The Digital-Forward Writing Course

First-year writing and composition courses can be major roadblocks for students as their success in later courses often hinges on their abilities to construct a quality written document. Students enter composition courses with broad variation in their abilities and yet must all meet the same standards of completion. In order to address this inequity, greater opportunities for writing and in receiving feedback are paramount. Yet such opportunities would place a high burden on writing instructors in a traditional course. This chapter proposes the digital-forward writing course that draws on a combination of a number of digital tools and pedagogical strategies that can increase writing opportunities while maintaining or even reducing instructors' time commitment. This information is drawn from a workshop held in 2020 that asked writing instructors, instructional designers, developers, and other educators to ideate on meeting the challenges of the entire student writing journey. Specific tools and a discussion of the value of adaptive courseware are included.

Pirmais teikums: zinātniskā raksta pieteikums

Tips for writers found in books, articles, blogs, and website forums often focus on the first sentence, engaging the reader to read the entire text. Tips for writing the first sentence are mostly applied to essays, including academic essays. On the other hand, good examples of the first sentence are usually chosen from classical literary works, making it possible to assume that the first sentence has meaning in every text, including a scientific article. The aim is to study and describe the first sentence in articles in various disciplines in the Latvian language to establish the connections between the recommendations on how to start the text and the actual language material. For the aim’s implementation, sentences from 848 scientific articles in Latvian (a total of 9700-word usage) are analyzed. The articles chosen for the study have been published between 2008 and 2018 in three branches and sub-branches of science: medical and health sciences, social sciences, humanities and arts. The main conclusions are as follows: the authors of Latvian scientific articles most often choose in the first sentence 1) to make a statement, 2) indicate the historical or geographical context, 3) define the main term used in the article. This is partly consistent with the suggestions given by writing instructors on the possible attractive content of the first sentence.

Teaching Research Writing to Chinese Graduate Students: A Guided Discovery Genre Approach

One of the biggest challenges graduate-level research writing instructors face is how to motivate students in large and multidisciplinary classes effectively. This article explores the influence of a guided inductive and discovery-based genre approach on improving students’ knowledge of research writing. A questionnaire survey was conducted, and some of the students’ written assignments were analyzed. The survey results show that the students were generally satisfied with this approach and affirmed its effectiveness in increasing their knowledge of the textual organization, format and documentation, and language style in research writing. Examining the students’ written analysis of the move structure of abstracts indicates that this approach has enhanced the students’ ability to identify moves and facilitated their acquisition of more appropriate genre knowledge. Further examination of the students’ written reflections reveals a more in-depth understanding of their learning experience. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Am I Promoting Feedback Cycle and Sociomaterial Learning?

This study employed practitioner inquiry to determine whether feedback cycle and socio-material learning was promoted through the provision of written corrective feedback (WCF). The context of study was the final draft submitted in an academic writing course for arts and social science students. The practitioner inquiry was shaped by mixed methods, through the quantitative (categorisation) and qualitative (analytical) examination of WCF. The categorisation of WCF was guided by a feedback typology and the extent of learning opportunities. A total of 309 instances of WCF were found across 55 final drafts. Indirect and metalinguistic feedback on Content and Language was frequent. Furthermore, most of the WCF was restricted to the final essay, with minimal expansive opportunities for students to extend their learning beyond this writing course. In the subsequent analysis of the WCF, this study concluded that feedback was provided for the purpose of keeping track of work done. To really promote a feedback cycle or sociomaterial learning, writing instructors should consider improving students’ feedback literacy skills.

An academic kickstart

In 2017 only 30 students out of 120 inthe nursing education program passed the examination assignment, a scientific report,on their first course. The coordinators of the course set out together withtheir liaison librarian to change the depressing scores. They developed change in the course content and assignments were made to strengthen the students’ academic literacy. The teachers offered lectures about the nursing profession,science and nursing theory, the research process, ethics, communication and scientific writing. The liaison librarian developed a set of five lectures, workshops and a reference quiz. The content of the five lectures is: •Brief library introduction •Reference management in Active Learning Classrooms •How to search for references and how to review scientific articles,lecture and workshop •How to search for scientific articles in Cinahl, lecture and workshop •An openfive-hour workshop together with librarians, Supplemental Instruction leaders1 and writing instructors from the Language Resource Center. Instead of diminishing the academic literacy demands,the course content has been increased with extended academic literacy training and the students’ tasks rely more than ever on scientific grounds. The changes were made to give all the students prerequisites to successfully pass the course carrying more knowledge with higher academic literacy and thus being better equipped for the rest of their education.This semester 90 of 120 students passed the scientific report examination on their first attempt. This session, An Academic Kickstart, will explain how the developmental change evolved and how the principles of andragogy and the implicit effort to locate the students’ point of departure have enhanced the students’ learning process and academic literacy. 1A Supplemental Instructor is a student who already has passed the course and help other students to understand the concepts of the course content and to find effective study strategies https://www.hv.se/en/student/jobb-och-karriar/si-leader

Pre-Service Teachers’ Views on the Implementation of Game-Based Learning for Academic Writing Skills

Implementation of game-based learning has been perceived by educators as a means to enhance effective classroom learning. Aspects in games have been identified to motivate learners to actively engage throughout the learning as it provides a fun, engaging, and rewarding experience for the learners. Despite the widespread of games implementation in classroom learning, limited exposure has been noted in the context of language learning particularly in ESL classrooms. In regard to the aforementioned situation, the current study aims to discover the implementation of game-based learning in the context of language learning. Research related to writing skills found to be limited in nature; therefore, the current study has discovered a need to further investigate the implementation of game-based learning in writing classrooms. In this study, a total of 32 pre-service teachers have participated in a survey conducted to discover their views on the implementation of games in a writing classroom. Data were analyzed quantitatively using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) by evaluating the mean value of the findings. The analysis from the data obtained showed that these students responded positively to the use of games in the writing classroom. The students also believed that engagement among peers in the classroom appeared to be less threatening; therefore, knowledge transfer became naturally favorable throughout the pedagogical process. These results implied a useful insight for writing instructors to further equip language learners with the use of games in classroom learning.

Holistic vs. Analytic Scoring between Expository and Narrative Genres: Does the Assessment Type Matter?

The unprecedented emphasis on EFL students' development of their writing skills has invited researchers and EFL instructors to look for the most effective methods of teaching writing and assessing it. Within this context, two main dominant assessment types have been used by EFL writing instructors: holistic and analytic scoring with ambiguous research findings about the use of each. Moreover, ambiguity has also been surrounding variability in raters' scoring across genre types. This study aims at uncovering the difference between using the two scoring schemes across two genres in EFL writing: expository and narrative. Two texts each representing a genre type from 10th grade EFL writers' compositions were presented to a sample of 90 in-service EFL teachers for holistic scoring. Two months later, the same texts were presented to the same teachers for analytic scoring in order to compare between the grades assigned in each round for arriving at results. Results suggest significant differences between the scores obtained according to the grading method. Also, narrative essays received higher scores in both assessment types. These results are discussed, and recommendations are derived.