InWhile research in second language writing suggests that instructor feedback can have a positive influence on students' written work, the provision of such feedback on a regular basis can be problematic, especially with larger student numbers. A number of computer programs that claim to provide both automatic computer-based holistic scores and…

Recitations and discussions are two types of interactions which have long been of interest to researchers who study classroom discourse in secondary English and Social Studies. According to research, teachers control the discourse during recitations through "inauthentic" questions requiring pre-specified answers. In contrast, discussions involve…

This article discusses how the author develops an approach that allows her students, who are part of the marginalized population, to learn the power of their own voices--not just their writing voices, but their oral voices as well. The author calls it "TWIST": Thoughts, Writing folder, Inquiring mind, Supplies, and Teamwork. It is where…

This article examines the spread of the neo-liberal educational policy in Finnish schools by considering entrepreneurship education. We examined the kinds of gendered and classed enterprising selves that were narrated in the Finnish writing competition "Good Enterprise!" written by pupils in the 9th grade of comprehensive school. In…

This study investigated the cognitive effort of 5th and 9th graders while writing a text. We manipulated genre (narrative text vs. argumentative text) and tested how level of handwriting automatisation contributes to cognitive effort and fluency in writing. The participants were 23 students from Grade 5 and 21 from Grade 9, who wrote two texts…

The aim of this study is to develop a general attitude scale about environmental issues (GASE) for students in different grade levels. The research was carried out with the total 1225 students; 409 (33.4%) were primary school students in grades 5, 6, 7 and 8; 408 (33.3%) of the students were in grades 9, 10, 11 and 12 at high schools and the…

The aim of this study was to investigate vocabulary knowledge and growth across two different language-learning programmes in Hong Kong. The two programmes compared were English immersion programmes (IM) and regular English second-language programmes (RL2). While previous research has identified an overall advantage to IM with respect to language…

An overview of research topics and findings from an interdisciplinary, programmatic line of research on writing over the past 25 years is presented. The cross-sectional assessment studies (grades 1 to 9) showed which measures uniquely explained variance in handwriting, spelling, and composing and thus validated their use in assessment. These and…

Today it is necessary to approach environmental topics with students in an interdisciplinary manner to mitigate the environmental damages that the Earth is suffering. In this paper we report an action-research and innovation study aimed at sensitizing students with respect to the care and preservation of the environment through the writing of…

The purpose of this quantitative study is to determine how secondary students use conventions in classroom composition assignments compared to the Internet writing outlets of e-mail, instant messaging, and blogs. Thirty-two ninth grade students were identified to participate in this study. Half of the participants were deeply involved in online…

Two instructional experiments used randomized, controlled designs to evaluate the effectiveness of writing instruction for students with carefully diagnosed dyslexia, which is both an oral reading and writing disorder, characterized by impaired "word" decoding, reading, and spelling. In Study 1 (4th to 6th grade sample and 7th to 9th grade…

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,…

From freshman composition courses to high school exit exams, the term "critical thinking" is everywhere. The educationally ubiquitous term has been defined as criticism that combines research, knowledge of historical context, and balanced judgment. In theory then, critical thinking should be taught in virtually every course in the humanities. In…

This article describes two instructional activities carried out in a ninth-grade Romanian classroom and suggests a number of reading and writing strategies that can be used to assist students in understanding and solving mathematics problems. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

After a class of ninth graders discovered the helpfulness of the thesaurus in such synonym activities as Synonym Tic-Tac-Toe and Cross-Synonym Puzzles, they started using the thesaurus to locate "the exactly right word" while drafting compositions. They also enriched their oral vocabularies during these activities by discussing synonyms from the…