Convinced of the power of PBL to promote students' critical thinking as demonstrated by its application across disciplines, we designed a series of problems for students in a second-year writing course. We collected samples of their writing before and after implementation of the problems. We were concerned about whether PBL pedagogy would…

This study, using a mixed methods design, examined the use of a photograph-based model to improve students' language and writing skills. Classes were assigned to receive the photograph-based intervention (experimental) or to receive the regular language-based curriculum (control). Both second and fifth grade students in the experimental group…

Effects of peer response using instruction in genre knowledge on the writing of 140 sixth-grade students are investigated. In one condition students were taught specific genre knowledge involving functions of linguistic indicators of time and place. In another condition students were taught more general aspects of communicative writing. Both…

Undergraduate students' experience of assessment in universities is usually of summative assessment which provides only limited information to help students improve their performance. By contrast, formative assessment is informative and forward-looking, possessing the leverage to inform students of their day-to-day progress and inform teachers of…

With the increased use of digital materials, undergraduate writers in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts have become more susceptible to plagiarism. In this study, the researchers designed a blended English writing course with an online writing tutorial system entitled "DWright." The study examined the effectiveness of the…

This article investigated the effect of weblog use in a process-based writing course on the writing performance of students as well as on their level of learner autonomy. The participants were 43 English language learners who were doing their BA in the field of English Language Teaching. The control group (n = 19) went through in-class writing…

Argumentation can contribute significantly to content area learning. Recent research has raised questions about the effects of discussion (deliberation) goals versus persuasion (disputation) goals on reasoning and learning. This is the first study to compare the effects of these writing goals on individual writing to learn. Grade 7 and 8 students…

Using an experimental study design (N = 41), we examined whether participation in an informal writing assignment, specifically writing a letter to a friend about course content, improved exam scores in an undergraduate child development course. Findings indicated that participating in the writing assignment significantly improved scores on an exam…

This study examined whether instruction in genre knowledge enriches students' feedback on each other's writing, resulting in better writing quality. In total 140 sixth-grade students (age 11-13) participated in the study. Two approaches to peer response with additional instruction were compared. In one condition, students were taught specific…

This study examined introductory journalism writing courses and compared hybrid (part online/part classroom) versus online grammar instruction. The hybrid structure allowed for grammar topics to be taught online, with a pretest following, and then reviewing missed/difficult pretest concepts in class prior to a posttest. The quasi-experimental…

This study aimed to investigate the effect of a program based on English digital stories on second-year preparatory pupils' writing performance and reflective thinking. Two writing performance tests (pretest and posttest) as well as a reflective thinking test were prepared by the researchers. Two 2nd-year intact classes from El Sadat Prep School…

This pilot study aims at integrating a socio-pragmatic concept, Cooperative Principles, into an experimental writing project on the genres of comparison and contrast. It reports on a six-week study of five undergraduates voluntarily recruited in a university located in central Taiwan. In surveying their writing momentum before and after the…

The nature of peer feedback and its impacts on writing in English has attracted much attention of researchers and educators. Recent studies have indicated various types of peer feedback and its positive effects on writing development. This paper presents the results of an investigation into the nature of peer feedback and its effects on learners'…

This study illustrates how a synergy of two technologies--Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning (ICALL) and corpus linguistic analysis--can produce a lasting improvement in L2 learners' ability to edit persistent grammatical errors from their writing. A large written English corpus produced by Korean undergraduate and graduate students…

Self-regulated strategy development is an evidence-based practice for use with students with emotional and behavioral disorders (E/BD). This study adds to the current research base by conducting the first investigation in a residential facility for students with E/BD and the first classwide investigation at the elementary level with students with…