in the students' writing, the corresponding simplex verb form of the verbs are higher in frequency. The only notable difference between the two groups is the overuse of zero article LVCs in the L2 students' writing, which is possibly due to their L1 influence.

Given the increasingly prominent position of digital technologies in the Higher Education classroom, this paper takes a concurrent triangulation mixed method approach to explore the ways in which blogging might be used to support student learning through a large MA dissertation module, comprising students from five courses. Taking as it impetuous the idea that blogging can create a community to support students in the writing of their own dissertation. The research saw 179 students invited to undertake blogging over a 10-week period, with proscribed activities for eight of these weeks. The networks built by students were modelled through Gephi, and this data was supplemented with two surveys carried out before and following the module. The results showed a mild trend towards the blogs not producing a community, nor creating an environment in which self-reflective practice was forthcoming. The role of the teacher also appeared to become solidified as the sole motivating factor, leading to a low uptake in posting on the blog, and even lower in commenting. The work also highlights the two-fold issue of students being fearful of giving negative, coupled with the sense that peer feedback was not worth as much as staff feedback, significantly reduced the development of the community, and of critical thinking. The work concludes that while blogs might have some potential, this case demonstrates that they need to be more deeply embedded within the pedagogy of the course, and not used as an 'add-on'.

This article responds to the question, 'how do doctoral students experience writing within space and time?' Whilst existing studies have understood academic writing to be a social and embodied practice, few have considered the material and temporal assemblages that facilitate everyday experiences of academic writing. Working from a new materialist ontological approach, this article draws on photovoice interviews with 11 doctoral students. Using 'affect' as the unit of analysis, the article explores the capacity of space, materiality and time to affect, and be affected by, experiences of writing. People, things, environment, and emotion all play a role in this 'spacetimemattering' and mean that experiences of writing are not processal, nor homogenous, but rather are ever-shifting assemblages of intra-actions. The article concludes with recommendations that attempt to shift our conceptualisation of doctoral writing, with writing being ultimately critical to doctoral success. In addition, it adds to the emerging literature that applies new materialist theory to studies in higher education.

This paper aims to provide insight and guidance for developing and leading interdisciplinary collaborative writing groups when working with researchers in Centre-Periphery contexts. The participants in this study were exiled Syrian academics domiciled in Turkey working in interdisciplinary project groups with their UK-Turkey-based academic mentors and UK-based workshop leaders. The groups were at the writing for publication stage of the project. In exploring the processes involved in writing in such groups, the study identified a key dimension to successful collaborative writing -- that of relational expertise. The study found that authorial identity played a significant role in the process of writing and that relational expertise was evidenced through confidence in knowledge, positive attitudes to others' knowledge and willingness to negotiate. We argue that explicit articulation of authorial identity and power differences are necessary first steps in establishing interdisciplinary collaborative writing groups in Centre-Periphery contexts.

Since it was first introduced in 2008, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been attracting a lot of interest. Since then, MOOCs have emerged as powerful platforms for teaching and learning academic writing. However, there has been no detailed investigation of academic writing MOOCs. As a result, much uncertainty still exists about the differences of writing MOOCs compared with traditional types of writing instruction in the classroom. Drawing on historical emphases in writing instruction, five approaches are illustrated: skills, creative writing, process, social practice, and a socio-cultural perspective. This study uses data from six academic writing MOOCs to examine what approaches are revealed within their writing instructions. Focusing on a group of six academic writing MOOCs at college level, attributes and features of writing MOOCs were explored by analyzing syllabi, video lectures, and assignments. Overall, the study found that these academic writing MOOCs stick to a traditional model of teaching writing, "writing as skills." These findings suggest that instructors who teach academic writing through online platforms showed that their immediate concerns were not a social practice or socio-cultural context. Rather, teaching and learning of grammatical accuracy and surface features of texts at college level appear to be best purpose of academic writing MOOCs.

Academic literacy practices are increasingly varied, influenced by the diverse education and language backgrounds of students and staff, interdisciplinary approaches, and collaborations with non-university groups such as business partners. Completing a master's dissertation thus requires students to negotiate literacy practices associated with different domains. To enable an investigation of conditions for such negotiations, this article extends the concept of literacy practices by combining insights from Academic Literacies, New Literacy Studies and Schatzki's (1996) social practice ontology. The resulting framework is applied in a case study of a student who negotiates academic requirements and entrepreneurial goals in completing a master's dissertation.

This essay explores the creativity and learning that can take place when students are given the opportunity to go beyond the GCSE set poems and create their own poetry anthologies. I argue that in the process of creating a poetry anthology, students are encouraged to engage on a deeper and more personal level with poetry. I suggest that when students are given the time, space, and autonomy to create their own anthologies, they not only develop the critical and creative writing skills required for their examinations, but are also more readily able to explore and express their lived experiences. I consider how such a project invites students to develop their writing and shape their identities through drawing on experiences, views and attitudes often overlooked in an increasingly exam-pressurised classroom. I closely examine two students' anthologies, arguing for the need to affirm and advance students' writing through a co-operative creativity.

Working as women in academia may still be regarded as 'complex and fraught with myths, gross generalisations and mixed emotions' (Barakat, 2014, p. 1). In this paper, we articulate the collaborative autoethnographic process in which we have been engaged over some time and through which we have challenged generalisations, explored emotions and illuminated further our complex identities as women in academia. Sharing and making visible our collaborative autoethnographic conversations and writing to other readers is risky and exposes us to possible censure. We realise that we are susceptible to being disparaged for being self-indulgent -- a common criticism of autoethnography -- yet we contend that our conversations and writing are both self and socially luminous as we connect our 'selves' with the UK higher education context. The paper's main focus is the collaborative autoethnographic process in which we have been engaged. Examples from our conversations and writing are included in order to demonstrate the power of this process and its potential and wider relevance for research.

Inequality in academic careers is structural and systemic. However, the growing writing retreat movement offers alternative structures for academic work, and in many countries retreats are mostly attended by women. We asked women about their experiences of retreats and did a systems and transactional analysis of their appraisals of writing and perceptions of relationships with systems at work. This article provides some answers to the question of why writing retreats are attractive to and seem to benefit women. A Structured Writing Retreat is one place where women can develop process, performance, prospect and profit beliefs in relation to their writing by creating a microsystem that sustains those beliefs. However, ambivalence in responses -- in relation to research assessment, management and teaching overload -- is a reminder of the overarching systems in which they work. This research shows that some women can counter some discriminatory practices, some of the time, at writing retreats.

This study draws on the theoretical frameworks of genre theory and writing expertise to explore how educators manage and excel in writing for professional recognition. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with four educators from different disciplines in which participants discussed their experiences of preparing and writing for Senior Fellow. Despite the fact that writing for professional recognition can be a contentious genre to manage with its reflective features favouring those from certain disciplinary backgrounds, the participants described positive and affirming experiences. The findings also suggest that educators are strategic in their approach, and that the writing process can have unexpected affordances including a developed knowledge of writing, professional confidence and a sense of empowerment. The findings have implications for developing systems and resources to support educators preparing for fellowship.

This mixed-methods study investigates writers' task representation and the factors affecting it in test-like and non-test-like conditions. Five advanced-level L2 writers wrote two argumentative essays each, one in test-like conditions and the other in non-test-like conditions where the participants were allowed to use all the time and online materials they needed. The writing was done on computers, and we recorded the writing process and keystrokes using the "Screen Capture Video" and "Inputlog" programs. We audio recorded stimulated recall interviews after each writing session, with the writers reporting and commenting on their writing strategies and their reasons for following them. The findings of this study suggest that there are several factors that play a role in task representation, such as previous education, personal beliefs, and task conditions. Although these factors were present in all participants' responses, the differences in the writers' approaches to interpret and execute the writing were marked. The results highlight various pedagogical issues and options related to teaching writing in general and to the place of task representation on writing programs in particular.

This study investigated the cognitive processes underlying pauses at different textual locations (e.g., within/between words) and various levels of revision (e.g., below word/clause). We used stimulated recall, keystroke logging, and eye-tracking methodology in combination to examine pausing and revision behaviors. Thirty advanced Chinese L2 users of English performed a version of the IELTS Academic Writing Task 2. During the writing task, participants' key strokes were logged, and their eye movements were recorded. Immediately after the writing task, 12 participants also took part in a stimulated recall interview. The results revealed that, when participants paused at larger textual units, they were more likely to look back in the text and engage in higher-order writing processes. In contrast, during pauses at lower textual units, they tended to view areas closer to the inscription point and engage in lower-order writing processes. Prior to making a revision, participants most frequently had viewed the text that they subsequently revised or their eye gazes had been off-screen. Revisions focused more on language- than content-related issues, but there was a smaller difference in the number of language- and content-focused stimulated recall comments when larger textual units were revised.

This article discusses and challenges the increasing use of plagiarism detection services such as Turnitin and Grammarly by students, arguing that the increasingly online nature of composition is having a profound effect on student composition processes. This dependence on the Internet is leading to a strategy I term 'de-plagiarism', in which students copy/paste text into their essays and then 'cleanse' the text to avoid plagiarism detection. I then argue that this is being done in the context of an increasingly 'de-authored' writing environment, manifested by lack of formative writing development and anonymous marking, rendering the student invisible in the writing process. I then report on a phenomenon observed in class -- namely that students who handwrote an exercise produced better, more original writing than those who typed, leading me to explore the affordances -- via Bakhtinian notions of dialogicality and addressivity -- of handwriting as a means of 're-authoring' the essay-writing process.

Set against the backdrop of children being 'alienated' from their writing, this paper is taken from a United Kingdom Literacy Association sponsored project where primary school teachers were trained to use process drama in order to give children more agency in their writing across the curriculum. Here, we use discourse analysis to think about the children's historical creative writing in relation to the drama lessons which are differently framed by the teachers. Building upon a theoretical model of process drama as involving 'embodied experience' and writing as problem-solving, a case is made that process drama can lead to what we term 'agentic writing'. Agentic writing, we demonstrate, involves children actively translating their embodied experience of process drama into writing by making a range of intertextual borrowings. These borrowings serve both to capture and transform their embodied experience as the children gain agency by standing outside language to achieve 'double voicedness' and in doing so write sophisticated texts. Seeing the relationship between process drama and writing in this light, we argue, provides a means of reconnecting children to the act of writing.

Background: The development of a set of questions is a central element of examination development, with the validity of an examination resting to a large extent on the quality of the questions that it comprises. This paper reports on the methods and findings of a project that explores how educational examination question writers engage in the practice of question setting. Although the practice of examination question writing is ubiquitous, limited research has been carried out on how writers actually draft individual examination questions when writing complete examination papers. Purpose: The main aim of this study was to understand more deeply the process of examination question writing. Sample: The study involved 12 experienced educational examination question writers. Design and methods: The first data collection phase involved observing writers whilst they wrote the first draft of a question paper (using a 'think aloud' process). Following the observation, the writers took part in an hour-long interview. This led to the construction of a model of question writing. Phase 2 of the data collection process involved validating the proposed question writing model with six additional question writers by means of telephone interviews. Analysis and findings: A model was developed that outlined the key stages of writing that all of the writers moved through in the completion of their question writing task. The question writing model situates the process of writing individual questions in relation to the broader cognitive tasks required in writing a complete paper. It also situates the writing process within the social dimensions of question writing. Conclusions: Iteration in the writing process appears to have an important function. These iterations represent a form of decision-making that is common to the examination question writing culture and appears to be logical and rule bound. Whilst the recognition of iterative behaviour reveals a highly personalised element of question writing, it also reveals a common expectation that the ideas across a subject area are highly inter-related, and that an examination paper should reflect this.

This article explores the experiences of international students as they engage in independent learning through formulating dissertation proposals. It contributes new insights by focusing on the 'pre-supervision' stage, where students formulate a research project and write a proposal independently. The analysis draws on questionnaire and focus group data from a large cohort of international taught postgraduates in business disciplines at a UK university. Two types of experience become apparent: one in which students work through the challenges presented by more independent learning, and the other where difficulties in 'getting started' present a barrier to progress. The article concludes by proposing a scaffolding approach, through which students can practise and complete key independent learning tasks involved in writing a dissertation proposal.

Traditional views of the writing process as a solitary and painstaking task can inhibit postgraduate students from pursuing useful conversations about their writing. Recent research has suggested that spaces for opening discussion on writing are needed and are important in supporting postgraduate writers to develop their academic identity (Cuthbert & Spark, 2008; Cuthbert, Spark & Burke 2009; Kamler & Thomson, 2007; Lee & Boud, 2003). This paper explores the experiences of five students at University College London (UCL), who were the first cohort to take a writing module which aimed to introduce theoretical and practical approaches to writing and to encourage reflection and evaluation of writing practices. The three key themes to emerge from the research were related to the development of the students' confidence as writers and more generally as researchers. These were: (1) Space--the value of having a defined space for writing, providing a new focus for learning in a less formal environment; (2) Academic Identity--the development of the students' academic identity through writing and gaining confidence as writers; and (3) Peer Learning--the importance of discussion with peers in developing writing and academic identity.

Research on authorial identity has focused almost exclusively on the attitudes and beliefs of students. This paper explores how academics understand authorial identity in higher education. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with professional academics and analysed using thematic analysis, identifying themes at two levels. At the semantic level was a main theme called 'the authorial writer,' with five subthemes: 'authorial confidence,' 'valuing writing,' 'ownership and attachment,' 'authorial thinking,' and 'authorial goals.' At the latent level were two integrative themes: 'tacit learning' and 'negotiating identities.' The semantic subthemes represent attributes that could be targets for pedagogic interventions. The integrative themes suggest processes in the development of authorial identity, which can inform more effective teaching. By identifying attributes and processes associated with authorial identity, these findings help towards a psychological understanding of authorial identity, informing development of more effective pedagogy to help students improve their academic writing and avoid plagiarism.

This paper aims to explore the strategic learning efforts and future vision of a group of Arab postgraduate students studying in a British University while writing a dissertation in English (about 15,000-20,000 words). It is guided by Dörnyei's [2009. "The L2 Motivational Self System." In "Motivation, Language Identity and the L2 Self," Chapter 2, edited by Z. Dörnyei and E. Ushioda, 9-42. Bristol: Multilingual Matters] concept of 'possible selves', and Hajar's [2016. "Motivated by Visions: A Tale of a Rural Learner of English." "The Language Learning Journal" 1-17. doi:10.1080/09571736.2016.1146914.] distinction between compulsory and voluntary strategies. Semi-structured interviews with each participant were used to collect data. The data suggest that the participants' language learning goals and associated strategy use for writing a dissertation were essentially influenced by the practices of their dissertation supervisors, who seemed to adopt a 'dynamic assessment' approach. The adoption of dynamic assessment by most supervisors helped the participants to strengthen the vision of their ideal L2 self, and make their goals clearer and more specific. From this qualitative study, practical recommendations to develop the effectiveness (quality) of Masters dissertation supervision at UK universities were made, and areas for ongoing research were suggested.

There appears to be little research on the standard of post-16 students' writing and how it can be improved. In respect of such students, the focus of teaching professionals seems to be on content rather than on the writing process; arguably this leads to weaknesses in written expression. This article examines some current research and follows one teacher's attempts to put in place some strategies in her classroom to improve the overall text cohesion of analytical essay-writing of post-16 students. Following analysis of the work of ten, post-16, English Literature students, the article focuses on how the explicit teaching of planning, openings/introductions, paragraphing within the main body of the text and conclusions, affected students' analytical essay-writing. The article then reviews whether there are differences in how best to improve the writing of students of different abilities. Finally the article considers what implications the research has for teachers and for teacher education providers. (Contains 5 footnotes and 1 table.)

The under-achievement of boys in the language components of standardised tests, together with a perception of boys as having negative attitudes towards the English curriculum, has led to boys being positioned as struggling writers. This article reflects critically on this construction, drawing on data from an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded study investigating the composing processes and strategies employed by secondary-aged writers. Annotated timelines were created during the observation of children writing in classroom settings. The children were subsequently interviewed using the timelines and their own writing to prompt stimulated recall of their own decision-making processes. Taken together, the observations and the interviews provide scant evidence to support the perception of boys as weak writers. Paradoxically, their patterns of behaviour are more similar to those of successful writers. (Contains 5 tables and 5 figures.)

This article reports on the design and implementation of an alternative form of writing assessment in a UK English for Academic Purposes (EAP) pre-sessional course. The assessment, termed processfolio, was a response to research inquiry into how writing assessment in a local context negated student agency and inculcated disempowering models of teaching and learning academic writing. The project merged an Academic Literacies approach to writing (Lea and Street, 1998) with a Critical Emancipatory Action Research (Carr and Kemmis, 1986) framework and a Critical Realist (Bhaskar, 1989) perspective. Data collected from interviews with students and teachers on their experiences of the processfolio found that a small scale intervention has potential for agency to be exercised within the highly constrained context of a UK EAP pre sessional. New directions in research are proposed which can engage students and teachers to work for change in EAP within their internal and external constraints.

This paper describes some of the key principles and practices of Teachers as Writers groups in the UK. It draws on participants' own accounts of the personal and pedagogic benefits of these voluntary teacher-led activities. It also presents a case-study of a teacher who used her experience of the process of writing in such a group to support students who were writing analytically about poetry in an A level (senior secondary) literature course.

The literature review is arguably the place in a thesis where doctoral authors convincingly engage with theory and theoretical perspectives underlying their research, situating their own contribution to knowledge in established and ongoing dialogues in the field. One difficulty doctoral candidates encounter in their learning to be researchers is articulating this understanding and engagement, how their work grows from literature informing and underpinning their research. Writing confidently at doctoral level in the discipline discourse, and breaking writing blocks are key features of engagement and articulation. Most research into academic writing concentrates on undergraduate writing development, while research on doctoral students looks at relationships with supervisors, communities and the doctoral learning journey. This research on doctoral writing in the literature review uses work on conceptual threshold crossings to identify ways in which doctoral students engage with and indicate their understanding of theoretical perspectives through successful doctoral writing.

Cognitive models of the writing process make a distinction between the functions of planning and translation: the first to generate ideas, the second to represent these ideas in written linguistic conventions. For many writers however, ideas do not always appear to precede the act of writing, rather they appear to be discovered through it. This article reports on interview data investigating the metacognitive thinking of adolescent writers about their own composing processes. The data will show that young writers differ in their understanding of their own composing styles and some struggle with the classroom imposition of pre- and post-composing strategies requiring that they plan and revise; talking instead of planning and revising as they translate. The findings will be considered in the light of contrasting models of writing composition, problem solving models and the dual-processing model. The article will call for a writing pedagogy that better recognises the different ways young writers might integrate planning and translation.

In recent years, contentiously for some, universities have developed generalist skills lists and associated curricula in response to government demand for more "employment-ready" graduates. Such training usually includes writing and communication. In Australia and the UK, guidelines designed to support the development of skills programmes describe research training as "generic skills" and/or "discipline-based." This framing effectively precludes a discussion of academic literacies perspectives on curriculum development and pedagogy for research training. In a review of some key insights from academic literacies and consideration of their implications for research training, the article discusses why academic literacies are not skills-based, strictly generic or informed by the students' discipline. The article suggests a reframing of the terms of research skills discussion to accommodate academic literacies perspectives. This would involve recognition of curriculum and pedagogy that aims to introduce the complex and diverse written genres, research purposes, rhetorical conventions, language functions and cultural norms that students are working with, an approach supportive of both effective student writing and subject learning.

This study investigates academic staff and student attitudes to style and etiquette of emails. Data were collected through two online staff and student surveys. Reported use and acceptability of particular features of email style were assessed. Open-ended responses yielded four themes: the balance between formality and informality, relationships, evolution in communications over time, and mutual expectations. These themes are discussed with reference to linguistic features of email style, theories of accommodation, and politeness studies. Points of guidance to students and staff on appropriate use and construction of email in higher education are indicated.

This article considers how course design accommodates the adaptation of L2 students into the early stages of the master's dissertation (Social Sciences and Humanities) at a UK university. I present a contrastive process-oriented analysis of two students' experiences on different courses, extracted from a 13-month ethnographic study in which students' self-reports (journals; interviews) were triangulated with their assignments, interviews with lecturers and classroom observation. I identify two "literacy events" in the early stages: discussing the topic and preparing the proposal. In order to make visible these events, I deploy Lave and Wenger's Community of Practice model, while taking a post-structuralist view of learning as a dynamic between language, identities, power relations, affordances and agency. Findings show unequal support for these events on the two courses; I argue that this exemplifies significantly different ideologies relating to the accommodation of L2 students, and discuss implications for course design.

Existing studies of source use in academic student writing tend to i), focus more on the writing than the reading end of the reading-to-write continuum and ii), involve the use of insufficiently "naturalistic" writing tasks. Thus, in order to explore the potential of an alternative approach, this paper describes an exploratory case study concerning the ways source material was used by two L2 MA students while involved in a real-life reading-to-write task. Think-aloud sessions were conducted with students at a UK university as they read to write during the dissertation component of their programme. Analysis of the resulting protocols revealed that they engaged with their source material in qualitatively different ways, in both the frequency and range of their reading-to-write behaviours. Specifically, the students differed in the ways they responded to their sources as they read, the ways they elaborated on what they read and drew inferences, and the extent to which they showed intertextual awareness. The findings suggest that, for these writers, the process of "using" source material begins early in the reading-to-write process and involves more complex interactions with sources than may be suggested by the use of "one-shot" reading-to-write tasks of the type used in much reading-to-write research. (Contains 7 tables.)

In order to understand the culture of the physical, virtual, and blended spheres that adolescents inhabit, we build on Gee's concept of affinity spaces. Drawing on our ethnographic research of adolescent literacies related to The Hunger Games novels, the Neopets online game, and The Sims videogames, this article explores the nature of interest-driven writing in these spaces. We argue that fan-based affinity spaces motivate young adults to write because they offer multiple modes of representation, diverse pathways to participation, and an authentic audience. As scholars and educators, we posit that these out-of-school spaces can offer youth new purposes, modes, and tools for their written work. (Contains 1 figure.)

Writers typically produce their writing in bursts. In this article, the authors examine written language bursts in a sample of 33 children aged 11 years with specific language impairment. Comparisons of the children with specific language impairment with an age-matched group of typically developing children (n = 33) and a group of younger, language skill-matched children (n = 33) revealed the role of writing bursts as a key factor in differentiating writing competence. All the children produced the same number of writing bursts in a timed writing task. Children with specific language impairment produced a shorter number of words in each burst than did the age-matched group but the same as the language skill-matched group. For all groups, spelling accuracy and handwriting speed were significant predictors of burst length and text quality. The frequency of pauses at misspellings was related to shorter bursts. These results offer support to Hayes's model of text generation; namely, burst length is constrained by language and transcription skills. (Contains 5 tables and 2 figures.)

Although keystroke logging promises to provide a valuable tool for writing research, it can often be difficult to relate logs to underlying processes. This article describes the procedures and measures that the authors developed to analyze a sample of 80 keystroke logs, with a view to achieving a better alignment between keystroke-logging measures and underlying cognitive processes. They used these measures to analyze pauses, bursts, and revisions and found that (a) burst lengths vary depending on their initiation type as well as their termination type, suggesting that the classification system used in previous research should be elaborated; (b) mixture models fit pause duration data better than unimodal central tendency statistics; and (c) individuals who pause for longer at sentence boundaries produce shorter but more well-formed bursts. A principal components analysis identified three underlying dimensions in these data: planned text production, within-sentence revision, and revision of global text structure. (Contains 5 tables and 6 figures.)

This paper explores the learning spaces associated with two geography undergraduate research journals. Wikis provide dedicated spaces for postgraduate reviewers to collaboratively develop constructive feedback to authors creating a supportive online learning environment. In becoming published authors, undergraduates reported that they gained not only academic recognition and curriculum vitae (CV) material but an ability to apply constructive criticism, a desire for more dialogue about their research and the motivation to publish further work in the future. This paper concludes that scaffolding the research writing process can be greatly enhanced by the strategic design of dialogic online learning space. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

Writing journal articles is essential for academics and professionals to develop their ideas, make an impact in their fields and progress in their careers. Research assessment makes successful performance in this form of writing even more important. This article describes a course on writing journal articles and draws on interviews with participants one year after the course in which they identified persistent challenges. These writers' accounts make visible some of the processes of writing for publication that are often tacit and identify key writing strategies. However, they also identify barriers to writing in academic workplaces and those professional workplaces where academic writing is produced. This article concludes by suggesting that while research assessment values written outputs over almost everything else, it is equally important to legitimise writing processes--and to be able to articulate the development of these processes--in communities of research practice. (Contains 1 figure.)

Concerns about the relation between critical and creative writing are reviewed in the context of encouraging students to engage in both kinds of writing as a response to literature in undergraduate degree courses. In particular the paper seeks to illustrate and promote good practice in the integration of creative and critical written responses to literary texts in different genres by referring to specific examples of student writing.

This paper reviews the opportunities and challenges for re-framing the purpose, process, product and assessment of final-year geography dissertations. It argues that the academic centralities of critical thinking, analysis, evaluation, effective communication and independence must be retained, but that the traditional format limits creativity and innovation. Re-imagining capstone projects has implications for students, faculty, departments and institutions, but greater diversity could enhance its relevance to students and employers, better aligning the student experience with the academic interests and future career demands of the 21st century graduate. (Contains 2 tables.)

This article discusses revisions to personal narrative writing made by Year 7 students (aged 11-12) in a UK secondary school. The concept of strategic revision was used as a basis for analysing drafts and revised texts in order to investigate strategies and techniques deployed by students in the process of revision and how these related to expectations student writers had of their readers. These analyses suggest that, given a reasonably supportive instructional environment, some Year 7 students can revise their own written texts strategically, and that in doing so they may recruit, and perhaps acquire, a range of writing skills and associated procedural knowledge. They also suggest that in the process of revising their texts, some student writers may have altered their expectations of their readers' understanding, ability to interpret and willingness to empathise. Implications for researching writing processes and for the writing curriculum are suggested, including the use of students' revisions to tap into the complex sets of procedural knowledge which seem to underlie aspects of writing and writing development.

Revision is recognised as a key and complex element of the writing process. Despite this, research shows that students find it difficult effectively to revise their own writing due to a lack of metacognitive awareness and understanding of the processes they undertake when writing. The first part of this inquiry studies nine students' understanding of the writing process and the revision strategies they employ using think-aloud protocols and follow-up interviews. Although the students all agreed that revision was an important part of improving their writing, they could not, or found it difficult to, articulate reasons for the changes they made to their writing. Therefore, the second part of the study explores the potential of collaborative writing to encourage and facilitate metacognitive talk through the implementation of a strategy where students are paired with a "writing buddy". Observations of classroom work and interview responses of students showed that the scheme was successful in providing students with an experience of writing which was social, flexible and holistic, where talk is used to externalise thinking in order to develop a metacognitive understanding of the writing process.

Although handwriting is often considered a matter of presentation, a substantial body of international research suggests that the role of handwriting in children's composing has been neglected. Automaticity in handwriting is now seen as of key importance in composing but this proposition is relatively untested in the UK and the assumption has been made that by Y6, handwriting is a matter of presentation, unrelated to composition processes. This article reports the results of a study into the handwriting speed and orthographic motor integration of 198 Y6 children in relation to their composition and relates it to findings from an earlier paper about 179 Y2 children. The study suggests that handwriting is an important factor in the composition of Y6 children and that a proportion of children suffer from low levels of handwriting automaticity, which may be interfering with their composition. (Contains 5 tables and 1 figure.)

A systematic review was undertaken in 2006 to answer the question "What is the evidence for successful practice in teaching and learning with regard to non-fiction writing (specifically argumentational writing) for 7- to 14-year-olds?", using EPPI-Centre methodology. Results showed that certain conditions have to be in place. These include: a writing process model in which students are encouraged to plan, draft, edit and revise their writing; some degree of cognitive reasoning training in addition to natural cognitive development; peer collaboration, thus modelling a dialogue that will become internal and constitute "thought"; and explicit explanations of the learning processes. Specific strategies include: "heuristics"; planning; oral argument, counterargument and rebuttal to inform written argument; explicit goals (including audiences) for writing; teacher modelling of argumentational writing; and "procedural facilitation". This article confirms the results of the 2006 study in the light of recent research. Implications for policy, practice and further research are considered. (Contains 1 table.)

Academic writing, especially the writing of research articles, dissertations and theses, is often viewed in the literature as "writing up". It is as if first comes the research, an active creation of new knowledge, and then comes the writing, a relatively passive assembling of what has already been achieved. It is as if researching and writing were two entirely separate processes. Alternatively we may choose to conceive of academic writing as a set process which overlaps considerably with researching itself and, indeed, which may contribute dynamically to knowledge making. This article outlines some of the ways in which we may re-conceptualize academic writing as a more dynamic set of activities and practices. This includes a consideration of, for example, academic writing as constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing knowledge, connecting, disconnecting and reconnecting concepts, describing and re-describing our views of the world, as well as shaping, mis-shaping and reshaping ideas.

This article reports on an Economic and Social Research Council-funded study into secondary-aged writers' compositional processes, both as observed in a naturalistic classroom setting and as gathered through post hoc reflections. The sample comprised 38 children drawn from Year 9 and Year 11 who were observed, using an annotated timeline, responding to a writing task in the classroom and were subsequently interviewed, using stimulated recall. The initial analysis of the pause and writing patterns observed during the writing task revealed different writing profiles for different writers, and subsequent analysis suggests tentatively that writers of different proficiency may present differing writing profiles. These patterns of composition are then illustrated further through use of the interview data, indicating the writers' awareness of their own composing processes. Finally, the article considers the pedagogic and theoretical implications of these findings, in particular the need for further confirmatory research. (Contains 6 tables and 6 figures.)

Three experiments investigated the scope of advance planning in written production. Experiment 1 manipulated phonological factors in single word written production, and Experiments 2 and 3 did the same in the production of adjective-noun utterances. In all three experiments, effects on latencies were found which mirrored those previously documented with spoken responses, and are taken to suggest that writers planned the entire utterance before initiating a response. Additionally, response durations were measured, and these provided further support for the complete planning assumption. The results suggest that writers, like speakers, plan utterances of at least two words in their entirety before initiating a response. (Contains 1 table, 1 figure, and 2 footnotes.)

Research into the behaviours manifested by the dyslexic condition has often focused upon younger dyslexic pupils and the lower-order skill difficulty in decoding and encoding. A surge in interest in the writing process has shifted the focus to higher-order skills, and a growing body of research is emerging within the higher education context (Hughes & Suritsky, 1994; McNaughton "et al.", 1997; Hatcher, 2001; Singleton & Aisbett, 2001; Farmer "et al.", 2002). Students are expected to be "expert" writers, and the mark of a good student is the ability to use writing as a tool for thinking. Drawing upon data from semi-structured interviews with undergraduate and postgraduate dyslexic students and their real-time writing logs, three case studies are presented and used to explore creative ways of using technology to manage dyslexia. The students demonstrate how they use different types of software to overcome writing anxiety, "fear of the blank page" syndrome and issues of plagiarism. The experiences of the students within the case studies demonstrate that often simple software can provide the best solutions, and that students combine features from software programs in creative ways to compensate for weaknesses in their cognitive profile. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

This article considers the development in understanding of aspects of formative assessment of students' writing at Key Stage 3 (11-14 years) by a group of trainee English teachers. An "analysis and application" approach to writing development, which requires students to master categories and processes then apply them, is outlined and illustrated. A proposed sequence for teaching writing which relies on an "engagement and reflection" approach to writing development is used as a context for discussion of trainee English teachers' ability to identify strengths, achievements and areas for development in students' writing, trainees' ability to use assessment criteria productively, and trainees' ability to use assessment information to inform their own planning and teaching.

Writing with the computer provokes and enables pupils to engage with aspects of multimodal design [Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures, Routledge, London, 2000]. At the same time the traditional stages of the writing process become much more fluid and integrated [Aust. J. Language Literacy 17(3) (1994) 183]. These consequences of technology are not recognised within the curriculum, the assessment system or current models of teaching the writing process in the UK. Using examples from current classroom research this paper argues that the significance of pupils' uses of the "available designs" of digital experience [Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures, Routledge, London, 2000] is undervalued. Furthermore it suggests that this undervaluing leaves teachers without well-developed pedagogic models of literacy when computers are involved.

This paper outlines issues around learning to write and considers the range of difficulties children may experience. The role of Information and Communications Technology in facilitating writing development is considered. Software applications that can be used to support aspects of the writing process and target teaching are outlined. Criteria for evaluation of existing products and the implications for practice in educational psychology are discussed. (Contains 1 table and 25 online resources.)