Welcome! Journal of Writing Research (JoWR) is an international peer reviewed journal publishing scientific research exploring the cognitive and social processes underlying written production, how writing is learned, and how it can be effectively taught, across all ages and educational contexts. Journal of Writing Research is diamond open access with no fees for either authors or readers. We publish 3 issues per year, with papers also available for early view. Scopus CiteScore ranks: Top 10% in Education. Top 5% in Language and Linguistics. If you register, you will automatically receive a notification when a new issue of the Journal of Writing Research is published.
Phase to phase: Developing an automated procedure to identify and visualize phases in writing sessions using keystroke data
Understanding the temporal organization of writing is key to studying writing processes. Existing methods to segment writing into phases often rely on arbitrary rules, extensive manual annotation, or focus on numerous transitions. This study aimed to develop an automated segmentation method to detect distinctive transition in the dominant writing process, particularly the transition from first draft to revision. For this, keystroke data (source-based L1 writing (N = 80) and text simplification in L2 (N = 88)) were manually annotated. The BEAST algorithm was applied for Bayesian change point detection, based on five characteristics derived from the annotation criteria: (1) percentage of the final text written so far, (2) distance between typed and remaining characters, (3) relative cursor position, (4) source use, and (5) pause timings. The first three features proved most effective in identifying change points. A rule-based approach was further applied to select one final change point, which resulted in mediocre accuracy ranging from 31% exact agreement to 49% agreement within 60 seconds. To conclude, the BEAST algorithm is useful in detecting a variety of change points in writing processes, yet connecting them to meaningful phases is still quite complex.
Copyright (c) 2025 Rianne Conijn, Alessandra Rossetti, Nina Vandermeulen, Luuk Van Waes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Introduction to the Special Issue | Operating units in written language performance: Linguistic and behavioral perspectives
This special issue of Journal of Writing Research addresses the fundamental question of performance units in writing: how can we characterize these units and which theoretical paradigms allow us to describe them? Despite their core role in the writing activity, there is no consensus on the nature of written performance units. In order to progress on this issue, the different articles presented in this special issue shed light on performance units, their description, definition and role in text construction. Different methodological and theoretical approaches, based on behavioral data, with pauses as a central indicator, illustrate how linguistic structures produced in these units constrain written production.
Copyright (c) 2025 Georgeta Cislaru, Claire Doquet, Thierry Olive https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Training programmes on writing with AI – but for whom? Identifying students’ writer profiles through two-step cluster analysis.
Generative AI has the potential to transform writing in schools and universities. This makes it necessary to develop training programmes for writing with AI, especially for students in teacher training. So far, however, little is known about the students' initial preconditions on which the trainings can be based upon. Evidence so far has come mainly from observational studies and questionnaire studies examining the frequency and type of AI use. However, the students themselves were not considered, nor the extent to which they can be categorised into groups. In other words, the focus has been on the writing rather than on the writers. To address this gap, the present article analyses data from a survey of N=505 students. To identify writer profiles, i.e. groups of students with comparable characteristics, we apply two-step cluster analysis. The students are clustered based on their use of AI for writing, as well as their level of awareness of AI applications, AI literacy, digital media literacy and writing-related self-concept. The results reveal four clusters, the two largest of which are characterised by the fact that students tend not to use AI, sometimes because they apparently have no awareness of AI, sometimes despite having such awareness. Merely one cluster, which describes 20% of the students, is characterised by regular use of AI for writing. The results therefore provide a useful insight for planning training in the context of university teaching.
Copyright (c) 2025 Gerrit Helm, Florian Hesse https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Student perspectives on the use of AI-based language tools in academic writing
Artificial intelligence-based Language Tools (AILTs) are being increasingly used in essay writing in higher education. Its application promotes global and multicultural perspectives in education and plays a critical role in advancing scholarly communication and research dissemination. However, these benefits cannot be measured without also considering student perspectives. This study analyzes the positive and negative aspects identified by students regarding the use of AILTs in their written texts at university. A total of 314 undergraduate and graduate education students were surveyed, and results were analyzed using the Reinert method. The results show that positive aspects are linked to the three pillars of text construction (planning, textualization, and revision). The negative aspects highlight concerns about academic integrity and student competencies. These findings can help guide teachers on how they can promote the responsible and beneficial use of AILTs.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mari Mar Boillos, Nahia Idoiaga https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
The KLiCKe corpus: Keystroke logging in compositions for knowledge evaluation
Despite the growing interest in the dynamics of the writing process in writing research, publicly available large-scale corpora of keystroke logs have been rare. We introduce KLiCKe, a freely available collection of keystroke logs for around 5,000 argumentative texts written by adults in the United States. The KLiCKe corpus also includes human-rated holistic scores for the essays as well as writers' demographic details, their typing skills, and vocabulary knowledge. We describe our methods for constructing the corpus and present descriptives for different components of the corpus. To illustrate the use of the KLiCKe corpus, we report a study using a subset of the corpus to investigate whether keystroke features are associated with holistic writing quality for L1 and L2 writers. The study shows that higher writing scores are related to shorter pauses in general, shorter between-word pauses, lower proportion of deletions, higher proportion of insertions, and less process variance. The KLiCKe corpus provides a robust resource for researchers to study the dynamics of text production and revision that will help spur the development of process-oriented tools and methodologies in writing assessment and instruction.
Copyright (c) 2025 Yu Tian, Scott Crossley, Luuk Van Waes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Book review | The hitchhiker's guide to writing research: A Festschrift for Steve Graham
Copyright (c) 2024 Jonathan M. Marine https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Good text quality despite deficient transcription skills
Current writing models suppose that the production of a good-quality text is a complex interaction of low-level transcription skills (handwriting fluency and spelling) and higher-level cognitive and text-specific formulation skills (such as building cohesion and using diverse and appropriate vocabulary). Low-level transcription skills, albeit important for text quality, can only explain a small part of its variance. Therefore, in this paper we investigate whether there exist children who show discrepant achievements in text quality and low-level transcription skills and how they can be characterized in terms of higher-level text-specific formulation skills. A total of 186 native German-speaking 5th to 7th grade students had to complete transcription skills tests and write a narrative text. Text quality and text-specific formulation skills were measured. The following results were obtained: (1) Students with double dissociations (deficient transcription skills/ age-appropriate text quality or the reverse) could be identified; (2) these groups differed significantly in text-specific formulation skills, namely lexical diversity, correct sentence building, and local cohesion. Generally, children with the same low-level transcription skills (whether age-appropriate or deficient) who wrote better texts, achieved higher scores in these variables. The findings emphasize the importance of text-specific formulation skills and their consideration in writing instruction.
Copyright (c) 2025 Rebecca Maria Kreutz, Julie Philippek, Ann-Kathrin Hennes, Alfred Schabmann https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Book review | Conceptualizing, designing, implementing, and evaluating writing interventions
Conceptualizing, Designing, Implementing, and Evaluating Writing Interventions, edited by Fien De Smedt, Renske Bouwer, Teresa Limpo, and Steve Graham, emerges as a comprehensive guide for researchers navigating the many steps to developing a writing intervention. Writing interventions are changes to a writer’s traditional approach which are meant to improve a writer’s cognitive processes in order to become a more skilled writer. These interventions are often implemented in classrooms, from primary schools to post-secondary education. This volume offers a start-to-finish overview of the intervention research process. The structure mirrors its title, dividing its contents into four crucial stages of intervention research. These stages are grounded in previous volumes on writing intervention research in the Brill Studies in Writing Series, which provide insight into how writing interventions have changed over the years and demonstrate a pattern of research design. Additionally, the need for a shared framework is emphasized through both reports from the National Commission on Writing (2004) and influential writing models by Graham (2018a, 2018b) and Hayes (2012), which recognize the significance of motivational factors in writing.
Copyright (c) 2024 Wren Bouwman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Examining reading and writing processes in a graduate level multiple text task: A think-aloud study
Writing from multiple texts is among the most common yet challenging tasks for higher education students. However, limited research has examined the strategies used by these highly competent readers and writers. The present descriptive study examines reading strategy use, writing strategy use, and writing performance in a sample of higher education students enrolled in graduate-level education classes. Students completed a scholarly multiple texts reading-to-write (S-MTRW) task, asking them to read three short research articles and to write a research report while thinking aloud and sharing their screen. Results indicate that students commonly reported evaluating, elaborating, and paraphrasing content during reading. During writing, students commonly engaged in summarizing, composing, and rereading information from the texts provided. Furthermore, the majority of students produced emergent documents models, reflecting limited attempts at synthesis in their writing about the research articles they read. A medium positive correlation was found between the number of instances students reported paraphrasing content while reading and the number of instances of multiple-text integration in students’ writing.
Copyright (c) 2025 Gala Campos Oaxaca https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Distinguishing effective writing styles in the PERSUADE corpus
Many linguistic studies of writing assume a single linear relationship between linguistic features in the text and human judgments of writing quality. However, writing quality may be better understood as a complex latent construct that can be constructed in a number of different ways through different linguistic profiles of high-quality writing styles as shown in Crossley et al. (2014). This study builds on the exploratory study reported by Crossley et al. by analyzing a representational corpus of 4,170 highly rated persuasive essays written by secondary-school students. The study uses natural language processing tools to derive quantitative representations for the linguistic features found in the texts. These linguistic features inform a k-means cluster analysis which indicates that a four-cluster profile best fits the data. By examining the indices most and least distinctive of each cluster, the study identifies a structured writing style, a conversational writing style, a reportive writing style, and an academic writing style. The findings support the notion that writers can employ a variety of writing profiles to successfully write an argumentative essay.
Copyright (c) 2025 Wesley Morris, Scott Crossley, Langdon Holmes, Joon Choi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Effects of text structure instruction on expository text writing: An intervention for grade 7 English as foreign language learners
Expository text writing is an essential skill for EFL primary school students, particularly where English is the medium of instruction. This quasi-experimental study examined the effects of explicit text structure instruction on the expository text writing of grade 7 EFL learners. Two intact groups of learners were randomly selected from two schools and designated as the experimental (n=44) and control (n=39) groups. The experimental group received explicit text structure instruction in two phases, while the control group followed the regular curriculum. Analysis of the post-test data using ANCOVA indicated that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in text structure identification (η2= 0.34), as well as in writing simple descriptive (η² = 0.28) and cause-and-effect paragraphs (η² = 0.37). An in-depth analysis of the participants’ writings showed that the experimental group included more main ideas/supportive details, and more precise word choices in their simple descriptive (η2=0.57 and η2=0.07) and cause-and-effect paragraphs (η2=0.43 and η2=0.35), respectively, with effect sizes ranging from medium to large. Moreover, the participants in the experimental group demonstrated significant improvements in their topic sentence writing quality, particularly in simple descriptive paragraphs (η² = 0.06), with a medium effect size. Finally, the study concludes with practical implications for EFL writing instruction and recommendations for future research.
Copyright (c) 2025 Andualem Tesfa; Dawit Amogne, Yinager Teklesellassie, Dereje Negede https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Sentence-centric modeling of the writing process
Linguistic modeling of the writing process has gained in importance in recent years. Existing models, both from a linguistic perspective focusing on syntactic analyses as used in natural language processing and from writing research, are insufficient to actually linguistically explain what authors do when writing and revising. Writing is linear in time, but writers are free to move to any point in the text produced so far whenever they want, thus producing specific parts (e.g., sentences) in a non-linear fashion. However, the final product is a linear sequence of sentences. We therefore can interpret writing texts as a sentence-driven process. In this new framework, this article proposes a model of the production of sentences during writing. This sentence-centric model builds on existing considerations of transforming sequences, bursts and revisions, and takes into account aspects of linearity and non-linearity on the sentence level. We present a working implementation (available as open source software) and show which information can be gained by the resulting analyses in a small case study.
Copyright (c) 2025 Malgorzata Anna Ulasik, Cerstin Mahlow, Michael Piotrowski https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Motivation matters: The positive influence of parental involvement on children’s writing outcome
Theoretical models and empirical evidence suggest parental involvement in general education is beneficial for children’s educational outcomes and that motivational factors may contribute to explaining parental involvement in children’s education. Few studies, however, have examined the role of parental involvement in children’s writing outcomes and, to our knowledge, none has investigated the motivations of Parents/Carers to support their children’s writing development in the first place. In this study, we aimed to address this gap by measuring Parents'/Carers' autonomous and controlled motivations for supporting their children’s writing at home and their engagement in writing activities with their children, and then assessing the links between parental motivations and involvement, and children’s writing quality and attitudes toward writing. Participants included 159 Year 2 children and their Parents/Carers. Structural equation modelling showed indirect effects between Parents'/Carers' autonomous motivation and children’s writing quality via the mediators of parental involvement and children’s attitudes towards writing. Conversely, Parents'/Carers' controlled motivation had no significant association with children’s writing outcomes. Findings suggested that, when Parents/Carers are autonomously motivated and involved in writing activities with their children at home, their children show stronger positive attitudes towards writing. Educational implications include encouraging home-school initiatives that foster autonomous motivation in Parents/Carers and support Parents/Carers in engaging in a wide range of enjoyable writing activities with their children at home, creating a community where writing is valued across home and school contexts.
Copyright (c) 2025 Bronte Kelso-Marsh, Anabela Abreu Malpique, Helen Davis, Debora Similieana Valcan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
The Impact of ChatGPT as a Brainstorming Tool on Gifted Students' Persuasive Writing
This study investigated the impact of using ChatGPT 3.5 as a prewriting brainstorming tool on the overall quality of persuasive writing among five gifted seniors majoring in Arabic at the College of Education, Kuwait University. Giftedness, in this study, was not defined by innate advantages such as intelligence quotient (IQ) but was instead viewed from a multidimensional perspective, focusing on academic performance, writing skills, and personal traits that reflect intellectual engagement. Four participants were typically developing gifted students, while one participant was twice exceptional, both gifted and autistic. An integrated single-subject design with multiple probes across multiple baselines was used, with each participant serving as their own control. Repeated measures were used throughout the baseline, intervention, and maintenance phases to monitor intraindividual variability and examine the effectiveness of the intervention. The results indicated a significant increase in mean scores for persuasive essays from baseline to intervention for all participants, with continued improvement during maintenance for all but the twice-exceptional student, whose mean maintenance score remained unchanged from the intervention. While promoting ChatGPT 3.5 as a valuable brainstorming tool for persuasive writing, this study emphasizes its complementary role and recommends that writers engage in brainstorming using multiple resources before writing.
Copyright (c) 2025 Huda Almumen, Mohammed Jouhar https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
A computational model for individual scholars' writing style dynamics
A manuscript’s writing style is central to determining its readership, influence, and impact. Past research has shown that, in many cases, scholars present a unique writing style that is manifested in their manuscripts. In this work, we report a comprehensive investigation into how scholars’ writing styles evolve throughout their careers focusing on their academic relations with their advisors and peers. Our results show that scholars’ writing styles tend to stabilize early on in their careers – roughly around their 13th publication. Around the same time, schol- ars’ departures from their advisors’ writing styles seem to converge as well. Last, collaborations involving fewer scholars, scholars from the same gender, or from the same field of study seem to bring about a great change in their co-authors’ writing styles with younger scholars being especially influenceable. The proposed method can help to investigate the dynamic behavior of academic writing style.
Copyright (c) 2024 Teddy Lazebnik, Ariel Rosenfeld https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Linguistic and behavioral alignment in writing: A scoping review
This article reports on a scoping review of the literature exploring the alignment between behavioral and linguistic units in L1 and L2 writing. Behavioral units in writing were assessed using keystroke logging measures of pauses, bursts, and revisions. Linguistic units were operationalized based on lexical and syntactic definitions from the literature. Nine empirical studies met the inclusion criteria. Most of these studies focused on L1 English writing by adult participants, although some explored other first languages, such as German, Dutch, and French. The identified L2 studies focused exclusively on English. Due to the limited number and high heterogeneity of the studies, no definitive conclusions can be drawn. However, meaningful links between behavioral and linguistic units were detected. In addition to confirming some previously known phenomena, the studies provided new evidence on online processing during pauses, revealed certain idiosyncrasies in L1 versus L2 writing cognition, and offered new insights into the nature of revision. We provide a critical interpretation of the results, propose new research directions, and recommend solutions.
Copyright (c) 2025 Olena Vasylets, Javier Marín https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Does the relationship between executive functions and L2 writing depend on language proficiency?
Executive functions are attributed a central role in maintaining fluency during L2 text composition, allowing writers to orchestrate the various linguistic and cognitive processes and resources involved in writing. The study examined (1) whether language proficiency moderates the relationship between executive functions and writing fluency in L2 writing and (2) whether the effects indirectly affect text quality. Sixty university students composed two texts in English as their L2, an argumentation and a description, three executive function tasks assessing inhibition, shifting, and updating skills, a language proficiency test, and a copy task. Keystroke logging protocols were recorded with Inputlog and analyzed for writing fluency. Text quality was assessed with a holistic benchmark procedure and comparative judgments. The results revealed language-dependent and genre-specific effects of updating and shifting but not inhibition skills on writing fluency. Path models indicated that the interactions between executive functions and language proficiency indirectly affect text quality through process-related writing measures. The findings suggest a complex relation between executive functions and writing performance that depends on language proficiency and varies with task demands.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lisa Haake https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Written performance indicators from experienced creative writers
Experienced creative writers (n=10) participated in an observational eye tracking study with corresponding video and cued retrospective response interview. The eye tracking data and video informed the subsequent interviews focused on identifying written performance indicators. The following question guided the study: What performance indicators from experienced creative writers can be surfaced through a combination of eye tracking, video, and cued retrospective response within an ecologically grounded writing task? Triangulation of the data yielded 10 experienced creative writing performance indicators. Performance indicators from these experienced creative writers are notably combinatorial and map onto cognitive functions such as long-term working memory, phonological loop, and visuospatial activity in writing. Experienced creative writers also purposefully create the conditions for dispositionally guided text production.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jason Wirtz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Book review: The Routledge International Handbook of Research on Writing
Copyright (c) 2024 Gustaf B. Skar https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Unveiling mirror-writing: Exploring the phenomenon in typically developing children within the Greek school context
Mirror-writing has consistently intrigued researchers throughout the years. This study is the first to explore Greek-letter and Arabic-digit reversals from typically developing children within the Greek School Environment. The hypotheses were: (1) Visual discrimination, visual memory, and visual-spatial relationships skills will negatively correlate with the occurrence of character reversals, (2) Left-oriented symbols will be reversed most frequently, (3) Children from year 1 will exhibit fewer reversals than children in nurseries. To test those predictions, 117 children (4.5 to 7.5 years) were recruited from Greek nurseries and primary schools. Character-recognition tasks were conducted, and children’s visual-perceptual ability was measured. Moreover, participants produced capital Greek letters and Arabic digits under dictation. Results yielded a significant negative correlation only between visual-perceptual skills and digit reversals in the total sample, suggesting that children with higher visual-perceptual skills tend to produce fewer digit mirrorings, unlike letters. Furthermore, left-oriented characters were significantly mirrored the most. Finally, only digit reversals were significantly reduced by year 1, probably due to the limited knowledge of letters by children in nurseries. Implications, and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Copyright (c) 2024 Eleni Kanitaki https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Clitic subjects as landmarks in the writing production process: A study based on a keylog-derived corpus of writing bursts
Bursts of writing, extracted from online recordings of the writing process, have proved an invaluable vantage point into the cognitive mechanisms at work during written language production. Crucially, they show that writers, much like speakers, produce language through a sequence of small ‘chunks’, patterns-like groupings of words that do not necessarily match the structures of theoretical grammars. As such, they are intriguing objects, whose linguistic properties are yet to be understood. To contribute to this endeavor, we track all instances of French so-called clitic subjects in a corpus of 81 keylogs of short essays written by undergraduate students in experimental conditions. We show that these clitic subjects are attracted to the burst-initial position, favoring resumption of the production after revision events. Moreover, they also act like discursive hubs in that writers are more likely to revise up to a clitic subject and restart from there, possibly relying on an entirely different structure. Therefore, they play the role of landmarks in the writing process, from which information can flow, and to which writers can get back to develop alternative discursive strategies. These results hint that the writing process and the information structure of the product are likely to be intimately intricated.
Copyright (c) 2025 Quentin Feltgen, Florence Lefeuvre https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Familiarity effect in the perception of handwriting: Evaluating in-group/out-group effect among readers of the Latin script
There is much evidence that familiarity can affect perception of stimuli, with items that are familiar to the individual being preferred and better remembered. Previous research has also shown that familiarity with a typeface increases preference for it, but no studies have evaluated the impact of familiarity in relation to the affect towards handwritten text. For the present study, a two-part experiment (N = 422) was designed to measure how contemporary users of the Latin script perceive handwritten text. The first section was designed to collect specimens of the participants’ handwriting. The second, which was adapted to each participant’s handwriting style, measured implicit judgments of certain familiar letter shapes against unfamiliar ones. Results show that familiarity positively influences the extent to which one judges the friendliness and trustworthiness of handwritten text. Furthermore, the greater the similarity to how one writes a letterform, the greater the observed effect in terms of perceived friendliness. These findings suggest that people have an implicit bias towards handwriting that looks like their own.
Copyright (c) 2024 Hector Mangas Afonso, Anouk Keizer, Peter Biľak, Sofie Beier https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Pauses during a writing process in two typologically different languages
This study investigates how pausing behaviour within a writing session is associated with the writer's language proficiency, focusing on Finnish and Swedish as both first language (L1) and learner language (L2). The data were collected through keyboard logging software and evaluated using CEFR-based assessments of the resulting texts. The relationship was analysed using ordinal mixed-effects logistic regression modelling, where proficiency is modelled as a function of various variables related to pausing behaviour. The results show that the L2 writing process reflects the writer's proficiency. However, there is a significant difference between L2 writers of Swedish and L2 writers of Finnish compared to L1 writers. The advanced L2 writers of Swedish behave similarly to the L1 Swedish writers. In contrast, even the most advanced L2 writers of Finnish have pause lengths and linguistic contexts that are more similar to the less advanced L2 writers than the L1 writers. In addition, the pauses between words do not indicate any clear proficiency-related patterning, leaving only within-word pauses as a robust indicator of proficiency, especially in Swedish. Unlike most writing process research, this study's parallel design allows for contrasting two typologically diverging languages while controlling for other contextual variables. Future studies could explore the grammatical nature of pause locations across the analysed languages.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ilmari Ivaska, Outi Toropainen, Sinikka Lahtinen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Readers’ awareness in the use of intertextual strategies when writing from multiple texts
Metacognitive reading awareness, involving cognitive process control and reading strategies, is linked to better comprehension and performance, but its relationship with intertextual integration strategies and the quality of argumentative essays remains unexplored. This study aimed to investigate the role of metacognition in employing integration strategies when reading conflicting texts. 69 undergraduate students participated in an online reading-writing activity, where they wrote argumentative essays based on conflicting texts about red meat consumption. We examined the students' use of intertextual integration strategies (refutation, weighing, synthesizing) and assessed their metacognitive awareness through their reflections on these strategies. The quality of the argumentative essays served as a measure of multiple text comprehension. The results indicated a lack of metacognitive awareness regarding integration strategies, with students overestimating their ability to employ these strategies. However, they demonstrated better understanding of refutational strategies based on the examples provided in their essays. Interestingly, students who were aware of and utilized these strategies in their essays performed better in the multiple-text comprehension task.
Copyright (c) 2024 Christian Tarchi, Lidia Casado Ledesma https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Macrotextual, microtextual and writing analysis of texts written by people with schizophrenia differentiated by their symptoms
Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder that primarily affects the semantic and pragmatic aspects of language. The aim of this study was to analyze pragmatics at macrotextual, microtextual and writing levels in persons with schizophrenia in order to ascertain the narrative characteristics and determine the nature of such pragmatics according to positive and negative symptomatology. Cross-sectional and quasi-experimental study was conducted on a sample of 41 individuals with schizophrenia. An analysis of textual pragmatics was performed using the participants’ summary of "The Tale of Landolfo Rufolo". Macrotextual coherence was functional in that it presented key plot information and respected the timeline of the story. Microtextual cohesion was characterized by repetitions, low lexical variation, low syntactic complexity and maintained morphology. The participants' writing was consistent with a generalized dysorthographic profile. In addition, the present work revealed significant differences according to symptomatology. Individuals with positive symptomatology showed lower macrotextual coherence, while microtextual cohesion entailed a greater number of words and therefore greater lexical variation. In contrast, those with negative symptomatology presented a greater dysorthographic profile. This study provides a functional overview of written language in persons with schizophrenia, highlighting the need for a multidisciplinary speech and language therapy intervention to enhance such individuals’ quality of life by favoring their social integration.
Copyright (c) 2025 Alfonso Martínez-Cano, Alberto Martínez-Lorca, Juan José Criado, Manuela Martínez-Lorca https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
The impact of written corrective feedback on students’ writing performance, self-efficacy, and anxiety
This paper investigated the impact of direct unfocused written corrective feedback (WCF) on EFL students’ writing improvement, self-efficacy, and anxiety. To this aim, 52 Iranian male learners were selected as participants by using the Oxford Placement Test and randomly placed in an experimental and a control group. The participants completed a pre-test that included a writing task, the writing self-efficacy questionnaire (WSEQ), and the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI) to assess their writing skill, writing self-efficacy, and writing anxiety, respectively. Having attended 15 sessions of writing instruction in which only the experimental group received WCF, the participants again completed a writing task, the WSEQ, and the SLWAI in the posttest procedure. The results showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in all three constructs, indicating that WCF has a positive impact on EFL students’ writing performance, self-efficacy, and anxiety. Implications of the study are presented.
Copyright (c) 2024 Mohammad Hasan Razmi, Mohammad Hossein Ghane https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Units of linguistic analysis in written production: From the case of enunciative irruptions
This contribution aims to address the following question: "What types of linguistic units constitute a step in writing process?". The authors propose a pragmatics of the textualization process, emphasizing the significance of operations in constructing meaning during the production of text. Using the example of "enunciative irruptions", they explore the difference between edition (i.e. mental elaboration of the linguistic signs to be emitted) and emission units, revealing instances where verbal elements are born during emission. The study concludes with a phenomenology of textualization, interpreting these operations as meaningful behaviors that reflect the writer's process of discovery and self-construction. The authors argue for a closer examination of production writings, despite the lack of direct temporal data, as it aligns the analyst with the writer's use of this type of documents experience and emphasizes the importance of textualization operations over pauses in understanding the dynamics of written production.
Copyright (c) 2025 Rudolf Mahrer, Giovanni Zuccarino https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Book review | Writing and Reading Connections: Bridging Research and Practice
The book Writing and reading connections: Bridging research and practise, edited by Zoi A. Philippakos and Steve Graham (2023) is a collection of works concerning writing–reading relationships and suggestions for instructional practices that can support the synergetic development of writing and reading. The editors commence by pointing out that an instructional divide that promotes separate instruction of reading and writing exists. With this book, they argue that this divide is unfortunate and that bringing together writing and reading in research and in the classroom can yield positive effects.
Copyright (c) 2024 Vibeke Rønneberg, Eivor Finset Spilling https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Fostering philosophy teachers' disciplinary writing practice: A multiple-case design study
In this design study, we designed an instructional unit open to contextual modifications with the aim of fostering secondary school students' philosophical writing. Three philosophy teachers developed innovative source-based writing tasks and provided discipline-specific writing strategy instruction in their 10th grade class. In this study, we focused on change. We explored teachers' interaction with the instructional design and studied teachers' views on how the intervention had changed their practice since a change of beliefs is crucial to successful, durable innovation of teaching. Moreover, we studied the effects of the changed practice, by exploring change in students' writing. An external jury analyzed students' texts to determine students' actual learning achievements. Teachers' insights into student progress were obtained from reflective interviews that featured comparisons between the observed and expected results. The results showed that teachers judged the design to be feasible, valid, and effective for students' philosophical writing development. After the intervention, students' texts showed similar or even more independent philosophical thinking than before, while the tasks became more complex. Implementation drove teachers to contemplate writing instruction, indicating a change in their belief system, which is necessary for genuine improvement in teacher practice.
Copyright (c) 2024 Lieke Holdinga, Jannet van Drie, Gert Rijlaarsdam https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Early handwriting performance among Arabic kindergarten children: The effects of phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, graphomotor skills, and fine-motor skills
This study aimed to delve into the under-explored domain of early handwriting performance among Arabic-speaking kindergarten children, focusing on the potential factors influencing early handwriting competency. The research encompassed 218 children from diverse socio-economic backgrounds in Israel. The underlying skills assessed were divided into linguistic skills (phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge) and graphomotor and fine-motor skills. Hierarchical regression analyses were utilized to evaluate the contributions of these skills. Results indicated that, within the Arabic orthographic context, orthographic knowledge stood out as a paramount contributor to early handwriting performance, more so than phonological awareness. Furthermore, graphomotor and fine motor skills significantly influenced letter-copying speed and legibility, but not the accuracy of letter-writing to dictation. In conclusion, while orthographic knowledge is paramount, the importance of graphomotor and fine motor skills for early handwriting performance in Arabic cannot be understated. The study suggests that a focused approach to these skills can lead to more effective interventions and teaching methodologies tailored for Arabic-speaking kindergarteners.
Early handwriting, Phonologic awareness, Orthographic knowledge, Fine-motor skills, Kindergarteners
Copyright (c) 2024 Abeer Salameh-Matar, Afnan Khoury Metanis, Asaid Khateb https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/