Search

Digital storytelling (DS) has increasingly been incorporated as a pedagogical tool to engage EFL learners for active language learning. However, little is known about how EFL learners make self-initiated use of multifarious resources available to them for engaging in the DS practice behaviourally, cognitively, affectively and socially. This 10-month-long study, informed by a dynamic and holistic approach, focused on an in-depth exploration of the dynamics and underpinning mechanisms of EFL learner engagement with the DS practice, as well as the alignment between their engagement and writing performance. Data were collected from multiple sources including learning journals, semi-structured interviews and DS products, and analysed using qualitative and quantitative techniques. Results revealed structural and temporal patterns regarding EFL learners' behavioural, cognitive, social and affective DS engagement, which were found largely attributable to various individual and contextual factors. Also prominent in our observation were marked individual differences in terms of the patterns, processes and outcomes (in the form of writing development) of learners multifacetedly engaging in the DS practice. Pedagogical suggestions accommodating the dynamic, multifaceted and individual nature of learner engagement are provided for the design and implementation of DS-based tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing is central to PhD work, though often a source of challenge, given the dissertation is the basis for the award of the degree. Universities may offer writing workshops, but these frequently take a remedial, skills-based approach: writing as something to fix rather than a developmental life-learning process of gaining confidence and fluency as a writer. In this study, we report the design of an eight-month writing program premised on a developmental approach and the longitudinal assessment of participants' journeys. Participants incorporated many elements of the developmental approach, including goal setting and review, metacognitive talk about their writing, valuing others' perspectives, and viewing writing challenges as shared. Most, but not all, developed a broader understanding of learning to write as an exploratory learning process. Finally, the data collection and analysis structure proved productive, not just for the inquiry, but also formatively during the program – both for the participants and facilitators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Programs to improve student writing have been deployed widely in nursing graduate education, but few operational indicators exist for measuring their value. Problem: The challenge of measuring outcomes reflects the complexity of what transpires when graduate students write. Better understanding is needed of what it means to students to "learn" from writing support. Approach: A full-semester writing course was implemented in a nursing science PhD program. In formative course assessment activities, students identified problems in early drafts of their work, which they subsequently learned to detect and resolve. In this article, students report what was learned. Conclusion: Writing skills, like clinical skills, are intertwined with intellectual maturation and sense of professional identity. Writing, like clinical learning, requires an investment of time and labor far beyond what is typical in didactic approaches to classroom-based graduate education. Our experience suggests a need to reconceptualize writing pedagogy in nursing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When he returned to Amsterdam in spring 1945, Otto Frank discovered that not one but two versions of his daughter's diary had survived the Holocaust: the three notebooks of so‐called version A and the revision of that diary on loose sheets of paper, called version B. Other texts also survived, including a notebook Anne titled “Tales and Events from the Secret Annex,” where she collected more than three dozen short pieces of prose. Best known for its “tales,” the book is, in fact, mostly nonfiction, including numerous sketches of annex life. More self‐contained and literary than her diary entries, they show Anne experimenting as a writer. They also show her writing vigorously in the summer of 1943, a period unrepresented in version A since none of that year's diary notebooks survived. Yet, as Anne later wrote, it was “the second half of 1943” when her life changed: when she began “to think, to write.” My goal here is to better fit the “Tales” notebook into the story of Anne's life and work, a project made easier by the recent publication of Anne Frank: The Collected Works, which includes, for the first time in English, all of the author's writing, in one volume, in separate, continuous texts. To read those texts in the order in which she wrote them is to see Anne Frank not just growing as a writer but becoming a writer. The results are of interest not only to scholars of Anne's life and work but to teachers of young readers and writers, for whom Anne Frank has long been a model, if an imperfectly understood one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessment literacy in EFL education has been a growing area of interest, yet there is a lack of experimental research on assessment strategies for writing skills. This study aims to explore the impact of assessment as learning on writing development for EFL intermediate learners. The research adopts a mixed-methods approach, including quantitative and qualitative phases. Thirty male EFL learners participated in the quantitative phase, while six students took part in the qualitative phase. The experimental group, exposed to assessment as learning strategies, showed significant improvement in writing skills compared to the control group. Semi-structured interviews revealed positive student perceptions, highlighting the strategies as challenging, new, and beneficial for reducing stress and enhancing participation. The results of the study confirmed that the experimental group demonstrated significant improvement in writing skills compared to the control group. Following the inter-rater and agreement reliability, seven common codes emerged from the semi-structured interviews with the students regarding the effectiveness of assessment as learning strategies including: challenging, new, good experience, improvement, good feeling, less stress, and more participation. A further implication of the study for EFL learners and teachers is that the holistic execution of assessment as learning strategies could enhance learners’ collaborative learning of writing skills and teachers’ writing assessment literacy. In the end, the study suggests that implementing assessment as learning strategies can enhance collaborative learning and teachers' assessment literacy in EFL writing education, providing a new perspective on assessment strategies in language learning.

Academic writing skills are essential in the context of teacher education programs, as this career path is directly linked to the academic field. The current study seeks to investigate the knowledge and academic writing abilities of Thai EFL preservice teachers, to enhance their academic writing skills, to explore their perceptions of ideal teaching and learning approaches, and to design an Academic Writing Teaching Model tailored to the specific context of Thai EFL preservice teachers. The research design employed a quasi-experimental approach and purposive sampling to gather both quantitative and qualitative data from forty-six participants who had completed at least one semester of teacher training. Research ethics were obtained before conducting the pretest, followed by a six-week treatment, with the final draft serving as the posttest. The results indicated that, based on a rubric, the participants' knowledge and abilities in terms of logic, grammar, and lexical usage were initially low. However, after implementing the Gradual Release Model and Scaffolding Approach, the posttest scores showed significant improvement with a p-value of 0.01. Furthermore, the study revealed that Thai EFL preservice teachers favored teaching and learning approaches such as Communicative Language Teaching and Game-based Learning. These approaches emphasized real-life situations, meaningful interaction, communication, and enjoyment. Notably, there was minimal mention of grammatical practices and instructions, possibly indicating a reluctance to engage with grammar. Overall, the findings suggest that the Gradual Release Model and Scaffolding Approach can positively impact the academic writing skills of Thai EFL preservice teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to examine group trends and individual variability of descriptive Grammatical Complexity (GC) in writing development. A longitudinal sample of 41 high school EFL learners is followed for an academic year (12 waves of data collection), resulting in a corpus of 492 texts, coded for eight descriptive GC features of academic writing. Our analysis reveals different sets of descriptive GC features relevant to capturing group trends and individual variability in writing development. At the group level, two phrasal-level GC features could capture significant changes in group means over time; at the individual level, four types of clausal and phrasal GC features showed significant associations between individual variability over time (measured by Standard Deviation of differences) and gains (as measured by the increase of usage frequency). Findings are discussed with regard to modeling both inter-individual and intra-individual trajectories in writing development and pedagogical implications attuned to both group and individual needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Composing a well-written text is a prolonged and challenging process. The present study explored the incipient stages in descriptive texts written (pen and paper) or dictated by 283 Hebrew-speaking Israeli children in second to fifth grades. This study aims to better understand the interplay between age, literacy-related abilities, and descriptive text quality by exploring developmental aspects across grade levels regarding text structural quality, length of text and literacy related abilities, and by analyzing the relation between text structural quality and literacy related abilities (cognitive, transcriptional, linguistic, and reading), beyond length of text and grade level. Regarding the developmental aspects, the results indicate that text structure quality becomes more sophisticated and complete with age, attaining high-quality descriptive text structure from third grade on in the production of autonomous texts with genre-driven elaborate features. Length of text and literacy related abilities also increase with age. Regarding the relation between text structural quality and literacy related abilities, we found in 2nd grade, for P&P text, a significant total effect of syntactic lexical ability on text structure rank, partially mediated by length of text, and a weaker but still significant direct effect of syntactic lexical ability on TS rank, when controlling for length of text. We also found in 5th grade, for DICT text, a significant total effect of reading high ability on TS rank, not mediated by length of text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Forma y Funcion is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Departamento de Linguistica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The present study was conducted to investigate and confirm the efficacy of educational technologies that could facilitate reading and writing development (affordances). It also investigates and reports on problems with these educational technologies that could limit reading and writing development (challenges) in a technology-assisted language learning (TALL) environment. One hundred sixty-five Web of Science and Scopus indexed journal articles published between 2015 and 2021 on reading and writing development in TALL contexts were included in the study based on predetermined exclusion-inclusion criteria. Pedagogically, the findings inform language teachers who seek a better understanding of available tools, strategies and activities in TALL to facilitate reading and writing development. In addition, the findings shed light on future research trends and highlight the theoretical and pedagogical challenges that need to be addressed in future studies to overcome the reported limitations and problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In successful writing development, English as a foreign language (EFL) learners not only need to acquire grammatical complexity (GC) features but also know when and how to use them flexibly across communicative contexts, known as register flexibility. The present study, guided by the sociocultural theory of language learning, examines descriptive features and developmental patterns of register flexibility, operationalized as cross-register variations in GC features in academic and colloquial writing. The sample contains 205 late adolescent and adult EFL learners, each completing two writing tasks designed to address distinct audiences, purposes, and channels of communication. Using corpus-based descriptive measures (i.e., Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English), the study analyzes a variety of structural forms and syntactic functions relevant to differentiating academic and colloquial registers. Results reveal that EFL learners show clear cross-register variations in GC features prevalent in the academic register (e.g., finite noun-complement clauses and phrasal noun modifiers) but a lack of cross-register variation in GC features prevalent in the colloquial register (e.g., non-finite adverbial and verb-complement clauses). English proficiency is found to be associated with register flexibility in only one GC feature: phrasal noun modifiers. The study adds to the growing body of research that emphasizes combining grammatical forms and communicative functions in EFL writing instruction and measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching linguistic aspects relevant to text construction is an essential component of any thorough writing instruction program, despite the conflicting evidence regarding its effectiveness. In this study, 889 second- and fourth-grade students were assigned to one of three conditions: Self-Regulated Development (SRSD), SRSD-connectors (SRSD-C), and business-as-usual (BAU). The experimental conditions addressed planning and self-regulation strategies to write opinion essays, but only the SRSD condition included explicit teaching of connectors (e.g., because) and discourse markers (e.g., In conclusion). Children in both experimental conditions outscored children in the BAU condition across grades and outcome variables. In addition, the SRSD condition showed larger effect sizes on Grade 2 children's gains in text quality, number of genre-appropriate elements, and number of connectors than the SRSD-C condition. The study provides evidence of the effectiveness of explicitly teaching functionally motivated linguistic representations within a SRSD program. Theoretical and educational implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to identify the factors that explain the quantitative development of students’ writing performance. The participants included forty-eight preservice Arabic teachers who were expected to graduate from the College of Education at Kuwait University during the fall 2022 semester. The methodology employed is a mixedmethods sequential explanatory design, which involves a quantitative phase followed by a qualitative phase. During the quantitative phase, the participants took part in a twelve-week writing workshop, during which their written performance was examined four times. The results revealed a statistically significant improvement in their written performance at the end of the program. During the qualitative phase, the interviews revealed that the key factors accounting for their improved performance included reading prior to writing, adopting prewriting practices, such as discussion, concept mapping, and inner speech, developing a stress-free first draft, engaging in significant revision, allowing for a multiday editing process, and leveraging the benefits of peer-review. This study emphasizes the significance of teaching the writing process to language-arts teachers in literacy classes in teacher preparation programs, as well as the need for offering professional development opportunities for in-service teachers. Moreover, the findings highlight the need for conducting future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graduate student writing is an under-attended to challenge for many incoming graduate students, whose skill levels often do not match the expectations of their graduate programs. Utilizing socialization theory as a foundation, we propose a Writing Bridge Program model to quickly, affordably, and clearly, develop graduate student writing, improve retention, and demystify the hidden curriculum. This article lays out the need for explicit graduate writing instruction and offers a model for meeting this need, particularly in low-resource environments. In order to evaluate the success of the program, we look at qualitative student comments regarding their experience in the Writing Bridge Program. We offer evidence for how dedicated writing programs can impact student attitudes toward the writing process through improved confidence and familiarity, and by decreasing feelings of impostor syndrome and isolation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the realm of Cultural-Historical Theory, A. Luria suggested writing as a model of a complex system of higher mental function, since that function is based on various psycho-physiological mechanisms, including processing of audial and visual information; and as a complex system of the frontal lobe functions of overcoming perseveration, and creation and control of the writing program. Subsequent research on these topics has shown a close association between the level of development of executive functions (EF) and writing skills. Nevertheless, the question of which parts of EF influence which aspects of writing, remains unresolved. In addition, there are few longitudinal studies of EF's influence on writing. In this article, we focus on the results of a longitudinal study of the influence of EF in children 6.3 years old on their mastery of basic writing skills at the age of 7.5. The results of regression model construction showed that all the aspects of executive functions strongly influenced the children's transcription skills, while the greatest impact on the development of the graphomotor component and spelling skills was exerted by working memory and inhibition control. These results are consistent with studies that have shown a correlation between the development of writing skills and EF. These results also confirm A. Luria's views on the importance of functions responsible for processing audial and visual information in the process of writing, and the importance of suppressing irrelevant stimuli and perseverations. Our research shows the importance of the development of EF in preschool childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by Vygotsky's sociocultural theory and Storch's framework of peer interaction, this study investigated the nature and outcome of peer interaction in EFL (English as a foreign language) learners' peer review and revision activities. During two 16-week semesters, 32 lower-intermediate learners participated in an Advanced Writing university course. Each of the learners wrote and revised six one-paragraph writing assignments and exchanged peer negotiated feedback in pairs. The qualitative analysis of their recorded dialogues revealed that although the learners were nearly at the same proficiency level, they adopted a variety of patterns of interaction including collaborative, expert/novice, dominant/dominant, and dominant/passive. Collaborative and dominant/passive patterns were the most and the least frequent patterns, respectively. The analysis of feedback types indicated that the collaborative pairs exchanged the highest number of feedback in total and could extend their focus to content and organization of the texts more than the other pairs. The lowest number of feedback was observed in pairs adopting a dominant/passive pattern of interaction. Further analysis showed that while collaborative learners succeeded in revising the majority of their errors correctly and had the greatest short-term writing development, the passive learners failed at both to a large extent. These findings are discussed drawing on relevant theoretical and practical literature, and implications for second language (L2) writing instructors and researchers are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the realm of Cultural-Historical Theory, A. Luria suggested writing as a model of a complex system of higher mental function, since that function is based on various psycho-physiological mechanisms, including processing of audial and visual information; and as a complex system of the frontal lobe functions of overcoming perseveration, and creation and control of the writing program. Subsequent research on these topics has shown a close association between the level of development of executive functions (EF) and writing skills. Nevertheless, the question of which parts of EF influence which aspects of writing, remains unresolved. In addition, there are few longitudinal studies of EF’s influence on writing. In this article, we focus on the results of a longitudinal study of the influence of EF in children 6.3 years old on their mastery of basic writing skills at the age of 7.5. The results of regression model construction showed that all the aspects of executive functions strongly influenced the children’s transcription skills, while the greatest impact on the development of the graphomotor component and spelling skills was exerted by working memory and inhibition control. These results are consistent with studies that have shown a correlation between the development of writing skills and EF. These results also confirm A. Luria’s views on the importance of functions responsible for processing audial and visual information in the process of writing, and the importance of suppressing irrelevant stimuli and perseverations. Our research shows the importance of the development of EF in preschool childhood.

This article is concerned with how developing writers use grammar knowledge to make choices in writing and the extent to which this knowledge is conscious and the choices deliberate. Drawing on case study data with 24 school-aged writers involved in a three-year longitudinal study, the article reports the pattern of conscious and unconscious choices being made. It will reveal how curriculum emphasis has tended to prioritise grammatical use over rhetorical purpose, thus raising grammatical use to conscious awareness. The data also shows how linguistic understanding appears first in text before being articulated as a conscious choice; thus raising a question as to the value of conscious and explicit grammatical understanding. The article will argue for a pedagogy that creates a space to talk about choices in order to lift unconscious writing decisions into conscious and useable awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Revision is a fundamental part of the writing process and is particularly important in the production of high-quality academic writing. This study is an exploratory examination of changes in revision behavior, as measured by keystroke logging software, at the beginning (T1) and end (T2) of a one-month intensive English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course on n = 39 undergraduate and postgraduate students. Bayes Factors (BFs) are utilized as measures of strength of evidence for changes in behavior. In this paper, we examine the application of a Bayesian Hypothesis Testing (BHT) approach and its implications specifically for exploratory studies, i.e., studies with relatively small samples intended to search data for emergent patterns. The results show that, in most cases, we have moderate evidence against any change in behavior over time. Based on this evidence, we conclude that the experimental parameters of further exploratory work into the development of revisions should be modified to maximize the chance of finding patterns in the data from which to generate any confirmatory hypotheses.

The development of written expression includes transcription, text generation, and executive functions (including planning) interacting within working memory. However, executive functions are not formally measured in school-based written expression tasks, although there is an opportunity for examining students' advance planning—a key manifestation of executive functions. We explore the influence of advance planning on Grade 2 written expression using curriculum-based measurement in written expression (CBM-WE) probes with a convenience sample of 126 students in six U.S. classrooms. Controlling for transcription, which is typically the primary focus of instruction in early elementary grades, we found that a score on advance planning explained additional significant variance in writing quantity and accuracy. Results support that planning may be an additional score to add to the use of CBM-WE. Implications for assessment and further research on the early development of planning and executive functions related to written expression are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated the influence of literacy environment on the performance of writing narratives for primary school students. Two hundred and fifty Chinese children participated in this study. There were 146 third graders (71 boys and 75 girls) and 104 fifth graders (53 boys and 51 girls). Results showed that children's writing abilities differed at the word level and sentence level between third grade and fifth grade. Formal literacy experience (parent teaching of characters) predicted the writing performance of third graders, while informal literacy experience (the visiting frequency of various places) predicted the writing performance of fifth graders. After controlling the effect of reading efficiency on the writing skills, the prediction of formal and informal literacy experiences on the writing performance remained. The results suggest the importance of formal and informal literacy experiences on the writing development of primary school students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While writing is a critical part of the medical profession, longitudinal studies exploring the social apprenticeship and genre knowledge development of medical practitioners are almost nonexistent. Through interviews and writing samples, this article traces a 10-year journey of one writer's engagement with the Patient SOAP note, following his experiences from the first year of his undergraduate education to the end of medical school. Drawing upon theories of social apprenticeship and the RIME framework (reporter, interpreter, mediator, educator) from the field of medicine, we offer an in-depth case study of our focal participant's growing medical expertise as he masters the Patient SOAP note. Through this in-depth analysis, we argue that the SOAP note functions as a "threshold genre" to assist entry into the medical profession. We conclude by offering additional evidence about the role that key threshold genres play in the development of professional expertise and offer implications for genre theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proficient writing performance in English requires multiple cognitive skills, which can be particularly challenging for English Learners (ELs). However, compared with reading and mathematics, there have been fewer scientific inquiries that explore the relationship between cognitive components and writing. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of three cognitive components (phonological awareness [PA], oral language development [OLD], and working memory [WM]), on writing development in Spanish-speaking EL children. To achieve this goal, 374 children in Grades 3 to 5 were administered a battery of cognitive measures in both Spanish as well as English, and a narrative writing task in English. Using structural equation modeling, three important findings emerged. First, the results showed that PA in both Spanish and English positively predicted English writing performance. Second, English OLD had a positive effect on writing, but Spanish OLD was a negative predictor of writing. Third, WM in both languages had large positive effects on writing in English. Taken together, the findings from this study highlight the important roles first- and second-language PA, OLD, and WM play in upper elementary ELs' English writing. Educational Impact and Implications Statement: The present study suggests that improving foundational cognitive components (i.e., phonological awareness, oral language, and working memory) may be beneficial in promoting writing for upper elementary English Learners who are receiving English-only instruction. It also highlights the roles of these cognitive components in the first language to writing. Additionally, this study provides a cognitive map for practitioners to identify specific skills needed to improve their student's writing development via instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a self-study that uses the lens of Vygotsky’s four phases of sign acquisition to examine one student writer’s development of voice through writing produced from 5th grade through her second year of graduate school (17 years). Growing up as a twin—and as a visually impaired individual—the author learned how to use the written word to help her imagine those aspects of the world that she could not physically see. Through excerpts from journal entries, planning documents, short stories, long fiction, poetry, school assignments, and fanfiction she traces her growth as a writer within the shifting context of experiences within and outside of school. Her sensitive exploration of varied sources of motivation and inspiration, along with her own changing attitudes towards and beliefs about writing, provide the reader with fresh insight into all that goes into one’s development as a writer.

The objectives of this study were to compare the impact of peer feedback implementation with teacher involvement through training in the classroom and asynchronous online communication on the quality of students' writing revisions, as well as to investigate students' perceptions of peer feedback activities. Twenty-five students participated in the experimental study. Eleven students were interviewed. Inferential statistical analysis was used to interpret the quantitative data collected from students’ essay writing scores. Meanwhile, the data obtained through observations and interviews were interpreted using qualitative coding analysis. The results of the inferential statistical analysis revealed that peer feedback activities conducted through asynchronous online interactions had more significant effects compared to those conducted face to face on students’ writing revision. Further, after conducting a thematic analysis, six themes emerged: 1) peer feedback activities could increase students’ autonomy in learning, 2) the teacher's involvement in peer feedback activities was beneficial in terms of improving the consistency of feedback and revision, 3) peer feedback through asynchronous online interactions gave extra time to produce more beneficial comments, 4) peer feedback activities through asynchronous online interactions gave more chances to become a writing audience, 5) communicating via Facebook made the students feel awkward, and 6) recorded feedback via Facebook comments was more beneficial for students’ revision. The implication of the research is that teachers of English need to consider asynchronous online interactions for students’ writing revision when teaching writing

Despite the burgeoning research on exploring learner engagement with feedback, how second language (L2) learners' engagement with feedback in different processing conditions influences their subsequent writing development is under-explored. This study examines the effects of individual and collaborative processing (languaging) of teacher feedback on Chinese lower-secondary school EFL learners' writing development. Eighty-one students aged 13–14 with A1-A2 levels of English proficiency (according to the Common European Framework of Reference) from two classes and two experienced English teachers participated in the study. Students were provided with comprehensive teacher feedback and were asked to process feedback provided on three writing tasks through either individual written or collaborative oral languaging over six weeks. Pre-, post-, and delayed post-tests were administered. Students' writing development was analysed using complexity, accuracy, and fluency measures, as well as content and organisation writing scores. Findings showed that the two conditions did not influence students' writing complexity and fluency differently, while only the collaborative oral languaging condition contributed to students' sustainable accuracy gains. Results based on the analytic writing scores suggested that students in the two conditions significantly improved content and organisation scores over time. Pedagogical and research implications regarding implementing the two feedback processing conditions are discussed. • Comparing individual and collaborative processing of feedback. • Written and oral languaging of teacher feedback. • Young L2 learners' writing development over time. • Sustained writing accuracy gains and development in global writing aspects. • Sociocultural theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, grammatical complexity has received substantial research attention in applied linguistics (Bulté and Housen, 2014). The representation of grammatical complexity has expanded in L2 writing with the application of diverse measures in empirical studies in the recent three decades (1991-2020). In response to this situation, we found it important to revisit grammatical complexity, and an exploratory factor analysis was applied to explore latent dimensions (i.e., factors) of grammatical complexity in L2 writing. We analyzed Lu's (2011) 14 grammatical complexity measures in the L2 corpus of the British Academic Written English Corpus. We then proposed a four-factor model with "clausal subordination," "phrasal construction", "global length unit" and "others." The four factors generally align with the types of grammatical complexity proposed in Lu (2011), but differences on six measures are also found. Noteworthy points were discussed to interpret the reasons behind the differences. Research implications are provided to show further research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to investigate the predictability of writing development and if scores on a writing test in the first weeks of first grade accurately predict students' placements into different proficiency groups. Participants were 832 first grade students in Norway. Writing proficiency was measured twice, at the start and at the end of first grade (time 1 and time 2, respectively). Multilevel linear regression analysis showed that writing proficiency measures at time 1 were significant predictors of writing proficiency at time 2. The results also showed that measures at time 1 could identify students running the risk of not meeting expectations with high precision. However, the results also revealed a substantial proportion of false positives. The results are interpreted and discussed from a formative writing assessment perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a framework designed to guide the development of automated writing practice and formative evaluation and feedback for young children (K-5th grade) – the early Automated Writing Evaluation (early-AWE) Framework. e-AWE is grounded on the fundamental assumption that e-AWE is needed for young developing readers, but must incorporate advanced technologies inherent to AWE, speech recognition, and games. In line with interdisciplinary views on writing to support learners in the classroom, e-AWE must support a community of learners and interlace reading and writing instructional activities combined with feedback to use reading and writing strategies. The e-AWE Framework provides a guide for the development of tools that leverage and integrate cutting-edge technologies, some of which only recently have become widely available in educational settings. These tools can continue to provide usable and feasible means to offer high-quality automated writing practice and feedback to a diverse and large number of students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

STEM graduate students are expected to develop strong writing skills as fundamental components of measured success. Based on a targeted learning outcome for an interdisciplinary graduate program, and a need to support STEM graduate student writing, this study analyzes the effectiveness of a writing community, implemented to assist with enhancing students' writing habits and skills. Twenty-nine STEM graduate students in various fields participated in this multi-year long study, analyzed using a Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test. The analysis demonstrated the implementation of structured writing sessions within a writing community environment enhanced students' writing habits, and development in multiple areas. Furthermore, enhancement increased students' positive perceptions of writing. Knowing the importance of writing success at the graduate level and beyond, ways to support graduate student writing must be developed to increase practice and confidence toward writing in STEM disciplines for sustainable writing and career success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addressed the relationship between students’ self-disclosure—that is, sharing social and positive information—and writing development in the English language classroom. The pre-test-post-test research design was adopted to assess whether students’ reflections on personal positive experiences including feelings and opinions help improve their writing output as measured by complexity, accuracy, and fluency. The participants, drawn from a convenience sample, were 15 Moroccan students enrolled in the department of English studies at a Moroccan university. These participants were included to establish a homogenous level of English proficiency in writing. The participants completed a pre-test, six positive self-disclosure topics, and a post-test. A paired-sample t-test was computed to determine if a significant mean difference existed between the pre- and post-tests. Although the descriptive statistics suggest that the learners showed relative improvement in complex and fluent language, their overall writing development did not reach a statistically significant difference level. Although differing writing prompts and learners’ academic learning experiences influenced the overall findings, this study contributes to the debate about the role of self-disclosure activities in improving certain language components in writing and calls for developing study programs that consider students’ personal lives in language arts classes.

The purpose of our correlational, quantitative study was to determine if time spent using digital media (i.e. text messaging and social media) influences students’ media writing self-perceptions (MWSPs). We measured students’ perceived writing ability using the MWSP scale and their time spent using digital media with the social networking time use scale (SONTUS). Correlations between students’ MWSP scores and SONTUS scores were statistically insignificant, suggesting that time spent using digital media does not negatively influence their perceived writing abilities. However, results from further analyses indicated that as students’ social media use increased, so did their ability to recognise the difference between writing for social media and writing for professional publications. We also found that the more students text the more they use social media and vice versa. We present directions for future research and practice.

Autism and writing are commonly discussed independently as complex, multifaceted entities. However, studies examining their intersections are limited and often oversimplify the nuances innate to both topics. This paper focuses on the complexities involved in studying autistic individuals' foundational writing skills (i.e., transcription and text generation skills) by drawing on theories of writing and autism grounded in perspectives from the neurodiversity movement. We frame our discussion around the complex sociocultural and cognitive factors important to writing by drawing on the Writer(s)-within-Community model. Our discussion highlights findings and trends among observational and intervention research studies as well as offers suggestions for future research guided by the ongoing reconceptualization and understanding of autistic development. In doing so, we argue that future research should look beyond written products as the only measure of writing development and beyond a diagnosis of autism as the indicator of atypical written language development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we adopt a functional perspective, based on the context conceptualisation and on the experiential structure of the transitivity system proposed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). According to this perspective, we consider the various contextual spheres that involve the writing process, from the immediate context of situation to the extended context of culture, and the unit of analysis is the process, expressed by the verb, which organises the clause as a configuration of experience. The aim of the study is to verify the change in the experiential configuration of the writing process of students from Portuguese basic education, as revealed by the processes emerging in participants’ discourse during collaborative writing. Transcriptions of group discourse interaction in different school levels (from second to eighth grade) were analysed. The analysis focused on the frequency and relative weight of the distribution of the processes by the different context spheres and by the different types of processes according to the SFL categorisation (material, relational, mental, verbal, behavioural and existential). The results do not show differences between school levels as to the weight of the different types of processes but reveal an increasing weight of the processes associated to the wider context, from which students will draw the content knowledge to be included in the text and the features of the text genre, and also an increasing weight of processes associated to the text genesis. This progression points to the pedagogical potential for strategies aiming to broaden the content and the language under consideration in the writing process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an illustrative and necessarily selective review of scholarship in systemic functional linguistics (SFL) since the 1960s, examining two major strands of application within the institution of education: teacher education and writing development. We explore properties of SFL that have been significant in this institutional setting, asking: "What are the properties of SFL being applied in research in teacher education and writing development?" Five foundational properties emerged from the review (i.e. language as meaning-making resource, the cline of instantiation, ontogenesis or the process of learning how to mean, the hierarchy of stratification and the spectrum of different metafunctional modes of meaning). From this basis, we explicate how SFL-based pedagogies promote language learning and literacy practices in these educational domains. The article ends by suggesting how further explorations can be undertaken to enhance understanding of the potential of this social semiotic approach and its applied contributions to solving real-world problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Longitudinal studies are rare in the field of writing research, and little is known about the concurrent development of the two transcription skills: spelling and handwriting. This study was designed to provide a comprehensive picture of the development and the longitudinal relations between spelling, handwriting speed, and handwriting quality at the word level.Method: Over a period of 3 years (coh1: Grades 2–4; coh2: Grades 3–5), 117 French-speaking children were assessed on a single-word dictation task. At each testing time, measures of spelling accuracy, handwriting speed, and handwriting quality were collected on 40 words. Words varied in both orthographic and graphic complexity, making it possible to investigate the influence of these levels of complexity on transcription abilities.Results: Linear growth analyses using cross-classified Bayesian structural equation modeling (CC-BSEM) revealed that spelling and speed continued to improve until Grade 5, while handwriting quality reached an early plateau in Grade 2. In the younger cohort, graphic complexity had a significant influence on the pace of development of handwriting speed and on spelling and handwriting quality performance in Grade 2. In the older cohort, a positive relation between spelling and speed and a negative relation between handwriting speed and handwriting quality were found, indicating that fast handwriting is associated with high spelling ability and that fast handwriting is detrimental to handwriting quality. By providing a better understanding of writing development, this study yields innovative findings not only regarding the development of transcription skills but also regarding how spelling, handwriting speed, and handwriting quality can influence each other's performance throughout primary school.

Aim: Longitudinal studies are rare in the field of writing research, and little is known about the concurrent development of the two transcription skills: spelling and handwriting. This study was designed to provide a comprehensive picture of the development and the longitudinal relations between spelling, handwriting speed, and handwriting quality at the word level. Method: Over a period of 3 years (coh1: Grades 2–4; coh2: Grades 3–5), 117 French-speaking children were assessed on a single-word dictation task. At each testing time, measures of spelling accuracy, handwriting speed, and handwriting quality were collected on 40 words. Words varied in both orthographic and graphic complexity, making it possible to investigate the influence of these levels of complexity on transcription abilities. Results: Linear growth analyses using cross-classified Bayesian structural equation modeling (CC-BSEM) revealed that spelling and speed continued to improve until Grade 5, while handwriting quality reached an early plateau in Grade 2. In the younger cohort, graphic complexity had a significant influence on the pace of development of handwriting speed and on spelling and handwriting quality performance in Grade 2. In the older cohort, a positive relation between spelling and speed and a negative relation between handwriting speed and handwriting quality were found, indicating that fast handwriting is associated with high spelling ability and that fast handwriting is detrimental to handwriting quality. By providing a better understanding of writing development, this study yields innovative findings not only regarding the development of transcription skills but also regarding how spelling, handwriting speed, and handwriting quality can influence each other's performance throughout primary school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oral and written language are constantly interrelated in literate communities. In this paper, we examine the repercussions of teaching argumentative oral discourse on the development of argumentative writing and vice versa. The participants were seventh-grade students, who were randomly assigned to one of three groups: the Oral-1 group, which received an oral language intervention first, followed by a written language intervention; the Esc-1 group, which received the written language intervention first, followed by the oral intervention, and the control group, who attended regular Spanish Language and Literature classes. We assessed measures of both oral and written argumentative discourse at pretest, posttest-1, and posttest-2 to determine the development of both intramodality and intermodality skills. The results showed that intramodality effects were larger for the written than for the oral language intervention. Both interventions produced intermodality effects. It is concluded that the teaching of argumentative discourse should incorporate the bidirectional influences between the oral and written modalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of the process and tools we have developed for assessing the impact of writing development projects carried out in a wide variety of courses at our university. It begins with an overview of writing studies in Canada to provide context for our approach to writing instruction and writing program assessment. It then offers a case study of a specific writing development project in a large first-year humanities course, a detailed explanation of the methods we used to measure the efficacy of that project, and an exposition of the way in which this assessment was used to drive reflection on the project and enhancement of it. The paper concludes with summary of the lessons we have learned regarding writing program assessment that navigates between creating a standardized process and responding to the unique needs of multiple projects, as well as a discussion of the benefits of such assessment for writing pedagogy research.

This article reports on the results of an action-research project in Italian primary schools. Its main principles are formative evaluation, a process orientation to writing, cooperative learning, and an inclusive approach that does not separate pupils according to their linguistic or writing skills. Pupils aged eight to eleven years old participated in the study in seven experimental (N = 106) and seven control classes (N = 118). Their texts were examined both holistically, through scales of communicative effectiveness, and by means of analytical measurements. The comparison of monolingual and multilingual pupils in both experimental and control classes shows a number of similarities in terms of textual competence, as well as a few differences, especially regarding the more linguistic aspects of writing, such as verb tense cohesion. A remarkable result is that students’ text quality seems to depend more on their participation to the program than on their monolingual or multilingual status.

Literacy development involves not only the cultivation of new practices but also of new identities. Drawing on theories of stance and positioning, this study examines the identity negotiations of one first-grade student with his teacher across a semester. Through close analysis of the stance bids and negotiations within a series of writing conferences, it demonstrates how the pair negotiated between four stances (feedback, instruction, management and collaboration) in disrupting the student's initial institutional positioning as a struggling writer. These findings illustrate how teachers might use stance as a pedagogical tool, highlighting three patterns of negotiation between the pair that supported the development of the student's literate identities while showing how new discursive patterns and positions emerged as the pair interacted across a semester. This analysis suggests the necessity of negotiation as a pedagogical orientation in (re)positioning students, as well as the need to look across multiple timescales in examinations of identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]