A convergent mixed methods research design addressed the extent of benefit obtained from reading culturally inclusive prompts (i.e., four brief essays written by Latino authors) to improve essay writing in a developmental (pre-collegiate) English course. Participants were 45 Latino students who provided quantitative data. Chi square analysis…

The purpose of this research was to determine the effects of Cardio-Syntactic Analysis instruction on writing scores in an 11th grade English class. The sample consisted of 35 students enrolled in an Honor's English 11 class at Volunteer high School, in Church Hill, TN. The class was randomly assigned into an experimental group of 17 students and…

In fall 2013, Career and Technical Education (CTE)-focused composition classes were piloted to accommodate Leeward Community College's requirement for college-level composition for students in the CTE majors. The first CTE-focused class was an accelerated developmental education reading and writing course for students placing two steps below…

Creative writing courses are growing in universities and outside them. Publishers and agents even turn to them now as sources of promise and talent. This article describes a particularly successful MA in creative writing at Goldsmiths College in London and makes a case for the popularity and the usefulness to universities, to aspiring writers and…

This article presents and illustrates a qualitative research methodology for studies of uptake. It does so by articulating a theoretical framework for qualitative investigations of uptake and detailing a research study designed to invoke and capture students' uptakes in a first-year writing classroom. The research design sought to make uptake…

To clarify the role of desire in discursive practice, this article examines rhetorical theories of genre and Lacanian theories of the unconscious. The former, it is argued, might be refined to shed more light on actors' unconscious investments in and resistance to the desires maintained by genres. The latter, meanwhile, might be refined to address…

According to the authors, teachers often read about inspiring lessons in which historically marginalized students find their voices through assignments and projects that centralize issues of importance to the student. This article describes the authors' revision of a persuasive writing unit to scaffold not only writing skills but also students'…

The emerging field of creative writing studies has provided new conceptions of creative writing's role within the English discipline. These conceptions focus on the relation of creative writing to composition studies, and there remains a need to reconsider creative writing's relation to literary studies. "Reading for pedagogy"--the…

In many cases, teachers shy away from including much writing because of the many hours it requires to read and provide substantial feedback on such papers. Yet writing is widely understood as critically important to learning (Applebee & Langer, 2013; Mayher, 1983; Zinsser, 1989). This article describes a program from the Northwest Arkansas…

Whether novice or experienced, writers must come to terms with the daunting task of filling up a blank page, or screen, in an effort to produce writing. Student writers are no different. They enter teachers' classes having confronted similar difficulties with discovering what it is they want to say. In seeking to help students, they devote…

Research on the second writing process is not recent. Both first and second writing processes have been in the area of argument among scholars. It has been confirmed that both first and second writers nearly all practice similar physical activities pre-writing, during, and post writing stages; however, they still differ in the inner extra thinking…

This paper reports on an investigation of L1 English teachers' conceptual and evaluative beliefs about teaching grammar, one strand of a larger Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded investigation into the impact of contextualised grammar teaching [RES-062-23-0775]. Thirty-one teachers in English secondary schools were interviewed…

Young people have the potential to transform public perspectives about pressing social issues--if their audiences listen deeply to what they have to say. This article examines the ways that high school student participants in a community-university writing partnership employ self-disclosure, or emotion sharing, to encourage audiences to listen…

Background: Numerous reports have highlighted problems with writing instruction in American schools, yet few examine the interplay of teachers' preparation to teach writing, the instructional policies they must navigate, and the writing development of the students in their classrooms. Purpose: This study examines high school English teachers'…

In this manuscript, the author discusses the importance of conceptualizing place and space in teacher professional development intervention research. This article draws on data that was collected during a two-year study that followed 12 secondary English teachers who taught in a single school district, Stone Creek County, located in the rural…