A major concern with computer-based (CB) tests of second-language (L2) writing is that performance on such tests may be influenced by test-taker keyboarding skills. Poor keyboarding skills may force test-takers to focus their attention and cognitive resources on motor activities (i.e., keyboarding) and, consequently, other processes and aspects of…

This study aimed to describe the writing activities that test takers engage in when responding to the writing tasks in the "TOEFL iBT"[superscript R] test and to examine the effects of task type and test-taker English language proficiency (ELP) and keyboarding skills on the frequency and distribution of these activities. Each of 22 test…

The four-week university-sponsored summer Computer-based Writing (CBW) Program directed by the head of a special education initial teacher licensure program gave teaching interns opportunities to work with young struggling writers in a supervised clinical setting to address keyboarding skills, writing conventions and knowledge and application of…

Classroom teachers sometimes struggle trying to find time during the typical school day to provide the writing instruction students need to be successful. This study examined 29 fifth through twelfth grade classroom teachers' survey responses about their perception of the effectiveness of using an online blogging tool, Kidblog, to plan and provide…

This paper argues that traditional threshold-based approaches to the analysis of pauses in writing fail to capture the complexity of the cognitive processes involved in text production. It proposes that, to capture these processes, pause analysis should focus on the transition times between linearly produced units of text. Following a review of…

Multiple factors simultaneously interact during the writing process. The effect of these interacting factors must be considered if writing is studied as a dynamic and complex process that constantly changes. Based on that premise, the study aims to determine how the interaction between the reading medium and the communicative purpose of a writing…

Writing is an essential skill for success in many academic and professional settings. Despite receiving individualized feedback on their writing, many students struggle with writing in postsecondary education. This dissertation addresses this gap by focusing on the writing process--the moment-by-moment actions taken during writing--rather than the…

Feedback is an essential component of learning environments. However, providing feedback in populated classes can be challenging for teachers. On the one hand, it is unlikely that a single kind of feedback works for all students considering the heterogeneous nature of their needs. On the other hand, delivering personalized feedback is infeasible…

Rural teachers and educators are increasingly called upon to build partnerships with families who use languages other than English in the home (US DOE, 2016). This is equally true for rural schools, where the number of multilingual families is small, and the language and cultural backgrounds of students differs from those of school. This article…

This work aims to characterize students' writing processes using keystroke logs and understand how the extracted characteristics influence the text quality at specific moments of writing. Earlier works have proposed predictive models characterizing students' writing processes and mainly rely on distribution-based measures of pauses obtained from…

Writing in a language different from one's mother tongue is a daunting task. The same challenge may apply to languages that have diglossic features whose spoken form differs from the written form. This article investigates Arab students' writing behaviors (fluency, pauses, and revision) in response to an argumentative composition in their L1…

The last two decades have witnessed a quick shift from pen-and-paper writing to computer keyboard writing. Corresponding to this shift in the writing medium are vigorous research efforts to understand new features of writing in computer keyboard settings. Using Inputlog7.0, this study investigated the writing process of 60 Chinese English as a…

Second language writing researchers have examined the affordances of Automated Writing Evaluation programs in providing immediate feedback that helps improve students' writing outputs. However, a little is known about tracking learners' process during writing essays and whether much/less pauses made by learners could predict good/poor quality of…

Most research into second language (L2) writing has focused on the products of writing tasks; much less empirical work has examined the behaviours in which L2 writers engage and the cognitive processes that underlie writing behaviours. We aimed to fill this gap by investigating the extent to which writing speed fluency, pausing, eye-gaze…

Although fluency is an important subconstruct of language proficiency, it has not received as much attention in L2 writing research as complexity and accuracy have, in part due to the lack of methodological approaches for the analysis of large datasets of writing-process data. This article presents a method of time-aligned keystroke logging and…