While the last two decades have witnessed a growing body of research on the quality of student writing, research on the impact of the socio-cognitive approach on young learners' writing has remained scarce. To fill this gap, this study investigates the effects of the socio-cognitive approach on the writing quality of 98 fourth graders in…

An overarching motivation driving my research has been to further our theoretical understanding of how readers successfully comprehend challenging text. This article describes the theoretical origins of this research program and my quest to understand comprehension processes through the use of technology. Coh-Metrix was developed to measure, and…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate heterogeneous writing skills that are generally lower than their typically developing (TD) peers and similar to peers with attention difficulties like attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Recent evidence suggests children with ASD spend less time engaging in writing tasks…

With the accelerated move to online learning, writing skills have become increasingly important for managing digital genres, such as educational blogs and discussion forums. Although effective written communication via such media is important for student success, many university-level second language learners navigate these unfamiliar tasks…

Writing tasks are essential in students' academic literacy learning experience. An important factor for success with academic writing tasks is task representation, which refers to how students understand the assigned writing tasks. Second language (L2) writing research has taken interest in this topic. However, most research has focused on the…

Collaborative communication skills are underdeveloped through higher education experiences; therefore, employees need to develop these skills while working. Current research has not focused on how employees identify collaborative communication skills developed from informal workplace learning experiences, specifically those presented as coaching,…

Portfolio assessment (PA) as an assessment "for" learning (AfL) alternative has been under-represented in second/foreign language acquisition (SLA) research literature. This study examined the potential impacts of electronic PA (e-PA) on English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) learners' engagement modes in descriptive and narrative genres of…

This study employed a multisite design to investigate the differential impact of deductive and guided inductive instruction for second language (L2) grammar development in ecologically valid classroom contexts. Students (n = 138) from eight intact third-year L2 Spanish classes in three public high schools in the United States received deductive…

The present study explored negotiated interaction with Grade 6 students (age 11-12) engaged in communicative tasks supported by Club Penguin Island, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Unlike previous studies on digital games, the present study assessed the use of Club Penguin Island during face-to-face interaction.…

This article explores the role of theatre clowning with scaffolded reflection in Waldorf (Steiner) teacher learning in enabling L2 teachers to develop important teaching dispositions. Waldorf schools require their L2 teachers to be creative, imaginative, skilled in narrative and presentation as well as being responsive to student needs and…

Digital Game Based Learning (DGBL) was considered as an effective way to engage learners and enhance learning performance. This case study demonstrates a design case that uses DGBL to support writing practices using student-centered pedagogy in K-12 education. Minecraft is used as a tool of transferring students' imagination and abstract design to…

To investigate L2 adolescent learners' use of machine translation (MT), an MT error correction (EC) test was developed, based on the analysis of MT errors arising from translating the learners' L1 of middle school EFL textbooks. Learners were also asked to report on their use of MT EC strategies on the EC task. Results indicated that…

Framed by theories of youth, culture, identity studies, and literacy identity formation, this article examines how youth articulate themselves as writers. Using interview transcripts, analysis explored writing identity from the perspective of teens in urban, suburban, and rural settings. Findings from this qualitative study suggest that youth used…

This study investigated the unique contribution of orthographic awareness, letter knowledge, and patterning skills to early literacy and arithmetic competence. A total of 145 third-year kindergarten (K3) children (M[subscript age]: 73.43 months, SD = 5.36; 70 boys, 48%) from Hong Kong participated in this study. Children were assessed on their…

The reader's ability to connect new information to existing knowledge is crucial when reading a text. Nonetheless, text complexity, in many ways, is more linguistic than cognitive. It encompasses the degree of sophistication, and how challenging a reading section is. Depending on the section, such difficulty may appear on the vocabulary level, in…