Writing is a complex process, and this complexity poses particular challenges when researchers and teachers approach the task of analysing young students' writing samples. This paper outlines a program of research undertaken to develop a writing analysis tool. The tool is designed to map shifts over time in the range of skills and competencies…

Research suggests that experts and beginners use qualitatively different writing processes when given the same text to write. Throughout their writing, experts tend to create a network of executive, structural, and content problems that they continually refine and coordinate as they bring the text to fruition. Novices, in contrast, tend to focus…

This article addresses the relationship among theories related to classroom language and literacy events by first examining the researcher's theoretical perspective on discourse and sociocultural theories of learning development. The analytical heuristic for a microethnographic approach using a variety of theoretical tools is discussed and…

Texts are routinely simplified to make them more comprehensible for second language learners. However, the effects of simplification upon the linguistic features of texts remain largely unexplored. Here we examine the effects of one type of text simplification: intuitive text simplification. We use the computational tool, Coh-Metrix, to examine…

We evaluated the narrative and expository writing samples of 12 adolescents with language-learning disabilities (LLD) in Grades 6 to 12 for elements of microstructure (e.g., productivity, grammatical complexity) and macrostructure (genre-specific text structure elements) using an experimental measure. Writing samples were elicited with…

In this review of the literature we examine empirical studies designed to teach the structure strategy to increase reading comprehension of expository texts. First, we review the research that has served as a foundation for many of the studies examining the effects of text structure instruction. Text structures generally can be grouped into six…

Recent studies suggest that basic effects which are markers of visual word recognition in Indo-European languages cannot be obtained in Hebrew or in Arabic. Although Hebrew has an alphabetic writing system, just like English, French, or Spanish, a series of studies consistently suggested that simple form-orthographic priming, or…

One of the primary purposes of expository text in education is to teach new content. Because elementary grade children are accustomed to applying their literacy skills to reading and writing narratives, they must be taught new skills if they are to access expository content effectively. These skills and practices can be challenging because…

This reading specialist has come up with a strategy to help other CTE instructors map the CTE textbook, so that students can better comprehend the information in them and discover a joy of reading. CTE textbooks present a particular challenge because they are packed with information and can be quite different in structure than texts student have…

This article presents a case study research with aims to find out which activities, methodological and textual aspects used in a reading strategies course were causing a group of students difficulties when analyzing critically written information. We conducted the study at Universidad de Córdoba (Colombia) with seventh semester students from the…

This paper attempts to expound that China English boasting its own distinctive features on the levels of phonology, words, sentences and discourse has been playing an irreplaceable role in intercultural activities, though still in its infancy and in the process of developing and perfecting itself, and it now makes every effort to move towards…

In the thesis a coherent text is defined as a continuity of senses of the outcome of combining concepts and relations into a network composed of knowledge space centered around main topics. And the author maintains that in order to obtain the coherence of a target language text from a source text during the process of translation, a translator can…

The purpose of this research was to examine the role of personalized and non-personalized online texts on elementary school fifth grade students' comprehension and their attitudes toward reading. Participants were 47 fifth-grade students from a rural elementary school in north Florida. The subjects were randomly assigned into two (personalized…

In response to rapidly changing communication practices in an increasingly technological world, evolving literacy concepts such as multimodality, are now acknowledged in the new Australian Curriculum. Ironically, primary school teacher professional development in Western Australia remains closely tied to a mono-modal, print focussed paradigm. This…

This paper explores the relationship between New Critical close reading techniques and studies of literary engagement by building on the work of Sumara, Rosenblatt and Todorov. New Critical techniques responded to the allusive density and terseness of modernist poetry and fiction. In the half-century since, the situated approaches favoured by…