Written assignments are, perhaps, one of the most common types of coursework that students will encounter in their undergraduate studies. This study describes the communicative purpose and textual and linguistic characteristics of university assignments written for content classes, taking into account variation across communicative text types and…

Disciplinary literacy is gaining momentum as an approach to adolescent literacy. Believing that a key aspect of disciplinary literacy is knowledge construction, the authors introduce a model for relating disciplinary literacy with project-based inquiry. Rather than merely exploring topics during inquiry, students use practices of a discipline to…

Students in upper-level courses are expected to observe disciplinary conventions in writing assignments. Common recommendations for teaching conventions require substantial time for instructor feedback and in-class instruction. As an alternative, we tested the effectiveness of a checklist in improving students' performance of these conventions.…

This case study reports the results of a genre-based approach, which was used to explicitly teach the touristic landmark description to fourth-grade students of Spanish as a foreign language. The instructional model and unit of instruction were informed by the pedagogies of the Sydney School of Linguistics and an instructional model for…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) emphasize disciplinary literacy by making literacy instruction every teacher's responsibility (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010). The CCSS require content area teachers to adapt curriculum and pedagogy to support disciplinary literacy…

Prior studies indicate that vocational students' literacy practices are more demanding than is generally recognised. Employing a view of literacy acquisition as socialisation, we investigated the literacy practices of trades training in Carpentry and Automotive Technology, by interviewing tutors and examined course books and student writing. A…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the prospective teachers' ability to write context-based problems about the concepts in radioactivity unit. Methodology: The study is carried out in a university in Turkey with 21 prospective teachers in physics, chemistry and biology in 2014-2015 fall terms. In the study, data are collected…

This yearlong ethnographic case study investigated higher and lower track adolescents' experiences with core content-area (social studies, science, and math) writing in one urban working-class district. Teacher, student, and administrator interviews; field notes; and students' written work comprised the data set. The findings from this…

We designed and implemented a first-year seminar in science course at the University of British Columbia to allow students to develop and improve their scientific writing and argumentation skills. To evaluate the efficacy of the course, we examined the progression that students made between the beginning and the end of the course as assessed by…

The ability to think critically is an important trait of all members of society. With today's multinational, multicultural, complex issues, citizens must be able to sift through large amounts of various data to make intelligent decisions. Thinking critically must be a focus of higher education in order to provide the intellectual training for its…

Writing for an audience different from teachers motivates students to translate their existing knowledge into audience-appropriate language, in which students explain, elaborate, and integrate their understanding of science concepts using more than just the technical language of the subject. Several studies also have found that students can…

The authors suggest using scripting as a strategy to mentor and enhance author's voice in writing. Through gradual release, students use authentic literature as a model for writing with voice. The authors also propose possible extensions for independent practice, integration across content areas, and tips for evaluation.

A pilot program in a public high school positions experienced student writing center tutors to become WAC liaisons who foster writing across the curriculum by raising questions, identifying needs, and providing support to their teachers with the goal of strengthening writing instruction school-wide. This article discusses the background and…

This study investigated the effect of teacher error feedback on students' ability to write accurately. Three male first-year Physics graduate students at a university in Taiwan participated in this study. They were asked to write a 100-word passage about the greatest invention in human history. Within days of the teacher's grammatical feedback,…

Based on the belief that learning is deeper in meaningful contexts, Wilhelm makes a case for creating (authentically or simulated in the classroom) specific contexts that lead students into new identities, new perspectives, and new vocabulary. This is effectively accomplished by framing instructional units or curricular topics as inquiry,…