Background: Traditionally writing instruction at the start of school has focused on developing students' ability to spell and handwrite. Teaching children explicit self-regulatory strategies for developing content and structure for their text has proved effective for students in later grades of primary (elementary) education. Aims: The present…

Introduction: Writing is a tool for constructing and modifying knowledge. However, it is not easy to evaluate spontaneous writing tasks. In the present study, we selected and analysed a series of quality indicators to assess spontaneous or productive writing, examining the level of difficulty of the indicators and the relationship between the…

Background: Strategy-focused writing instruction trains students both to set explicit product goals and to adopt specific procedural strategies, particularly for planning text. A number of studies have demonstrated that strategy-focused writing instruction is effective in developing writing performance. Aim: This study aimed to determine whether…

We examined the differential effects of the social cognitive model of sequential skill acquisition (SCM intervention) and the self-regulated strategy development model (SRSD intervention) for writing. One hundred and twenty-one 5th- and 6th-grade Spanish students with learning disabilities (LD) and/or low achievement (LA) were randomly assigned…

This study aimed to investigate the importance of self-efficacy and attitudes to wards writing in writing training. It was also necessary to establish whether these constructs could be more enhanced through a specific intervention as part of the motivational factors, than through training which coaches other writing components such as cognitive…