While early career researchers (ECRs) often read and produce articles for peer reviewed journals, they are of ten less familiar with peer review reports (PRRs). Most ECRs learn about the genre of PRRs by reading reports written about their authored manuscripts, and through hands-on experience crafting their own PRRs, albeit often with little…

Comparison is an important geographic method and a common task in geography education. Mastering comparison is a complex competency and written comparisons are challenging tasks both for students and assessors. As yet, however, there is no set test for evaluating comparison competency nor tool for enhancing it. Moreover, little is known about…

Variability is common in language sample analysis (LSA), arising from personal factors such as age or level of education, or from factors within the text such as its length and purpose. Variability can affect interpretation of results in clinical practice and research studies, as well as the ability to detect change in individuals over time. This…

Previous research shows a discrepancy between different teachers' assessment of student theses. This might be an even larger problem in the context of teacher education, since teacher trainers originate from different disciplines. This study aims to investigate how different assessors prioritise between criteria for assessment. Criteria were…

The present study examines effort in narrative creative writing (operationalized as time-on-task) using a new assessment approach, the storyboard task. Participants (N = 125) completed alternate forms of the storyboard task in two sessions five weeks apart. They also completed measures of divergent thinking and self-reported ideational behavior.…

A novel instrument, the Features of Excellent Arguments task (FEXA), was developed to elicit adolescents' judgments about argumentative essays displaying to varying degrees features characteristic of strong persuasive writing: academic language, rich evidence, multiple perspectives, and rhetorical appeal. We collected students' categorical choices…

This study aimed to profile the sublexical, lexical, and text level language skills, and cognitive processes of a sub-group of children with poor reading comprehension known as poor comprehenders. An assessment protocol was developed to assess each of the components from Perfetti and Stafura's Reading Systems Framework. A comprehensive profile was…

The ultimate communicative purpose of literature reviews is to convince the reader of the worthiness of the writer's research, which is realized stage by stage and evaluation plays an important role in achieving this end. However, concerns about evaluation demonstration in novice academic writers' literature reviews have been repeatedly voiced in…

The purpose of this article is to understand the function, logic, and impact of qualitative systems for analyzing text complexity, focusing on their benefits and imperfections. We identified two primary functions for their use: (a) to match texts to reader ability so that readers read books that are within their grasp, and (b) to unearth, and then…

Writing is a complex process, and this complexity poses particular challenges when researchers and teachers approach the task of analysing young students' writing samples. This paper outlines a program of research undertaken to develop a writing analysis tool. The tool is designed to map shifts over time in the range of skills and competencies…

This study investigated the effects of linguistic simplification and content schemata on reading comprehension and recall. The participants, 240 Iranian male students of English as a foreign language (EFL), were divided into 4 homogeneous groups, each consisting of 60 participants (30 with high proficiency and 30 with low proficiency). To elicit…

Explores the expectations of the National Literacy Framework and highlights some problem areas in the context of the National Curriculum for English. Notes one such area relates to the assessment criteria which were selected from the framework to address children's understanding of organizational features of texts in reading and writing. Concludes…

This study extends earlier research on headings use in undergraduate testing, and examined whether headings within multiple-choice tests positively impact test performance. Participants were employees (n=143) of a large manufacturing plant in the western United States. The experimental group received a multiple-choice recertification test with…

Five experiments investigated the interpretation of quantified noun phrases in relation to discourse structure. They demonstrated, using questionnaire and on-line reading techniques, that readers in English prefer to give a quantified noun phrase in (VP-external) subject position a presuppositional interpretation, in which the noun phrase limits…

Identifies a set of linguistic/rhetorical measures which were developed to analyze cross-cultural differences in student argumentative/persuasive writing at the same age level. Compares the writing achievement of students from America, England, and New Zealand to test these measures, and contrasts these results with those produced by holistic…