This study examines factors that shape four student's perceptions of writing tasks in their science classroom. This qualitative retrospective interview study focuses on four students concurrently enrolled in honors English and honors biology. This research employs a phenomenological perspective on writing, examining whether the writing strategies…

This newsletter of best practices in implementing the High Schools That Work (HSTW), Making Middle Grades Work (MMGW) and Technology Centers That Work (TCTW) school improvement models is based on presentations at the 27th Annual HSTW Staff Development Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the summer of 2013. The newsletter is divided up into…

Teachers across the country consider the best methods to teach writing in the middle school and high school. They aspire for students to produce writing aimed at real audiences and purposes, writing that follows the author's thinking and leads readers to discoveries about the topic. Many teachers believe that a formula in writing could offer…

The current study aimed at investigating the effect of using the story-mapping technique on developing tenth grade students' short story writing skills in EFL. The study attempted to answer the following questions: (1) What are the short story writing skills needed for tenth grade students in EFL?; and (2) What is the effect of the using the…

This qualitative case study of 1 teacher and 10 students in an Advanced Placement English class explores the role of computer-mediated feedback in the creation of a classroom learning environment that was supported through hybrid learning experiences. Data sources included classroom observations, online conversations, interviews with 10 high…

Students in intermediate and middle level grades are often caught up in the exciting visual images and auditory stimuli that are a part of all their everyday communication and learning experiences. As a group of students who are growing intellectually and socially in the midst of, and through, predominantly media messages, they require reading and…

The 5th International Conference on Language, Literature and Culture has been hosted by Mehmet Akif Ersoy University (Burdur, Turkey), in cooperation with Çankaya University (Ankara, Turkey) and Süleyman Demirel University (Isparta, Turkey). Our main aim has been to provide a forum for discussion, to facilitate integration in these fields, and to…

These two recipients of this year's Alan C. Purves Award reflect on their work (reported in "RTE" Vol. 41, No. 3, pp. 269-303) on "A Cognitive Strategies Approach to Reading and Writing Instruction for English Language Learners in Secondary School" and the lessons they learned from their original research study as they tried to…

In this article, the author discusses the five-paragraph essay, a way of organizing ideas into an introduction with a main argument, three body paragraphs that develop that argument, and a conclusion that advances the argument a step further by way of application or tantalizing suggestion. She stresses the importance of teaching the five-paragraph…

The under-achievement of boys in the language components of standardised tests, together with a perception of boys as having negative attitudes towards the English curriculum, has led to boys being positioned as struggling writers. This article reflects critically on this construction, drawing on data from an Economic and Social Research Council…

This article reports on a descriptive and exploratory study of near-beginner learners of French in English secondary schools, their cognitive and metacognitive strategies, and their general approaches to writing. There is virtually no research on foreign language writing at this level, conceived in this study as including the copying of words and…

Drawing on the second phase of a 2-year study of students' linguistic and compositional processes, this article describes students' reflections on their online revision processes, those revisions made during the process of translating thoughts into written text. The data collected were from classroom observation and post hoc interviews with 34…

This article reports on a distinctive form of continuing professional development that emerged from a classroom-based collaborative research project between university researchers and teachers of French. We shall argue that one of the outcomes of this particular form of collaboration is a relatively unexplored, yet potentially important, approach…

The academic silos that house mathematics, science, and language skills must be broken down to better replicate how those disciplines mix in the real world. This article discusses the benefits of linking writing with mathematics, the challenges of integrating mathematics and writing, and the strategies for mathematics writing. Combining…

Background: When writing a text, students are required to do several things simultaneously. They have to plan, translate and review, which involve demanding cognitive processes. In order to handle this complexity, writers need to develop a writing strategy. The two most well-defined writing strategies that have been identified, are those of a…