The impact of an in-service professional development course on writing teacher attitudes and pedagogy

In education, it is commonly believed that the quality of teachers' learning experiences directly affects the quality of their students' learning experiences. Specifically, teachers' continuing learning may bring about positive effects on student learning. For the past ten years or so, research has emphasized the effects of professional development courses on teachers in hard science disciplines. Little attention has been paid to study the influences of those courses on teachers in the 'soft' sciences, such as English language, especially in the area of teaching of writing. Against this background, I undertook a study to investigate how an in-service professional development course influences the teaching attitudes of writing teachers who enrolled on the course and their teaching practice. I argue that the professional development course empowered the teachers with skills useful for the teaching of writing. I also argue that the course positively changed the attitudes of the teachers towards their practice in the teaching of writing. It is suggested that teachers need to engage in continuing professional development to improve the quality of their teaching

Cohesion, Coherence, and Children Narrative Writing Quality: Topical Structure Analysis

Cohesion and coherence of writing have been important topics in academic writing research. Few studies have examined the relationship between cohesion, coherence, and quality of elementary school pupils’ writing using the topical structure analysis. This study reports the results of an analysis of English language narrative compositions of 19 elementary school pupils, to identify the link between cohesion, coherence, and children’s narrative writing quality. Independent-Samples t tests were performed. Results show that students with low writing quality produced more indirect, less unrelated sequential progression. They tended to overuse ‘and’, ‘so’, and ‘then’ in the current study. The study contributes to our understanding of teaching cohesion and coherence in writing among young learners

Peer review activity and a search‐engine based corpus system

For the past two decades, we have witnessed a number of peer review research studies in both first and second/foreign language writing classrooms. Few studies, however, have been done to build a custom search‐engine based corpus system that performs searches on relevant texts for academic writing tasks, such as peer review activity. The study investigates students’ perception of the peer feedback task using a search‐engine based corpus system called Word Engine. The participants were 322 first‐year undergraduates across disciplines who took an academic writing course at a large public university in Singapore. Data were collected from background questionnaires about the participants, peer reviews on first drafts of the students’ papers, and students’ final papers after incorporating feedback from the peer review. Findings showed that students believed that peer feedback activity was useful. They made revisions on various aspects including discussion of results, the development of ideas, macro‐rhetorical goal of the paper, and the use of academic language such as hedges. Students used Word Engine because it excluded all nonacademic websites. The study contributes to the field of academic writing and corpus linguistics, particularly how peer feedback with the use of Word Engine can promote student autonomy in learning

The Effects of Writing Instructors’ Motivational Strategies on Student Motivation

While the last decade has witnessed a growing body of research on student motivation in second language acquisition, research about the impact of writing instructors’ motivational strategies on student motivation has remained underexplored. In order to fill this important gap, this study, guided by motivational strategy framework, investigates the effect of writing instructors’ motivational strategies on student motivation. Participants were 344 first-year undergraduate students taking a writing course at a university in Singapore. Classroom observation schemes, student surveys, and surveys with writing instructors were collected. Findings show that the more the writing instructors reported using strategies in generating students’ initial motivation in the classroom, the more the students reported having positive attitude and improved self-confidence in the writing course. This study contributes new knowledge to the field by relating writing instructors’ motivational strategies to students’ positive attitude in learning, the feeling of success in written assignments, and their self-confidence

Understanding writing teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge: A study with five in-service teachers

The growing emphasis on emerging technologies in education has required in-service teachers to develop more technological knowledge. However, little is known about the application of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) on subject matter knowledge in language teaching. This qualitative study examined five writing teachers’ implementation of instructional objectives, instructional strategies, and technologies to teach writing as well as their assessment of learning using the TPACK-Writing perspective. Lesson observations were conducted for each teacher. Adopting a case study design, the observation transcripts were analyzed with a focus on the teachers’ execution of the instructional objectives, instructional strategies, and technologies to teach writing as well as their assessment of learning. The results showed that the complex nature of writing pedagogy with TPACK-Writing as a construct was mediated by cultural factors such as an examination-oriented system and teacher-centered pedagogy. The results also suggested that the application of TPACK-Writing should involve a student-centered approach rather than a teacher-centered approach, which implies the need for teachers to acquire a high level of knowledge of learners and the instructional context to promote effective pedagogy

The construction of authorial voice in writing research articles: A corpus-based study from an APPRAISAL theory perspective

This study explores voice from an APPRAISAL theory perspective. It aims to investigate how published research writers deploy ATTITUDE and GRADUATION resources to review existing literature in the field. The study is based on a corpus of literature reviews (LRs) from 204 research articles (RAs) in computer networks and communications (CNC) and second language writing (SLW). Findings show that 1) writers demonstrate a strong preference to express their attitude through APPRECIATION rather than AFFECT and JUDGEMENT resources; 2) more FORCE than FOCUS resources are used to upgrade attitudinal meanings realized through ATTITUDE resources or to evoke APPRECIATION; and 3) one-way ANOVA and post hoc tests have detected significant differences in the use of AFFECT and JUDGEMENT resources and in two sub-categories of FORCE and FOCUS resources. The study contributes to new knowledge by relating ATTITUDE and GRADUATION resources to the construction of voice in the disciplines of CNC and SLW.&nbsp

A structural equation model of environmental attitude and behaviour : the Hong Kong experience

The present study aims at establishing a structural equation model relating affect, verbal commitment, and actual commitment using a sample of 271 university students (119 males, 152 females) by applying the theory of reasoned action (Aizen & Fishbein, 1980). A linear structural equation relation (LISREL) model was developed to verify that verbal commitment is a function of affect, and in tum, determine actual commitment. Sixty percent of the variance of verbal commitment could be explained by affect, and 19 % of actual commitment could be explained by verbal commitment; yet only a small percentage of the variance of actual commitment could be explained by affect. It can be concluded that verbal commitment is a good mediator of the affect- actual commitment relationship, and therefore the theory of reasoned action of having intention as the mediator of the attitude-environment relationship can be generalized to a Chinese sample

Plasma lipoprotein subfraction concentrations are associated with lipid metabolism and age-related macular degeneration

10.1194/jlr.M073684Journal of Lipid Research5891785-179