We are delighted to welcome you to the International Psychological Applications Conference and Trends 2013, taking place in Madrid, Spain, from 26 to 28 of April. Our efforts and active engagement can now be rewarded with these three days of exciting new developments about what we are passionate about: Psychology and its connections. We take pride…

Reports the findings of a small-scale study assessing whether students revise essays more effectively when given written diagnoses that identify textual flaws and prescriptive comments, compared with a group of control students who received only directions stating that flaws were present. Concludes that while both groups' revising skills improved…

This paper reviews studies concerning writing skills at the college level. These skills are examined within discussions concerning cognitive abilities, features of the written product, the various aspects involved in the writing process, and the mastery of specific genres and forms. It is observed that some studies draw their information from…

Recent years have witnessed an increased emphasis on the professional development of undergraduate psychology students. One major thrust of this professional development has been on research that results in a convention presentation or journal publication. Research leading to journal publication is becoming a requirement for admission to many…

This study examined the writing strategies and text characteristics associated with discovering a scientific principle by writing about an experiment. Sixty-four university students (non-science majors) carried out a physics experiment concerning either buoyancy, or the forces acting on a balance scale, then wrote an informal journal-style note…

Focuses on whether university students studying a foreign language at an American university use the same processes and writing strategies in foreign language and first language writing in two different genres (letter and article). Using a computerized tracking device, individual writing sessions were analyzed through statistical techniques and…

This study investigated 3 English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writing teachers' and 39 of their ESL students' attitudes toward feedback and its uses. The results indicated that students preferred teacher feedback over non-teacher feedback, though the three teachers used non-teacher feedback frequently in their classes. (37 references) (MDM)

Reports on a study of the communications strategies used in the writing of answers in biology by English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) first year biology students at the University of Botswana. Examines four macro-strategies used by the subjects: risk taking, risk avoidance, second language-based strategies and semantic simplification. (Author/VWL)

A study investigated the writing strategies used by English as a second language (ESL) students in writing electronic mail (e-mail) messages, and to what extent certain ESL teaching variables influenced students' use of writing strategies. Subjects were 16 ESL teachers and their 208 university students. Students were administered a 50-item…

Perceptions of 48 preservice elementary education teachers concerning their own writing were examined. The weaknesses and difficulties that these University of Saskatchewan (Canada) students admitted concerning their own writing have implications for teacher education. Improvement of university students' writing should be a joint venture of…

This article suggests ways of writing a truly effective cover letter, an extremely important document in the search for a job. First, features gleaned from 13 model letters in technical writing textbooks yield figures on the number of words, sentences, and paragraphs per letter, plus the average number of words per sentence and paragraph,…

Learning to write is difficult, especially for those beginning the process at the university level, such as dialect speakers of English and speakers of English as a Second Language. Recent pedagogical experimentation with external dialogues involving instructors and peers to provoke critical thinking have not been very successful. One explanation…

Japanese university English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) students have problems structuring English sentences, especially complex compound sentences. This study reviewed undergraduate EFL student writings from three Japanese universities to identify common sentence structure aberrations. Four types of sentence structure aberrations were examined:…

A study investigated the effect of explicit instruction in reading and writing strategies on student performance in a college-level Japanese partial immersion course. Subjects were five students, four of whom had been subjects of an earlier study of reading and writing strategies and all of whom were training to be Japanese teachers. In class,…

Presents results from a study of eight college freshman to determine differences between revising essays on-screen and on-paper. Eighty-one percent of on-screen changes were above the mechanical or word level, often related to meaning and content. Students working on-screen tended to add more information and recreate paragraphs, but sometimes…