The purpose of this collaborative schools-university study was to investigate how the explicit instruction of literary devices during designated literacy sessions could improve the quality of children's narrative writing. A guiding question for the study was: Can children's writing can be enhanced by teachers drawing attention to the literary…

Explores some of the important aspects of language learning in the teaching of English in the United Kingdom. (RB)

Examines theoretical and methodological concerns of the new ethnographic writing, analyzing writing practices of both professional anthropologists and student ethnographers who undertake ethnographic research as part of a modern languages degree course in universities in the United Kingdom. Emphasis is on qualitative writing as a heuristic…

Compares the development of copyright in the United Kingdom and the United States in relation to writing, literary works and other forms of intellectual property, and computer programs to show how writing is a unifying principle for documents and computers. (68 references) (EAM)

This paper investigates the effect of explicit grammar instruction on grammatical knowledge and writing proficiency in first-year students of French at a UK university. Previous research suggests that explicit grammar instruction results in gains in explicit knowledge and its application in specific grammar-related tasks, but there is less…

Recently, the place of adventure activities in outdoor education has become contentious, particularly in Australia and the United Kingdom. It can be challenging for outdoor leaders to incorporate adventure activities with attempts to foster environmental awareness, understanding and action. Recently, some authors have suggested practitioners…

Describes how the development of a criterion-referenced test for Kweyol led to the accreditation of Kweyol language and literacy courses taught in London. The process of accreditation has relevance for those involved in heritage teaching in countries such as the United States and for those committed to sustaining local literacies in microstates…

This study investigated written language production in 10-year-old children with impaired reading comprehension. Despite fluent and accurate reading, these children are poor at understanding what they read. Participants completed a spelling test, and were asked to write an extended narrative, prompted by a series of pictures. Poor comprehenders…

Studies English comprehensive secondary school students' interpretation and hypothesis-making while 12 year-old students are observing a bottle ecosystem of brine shrimps without any prior instruction and keeping diaries. Studies students through the task of open-ended diary writing and through small group discussions about the scientific…

This article describes an investigation based on a corpus of original and redrafted versions of extracts from reflective narratives by 15-year-old secondary school students in the UK. It builds on the established research on sentence combining with respect to students' writing development. The findings are discussed in relation to the use of…

Discusses the use of computer-generated text analysis to provide diagnostic information regarding students' writing. Describes a study of 12 stories written by grade 6 students in the United Kingdom that used computer-generated text analysis to determine whether the writing met the criteria for National Curriculum levels of attainment for the…

Suggests the challenge that genre theory presents to educators in the United Kingdom is whether to avoid it because others have reported the dangers or whether to grapple with it and discover what insights might be found. Argues that genre theory is not a method of teaching writing alone: it relates to each language activity. (RS)

Describes outcomes of a national investigation in the United Kingdom into linguistic characteristics of writing in GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) English examination. Argues that greater precision in describing writing will promote better teaching and learning. (NH)

This article describes five political scientists' interview-based accounts of appropriate and inappropriate use of the pronouns "I" and "we" in academic writing. The informants talked about pronoun use with reference to one of their own journal articles and also by referring to other informants' texts. Beliefs about appropriate…

Draws on Bakhtin's work on dialogism and research with a group of non-traditional student writers and their specific experiences of academic writing within a number of academic disciplines. Maps out different levels of dialogism in Bahktin's work and illustrates the way these are and are not to be the center of an academic literacies stance.…