Note-taking is a commonly applied pedagogical strategy across all areas of education. In higher education specifically, there has been an increasing push to get students involved in collaborative note-taking in order to increase their engagement with the contents and to inspire deeper and more meaningful learning. However, there is a lack of…

Purpose: The overarching purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to determine the degree to which differences existed in Grade 4 STAAR Writing performance by student economic status, gender, and language status. In the first article, the purpose was to investigate the extent to which student economic status (i.e., Not Poor, Moderately Poor,…

Reading, writing, and mathematics are widely regarded as foundational academic skills upon which many other academic skills depend. Consequently, each receives a considerable allocation of resources for instruction, assessment, and intervention in K-12 education (Hooper, 2002). An additional indicator of the importance of these skills is the…

Pedagogical shifts that incorporate multimodal and digital literacies challenge the world in which literacy teachers have lived and worked. Effective professional development (PD) experiences may increase teachers' knowledge and enlarge their teaching paradigms about writing instruction. The current study explored ways PD might encourage teachers…

This paper describes an investigation of the relationship between students' writing knowledge and second language writing performance. Metacognitive and metalinguistic knowledge contribute significantly to writing performance. As a foreign language, 78 undergraduate students took a writing knowledge class and a writing proficiency test. The…

This study reports on validation of a writing motivation survey and its relationship with a variety of indicators of academic performance of 566 undergraduate students drawn from six US postsecondary institutions. A writing motivation survey was used to capture students' writing goals, confidence, beliefs, and affect. Two research questions are…

This study explored possible reasons why IELTS candidates usually score low in writing by investigating the effects of two different test designs and scoring criteria on Iranian IELTS candidates' obtained grades in IELTS and World Englishes (WEs) essay writing tests. To this end, first, a WEs essay writing test was preliminarily designed. Then, 17…

The aims of the current project were to: (a) describe lexical diversity, morphologically complex word use (MCW), and writing quality ratings of 5th-grade students with diverse language backgrounds and (b) to examine the relationship between analytical components and writing quality ratings with performance on measures of language and literacy…

This study explores the impact of mind mapping on the writing of English as a Foreign Language [EFL] among Saudi learners and the bilateral effects of mind mapping and other writing processes. Little research has been devoted to the effect of electronic mind mapping as a mediating tool. Despite the cyclical nature of writing processes, the…

This article reports on a qualitative secondary data analysis of a study of upper elementary students' narrative writing progress in U.S. rural schools. It compares students working online in pairs with those working alone. We explain why the intervention had some positive effects for struggling writers but few effects for skilled writers. The…

Automated writing evaluation (AWE) is a cutting-edge technology-based intervention designed to help teachers meet their challenges in writing classrooms and improve students' writing proficiency. The fast development of AWE systems, along with the encouragement of technology use in the U.S. K-12 education system by the Common Core State Standards…

The instruction of metadiscourse markers to L2 writers has been recommended by some scholars to assist them in employing a certain tone in persuading readers. Nonetheless, there is a dearth of research investigating the effect of process-based instruction on hedging and boosting devices to L2 learners. To fill this gap, the present study aimed at…