Conflicting ways to understand the nature of paragraphs, including their purpose and structure, have been central to composition theory for many decades. Yet English teachers across countries are experiencing ongoing pressures to mandate a specific paragraph template. This article traces the contentious, binary history of paragraph theory and…

Challenges with writing have been identified as a key factor in the timely completion of PhD programs. Doctoral writing groups, where students provide peer feedback on drafts, are increasingly being implemented as a potential solution to support and develop student writing. This paper presents an exploration of the impact of an online doctoral…

It has been widely recognised that plurilingual pedagogy offers many benefits both for language learning and learning in general. However, in contexts where the linguistic profile of students is diverse, it can still be challenging for teachers to view working with the language resources of their students as feasible. In this article, we discuss…

Australian students come from a wide range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds with each context providing unique challenges. Tensions however exist between the intentions to address diversity and the competing influence of a high-stakes context that prioritizes monolingual classroom practices and diminishes teachers' use of engaging pedagogy.…

Hattie and Timperley's (2007) model of effective feedback, widely used in teacher professional development, provides an easily-applied framework for thinking about the information contained in feedback. However, the model simplifies a complex phenomenon shaped in practice by interpersonal, disciplinary and institutional aspects. Examining the…

The ancient literary form of commonplace books offers rich possibilities to students and teachers of English in Australian schools in the 21st century. By briefly tracing early uses of commonplace books and examining contemporary approaches to the teaching of writing, this paper re-imagines the 15th century commonplace book as a personal learning…

Effective feedback is an essential tool for making learning explicit and an essential feature of classroom practice that promotes learner autonomy. Yet, it remains a pressing challenge for teachers to scaffold the active involvement of students as critical, reflective and autonomous learners who use feedback constructively. This paper seeks to…

Learning to read and write the Japanese language is not an easy task. For the non-Japanese speaker this can be a struggle and a challenge. Some schools in Western Australia offer children the opportunity to learn Japanese as a foreign language. Consequently, Japanese as a foreign language unit is offered to all undergraduate students in Education.…

To be fully prepared for the professional workplace, Engineering students need to be able to effectively communicate. However, there has been a growing concern in the field about students' preparedness for this aspect of their future work. It is argued that online writing tools, to engage numbers of students in the writing process, can support…

In recent years, contentiously for some, universities have developed generalist skills lists and associated curricula in response to government demand for more "employment-ready" graduates. Such training usually includes writing and communication. In Australia and the UK, guidelines designed to support the development of skills…

This paper presents research exploring "writing and text construction" practices in contemporary primary classrooms. In particular, the ways 17 teachers and their students engaged with technologies in the construction of classroom texts were investigated. The case studies presented prompt the necessity to extend more traditional…

Despite increasing attention to the challenges of supervising international doctoral students, little research has been conducted to examine supervisory feedback practice with international students and its impact on the thesis writing process. This exploratory qualitative study seeks to fill the gap and contribute to understanding the feedback…

Interviews Jan Turbull about her work with writing teachers in the St. George Writing Project in Australia. (HTH)

Integrated approaches to the teaching of reading and writing being used in classrooms in Australia and New Zealand are described in this booklet. The first part of the booklet presents theoretical background on how children learn to talk and the reading and writing processes. The second and third parts of the booklet describe ways of putting…

Presents a new model of the writing process, adding technic to the traditional elements of writer, subject, and audience. Offers 20 questions, based on the dynamics of the new model, to help students write and teachers respond. (RL)