While leisure writing may help children to acquire writing skills, it can also be considered as an inherently valuable cultural activity. This study explores how children's beliefs may explain to what extent children are inclined to leisure writing and if there are any gender differences. Building on preliminary scale development work, we analysed…

A random sample of 782 grades 1 through 3 Chinese language arts teachers in Taiwan were surveyed about how they taught writing and their beliefs about writing. The underlying dimensions of teachers' reported writing practices and beliefs were established through factor analyses. Thirty-seven percent of the teachers reported they taught writing…

Motivational variables, such as writing self-efficacy and writing attitudes, are not emphasized in writing frameworks for developing writers. The purpose of this research study was to extend the research literature on elementary-aged students' writing development by examining the potential mediational role of writing self-efficacy and writing…

The study has the purpose of analyzing the process of parent-teacher cooperation and the written form communication as a factor with influence in this process. Within the overall purpose, the study also has his specific objectives. It is also analyzed if there exists a statistically significant relationship between written communication and the…

There is a growing body of research showing that writers are influenced by motivation-related aspects. This study documents the translation process of the Portuguese version of the Writing Motivation Questionnaire and the construction of two scales to measure self-efficacy for handwriting and story writing. The psychometric properties of these…

This study describes the use of a game-based writing environment (GWE) to increase textual cohesion in students' writing and improve their writing attitude. The participants were 113 third-grade students in Taiwan; the study was conducted over two semesters. A GWE was used for the experimental group (n = 56), and a conventional writing environment…

The aim of this study is to develop a valid and reliable Likert-type attitude scale for toward story writing for third- and fourth-grade primary school students. 354 children from three different schools in the Eregli district of Zonguldak province, Turkey constituted the sample of this research. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory…

This article reports on how pen pals can be incorporated into the literacy classroom for engagement and motivational interest. The authors describe a study in which focused, interactive pen pals were implemented in a third-grade classroom, and the influence this practice had on students' writing. Incorporating pen pals during writing instruction…

The objective of this action research study was to assess the impact of the Process-Based Approach (PBA) on the development of the writing skills of young students who are learning English as a Foreign Language. The participants included 12 third-grade students from a bilingual private school in Manizales, Caldas. Six workshops were implemented,…

This study examined whether attitude toward writing is a unique and separable construct from attitude toward reading for young beginning writers. Participants were 128 first-grade children (70 girls and 58 boys) and 113 third-grade students (57 girls and 56 boys). We individually administered to each child a 24-item attitude measure that contained…

Background: There are two approaches to the differential examination of school motivation. The first is to examine motivation towards specific school subjects (between school subject differentiation). The second is to examine school motivation as a multidimensional concept that varies in terms of not only intensity but also quality (within school…

This study tested three models of the structural relationship between the writing achievement of primary grade students and their attitude towards writing (defined here as an affective disposition involving how the act of writing makes the author feel, ranging from happy to unhappy). The three models tested were: (a) writing attitude influences…

In a 3-year longitudinal, mixed-method study, 67 children in two schools were observed during literacy activities in Grades 1-3. Children and their teachers were interviewed each year about the children's motivation to read and write. Taking a grounded theory approach, content analysis of the child interview protocols identified the motivations…