Written corrective feedback has been subject to increasing attention in recent years, in part because of the conceptual controversy surrounding it and in part because of its ubiquitous practice. This study takes a meta-analytic approach to synthesizing extant empirical research, including 21 primary studies. Guiding the analysis are two questions:…

During this decade there have been numerous efforts to identify instructional practices that improve students' writing. These include "Reading Next" (Biancarosa and Snow, 2004), which provided a set of instructional recommendations for improving writing, and "Writing Next" (Graham and Perin, 2007) and "Writing to Read" (Graham and Hebert, 2010),…

For more than a decade now, a great deal of research has been done on the topic of written corrective feedback (CF) in SLA and second language (L2) writing. Nonetheless, what those research efforts really have shown as well as the possible implications for practice remain in dispute. Although L2 writing and SLA researchers often examine similar…

Transforming Writing is a two-year action research project which aims to develop a model for the teaching and learning of writing that more fully incorporates a focus on embedded formative assessment. In the first year of the project, the 12 participating schools developed a model of writing underpinned by Talk for Writing, an approach developed…

Building on Sheen's (2007) study of the effects of written corrective feedback (CF) on the acquisition of English articles, this article investigated whether direct focused CF, direct unfocused CF and writing practice alone produced differential effects on the accurate use of grammatical forms by adult ESL learners. Using six intact adult ESL…

Finds that visualization techniques were effective in guiding the revision process and that students remembered both specific details about the pictorial information used to guide the composing process and the underlying principles informing the techniques. Discusses visualization techniques in terms of their potential usefulness in reducing the…

Investigates whether an increased use of techniques of visual design in technical communication improves instructional materials intended for novice writers. Finds that instructional materials incorporating basic visual design principles are more effective than those that are primarily verbal, and that less-capable writers benefit most from…

A study examined the effectiveness of a metacognitive intervention that concentrated on eight subprocesses of writing and on executive procedures according to an "Orchestra Model" of text production. Subjects, 90 tenth-grade students, participated in the intervention which lasted for about six months and consisted of about 60 lessons.…

One researcher found that the most productive collaborative learning approach has at its core a communally evolved metalanguage to generate and maintain ongoing dialogue among students and between students and their teacher. A shared metadiscourse about writing was established in the classroom by working in small groups to determine qualities of…

A study examined the effectiveness of a writing center in improving student writing. All Composition 121 instructors except those who taught in the writing center were included. Students (1519 were enrolled in 69 sections of Composition 121) and instructors were randomly placed into three groups: Group I, the experimental group; Group II, the…

Conducts two studies that asked whether undergraduates who attended one-to-one conferences on rough drafts improved as writers. Notes the first year focused on peer tutors, so few changes remained for students to make, and results were inconclusive; but the second year focused on a professional tutor. Finds 65% of revisions made afterwards were in…

Examines whether business writing courses result in improved language skills as measured by the Descriptive Test of Language Skills of the College Board (DTLS). Concludes that business writing courses, although designed to teach students how to write effective business communication, have the additional value of improving students' basic language…

Discusses a model of argumentation adapted for instructional intervention with general education students and students with learning disabilities (LD). Reports results from three studies in which an experimental intervention has achieved some success in addressing the difficulties that students with LD have with argumentative writing. Draws…

Describes a "writing workshop" for eighth graders which focuses on the writing process as well as the finished product. Reports the approach's effectiveness by noting students' improvement on standardized exams and syntactic maturity of student compositions (as measured by the increase in number of words per T-unit). (MM)

This experimental, statistical study investigated the effects that a review of grammar and writing mechanics would have on the overall quality of college students' documents in technical/business communication. In the experimental group of 25 students, the professor assigned several exercises in grammar and mechanics as a review related to…