Source-based writing is a common but difficult task in history and philosophy. Students are usually taught how to write a good text in language classes. However, it is also important to address discipline-specificity in writing, a topic likely to be taught by content teachers. In order to design discipline-specific writing instruction, research…

Background: Writing is an important and complex skill, which could be enhanced by teaching students effective writing strategies such as outlining. Electronic outlining - integrated feature in Microsoft® Word -- has been shown to enhance students' writing performance. However, little is known about the optimal didactic approach for electronic…

This paper explores the annotation and classification of students' revision behaviors in argumentative writing. A sentence-level revision schema is proposed to capture why and how students make revisions. Based on the proposed schema, a small corpus of student essays and revisions was annotated. Studies show that manual annotation is reliable with…

This study analyzed three analytical essays and three metacognitive reflections written by 36 high school sophomores during one school year. After they had written analytical essays, students wrote reflections in which they described their writing process, explained what they did well, and identified two areas for improvement. The study focused on…

We present an evaluation of the Writing Pal (W-Pal) intelligent tutoring system (ITS) and the W-Pal automated writing evaluation (AWE) system through the use of computational indices related to text cohesion. Sixty-four students participated in this study. Each student was assigned to either the W-Pal ITS condition or the W-Pal AWE condition. The…

To teach science writing effectively, scholars encourage combining writing to learn with applications of the science writing heuristic. How teachers learn to do so remains under-examined. This essay follows a cohort of ninth-grade science teachers who collaborated in a project to develop, test, and revise such a combination of writing prompts for…

If you want to learn how to shoot a basketball, you begin by carefully observing someone who knows how to shoot a basketball. If you want to be a writer, you begin by carefully observing the work of accomplished writers. Recognizing the importance that modeling plays in the learning process, high school English teacher Kelly Gallagher shares how…

In this study, 72 secondary English teachers from the Santa Ana Unified School District were randomly assigned to participate in the Pathway Project, a cognitive strategies approach to teaching interpretive reading and analytical writing, or to a control condition involving typical district training focusing on teaching content from the textbook.…

This study tested the hypothesis that self-regulation of writing is a multifaceted modular construct and that students would perceive different goal orientations for writing as involving the application of different writing strategies. Two hundred eleven Jewish Israeli high school students engaged in a writing assignment and then reported on their…

This article describes the preliminary exploratory process used to develop the research questions that will be addressed during a project to be offered in the 2005-2006 academic year. The project will bring together Maine high school and college faculty to learn from each other about shared needs, methods and priorities, in a year long series of…

This report offers a number of specific teaching techniques that research suggests will help 4th- to 12th-grade students in this nation's schools. The report focuses on all students, not just those who display writing difficulties, although this latter group is deservedly the focus of much attention. The premise of this report is that all students…