In this article, the authors examine the effect of a National Writing Project professional development model on a group of middle school writing teachers. The authors examine how contact with other professionals in intensive week-long sessions as well as mentoring from the professional development coach affected the teachers’ concept of themselves…

Teaching writing has always been a controversial issue in the field of Foreign Language Teaching. And while there are a number of approaches and techniques for teaching writing in an English as a Second Language or English as a Foreign Language (SL/EFL) setting, very few comprehensive frameworks exist for an ESL/EFL writing teacher. The present…

Research reveals that many teachers express a discomfort about teaching writing; moreover, there is growing evidence that professional learning communities can have a positive impact on teacher learning and performance. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the relationship between teachers' involvement in a professional…

This article reports the findings from a year-long study of 6 writing teachers in an urban elementary school who also received intensive professional development in writing instruction from a nonprofit organization. Repeated observations demonstrated that the teachers displayed consistency in their use of the core instructional elements associated…

With a particular focus on the preparation of teaching assistants, this profile details the recent transition to a standardized English 101 curriculum at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC). More specifically, the profile details theoretical and practical incentives for the move, as well as political and logistical challenges…

This paper analyzed the common errors in university students' writing. At the same time, it showed some methods based on activities designed to give students practice in these problem areas. The activities are meant to be carried out in a comfortable, non-threatening atmosphere in which students can make positive steps toward reducing their errors…

Language teachers spend much of their time providing corrective feedback on students' writing in hope of helping them improve grammatical accuracy. Turning to research for guidance, however, can leave practitioners with few concrete answers as to the effectiveness of written corrective feedback (CF). Debate in the literature continues, reflecting…

Journaling is an effective tool for the development of writing skills and creative thinking; however, research has not revealed how it improves writing skills in the college classroom. The majority of the studies related to journaling are elementary school studies, which do not provide statistics on how journaling can improve writing skills for…

Given the current emphasis on disciplinary discourses, it's not surprising that so little recent attention has been devoted to identifying conventions that are universal in academic discourse. In this essay, the author argues that there are shared features that unite academic writing, and that by introducing these features to first-year students…

Knowing what students should be able to accomplish academically is the first step in knowing how to write accurate Individual Education Plan (IEP) goals. By giving students short Curriculum-Based Measurements (CBM) in areas such as reading, writing, and mathematics, teachers are able to determine current level of performance, or baseline. Teachers…

In tight financial climates, emerging technologies loom as enticing options to administrators: efficient and cost-effective solutions to both operational and pedagogical problems. Disciplinary knowledge, frequently hailed as the pinnacle of cultural capital in the academy, does not hold absolute power in rhetorical situations in which the material…

This paper aims to investigate the efficacy of two commonly used techniques of feedback in teaching writing: teachers' feedback and peers' feedback in the Saudi educational context. The study was comprised of 132 Saudi EFL students enrolled at the Department of English in the University of Hai'l. The data collection was carried out through a…

In order to prepare effective writing teachers, teacher educators need an understanding of how preservice preparation programs, inservice professional development, and the policies and practices of K-12 schools work together to influence teachers' writing instruction. This qualitative case study uses complexity theory (Davis & Sumara, 2006) to…

This article examines the outcomes of an eight-month professional development initiative, designed to support six Writing Project teachers' classroom inquiry projects, each focused on improving an aspect of student writing. We begin by introducing the genesis of these classroom research projects as well as the structure and content of the support…

Background: The need for improvement in writing instruction in schools is dependent on teachers being aware of evidence-based procedures in writing and implementing them on a regular basis in their classrooms. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the frequency with which teachers in Western Canada employed evidence-based procedures in…