In university settings, writing argumentative essays from reading conflicting source texts is a common task for students. In performing this synthesis task, they must deal with conflicting claims about a controversial issue as they develop their own positions. Argumentative synthesis is characterized by writers' back-and-forth moves between…

Scaffolds that support self-regulated learning (SRL) have been found to improve learning outcomes. The effects of scaffolds can differ depending on how learners use them and how specific scaffolds might influence learning processes differently. Personalized scaffolds have been proposed to be more beneficial for learning due to their adaptivity to…

The present study investigates the effects of online collaborative writing instruction combined with metacognitive guidance on students' writing performance in German as a foreign language and their metacognitive awareness. For this purpose, a total of 90 students are randomly and equally divided into three groups: group with online collaborative…

Achieving a sufficient IELTS band score for academic purposes has been a major goal of many L2 learners around the world, especially those in Asia. However, IELTS writing scores were consistently reported to be the lowest when compared to the scores in speaking, reading, and listening. Despite a growing body of research in IELTS writing, little…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a curriculum based on self-regulated strategy instruction in college developmental writing courses. Prior research that had found large effects on the writing quality for essays without sources was extended to include strategies for critical reading and note-taking, writing summary response…

The ability to compose argumentative essays of sufficient quality is tantamount to the aptitude of thinking independently and critically, which is vital to playing an active part in one's society. Thus, the aim of teaching students this skill is incorporated into virtually every secondary school curriculum in almost all democratic countries around…

This study compares a problem-solving account of discovery through writing, which attributes discovery to strategic rhetorical planning and assumes discovery is associated with better quality text, to a dual-process account, which attributes discovery to the combined effect of 2 conflicting processes with opposing relationships to text quality.…

Although research about the effectiveness of second or foreign language collaborative writing for jointly written products has proliferated in the last few decades, there has been less examination of whether and how pre-task preparation could maximize the language learning opportunities that collaborative writing can afford learners. Informed by…

Mindful breathing has been linked to changes in physiology, but we took the practice further by examining whether a mindfulness breathing intervention, a three-minute breathing exercise marked by focused attention on the sensations of breath, affected writing anxiety, and writing performance measures. In addition, we examined mindful breathing as…

The paper presents the results of a randomized experimental study of a writing curriculum for college developmental writing courses based on strategy instruction with self-regulation integrated with practices common in college composition. Students in a full semester course learned strategies for planning and revising based on rhetorical analysis…

The present study attempts to provide empirical and qualitative evidence to support the feasibility of rubric-referenced self-assessment to promote learning in a Korean high school EFL context. Over four rubric-referenced self-assessment lessons, with the help of a teacher's instructions, students wrote a first draft and assessed it using a…

Aim/Purpose: Quality in higher education assumes the challenge of developing in all citizens of the 21st century the cognitive, motivational, and socio-cultural dimensions that provide them with communication competences including the use of information and communication technologies, for the dissemination of sustainable scientific knowledge in…

This study was based on the hypothesis that students' epistemological beliefs could become more expertlike with a combination of appropriate instructional activities: (i) preclass reading with metacognitive reflection, and (ii) in-class active learning that produces cognitive dissonance. This hypothesis was tested through a five-year study…

The purpose of this research study was to explore what effect instruction in metacognitive strategy (MS) use had on student achievement in a hybrid developmental English course at a community college. The study examined whether the addition of teacher-led or peer-led instruction in MS use would result in improved writing ability for the student…

Seventy-one normally functioning Spanish sixth-grade students participated in classroom-based training in cognitive strategies for preplanning and substantive revision of expository text. Short essays completed by these students pre-intervention, post-intervention, and after a 12 week delay were compared with those of an ordinary-curriculum…