Presented at the national conference for the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2010. This presentation examines the relationship between academic self-beliefs and outcomes.

A popular but unsubstantiated belief is that a reading disability is the most prevalent type of learning disability (LD), that LD in mathematics is rare, and that LD in written expression is very rare. In 485 clinical children administered the WISC-III and WIAT, 65 percent had LD. The most common was LD in written expression (92 percent), either…

This article reports on an Economic and Social Research Council-funded study into secondary-aged writers' compositional processes, both as observed in a naturalistic classroom setting and as gathered through post hoc reflections. The sample comprised 38 children drawn from Year 9 and Year 11 who were observed, using an annotated timeline,…

Drawing on the findings of an ESRC-funded research study, which included a detailed linguistic analysis of a large corpus of writing from secondary English classrooms, this article describes patterns of linguistic deployment at the level of the sentence. Given the limited number of applied linguistic studies which consider writing development in…

This study attempts to reliably measure literature reading and creative writing ability, and subsequently to determine whether a relationship exists between the two abilities. Participants were 19 eleventh-grade students: 11 were known to be good readers of literature, whereas 8 were known to be poor readers of literature. Each participant read 4…

Recent and ongoing research has demonstrated the alarming likelihood of children from low-income homes and from ethnic minorities to read at much lower reading levels than their peers. Additionally, reading ability is related to the earliest of emergent literacy skills, which can be measured in young children before they enter formal schooling.…

The 25 mini-lessons provided in this book are designed to develop students' self-regulated writing behaviors and enhance their self-perceived writing abilities. These foundational writing strategies are applicable and adaptable to all primary students: emergent, advanced, English Language Learners, and struggling writers. Following the SCAMPER…

Higher education settings in the United States typically include several types of writing assessments. Since tests determining students' placement into writing courses are often high-stakes, it is imperative for those who make placement decisions to be knowledgeable of the different types of learners entering higher education in order to make…

The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which the linguistic forms used by adolescents in electronic mail (e-mail) differ from those used in standard written language. The study was conducted in French, a language with a deep orthography that has strict, addressee-dependent rules for using second person personal pronouns (unfamiliar…

Although peer review has been shown to be beneficial in many writing classrooms, the benefits of peer review to the reviewer, or the student giving feedback, has not been thoroughly investigated in second-language writing research. The purpose of this study is to determine which is more beneficial to improving student writing: giving or receiving…

In this article, I describe how policy changes instituted by our State Board of Education prompted the composition faculty at Boise State University to develop a Stretch program. Our goal was to support basic writing students by linking two writing courses (one of which is non-credit-bearing) , thus allowing students to remain with the same…

Despite the growing use of writing assessments in standardized tests, little is known about coaching effects on writing assessments. Therefore, this study tested the effects of short-term coaching on standardized writing tests, and the transfer of those effects to other writing genres. College freshmen were randomly assigned to either training…

In this article, the author offers his critiques on Downs and Wardle's course, Introduction to Writing Studies. Downs and Wardle use their course to alert students to the very misconceptions that prompt the shift from "teaching writing" to "teaching about writing"--namely the inability of first-year composition courses to make good on the pledge…

Art is visual literacy, some would say more basic than writing and speaking, because it is not hampered by the barrier of language. The process of creating a visual narrative and understanding visual literacy is multi-faceted. Because similar cognitive strategies are used in the practice of both visual and written literacy, incorporation of…

One area of writing that may be particularly problematic for less skilled writers and writers with learning disabilities is constructing well-formed sentences. In this single-subject design study, sentence-combining practice with a peer-assistance component was used to improve the writing ability of 6 fourth-grade students with and without…