Two hundred ninety-eight primary teachers (88% female) from across all Australian states and territories reported on the frequency with which they implemented instructional adaptations for struggling writers in their classrooms. They also rated their preparation and self-efficacy for teaching writing. The majority of participating teachers…

Tom Nicholson and Sue Dymock analysed research on teaching writing to identify the skills students need to write for impact. Their approach is based on a simple view of writing: it is ideas presented well. The two volumes of this book work together to explain and show teachers how to teach students these essential writing skills. Nicholson and…

Writing is a key area of literacy in the early years, however writing receives less research attention than reading despite its impact on students' learning generally, and literacy development specifically. Writing skills have also been shown to be quite stable--good writers in the early years stay good writers in the later years. Therefore it is…

This article presents a case study which aims at analyzing the influence that the first language has on the learning of a foreign language. This research was conducted in an ESL classroom from a Language Center in England and was carried out with a Saudi Arabian student during a two-month period. In order to conduct this research, theoretical…

Writing is a complex process, and this complexity poses particular challenges when researchers and teachers approach the task of analysing young students' writing samples. This paper outlines a program of research undertaken to develop a writing analysis tool. The tool is designed to map shifts over time in the range of skills and competencies…

This study examined the effects of Interactive Writing, a dynamic approach to writing instruction designed specifically for young children, on the independent writing of first graders enrolled in urban schools in a large metropolitan area. Children in the Interactive Writing condition (N = 49) showed greater growth on measures of independent…

This guide provides an evaluation system by which a teacher or parent can follow a child's progress in sentence structure, usage, punctuation, capitalization, penmanship, and composition from kindergarten through grade eight. Each page lists an objective that is coded so that it is possible to correlate related materials, such as test items,…

This paper specifies the assessment of those mechanics skills-handwriting, capitalization, punctuation, formats--that are needed for effective writing by students in grades one through six. An introductory section provides background materials, including explanations of how the skill specifications were selected and how they are presented in the…

Presents tips on improving the writing process of students with learning disabilities (LD). Information on a literacy intervention curriculum for students with LD; Impact of the strategy on the sentence writing skills of students; Process of the curriculum with its corresponding modifications; Benefits of the writing instruction program to improve…

The aim of this book is to provide a compromise between past and present theories of language teaching and learning. The book is organized into six main parts. In the first part, the author highlights the strengths and weaknesses of both the skills-based approach and the whole-language approach. He then presents a theory that emphasizes the…