While substantial evidence has demonstrated the effectiveness of peer assessment, how peer assessment—more specifically, providing feedback—contributes to learning is unclear. To explain why providing feedback improved kindergarten students’ letter writing ability, we examined whether teaching students how to provide specific feedback drew their attention to key features of letter formation and...

This study examined the effects of an innovative comprehensive writing program in upper primary education on students’ writing performance and on teachers ́ classroom practices, beliefs and skills. The program focused on the communicative nature of writing, on writing as a process, and on explicit teaching of five genre-specific writing strategies. It was implemented by 43 teachers in their regu...

In recent years plagiarism has been on the increase across the western world. This article identifies internet access as a contributory cause of this trend and addresses the implications of readily-available internet sources for the teaching and assessment of writing in schools. The basis for the article is a previous study showing a wide incidence of plagiarism in the internet-based writing of...

Self-assessment and peer-assessment have been appraised in a large number of studies, aiming at investigating their effectiveness in different contexts. However, the challenges of implementing self-assessment and peer-assessment have been investigated rather sporadically. Given that, the purpose of this study was to explore the challenges and probable solutions of implementing self-assessment a...

in expecting much from their joint labours. The work before us is divided into two portions, the first embracing the history, classification, statistics of insanity, is from the pen of Dr. Tuke; the remaining chapters, which treat of the diagnosis, pathology, and treatment of mental disorders, are by Dr. Bucknill. Our space will not allow us to do more than briefly refer to some of the more imp...

After Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory (MIT), some language teaching practitioners set out to teach students in a way to help their dominant intelligence(s) blossom. In an EFL context, usually teachers’ main focus is to develop communication skills. Nowadays, writing is one of the main ways by which people communicate. Thus, this study aimed at investigating possible relationship between...

The present study explored the intensity level of authorial voice in relation to the quality of argumentative writing. 42 undergraduate learners of English as a foreign language (36 girls and 6 boys) spent 45 minutes to individually complete in-class position-taking writing tasks for three weeks. Their overall academic writing quality scores assigned based on portfolio assessment were studied i...

The NTID Writing Test was developed to assess the writing ability of postsecondary deaf students entering the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and to determine their appropriate placement into developmental writing courses. While previous research (Albertini et al., 1986; Albertini et al., 1996; Bochner, Albertini, Samar, & Metz, 1992) has shown the test to be reliable between multiple...