关于写作本质的思考

"写作就是写文章"这一判断掩盖了写作的真实目的,模糊了人们对写作本质的认识。从发生学的角度讲,写作是使用工具呈现主体精神世界的特殊劳动。这一劳动的目的是:传递信息、进行精神生产、磨砺思维、诗意地栖居。打开人类发展的历史画卷就会发现,文字出现以后历史发展的速度快得惊人,一方面是写作帮助人类积累了丰富经验;另一方面是写作磨砺了人类思维。因此,任何一个文明民族都不会轻易放弃写作。对现代人来说,手工劳动的机会越来越少,按照劳动是推动人类向前发展的重要动力这一原则,写作越发不可忽视,它成为人类保持头脑清醒和思维不断进化的重要手段。     

Reducing variation in the assessment of student writing

This paper extends the literature on grader variation and the role of moderation and socialisation processes in reducing this variation. It offers a fresh categorisation of academics’ assessment beliefs and expectations, and uses this categorisation to analyse the interaction between implicit and explicit expectations in relation to grader variation and socialisation processes. A combination of quantitative and qualitative data from a large class grading moderation process was used to identify the existence and character of residual implicit grader expectations, the impact of these implicit expectations in causing grader variation, and the effectiveness of socialisation in reducing the extent of variation. An effective strategy for designing and focusing socialisation processes is also outlined.     

Promoting higher levels of reflective writing in student journals

This paper traces the development over several years of an initiative involving student journals that was introduced into a tertiary science education course for pre‐service teachers to promote enhanced learning of how to teach science. Very soon after introducing the journals into course work the lecturer began engaging in ‘unplanned’ informal reflection (reflection‐in‐action and reflection‐on‐action) when she witnessed the shallow, often trivial nature of her students’ reflective writing and the lack of pedagogical insights they were gaining from the exercise. Motivated by her own ongoing scholarship the lecturer introduced purposeful coaching of reflective skills into her pedagogy to scaffold students’ learning and promote more useful reflection. The impact of these interventions on students’ reflective capabilities and learning were investigated using a formal action research cycle. Findings indicate that student teachers’ reflective skills improved and resulted in deeper and more focused thinking about how to teach science for learning.     

商务英语写作中的中介语错误研究

商务英语写作的中介语错误来源于语言和文化两个层面。语言层面错误主要体现为介词、冠词、动词等词汇错误和连词、语态、从句等语法错误。文化层面错误主要是受中西思维模式和价值观差异影响。中国学习者应加强这两个方面的学习以完成地道的、符合英语语言规则和文化价值观的商务英语写作任务。     

错误分析理论在高中英语写作教学中的应用研究

英语在高考必考的科目中是一门很重要的科目,英语分为听力、完形填空、阅读理解、改错、写作五个部分,在这五个部分中,写作是其中的一个难点,需要老师在学生的学习过程中加以教导。写英语作文和写语文作文是差不多的,都需要我们对于我们所学知识的理解、整合并且加以利用,需要我们平时有较为深厚的积累。在英语写作的过程中学生经常会遇到一些问题,犯一些错误,这就需要老师对这些错误加以分析,并获得经验和方法以此在日常的英语写作的教学过程中进行有效的运用。     

Peer facilitated writing groups: a programmatic approach to doctoral student writing

Very few empirical studies have investigated programmes in which doctoral students act as peer facilitators in faculty writing groups. We report on the development of a centrally delivered doctoral student writing programme in which twenty student participants were mentored and provided with the resources to initiate their own faculty-based doctoral writing groups. ‘Legitimate peripheral participation’ was used as a conceptual lens to interpret the data collected during the establishment and evaluation of the programme. All student participants in the preparatory training course, which was developed in consultation with postgraduate students and research supervisors, went on to become doctoral writing peer facilitators of peer writing groups. Insights from seven of these showed how a well-structured and supportive programme harnessed the benefits of peer learning by bringing personal rewards to participants and building institutional capacity around doctoral research writing literacies.     

The writing process: A powerful approach for the language-disabled student

Our understanding of the writing process can be a powerful tool for teaching language-disabled students the “how” of writing. Direct, explicit instruction in writing process helps these students learn to explore their ideas and to manage the multiple demands of writing. A case study of one student, Jeff, demonstrates how we structure the stages of writing: prewriting, planning, drafting, revising, and proofreading. When these stages are clearly defined and involve specific skills, language-disabled students can reach beyond their limitations and strengthen their expression. The case study of Jeff reveals the development of his sense of control and his regard for himself as a writer.     

The nature of student predictions and learning opportunities in middle school algebra

In this article, we describe how using prediction during instruction can create learning opportunities to enhance the understanding and doing of mathematics. In doing so, we characterize the nature of the predictions students made and the levels of sophistication in students’ reasoning within a middle school algebra context. In this study, when linear and exponential functions were taught, prediction questions were posed at the launch of the lessons to reflect the mathematical ideas of each lesson. Students responded in writing along with supportive reasoning individually and then discussed their predictions and rationale. A total of 395 prediction responses were coded using a dual system: sophistication of reasoning, and the mechanism students appeared to utilize to formulate their prediction response. The results indicate that using prediction provoked students to connect among mathematical ideas that they learned. It was apparent that students also visualized mathematical ideas in the problem or the possible results of the problem. These results suggest that using prediction in fact provides learning opportunities for students to engage in mathematical sense making and reasoning, which promotes students’ understanding of the mathematics that they learn.     

Becoming a teacher of writing: Primary student teachers reviewing their relationship with writing

This article investigates the extent to which Year One B.Ed student teachers arrived at university already possessing self‐confidence as writers. Both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection were used to identify students' self perceptions and confidence as writers and their understanding of processes of written composition. The article argues that to consciously engage student teachers in the writing process and to require them to reflect on that process can lead to their self efficacy as writers. Evidence from this study suggests one's self‐confidence, as a writer, is enhanced by explicitly engaging in self reflection of one's own approaches to writing. The findings have implications for course design of literacy components in teacher education internationally.     

错误分析理论在大学英语写作训练中的运用

通过错误分析理论时大学英语学生的写作错误进行分析研究,对主要错误类型进行了分类,并对不同类型的错误提出了不同的处理方法。     

University student approaches to learning science through writing

This study investigates the approaches adopted by students to a university writing programme designed to help them learn first‐year undergraduate science. The research design includes phenomenographic analyses of 19 interviews and 50 open‐ended questionnaires, as well as quantitative analyses of the qualitative data. The main results of the study are the close association between the quality of the students’ approaches to writing, including when they use technology, to the way they think about writing as a way of learning, and to the level of achievement they reach. The results suggest that writing programmes designed to help students learn science would be improved if their tasks embed issues such as what learning is possible through writing, how new technologies can be used to support meaningful writing and who should be offering models of how to approach university writing most meaningfully.     

Literature reviews,citations and intertextuality in graduate student writing

Literature reviews are a genre that many graduate students do not fully understand and find difficult to write. While the genre, language and rhetorical moves of literature reviews are widely researched, less research focuses on citation use in literature reviews. Teaching students ‘how-to’ write the literature review through explicit genre awareness is not enough. What is needed, is a focus on the discursive nature of citations since citations are a core ingredient in literature reviews. The complexity of citing, referencing and using sources is difficult to teach in university classrooms, especially in courses that focus on content knowledge. When it is taught, it is often imparted to students as conventions with particular organisational features around citation styles. Or it is taught within the discourse of morality and academic dishonesty that surrounds plagiarism. What is lacking is a pedagogy that relates citing to the more complex discursive practices that are implicit and deeply embedded in particular time-bound contexts. The purpose of this research was to explore citation patterns in 23 draft and final masters’ student literature review papers to better understand the ways in which students use sources in literature reviews with the aim of informing pedagogy. Findings indicate that the concept of intertextuality, specifically, transgressive intertextuality, intertextual engagement and discursive intertextuality can help with the teaching and learning of literature reviews and citation use.     

The effect of worked examples on student learning and error anticipation in algebra

Instructional Science - The present study examines the effectiveness of incorporating worked examples with prompts for self-explanation into a middle school math textbook. Algebra 1 students...     

Examining student conceptions of the nature of science

The purpose of this research was to examine pre-college students' understandings of the nature of science and track those beliefs over the course of an academic year. Students' conceptions of the nature of science were examined using a model of the nature of science developed for use in this study. The model has eight tenets which address both the nature of the scientific enterprise and the nature of scientific knowledge. Findings indicate participants held fully formed conceptions of the nature of science consistent with approximately one-half of the premises set out in the model. Students held more complete understandings of the nature of scientific knowledge than the nature of the scientific enterprise. Their conceptions remained mostly unchanged over the year despite their participation in the project-based, hands-on science course. Implications for teaching the nature of science are discussed.     

Using rubrics in student self-assessment: student perceptions in the English as a foreign language writing context

The instructional value of rubrics for promoting student learning and aiding teacher feedback to student performance has been extensively researched in th educational literature. There is, nonetheless, a dearth of studies on students’ rubric use in second/foreign language contexts, and fewer studies have investigated the factors affecting rubrics’ effectiveness for promoting student learning. The paper reports a classroom-based inquiry into students’ perceptions of rubric use in self-assessment in English as a Foreign Language context and the factors moderating its effectiveness. Eighty students at a Chinese university participated in the study. The data collected included their reflective journals and six case study informants’ retrospective interviews. Results showed that the rubric was perceived as useful for fostering the students’ self-regulation by guiding them through the stages of goal-setting, planning, self-monitoring and self-reflection. Both within-rubric and rubric-user factors were identified as affecting the rubric’s effectiveness in student self-assessment. The findings are discussed with reference to the design features of rubrics. Implications are drawn for formative rubric use in student self-assessment.     

Grade one peer and teacher feedback on student writing

This article examines a grade one teacher's support for her students’ writing development through formal peer and teacher feedback. The teacher modelled and provided examples of effective feedback and good writing in whole-class and small-group lessons and in her own one-on-one verbal feedback on student writing. She allocated time for the students to participate in formal peer-feedback sessions, in turn giving feedback to the students on the suggestions to one another during these sessions. Students gave more content-oriented than conventions-oriented feedback to each other. They revised the content and writing conventions of their writing in response to 90% of the feedback they received from their peers and teacher.     

英汉语义对比与英语写作错误分析

本研究以42篇大学生书面写作中的错误为样本进行词汇语法错误统计分析。研究结果表明:大学生书面写作中错误最多的出现在句子层面,主要表现为不断句、主被动错误、独立短语做主语、主语缺失等;在词汇层面,错误最多为动词,主要表现为搭配不当、时态误用等。其次是名词错误主要表现为单复数一致,缺乏冠词修饰等。结合错误类型,从英汉语义对比及母语迁移影响角度解释错误原因,并对大学生英语教学提出相关建议。     

Essay writing in biology: An example of effective student learning?

The views of first-year biology students (N=337) on an essay writing assignment were evaluated by means of a questionnaire. The students were asked to reflect on the strategies they employed, the number and type of resources used, their areas of difficulty and to evaluate their own performance. The data were used to elucidate possible areas of discrepancy between the approach taken by the students and that suggested by the Biology Department via information in student manuals and evaluation criteria. The data were also compared to similar studies on student writing previously reported for students of psychology and history. Finally a series of recommendations is made to help staff to allow their students to develop improved writing strategies, minimise the possible difficulties encountered and allow the writing exercise to fulfil its desired outcome, that of being an integral part of the process of learning.     

The nature of feedback: how different types of peer feedback affect writing performance

Although providing feedback is commonly practiced in education, there is no general agreement regarding what type of feedback is most helpful and why it is helpful. This study examined the relationship between various types of feedback, potential internal mediators, and the likelihood of implementing feedback. Five main predictions were developed from the feedback literature in writing, specifically regarding feedback features (summarization, identifying problems, providing solutions, localization, explanations, scope, praise, and mitigating language) as they relate to potential causal mediators of problem or solution understanding and problem or solution agreement, leading to the final outcome of feedback implementation. To empirically test the proposed feedback model, 1,073 feedback segments from writing assessed by peers was analyzed. Feedback was collected using SWoRD, an online peer review system. Each segment was coded for each of the feedback features, implementation, agreement, and understanding. The correlations between the feedback features, levels of mediating variables, and implementation rates revealed several significant relationships. Understanding was the only significant mediator of implementation. Several feedback features were associated with understanding: including solutions, a summary of the performance, and the location of the problem were associated with increased understanding; and explanations of problems were associated with decreased understanding. Implications of these results are discussed.

The reliability and sources of error of using rubrics-based assessment for student projects

Rubrics are widely used in higher education to assess performance in project-based learning environments. To date, the sources of error that may affect their reliability have not been studied in depth. Using generalisability theory as its starting-point, this article analyses the influence of the assessors and the criteria of the rubrics on the assessment of two service-learning projects. A sample of 365 novice students studying for three different undergraduate degrees was evaluated by eight student assessors and two teachers at three stages of assessment. Depending on the type of project and the stage of assessment, between 19.27 and 39.55% of the total variance was attributed to the quality of the projects, 0–7.49% to the main effect of the raters, and 3.44–17.3% to the main effect of the criteria. The results demonstrated that acceptable levels of reliability (≥.70) were obtained with three raters and eight criteria or four raters and nine criteria in contexts of relative or absolute decisions, respectively.