English language teachers in many countries around the world teach large classes of 40 or more students. Since the 18th century, many English teaching methods have focused on speaking skills. However, in recent years, globalization has heightened the importance of writing instruction. Writing skills have become increasingly important for English language learners in professional, academic, and personal contexts. Despite this increasing importance, to date, there has been limited research that shows how writing instruction is implemented in large, secondary school English language classes although large-class contexts represent the majority of English language classes globally. Therefore, this qualitative, exploratory study aimed to explore and understand writing instruction in one particular large-class context-public secondary school English language classes in C & ocirc;te d'Ivoire. Data were collected through autobiographical essays, interviews, and teaching artifacts and analyzed through narrative profiles. Major findings show that Ivorian secondary school English language teachers might not have much training for teaching writing. Additionally, Ivorian secondary school English language teachers face numerous challenges teaching writing, including student reluctance to write. Implications suggest the need to give more consideration to writing assessments and instruction and the need to ensure that secondary school English language teachers receive adequate training for teaching writing that fits their large-class contexts.
This article focuses on teacher educators' approaches to supporting discipline-specific undergraduate writing at the University of Strathclyde, the largest provider of initial teacher education (ITE) in Scotland. Although the Scottish Enlightenment had a substantial influence on positioning language, and therefore rhetoric, as a field of study (Shieber, 2023), contemporary Scottish higher education-including teacher education-has no teaching of rhetoric or composition and no formalised general writing education (e.g., first-year composition). Yet, ITE students are expected to write in a variety of genres throughout postsecondary education. We position writing instruction as part of socially just teacher education. Our qualitative study investigates how university teacher educators conceive of student writing and enact these conceptualisations in practice. This study offers insight into how teacher educators evaluate the role of writing in teacher education and how they connect it to professional practice, positioning writing instruction as part of socially just teacher education.
Focusing on genre-related episodes (GREs) identified in teacher talk, this article investigates how two preservice teachers enacted genre-based writing instruction during their practice teaching in a 9th-grade public school English class in T & uuml;rkiye. We adopted a teacher-oriented lens to investigate GREs, specifically paying attention to presentation choices and teacher talk during the genre knowledge elicitation phase-a move that facilitates eliciting students' prior genre knowledge and making connections to the target genre. By examining the types of intentional guidance embedded in these GREs, the findings suggest that, through overt instruction and supervision in TESOL practicum courses, preservice teachers attempted to incorporate genre-specific instruction and showed increased investment in using prompts and tasks that would elicit their students' genre-specific knowledge and organize their teaching around genres. Two important insights could be gained from this study: (1) TESOL practicum courses can serve as productive sites for cultivating genre-based writing expertise, enabling preservice teachers to design genre-rich lessons that support English as a foreign language student engagement with genre; and (2) GREs identified in classroom observations are valuable tools for examining new teacher genre-oriented deliberations during collaborative writing tasks. The article ends with a call to expand scholarly conversations on second language writing expertise and metacognitive awareness of genres to include a closer look at GREs during new teacher practice teaching.
This article outlines the curriculum and assessment regime related to writing in England that affects children in their final year of primary school (Year 6: ages 10-11). The assessment in England is colloquially known as SATs and, for writing, consists of a grammar, punctuation, and spelling test, alongside a separate teacher assessment of writing using a set of criteria. Both these assessments are statutory and are integral components of the accountability system for primary schools in England. From an interpretive perspective, this article explores how teachers perceive the assessment and how it influences their instructional practices through data collected from interviews with 10 Year 6 teachers. A broad discussion centres around the potential negative consequences of the assessment regime on the teaching of writing and includes the teachers' perceived impact of these assessments on writing instruction and the effects this has on the teachers' teaching practices. There is a particular focus on issues around "teaching-to-the-test" with some implications for policy.
French immersion (FI) programs have continued to grow in popularity across Canada and around the world (Garc & iacute;a et al., 2017; Johnson & Swain, 1997). With its unique content-based language pedagogy, teachers use the target language to teach most subjects of the school curriculum (Cammarata & Tedick, 2012). Research has found that FI students' language production skills (including writing) are not as strong as their comprehension skills (Erdos, et al., 2014). Questions remain about how to support students' L2 writing across the FI curriculum. Grounded in a theoretical understanding that recognizes language as a critical tool for the development of complex concepts (Wertsch & Tulviste, 1994), we set out to explore how immersion teachers can better support students' L2 writing development across the French immersion curriculum and which pedagogies show promise in doing so. Specifically, we examined how elementary immersion teachers can capitalize on the communication opportunities offered in content courses to further strengthen writing instruction. To do so, we analyzed different types of writing tasks designed to bring together language and writing outcomes. The study was developed using Action Research cycles of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting (Kemmis & McTaggant, 2000). Through qualitative data analysis of writing tasks and samples of students' writing, we identified various types of "writing across the curriculum" tasks that support the learning of language, literacy, and content. We then created an instructional framework highlighting pedagogical shifts and pathways that teachers can use to weave writing instruction across the French immersion curriculum. This framework allows for newly learned language and writing skills to be transferred and reinvested into writing tasks in content courses and enables teachers to develop reciprocity between "learning to write" and "writing to learn."
Curricula are an important but neglected part of the context of writing instruction; they mediate between policies, instructional practices, and student learning. Acknowledging the key role of teachers in interpreting and implementing curricula, we examine structural and contextual conditions that impact their agency in the "curriculum work" they do. Drawing on our international online survey of experts' (N = 46) views of writing curricula, we note teachers' role in development; the nature of writing curricula and where it is located; teacher agency and the support they receive, for interpretation and implementation; and the resulting perceived degree of alignment of enactment with the official curriculum. Teachers' role in the development of writing curricula is largely indirect, through consultation or participation of a small, selected number. Teachers are seen to have considerable agency in implementation; more than half of our respondents considered teachers had a fair amount or a great deal of autonomy. While responses suggest that a majority of curricula are relatively rich in terms of the theoretical perspectives they represent, some are narrow, and the coherence of others, with multiple perspectives, is questioned. Importantly, teachers reportedly receive limited support for implementation, while two thirds of our respondents considered teachers received only a small amount of preparation to teach writing. The data reinforce the need for the provision of quality, relevant resources, and opportunities for professional learning to support ongoing curriculum work of teachers in interpretation and implementation.
This article presents findings from an ethnographic, rhetorical study of children's experiences with free-time writing in so-called author schools for children in Denmark. The study is guided by two research questions: What characterizes writing enjoyment in the context of free-time author schools for children, based on children's own experiences? and How can insights from children's writing experiences in author schools inform broader pedagogical considerations about writing in formal school settings? The aim of the article is to contribute empirically grounded knowledge about writing enjoyment in an out-of-school teaching context and to explore how such knowledge might inspire broader considerations about a pedagogy for enjoyable writing experiences. Findings point to four core dimensions of writing enjoyment as expressed by the children: (a) writing together with others in a community of writing, (b) being free in writing and experiencing agency, (c) using imagination in writing to explore ideas and stories, and (d) being taught by an author, someone who is herself a writer. These insights are considered in relation to existing understandings of writing enjoyment and discussed as inspiration for a writing pedagogy that is experience centered rather than performance centered.
The Developing and Teaching Academic Writing (DATAW) Global Online Course (GOC) is a teacher professional development course for writing educators in diverse contexts. The DATAW GOC was designed to employ a flexible, learner-centered pedagogy that combines Backward Design principles, foundational concepts of academic writing, andragogical strategies, and sheltered English instruction standards to create optimal learning activities for a highly heterogeneous group of adult learners with different language skills and teaching experience. It also integrates modeling and scaffolding of teaching strategies, experiential learning tasks, project-based activities, and application of knowledge to GOC participants' teaching contexts and their students' needs. In this reflection article, we make connections between our DATAW course design decisions and our observations from course delivery. Teaching the GOC across 8 terms to 850 participants from 103 countries revealed significant variation in teaching contexts, class size, workload, pedagogical practices, educational systems, and English language proficiency. These insights guided our iterative revisions at the end of each term, which allowed for continued tailoring and improvement of materials and tasks in response to the contextual possibilities and inhibitors in participants' global contexts. By balancing theory and research-based best practices with participants' real-life needs, the DATAW GOC provided a flexible, responsive platform for educators to improve their teaching practices, ultimately cascading their pedagogical knowledge to positively impact academic writing instruction in a globalized educational landscape.
This article draws on data gathered during a 3-year study that was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and set out to investigate how dialogic metalinguistic talk mediates metalinguistic learning and informs students' writing choices. Working with seven secondary English teachers in the South-West of England, pedagogical strategies and lesson sequences were explored for their potential to promote dialogic metalinguistic talk in Key Stage 3 (11 to 14 years of age) classrooms. This article reports on how teachers used one specific strategy, described here as metalinguistic modelling, to make thinking about language choice explicit and to scaffold writerly independence. Drawing on qualitative data capture of 33 whole lessons, this study develops the notion of metalinguistic modelling as a "bridging" mechanism that connects talk, text, and writing in the dialogic development of metalinguistic understanding, mediating the internalisation of thinking about language choice and activating procedural activity. This article offers an empirical conceptualisation of metalinguistic modelling as a key repertoire of a metalinguistic talk pedagogy and advances a theorisation of its role in writing instruction.
Using both a Bakhtinian and a collaborative writing framework, in this qualitative study, we sought to understand writing practices in one elementary school. Through observations in three classrooms and interviews with students, the study found that students had opportunities to engage in a variety of collaborative writing activities, including supportive contributions and co-constructing a text. When engaging in supportive contributions, students inspired, assisted, or shared their work with peers. In collaborations of a single text, students who had experiences writing with one another negotiated ideas and texts successfully. In pairs where students experienced conflict, there tended to be fewer collaborative moments, and students sought help from the teacher. The study demonstrates that students' relationships with one another play a significant role in collaborative writing practices and highlights the important role of friendships in successful interactions.
This article examines how students use and perceive digital writing tools, including chat platforms and generative AI, within academic writing environments. It describes a qualitative study of 15 undergraduate students in guided focus group discussions. In a grounded theory analysis of focus group transcripts, the researchers explored undergraduates' sense of copresence-their perception of support through both human interaction with both peers and instructors and AI technologies during their writing processes. Findings reveal that students' trust in both peer feedback and AI assistance plays a crucial role in their writing, shaping their decisions about which tools to use and how they integrate human and AI feedback in the development and revisions of their writing. The study sheds light on students' nuanced understanding of the affordances and limitations of multimodal chat platforms and generative AI technologies. We conclude by highlighting the need for pedagogical practices that support students' choice of tools when collaborating in digital spaces. We suggest future research directions that will enable us to better understand how copresence and trust influence students' writing in these contexts.
Providing effective written feedback to ESL students poses a challenging yet crucial task for language teachers. While numerous studies have delved into critical feedback, few have explored students' perceptions of praise in written feedback. To gauge students' view of praise, we analyzed responses to two types: person praise (e.g., "You are a good writer") and performance praise (e.g., "You used the past tense correctly"). Language proficiency levels (high and low) and cultural backgrounds (Asian and Romance) were also considered. ESL students (n = 100) were given feedback on an essay they wrote and surveyed about praise comments. In addition, three focus groups were conducted. Quantitative data indicated a preference for both praise types, while focus groups revealed a preference for performance over person praise. Lower proficiency students valued and considered praise to be more change-invoking than high-proficiency peers. Additionally, students from Romance cultures favored praise more than Asian cultures. Interaction effects highlighted nuances, such as high-proficiency Asian students perceiving praise as less kind, valuable, positive, and clear than their Romance counterparts. These findings offer insights for teachers and administrators to develop an informed praise philosophy and recognize which praise type best meets their students' needs.
This article makes a case for the importance of integrating public writing pedagogy in and beyond second language (L2) writing classrooms. Public writing is defined as a situated, distributed act of engaging public audiences through writing, with various semiotic resources and modalities, to make meaning, connect, and bring about social change. L2 writers practice public writing deliberately or unwittingly, for various personal or political purposes, and within various discursive contexts. However, such practices are underresearched, undertheorized, and underdiscussed in L2 writing classrooms, which could be partially ascribed to the disciplinary disposition of the field L2 writing and to the ethical concerns regarding cultural assimilation. The article begins by contextualizing the definitions of public writing in relation to L2 writing. It then explains why it is important to discuss public writing in an L2 writing classroom and consider public writing a legitimate L2 writing issue while acknowledging the pedagogical resistance. In particular, the article highlights the decolonial potential of practicing public writing in an L2. In the final section, the article offers pedagogical guidelines and a graphic framework concerning the "where" and "how" of teaching public writing in an L2.
This study explores educator attitudes, beliefs, and experiences regarding writing and writing instruction before and after participating in a week-long Summer Institute (SI) facilitated by leaders at one National Writing Project (NWP) site. Throughout the SI, the 12 educators (i.e., instructional coaches and classroom teachers) participated in personal, creative, and professional writing designed to support them as writers and writing instructors. Study participants completed a survey before the SI and at its conclusion, which captured their perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, and experiences about writing and writing instruction, as well as the importance of writing in education. Findings demonstrated that many participants viewed themselves as writers prior to the SI with this amount increasing at the conclusion of the SI, and many reported increased writing confidence. There were inconsistencies in the ways participants defined what it means to "be a writer," and findings suggest that writer identity is influenced by writing confidence and enjoyment, with some participants struggling to navigate the dual identities of writer and writing teacher. Study findings suggest that addressing the writer-teacher identity crisis is crucial for fostering effective writing instruction. Teachers need time, space, and opportunity to immerse themselves in their writing and practice different skills to then apply to their instruction. Buy-in from school districts to provide such opportunities and a willingness to support teacher autonomy will enable teachers to better support students as writers and engage them in meaningful writing instruction for authentic tasks and audiences.
This systematic historical descriptive review was conducted to determine the trends and status of research using true and quasi-experiments (with pretests) to test the effectiveness of writing practices with students in kindergarten to grade 12. The analyses included 859 writing treatment/control comparisons, which were included in two previous meta-analyses (Collins et al., 2025; Graham et al., 2023). The search for studies in these two reviews ended in September 2021 and December 2022, respectively. The use of true and quasi-experiments (with pretests) to test writing practices increased dramatically across the decades from the 1930s onward, with 290 treatment/control comparisons conducted in the 2010s. The expansion in the number of studies conducted was accompanied by an increase in study quality as measured by internal/external research design indicators. Research in this area moved from an exclusive study of teaching spelling and handwriting in the 1930s through the 1950s to the study of a diverse array of writing practices in the decades that followed. As the number of writing practices tested increased, so did the number of measures used to assess the effects of these instructional methods. Most of the writing treatment/control comparisons originated in the United States/Canada, but starting in the 1970s European researchers began to make significant contributions to testing the effectiveness of writing practices. The most prolific researchers from 1931 onward were Steve Graham, Karen Harris, Gert Rijlaarsdam, and Sue Del La Paz. Limitations and suggestions for future research are provided.
In 1974, the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) drafted a statement recognizing students’ right to their own language. However, many writing classes, including those in college, continue to teach Standard English as the only acceptable language in the classroom. In this article, I argue that a critical place-based college composition course can demonstrate to students that nonstandard dialects can coexist in the writing classroom. Drawing on my experiences teaching critical place-based composition courses, I describe the writing assignments that encourage students to reflect on how their “hometowns” have influenced their current identities as well as to critique the commonly held assumptions that marginalized communities, such as Appalachia, matter less than places with more cultural capital. I also demonstrate how the assignments in this class can encourage students to critique the assumption that Standard English is the only acceptable language in the writing classroom. A critical place-based composition course has the potential to increase students’ sense of belonging in college, inspire students to be more culturally aware of the places they find themselves in, and aid in designing a composition curriculum that is more in line with the CCCC's statement recognizing students’ right to their own language.
Multilingual writing is a challenging process that requires adjusting to academic and cultural demands. Studies of multilingual writers acknowledge the need for learners to self-regulate their cognition, affect, and actions as they write. Scholarship in educational psychology emphasizes socially regulated learning, suggesting that the regulation of learning is facilitated or hindered not only by the self but also by others. There is, therefore, a need to examine how developments in educational psychology and multilingual writing inform efforts to promote language learners’ writing skills. This article introduces a theoretical model of self- and socially regulated multilingual writing that can guide empirical research. The narrative literature review method was used to inform the design of the model. The review revealed that self- regulated writing by multilingual writers involves activating background knowledge and motivational beliefs, which then lead to decisions about strategies to employ to accomplish a writing task. The review also identified effective processes of socially regulated writing, including cognitive strategy instruction and formative assessment practices, particularly feedback. Finally, the review surfaced gaps in the literature that could be addressed, including how multilingual writers interpret writing tasks, manage their time and environment, deal with distractions, respond to feedback, seek help, and reflect on their successes and failures.
This article offers insights into elementary-aged students’ perspectives as they embark on composing collaborative multimodal narratives. Contributions from research literature on the writing process, conference practices, and multimodality situate the study. Analysis of students’ responses on a retrospective interview protocol that focused on students’ recollections of the experience, illuminated three findings that may be used to generate questions for effective writing conferences for multimodal compositions. Questions can be asked to support students as they navigate technology, gain insights into modal selection, and determine their collaborative approach to the composing process. Moreover, learning more about students’ decisions as they compose multimodal texts leads to a richer understanding of the affordances of multiple modes in writing and recommendations for creative effective writing conferences.
