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Writing Skills (writing + skill)
Selected AbstractsThe relative contributions of the Cattell-Horn-Carroll cognitive abilities in explaining writing achievement during childhood and adolescence,PSYCHOLOGY IN THE SCHOOLS, Issue 2 2008Randy G. Floyd This study examined the relative contributions of measures of Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) cognitive abilities in explaining writing achievement. Drawing from samples that covered the age range of 7 to 18 years, simultaneous multiple regression was used to regress scores from the Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ III; Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001) that represent CHC broad and narrow abilities onto the WJ III Basic Writing Skills and Written Expression cluster scores. At most age levels, Comprehension-Knowledge demonstrated moderate to strong effects on both writing clusters, Processing Speed demonstrated moderate effects on Basic Writing Skills and moderate to strong effects on Written Expression, and Short-Term Memory demonstrated moderate effects. At the youngest age levels, Long-Term Retrieval demonstrated moderate to strong effects on Basic Writing Skills and moderate effects on Written Expression. Auditory Processing, and Phonemic Awareness demonstrated moderate effects on only Written Expression at the youngest age levels and at some of the oldest age levels. Fluid Reasoning demonstrated moderate effects on both writing clusters only during some of the oldest age levels. Visual-Spatial Thinking primarily demonstrated negligible effects. The results provide insights into the cognitive abilities most important for understanding the writing skills of children during the school-age years. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] Advanced Heritage Learners of Spanish: A Sociolinguistic Profile for Pedagogical PurposesFOREIGN LANGUAGE ANNALS, Issue 2 2010Irma Alarcón Abstract: This article reports on an extensive survey administered to advanced heritage language (HL) learners to examine their language behaviors, attitudes, and backgrounds. To date, there have been no detailed categorizations of advanced HL learners to guide classroom instruction and curriculum design. Thus the present study is a first attempt to fill this gap by providing a sociolinguistic profile of these speakers, including their identifying characteristics, linguistic needs, and similarities and differences with lower-proficiency speakers. Survey responses indicate that advanced HL learners possess both productive and receptive skills in the HL, always use Spanish at home, are fluent speakers of a standard variety, already have basic academic skills in Spanish, and are therefore primarily interested in perfecting their academic writing skills. [source] Sharing our Experiences with Writing-for-Learning Techniques in a Large Introductory Course: The Popular Press CritiqueJOURNAL OF FOOD SCIENCE EDUCATION, Issue 2 2002S.J. Schmidt ABSTRACT: The Popular Press Critique was a 2-page, out of class writing-for-learning assignment. The purpose of the assignment was to help students learn how to analyze and critically evaluate the validity of published popular press articles in the context of accurate scientific research versus the demands of the mass media. The assignment included a peer evaluation component that provided feedback to the students and exposed them to the perspectives and writing styles of others. Overall, we observed that the assignment helped the students become more critical readers of popular press food science and nutrition news. The peer evaluation component encouraged the students to reflect on and improve their thinking and writing skills. The majority of students reported that they felt the assignment helped them learn how to appropriately interpret popular press articles. [source] Developing audience awareness in writingJOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN READING, Issue 3 2002José Brandâo Carvalho Beginning writers need to consider their audience; but this is only possible when the writer has reached a certain stage of cognitive development, as it is necessary to consider an absent reality (e.g. an audience reading the piece at a later point). Adapting the text to the audience is only possible when the physical task of writing becomes automatic and the writer is no longer absorbed by it. Then the writer is free to pay attention to other aspects of the task without overloading cognitive processes. Procedural facilitation involves the use of external aids to support a simplified version of the processes used by expert writers. It may function as a way of enabling beginning writers to adapt what they write for their audiences. At the same time, as this task becomes automatic, it may be seen as a way of promoting writing development. A quasi,experimental study is described in which a procedural facilitation strategy is used to promote writing skills, in particular, the skill of suiting the text to the communicative context. The study was with fifth and ninth grade Portuguese students. The results of the post,test show significant progress for the experimental groups in contrast to the control groups. [source] Strategies for Managing Barriers to the Writing ProcessNURSING FORUM, Issue 4 2000Celia E. Wills RN Publication is essential to advancing nursing knowledge for clinical practice, but relatively few nurses publish the results of their research or other writings about clinical practice issues. This article identifies some common barriers to writing for publication-personal factors, such as inadequate knowledge and writing skills, lack of confidence, and low motivation for writing for publication; and situational factors, such as limited time, energy, and other resources constraints-and discusses strategies for managing such barriers. Key words: [source] The relative contributions of the Cattell-Horn-Carroll cognitive abilities in explaining writing achievement during childhood and adolescence,PSYCHOLOGY IN THE SCHOOLS, Issue 2 2008Randy G. Floyd This study examined the relative contributions of measures of Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) cognitive abilities in explaining writing achievement. Drawing from samples that covered the age range of 7 to 18 years, simultaneous multiple regression was used to regress scores from the Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ III; Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001) that represent CHC broad and narrow abilities onto the WJ III Basic Writing Skills and Written Expression cluster scores. At most age levels, Comprehension-Knowledge demonstrated moderate to strong effects on both writing clusters, Processing Speed demonstrated moderate effects on Basic Writing Skills and moderate to strong effects on Written Expression, and Short-Term Memory demonstrated moderate effects. At the youngest age levels, Long-Term Retrieval demonstrated moderate to strong effects on Basic Writing Skills and moderate effects on Written Expression. Auditory Processing, and Phonemic Awareness demonstrated moderate effects on only Written Expression at the youngest age levels and at some of the oldest age levels. Fluid Reasoning demonstrated moderate effects on both writing clusters only during some of the oldest age levels. Visual-Spatial Thinking primarily demonstrated negligible effects. The results provide insights into the cognitive abilities most important for understanding the writing skills of children during the school-age years. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] An examination of the criterion validity and sensitivity to brief intervention of alternate curriculum-based measures of writing skillPSYCHOLOGY IN THE SCHOOLS, Issue 3 2004Kristin A. Gansle Curriculum-based measures have been validated for use in evaluating reading, mathematics, and writing skills (Marston, 1989). Despite its common use by school psychologists (Wilson & Reschly, 1996), the relationship between the Woodcock Johnson-Revised and curriculum-based measures of writing has not been evaluated. This study investigated the relationship between the Woodcock Johnson-Revised Writing Samples subtest and alternate curriculum-based measures of written expression. In addition, the sensitivity of the measures to the effects of a short group writing intervention was assessed. Forty-five third and fourth graders participated in an intervention that consisted of brainstorming ideas, presenting those ideas on a dry-erase board, and writing a complete sentence on paper with writing quality feedback before completing a CBM (curriculum-based measurement) writing passage. Numbers of words written as well as five alternate measures of writing samples were used to assess the effects of the intervention. The intervention had a positive effect on total words written. Total punctuation marks, simple sentences, and words in complete sentences emerged as the best predictors of the Woodcock Johnson-Revised Writing Samples subtest scores in regression analyses. The implications of the analyses, limitations of the study, and directions for future research are discussed. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 41: 291,300, 2004. [source] Computer-based teaching of Kanji construction and writing in a student with developmental disabilitiesBEHAVIORAL INTERVENTIONS, Issue 1 2009Hiroshi Sugasawara Students with developmental disabilities often have difficulty with writing skills such as tracing, copying, and dictation writing. A student with writing difficulties participated in the present study, which used computer-based teaching applied in the home. We examined whether a student could copy Japanese Kanji characters after training with a constructed response matching-to-sample (CRMTS) procedure. The procedure was designed to teach identity Kanji construction. The results showed that the student not only acquired the constructed responses through this procedure but also to spelling generalized to copy trained and untrained Kanji characters. The results are discussed in terms of the effect of the CRMTS procedure on the acquisition and transfer of writing characters and the applicability of computer-based home teaching. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] The personal response: A novel writing assignment to engage first year students in large human biology classes,BIOCHEMISTRY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY EDUCATION, Issue 2 2007Roger W. Moni Abstract The teaching of highly valued scientific writing skills in the first year of university is challenging. This report describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of a novel written assignment, The Personal Response and accompanying Peer Review, in the course, Human Biology (BIOL1015) at The University of Queensland. These assignments were the first assessment tasks of the course and were set early in the first semester of university. BIOL1015 had a diverse cohort of 319 first year students from five bachelor degree programs, primarily from Pharmacy and Human Movement Studies. Audio files in the form of interviews with eminent biomedical scientists were obtained from a leading public radio program. Students used these files as triggers to submit a short but highly structured assignment written from a personal perspective and in an expressive style. Evaluations revealed that overall, students found the task interesting and challenging. Students performed well, regardless of their background knowledge, disciplinary interest, or preference for topics within human biology. This study demonstrated that The Personal Response was an appropriate task for these first year students of human biology. It represents an alternative to traditional essay writing. [source] An Assessment of the Faculty Development Needs of Junior Clinical Faculty in Emergency MedicineACADEMIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE, Issue 7 2008Heather Farley MD Abstract Objectives:, Academic physicians must be able to access the resources necessary to support their ongoing professional development and meet requirements for continued academic advancement. The authors sought to determine the self-perceived career development needs of junior clinical faculty in emergency medicine (EM) and the availability of educational resources to meet those needs. Methods:, An educational "needs assessment" survey was distributed to 954 American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) members listed in the ACEP database as being faculty at EM residency programs in the United States and having graduated from an EM residency within the past 7 years. Respondents were asked to rank the importance of 22 areas of faculty development to their own professional growth and then to indicate whether educational resources in each area were available to them. Respondents were also asked to note the educational formats they prefer. A search for currently available resources in each topic area was undertaken and compared to the survey results. Results:, A total of 240 responses were received. Self-perceived career development needs were identified in the following areas: bedside teaching, lecture development, business skills, managerial skills, educational research, mentorship and career counseling, interpersonal skills, leadership skills, scholarly writing skills, physician wellness, and knowledge of the faculty development process. While a review of currently available educational resources revealed lectures, conferences, and online materials pertinent to most of these topics, a relative lack of resources in the areas of mentorship and physician wellness was identified. Conclusions:, Junior clinical faculty in EM perceive a lack of educational resources in a number of areas of faculty development. The academic community of EM should strive to improve awareness of and access to currently existing resources and to develop additional resources to address the area of physician wellness. The lack of mentorship in academic EM continues to be a problem in search of a solution. [source] | ||||||||||||||||