The academic writing competencies of nontraditional graduate students enrolled in accelerated graduate programs have become a growing concern for many higher learning educators in those programs. The purpose of this nonexperimental quantitative study was to examine the writing experiences that impacted nontraditional graduate students enrolled in…

The current study investigated the application and effectiveness of computer assisted language learning (CALL) in teaching academic writing to Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners by means of Microsoft Word Office. To this end, 44 sophomore intermediate university students majoring in English Language and Literature at an Iranian…

The Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) laboratory instruction approach has been used successfully over a decade to engage students in laboratory activities. SWH-based instruction emphasizes knowledge construction through individual writing and reflection, and collaborative learning as a group. In the SWH approach, writing is a core component of…

This paper outlines the process and results of an authentic assessment of student work using a revised version of the AAC&U's Information Literacy VALUE rubric. This rigorous assessment, which included the scoring of nearly 900 student papers from four different stages across the undergraduate curriculum, revealed much about the process of…

Writing centers on college campuses are spaces where students work with tutors individually or in small groups to build the skills to produce better essays, term papers, and other writing assignments. This article describes how high school students can themselves play a role in answering the "yeahbuts" and help create writing centers in…

A review of studies published from 2000 to 2012 was conducted to describe the literacy skills of underprepared postsecondary students, identify teaching approaches designed to bring their skills to the college level, and determine methods of embedding developmental instruction in college-level course work. The studies pinpointed numerous weak…

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of integrating a learner-centered blogging approach into the EFL writing classroom in Taiwan. For this purpose, a 16-week experiment was conducted, involving an intact class of 18 university-level Taiwanese EFL student writers. During the experiment, the participants first created their own blogs on…

Purpose: Given that there exists in the literature relatively little research into the effectiveness of writing centers at universities, the purpose of this paper is to show the impact of university writing centers on first-year business seminar student writing. Design/methodology/approach: This quantitative study involved 315 first-year…

Writing is central to academic development, permeates content area coursework and serves as both a vehicle for and a display of learning. For English learners (ELs), writing poses challenges, and teachers need preparation in how to understand and respond to these. This study reports 5 teacher inquiry processes that preservice teachers in one…

Based on their scores on a proficiency test, the 894 participants in this study were grouped into three experimental groups (EG) and three control groups (CG). They attempted an argumentative writing task and the Cornell Critical Thinking Test, Form Z (CCTT-Form Z) as the pre-test. While CG participants received no treatment or placebo, EG…

The tenet of this study is to investigate the use of writing strategies in reducing writing apprehension and uncovering its effect on EFL students' writing achievement. It also attempts to explore associations between foreign language apprehension, writing achievement and writing strategies. The primary aims of the study were to explore the…

Teacher education programs have increasingly embraced online education, and the number of candidates enrolled in distance coursework is rising. In response to changes in delivery methods brought about by this trend, programs seek to deliver content via distance learning options in ways that demonstrate pedagogical best practices. Through an…

The purpose of this report is to describe the procedure for revising the ReadiStep™ score scale using the field trial data, and to provide technical information about the development of the new ReadiStep scale score. In doing so, this report briefly introduces the three assessments--ReadiStep, PSAT/NMSQT®, and SAT®--in the College Board Pathway…

Mina Shaughnessy continues to exert powerful influences over Basic Writing practices, discourses and pedagogy thirty-five years after her death: Basic Writing remains in some ways trapped by Shaughnessy's legacy in what Min-Zhan Lu labeled as essentialism, accommodationism and linguistic innocence. High-stakes writing tests, a troubling hallmark…

This action research project explores masters level graduate student writing and academic identity during one semester in an interdisciplinary masters program. Informing this study is a two part theoretical framework including the Academic Literacy Model (Lea and Street) and Wenger's concept of identity. The purpose of this exploration was to…