This narrative study tracks low-income student perceptions of college writing. The study uses the Funds of Knowledge theoretical framework to suggest that underperforming high schools--like diverse households and families--socialize students into bodies of knowledge that are academically relevant regardless of whether or not they resemble…

The authors report on a study of writing transfer using a relatively novel method. Specifically, they use screencast videos to study the work of a dozen undergraduates who had taken first-year writing and were now enrolled in an interdisciplinary biology class. The authors argue that students were able to adapt to the writing requirements in the…

The current study was designed to unveil a group of EFL students' metaphors for English writing and determine whether engaging in peer dialogues helped students to modify their beliefs and practices. It was found that about one third of the elicited metaphors carried a negative tone towards English writing. The metaphor-sharing dialogues among…

This article describes a two-semester study of mixed (native and non-native speaking) writing groups in developmental college writing classes. The teacher assigned and observed writing activities and collected survey and interview data to determine the impact on the students' perceived writing abilities and attitudes toward paired and small group…

This essay explores what the development of writing might look like and how it might take shape in a secondary English classroom. The study problematises current definitions of progress. In direct opposition to standards-driven models, I propose an alternative way of thinking about the development of writers through a series of narrative accounts…

Introduction: In this study, the conceptions of learning and writing of a group of undergraduates enrolled in a teacher education programme were identified. The relationship between them were analysed, and a set of patterns of beliefs about learning and writing were defined. Finally, the relation between these patterns and the quality of a text…

This article takes survey and interview responses from undergraduate writing majors in two independent writing programs as points of departure for reflection on the disciplinary work of writing studies. Though scholarship about writing majors focuses on these programs as sites for the distribution of disciplinary expertise, students in this study…

Literacy activities in which children invest in and understand literacy creates spaces for them to construct their identity as readers/writers and build their personal theories of literacy. This study presents the identity construction of second grade students who identified as successful, average or struggling in their first time engagement with…

Writing in the Disciplines curricula can both challenge and reinforce assumptions that writing is a general skill that students will already have learned prior to doing the specialized writing in their chosen field of study. Rhetorical genre studies, however, tends to emphasize the situated nature of writing expertise, and thus supports the…

The academic writing competencies of nontraditional graduate students enrolled in accelerated graduate programs have become a growing concern for many higher learning educators in those programs. The purpose of this nonexperimental quantitative study was to examine the writing experiences that impacted nontraditional graduate students enrolled in…

Research is conducted all over the world to solve problems or to answer questions of significance to humanity. Academic writing or writing to report research is not easy because it requires adequate background knowledge, interest, motivation and hard work. This study investigates the major challenges in research writing faced by Libyan EFL…

Effective writers--professionals and students--break traditionally taught rules frequently. So why teach students rules that writers don't actually follow? English teachers bear the responsibility of offering young writers guidance--of teaching them stylistics "rules." But as thoughtful writing teachers, they are also responsible for observing…

In this article the author--a full-time high school mathematics teacher and concurrent doctoral candidate in Department of Middle-Secondary Education and Instructional Technology at Georgia State University--will make a case for the use of an autoethnographic methodological tool he is calling "narrative mining." He will begin by briefly…

Instructors across the disciplines require their students to write literature reviews. Although numerous sources describe the literature review process, instructors and students face difficulty when approaching the structure of a literature review. This paper presents a straightforward, efficient approach for teaching students how to write a…

This longitudinal case study, supplemented by cross-sectional comparisons among five groups of writers with differing backgrounds, investigates how Natsu, a Japanese multilingual writer, developed her L1, L2 (English), and L3 (Chinese) writing competence over two and a half years. To create a comprehensive picture of this multilingual writer, the…