Recent years have witnessed an increased interest in automated writing evaluation (hereafter AWE). However, few studies have examined the use of AWE with apprehensive writers. Hence, this study extends research in this area, investigating the effect of using AWE on reducing writing apprehension and enhancing grammatical knowledge. The participants…

Writing anxiety is a term for a wide variety of apprehensive and pessimistic feelings about writing. The purpose of this study is to identify factors contributing to writing anxiety experienced by EFL students in writing essays and the strategies they apply to manage it. The possible factors of the anxiety were elaborated into close-ended…

This study investigates a novel approach to automatically assessing essay quality that combines natural language processing approaches that assess text features with approaches that assess individual differences in writers such as demographic information, standardized test scores, and survey results. The results demonstrate that combining text…

Since the inception of the Writing Across the Curriculum movement more than 30 years ago, scholars have explored ways of enhancing students' writing performance. Faculty members across disciplines are often challenged by students' resistance to writing; resistance that may stem from anxiety, poor academic performance, and lack of recognition that…

Time and opportunity to discover truths are essential in education. Discovery takes repetition and trial and error. Discovery crosses intellectual and disciplinary boundaries as well. What is learned through the diverse experiences of one's academic and individual lives will pollinate each other if there is room left for discovery. The tyranny of…

This study tested the influence of writing self-efficacy, writing apprehension, perceived usefulness of writing, and writing aptitude on 218 fifth graders' essay-writing performance. Students' beliefs about their abilities directly influenced apprehension, perceived usefulness, and performance, and partially mediated the effects of gender and…

Deals with university faculty's and students' perceptions of essay-writing difficulties in examinations and on coursework and ways to improve these problems. Offers a framework for analyzing types of writing problems and offering support. (MG)