The facilitation of peer feedback on academic writing is often lauded for its myriad cognitive, affective, social, and linguistic benefits. However, educators face conflicting research results when seeking empirical guidance on efficient methods to support peer feedback, particularly for their English language learners. This study contributes to…

This purpose of this study was to identify how adult ELL community college students perceive their experience in the development of academic literacy, specifically academic writing, and to explore their perceptions of the factors, attitudes, and experiences that have facilitated their development of that level of academic literacy. To address this…

Disability labels and other social categories in school arise out of an educational system which attributes learning problems, perceived weaknesses, and academic failure to individual students. Instead, this dissertation investigates how learning problems are produced and reinforced through cultural practices. Through a two-year, cross-context…

In 2005, the U. S. Department of Education estimated that 44% of the 3 million students enrolled in non-traditional, that is, non-academic, adult education programs were English language learners. Yet, because of the overt focus that tends to be placed on oral communication, little has been done to document how these learners might view themselves…

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of undergraduates' metacognitive beliefs about writing and knowledge, ways that those beliefs may change during the semester, and the relationship of beliefs to their persuasive writing. Scales assessing epistemological and writing beliefs were given to students in lower-division…

The language shortcuts used in text messages are becoming evident in students' academic writing assignments. This qualitative study sought to determine if the use of the shortcuts has an adverse impact on developmental students' spelling and grammar skills. This research was based on the constructivist theory, which rationalizes that students use…

Today's students have grown up surrounded by technology. They use cell phones, word processors, and the Internet with ease, talking with peers in their community and around the world through e-mails, chatrooms, instant messaging, online discussions, and weblogs ("blogs"). In the midst of this technological explosion, adolescents face a…

This study examined the literacy identity development of fourth graders engaged in a writer's workshop, with literacy identity development referring to the ways students come to see themselves as readers and writers or the ways that others come to see them as readers and writers. The researcher collected data through observations during writing…

This mixed methods study combining a single-subject experimental design with an embedded case study focuses on the impact of a visual treatment on the handwritten and typed output of a struggling male writer during his 5th through 7th grades who has undergone a longitudinal remedial phase of two and a half years creating text-only material as well…

A major challenge for the increasing multicultural and multilingual community college student population has been the difficulty in accessing the register features which define academic writing. In this study, an analysis of clause structures using writing samples collected from 45 community-college students, 15 from African-American, Haitian and…

The study investigates whether the informal interactive written discourse in instant messaging (IM) is permeating the more formal writing of English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) college students, and how students' identities are constructed in terms of English multiliteracies in Taiwan. The study is designed as a qualitative case study. The…

The study's purpose was to assess, through mixed methods, written linguistic features of 20 Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs) in middle school. Students came from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. Participants wrote two expository and two narrative formal texts, each in Spanish and English, for a total of eight…

This research investigated how teacher dispositions along with content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge work together in the action of second grade classrooms through two descriptive case studies. Focus of the observations was on the interactions between two expert second grade teachers and their students during times of reading and writing. A…

In the past few years, the number of students placing into developmental or remedial college courses has grown considerably. Research is needed to explore the learning dynamics of underprepared students and to offer insights for practice. However research in the developmental field so far has lacked a scholarly, rigorous approach, and research in…

Many composition teachers use the writing conference to provide feedback to their students; however, the existing literature on the subject indicates that teachers may unintentionally harm their weaker students by using this strategy. To better understand the effect of the writing conference on developmental writing students, the researcher…