This study aims to enhance second language (L2) learners' motivation and facilitate successful L2 learning by using motivational languaging, an intervention that encourages learners to reflect on, and externalize, their L2-speaking, competent future self-concepts by writing or speaking about them. Two types of effective languaging activities were…

First-Year Seminars (FYS) are among the high-impact practices described by AAC&U. We studied the long-standing First-Year Seminar Program at our public research university for the ways in which writing assignments--individualized for each seminar--help faculty and students achieve program objectives in critical and analytical thinking, the…

This study investigates the benefits of collaborative writing tasks. Previous research from the perspective of the sociocultural theory of mind suggests that writing tasks completed in pairs offer learners an opportunity to collaborate in the solution of their language-related problems, co-construct new language knowledge, and produce…

This paper is an attempt to explore the interaction discourse of second language undergraduate learners in the online peer review process of a writing classroom in Hong Kong. Specifically, the writer sought to investigate the types of online discourse learners have in the peer discussions on their writing, and to examine the role of explicit…

For a number of years, Rebecca Luce-Kapler and Dennis Sumara have been investigating the ways in which literary practices of close reading can help change how we think and how we remember. They have also considered how such practices might help make us more critical of normative representations of remembered experience. More recently, they have…

The present study represented an effort to improve on the outcomes of the Puma (2006) study by creating a writing process program that provided students with compelling video models of effective writing practices in small writing teams. In this method, called Writing Wings with Media (WWM), students worked in 4-member, heterogeneous writing groups…

Suggests that through the shared experience of producing a story, students can understand plot on a deeper level and remember it more vividly than simply having it explained to them. (MS)

Describes how to conduct a collaborative group story-writing session with preschool children and encourage the creativity of the group. (MM)

Describes an effective method for having business writing students work together on a writing project. (JC)

Teachers at both college and pre-college levels have long realized that collaborative writing is an effective learning tool for beginning writers. Many have pointed out that collaboration in writing groups properly shifts the focus from the teacher to the student, and allows writers to take more responsibility for their own composing processes.…

Discusses a course on shared-document writing in which students indicate that they value the time allowed to coordinate groups and to understand and complete assignments. Asserts that structuring the course necessitates assigning work relating to a single topic and providing choices, including a voice in group formation and evaluation. (PRA)

Growth into literacy occurs most effectively with the engagement of the learner. The question is therefore: what motivates learners to sustain them through the struggle to attain literacy? In this aspect of literacy education, "lifewriting" can be a most powerful medium. Basic to all of the lifewriting programs described in the text,…

Describes one technical writing teacher's use of group writing projects in which students write and present a marketing report of a product they have invented. Points out that such projects teach students valuable skills in group dynamics, as well as technical writing skills. (ARH)

Discusses collaborative planning as a heuristic for dealing with the rhetorical elements often considered by experienced writers when they plan and prepare documents. Defines collaborative planning, identifies its benefits, discusses its implementation in upper-level business communication courses, and presents a series of examples of students…

Offers a view of writing as a process involving three forms of collaboration: coauthoring, workshopping, and knowledge making. Offers guidelines for designing courses in which writing is consciously, deliberately collaborative in all three of the realms identified. (MG)