The principles of readability are in every style manual. Readability formulas are in every word processor. What is missing is the research and theory on which they stand.

this paper we compare two algorithms for linearising hypertext networks and describe how hypertext linearisation has been incorporated into a computer-based writing environment.

The purpose of the study is to compare the writing proficiencies of first- and second-language learners and to examine their teachers’ beliefs about the writing students produce. The four fifth-graders were nominated by their teachers as either strong or weak writers. Text analysis methods were used to analyze the writing proficiencies manifested in the compositions and interviews with the teachers about their views on writing. The results suggest that the writing skills of strong second-language children writers are virtually indistinguishable from those of strong first-language children. Furthermore, the weak second-language writers in this study did not lag significantly behind the firstlanguage writers. Finally, parents ’ informal Spanish-language instruction, coupled with formal English instruction, was sufficient for some bilinguals to write in Spanish. The study has implications for expanding the L1 and L2 relationship–L2 can support expanding L1 literacy. It also provides direction for the type of writing instruction that second-language learners considered weak writers need in order to become strong.

This study investigated the relationship between college freshmen’s stage of reflective judgment and the patterns in their written arguments using a mixed-method design with two major and two secondary data collection strategies. The Reflective Judgment Interview (RJI) was conducted with 15 college freshmen enrolled in a composition course that focused on persuasive writing. Participants ’ essays were examined for patterns in position-taking, evidence-usage, treatment of objections, and rhetorical strategies. Essays were examined “blind ” to participants ’ reflective judgment scores, and then analyses were compared across reflective judgment groupings. Participants ’ qualitative interviews and self-recorded reflections on Paper 4 were used to supplement analyses of their essays, and to provide information about contextual factors. Based on assessments made by independent raters, four participants were described as using predominantly pre-reflective judgment, and eleven were described as using predominantly quasi-reflective judgment. Qualitative interviews revealed that participants in both groups had received instruction in persuasive writing in high school, had taken advanced English classes, and were familiar with their own writing processes. However, participants rated as using predominantly quasi-reflective judgment tended to adopt balanced positions, differentiate their

Reading and writing have become the predominant way of acquiring and expressing intellect in Western culture. Somewhere along the way, the ability to write has become completely identified with intellectual power, creating a graphocentric myopia concerning the very nature and transfer of knowledge. One of the effects of graphocentrism is a conflation of concepts proper to knowledge in general with concepts specific to written expression. The words ‘literate ’ and ‘literacy ’ themselves are a simple case: their connotations sometimes focus on the process of reading text and sometimes on the kinds of knowledge that happen to be associated in our culture with people who read many books. This thesis has a conceptual and an empirical component. On the conceptual side a central task is to disengage certain concepts that have become conflated by defining new terms. Our vocabulary is insufficient to describe alternatives that serve some or all of the functions of writing and reading in a different modality. As a first step, I introduce a new

Abstract not found

Abstract not found

Abstract not found

As technological tools are now almost indispensable for foreign language teaching (Sotillo 2000), innovative pedagogy and methodology are required for the successful integration of computers into the foreign language curriculum. Like any other classroom tool, technology for language learning must offer opportunities to practice the language in authentic contexts and user-friendly environments. Internet technologies, because they have the potential to connect students across national and linguistic boundaries, abound with such opportunities. In particular, the Internet and related technologies can give new power to peer-assisted learning techniques by allowing language learners to communicate with native speakers of the language they are studying. In summer 2006, two primary schools, one in Scotland and one in Spain, participated in a novel program that incorporated peer-tutoring techniques in tandem learning activities and evaluated the effect on students' writing development in their second languages. The program linked English-speaking learners of Spanish with Spanish-speaking learners of English, capitalizing upon the novelty and purposefulness of using peers in another country as an audience. This small-scale research, which is part of a bigger project, seeks to assess the pedagogical value of reciprocal peer-tutoring methodologies via the Internet as an effective and engaging language learning tool.

The publication of this report was supported under the Educational Research and Development Center Program (R117G1O036 for the National Center for the Study of Writing) as administered by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education. The findings and opinions expressed in this report do not reflect the position or policies of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement or the U.S. Department of Education.