Using wikis to promote quality learning in teacher training

This paper discusses writing as a social practice and speculates on how wikis might be used to promote higher quality academic writing and support collaborative learning. This study of undergraduate teacher trainees’ online learning activities focuses on how shared spaces – wikis – might be used to communicate ideas and generate course‐specific content. The study also explored how students, through such activities, were able to improve their academic writing skills and engage more critically in learning. Data captured from student discussion boards and a post‐module email questionnaire (n = 35) were used to map student perceptions of the usefulness of wikis in support of their academic studies. The data indicate that most students raised their skill level in writing directly to the publicly viewable wiki space, in sharp contrast to the more informal content they posted on the discussion boards. The scope of collaborative writing was limited due to students’ reluctance to edit each others’ work, but students appreciated the shared environment as a means of discussing their work and the content of the course. Students reported that their academic writing skills had improved through their formal participation in the wiki.     

Writing to learn writing skills – a case study

The paper describes a case study in which the main objective is to understand how engineering students can improve their writing skills, regarding spelling and syntax, when taught specifically on these issues. The methodology Writing To Learn is applied in two courses and, making use of the written texts, the students’ writing skills are assessed and evaluated. In one course, writing skills are taught and assessed and in the other they are only assessed. The comparison allows conclusions on the success of teaching writing skills, the influence of text styles and the differences between basic and advanced writing skills. It was found that writing skills were successfully taught, particularly with regard to basic writing skills. Advanced writing errors are twice as common as basic writing errors. Schematic writing styles favour a reduced number of writing errors.     

Effects of feedback on collaborative writing in an online learning environment

The need for supporting student writing has received much attention in writing research. One specific type of support is feedback—including peer feedback—on the writing process. Despite the wealth of literature on both feedback and academic writing, there is little empirical evidence on what type of feedback best promotes writing in online environments. This article reports on research that tries to determine what type of feedback best improves the quality of collaborative writing and what the effects of feedback are on student learning in an environment based on asynchronous written communication. The results reveal that concerning the type of feedback, epistemic feedback or epistemic and suggestive feedback best improve the quality of collaborative writing performance. The nature of the feedback-giver (whether teacher feedback or teacher and peer) makes a difference to the final text only when the feedback is epistemic, or epistemic and suggestive.     

Making inter-disciplinary spaces for talk about and change in student writing and literacy development

This paper discusses the role of a writing centre in creating spaces for talk about and change in disciplinary writing pedagogy. It asks how collaborative partnerships between disciplinary academics and Writing Centre practitioners might be established and nurtured sustainably. Drawing on insights from two collaborations with academics in political studies and law, the article asserts that writing centre practitioners play a valuable role in talking about and changing the way academic writing and literacy is taught in the disciplines. This is shown by working consistently with the understanding that critical reading, thinking and writing are literacy acts rather than generic skills and must therefore be learned and practiced in the disciplines. By supporting disciplinary academics in re-examining course outcomes, materials and assessments, and moving away from a ‘skills approach’ to writing, it is shown that building discipline-specific spaces for writing and literacy development is possible through these collaborative partnerships.     

‘Getting it Write’ in social work: exploring the value of writing in academia to writing for professional practice

Writing plays a central role in social work practice and in the qualifying programmes studied by student social workers. The research on which this paper is based explores the value of writing undertaken in higher education to writing for professional practice in social work. Drawing on data sources from a ‘text oriented ethnography’, this paper explores the reflections of five recently qualified social workers making the transition from academic to professional practice. The significance of this study is heightened as social work practice and education are undergoing significant review at the time of writing. This review has identified the role of writing as important in both academic and practice domains. The paper suggests that there is currently no clear progressive link between academic writing in social work and the writing in practice required of graduate social workers. This paper offers some reflections on the implicit and explicit value of writing in an academic context to writing in professional practice.     

Assessment feedback in examiner reports on master’s dissertations in translation studies

Assessment is a crucial part of degree programmes in higher education. While previous research has been primarily concerned with PhD thesis assessment practice in western countries, this article considers the focus and assessment criteria of 40 examiner reports on master’s dissertations in translation studies at a Chinese university. The results indicate that these examiners structured their reports in four rhetorical moves: ‘preparing the candidate for a decision’, ‘expressing an evaluation’, ‘conveying the decision’, and ‘making recommendations’. These examiners appeared to place more emphasis on the expression of ideas, rather than on the accuracy and originality of those ideas. They apparently adopted flexible working criteria, assessing the dissertations based on institutional requirements and on their own experience. This article concludes with a discussion of implications for dissertation writing.     

Students' perceptions of Wiki-based collaborative writing for learners of English as a foreign language

This study proposes a Wiki-based collaborative writing approach to the writing process for EFL (English as a foreign language) learners. A five-stage computer-mediated collaborative writing project including collaborative planning, partitioned drafting, peer-revising, peer-editing, and individual publishing was blended with on-campus English composition course. Fifty-one L2 learners at a university in central Taiwan participated in this project. Procedural scaffolding and collective scaffolding were provided to promote students' self-regulation and thus to foster the development of students' writing skills. A cross-referencing questionnaire survey was adopted to investigate students' perceptions of Wiki-based collaborative writing and students' perceptions of their work in each stage of collaborative writing. As the results indicated, a high percentage of students' satisfaction showed positive perceptions of this Wiki-based collaborative writing environment, and the instructional design of implementing a Wiki-based collaborative writing project with a five-stage writing process does assist EFL learners to accomplish a collaborative writing task on the internet with less limitation of time. This article also points to new possibilities for future research.     

Introducing teachers to new semiotic tools for writing instruction and writing assessment: consequences for students’ writing proficiency

This article reports consequences for student writing quality based on a long-term professional learning project. Project teachers, representing all school subjects in grades 3–7, were presented with a writing construct, ‘Wheel of Writing’, and norms of expectation for writing proficiency. Participating teachers used the writing construct and norms as a basis for writing instruction and writing assessment. The project was conducted in 24 schools across Norway. 3088 students from 20 project schools participated. Two hundred and thirty three students from 4 schools were used as a comparison group. The investigation showed that students in primary school improved their writing quality significantly. Students in lower secondary school did not. However, there was substantial variation in writing quality effects between schools, classes, and individual students. For instance at a number of schools, project students from lower secondary school improved their writing quality significantly. The article discusses potential explanations of the effects.     

合作写作--元认知支持应用于作文教学的尝试

英国学者Fiona Yarrow和Keith J.Topping创立的配对写作模式,是一种非常灵活的结构性合作写作体系,它以整合元认知和社会互动的方法支持学生的写作发展。其中,带有元认知支持的配对写作流程图,不仅能有效地提高学生的写作成绩,而且能激发写作兴趣,增强自信心及自我效能感,培养协作精神。因此,该研究具有较高的理论意义和实践价值,是一项极具创新的作文教改实验,值得我们研究与借鉴。     

写作教学应追求思想美的境界

学生的思想美不美决定他的文章美不美,精神的贫弱、思想的空虚、思考的缺失难以写出美文。教师评判学生的作文过程就是＂发现并欣赏思想之美的过程＂,文章会表达作者的＂思想＂,＂好思想＂支撑好文章,＂有思想＂才能成就好文章。训练＂思想之美＂应该是写作教学的根本,训练美好的思想不仅可以写成好文章,而且可以成就美好的人。教师应努力在高中写作教学中捍卫精神健康、促进心灵高贵、追求思想之美,让写作呈现的思想之美影响学生的心灵,从而达到美好的教育境界。     

Native-English Speaking Instructors Teaching Writing in China

This article presents two separate but related studies on native-English speaking (NES) instructors’ teaching writing practice in Chinese universities. One study is a case study that explores the teaching practice of three NES instructors’ writing instruction in a southern Chinese university as well as students’ responses to their practice. Another study takes on an auto-ethnographic approach, in which the researcher retrospectively examines his own writing instruction as a college NES instructor in China with his new understanding of Bakhtin’s dialogic theory and theories of multi/biliteracy. The pairing of these two studies, methodologically and conceptually, illustrates the NES instructors’ teaching experiences in China from both an outsider and an insider’s perspectives. The findings of the studies indicate that one of the key factors that hinder the effectiveness in teaching writing in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts is the doctrine of ‘native fallacy’ widespread in the EFL field. This is an ethnocentric view of treating English as a hegemonic practice that drives EFL students to reach native-like English proficiency in both their English speaking and writing. The article concludes with a call for a paradigm shift in teaching and learning in the EFL field, which requires fundamental changes in the view of English from ‘native English’ to World Englishes or an international language for today’s globalized community.     

写作教学中的思维训练

写作水平的提高在很大程度上是由思维能力的强弱来决定的,本文提出应将思维训练作为写作教学的一个重点,在教学过程中渗透、强化思维训练,并以抽象思维训练、形象思维训练、发散思维训练为例,阐述了在写作教学中进行思维能力训练的方法要点,强调了思维训练要结合写作实践进行,处理好讲授写作知识与发展学生思维能力的关系.     

Experiential learning in doctoral training programmes: fostering personal epistemology through collaboration

There has been increasing recognition for the need to reform doctoral training practices to foster students’ personal epistemology. This study describes the design and evaluation of a learning experience designed to help students understand the scholarly publication process. Firstly, this study discusses the design of the learning experience, describing the collaborative process of writing an interdisciplinary publication using both online and face-to-face learning. Secondly, this study evaluates the effectiveness of the learning experience by examining students’ reflections. We show that participation in the learning experience helped students to develop their academic writing proficiency, collaboration and teamwork, intercultural competence, and ability to engage in reflective practice. Importantly, we show that each student also created more individualised knowledge, gaining insight into how they and others think. This study, therefore, demonstrates that personal epistemology can be fostered through collaboration in a doctoral writing group context.     

构建“三阶段写作模式”,培养学生的英语写作能力

从“三阶段写作模式”的形成、特点、具体操作及其初步成果分析等四个方面进行论述 ,并突出模式中教师的主导作用与学生的主体作用 ,旨在通过该模式的实践提高学生的英语写作能力     

Teacher–writer–crafter–maker: an exploration of how making mattered for one writing teacher

This qualitative case study documents a secondary English teacher's making, writing and teaching. The focal teacher engaged in diverse making practices – including composing, crafting and digital fabrication. She also participated in a National Writing Project (NWP) Summer Institute that focused on both teacher writing and digital composing. Data include observations at this NWP Project Summer Institute and in the focal teacher's English classroom, as well as interviews and artefact collection related to her making practices. The findings describe how this teacher's making mattered for her understandings of writing and for her teaching (or not). The case offers insights into why it may be important to cultivate educator making, as well as potential tensions between experiencing making and incorporating it into writing pedagogy. Ultimately, it contributes to writing research interested in examining how various forms of production and making are enmeshed.     

African international doctoral students in New Zealand: Englishes,doctoral writing and intercultural supervision

While the experiences of international doctoral students, especially those from Asian countries, have been well researched, fewer studies have explored the experiences of African students in Southern countries like Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. This article reports on doctoral writing and student and supervisor perspectives on English languages in a small study of supervisors and African students in New Zealand. It challenges deficit constructions of African students and illustrates how the growing internationalisation of higher education is adding to the complexities of doctoral writing, raising questions as to how students and supervisors recognise and navigate differences in Englishes and doctoral writing. It makes a number of recommendations about how supervisors might work effectively with African and other doctoral students.     

应用写作学的对象、矛盾、构想研究

应用是人类活动的产物，它既在社会生产中发展，又推动社会生产有序发展，作为一门学科，一国三地对它的解释大同小异，在经济全球化的发展趋势中，对应用写作学的研究对象和特殊矛盾进行具体研究，创建具有中国特色的应用写作学，既具有理论价值，又具有实用价值。     

Developing Students as Writers Through Collaboration

Revision is recognised as a key and complex element of the writing process. Despite this, research shows that students find it difficult effectively to revise their own writing due to a lack of metacognitive awareness and understanding of the processes they undertake when writing. The first part of this inquiry studies nine students’ understanding of the writing process and the revision strategies they employ using think‐aloud protocols and follow‐up interviews. Although the students all agreed that revision was an important part of improving their writing, they could not, or found it difficult to, articulate reasons for the changes they made to their writing. Therefore, the second part of the study explores the potential of collaborative writing to encourage and facilitate metacognitive talk through the implementation of a strategy where students are paired with a ‘writing buddy’. Observations of classroom work and interview responses of students showed that the scheme was successful in providing students with an experience of writing which was social, flexible and holistic, where talk is used to externalise thinking in order to develop a metacognitive understanding of the writing process.     

Writing and pseudo‐writing from Internet‐based sources: implications for learning and assessment

In recent years, plagiarism has been on the increase across the Western world. This article identifies Internet access as a contributory cause of this trend and addresses the implications of readily available Internet sources for the teaching and assessment of writing in schools. The basis for the article is a previous study showing a wide incidence of plagiarism in the Internet‐based writing of students in three classes at upper secondary school level in Norway. I relate the students' choices to writing as a cognitive process and as a cultural practice. My basic assumption is that the students' writing is work. It is this work we have in mind when we relate writing to learning and when we assess students' skills on the basis of their written texts. Access to the Internet changes the premises for this work because writing can be replaced by ‘pseudo‐writing’. ‘Pseudo‐writing’ is a work reducing writing practice, which neither excludes nor coincides with what we traditionally associate with plagiarism in schools. The main point in this article is that when students have access to the Internet during essay writing, the result is unavoidably a product of both writing and pseudo‐writing. Internet access thus leads to greater uncertainty about the role writing plays in student learning and makes it more difficult to take written assignments into account in assessing students' school results and effort.