Expository Writing Research Articles

Extraordinary Animals and Expository Writing: Zoo in the Classroom

A zoo outreach program led to placing animals in classrooms where those animals became foci for numerous learning activities such as writing, observing, and care. Systematic debriefings suggested uniqueness to learning outcomes connected to zoo animals. Subsequent analysis of student writing indicated that students responded to situational interest by recording more observations, made use of more science facts, and used more science vocabulary when writing about unique animals (albino hedgehog, legless lizard) than ‘ordinary’ animals (rabbit, dove). The results are interpreted in terms of motivation, creating situational interest, and the familiarity of the schema available to the students. Policy implications are discussed.

The Relationship Between Curriculum-Based Measures in Written Expression and Quality and Completeness of Expository Writing for Middle School Students

This study extended the work on curriculum-based measurement to examine the criterion-related validity of curriculum-based measures in written expression for middle school students, the differences in validity coefficients for various lengths of text, and the sensitivity of curriculum-based measures to change in student performance. Curriculum-based measures were the number of correct word sequences (CWS) and correct minus incorrect word sequences (CIWS) written in expository essays. Criterion measures were the number of functional elements in and quality ratings of student essays. Results revealed a strong relationship between curriculum-based and criterion measures.

字数制限は, 書き手の文章産出活動にとつて有益であるか?

字数制限は, 書き手の文章産出活動にとつて有益であるか?

Travel Education: Demonstrating Effective Learning through the Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education

Two Winona State University professors created an interdisciplinary six-hour curriculum with eleven days of travel as a means of transforming course material into experiential learning. Both courses, Leisure in Different Cultures and Advanced Expository Writing, falfilled general education requirements. The faculty wished to determine if travel education would expedite and facilitate the Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education, as described by Chickering and Gamson (1987). Travel education fulfilled all seven principles to a degree not seen in the classroom. The seven principles consist of the following: student-faculty interaction, cooperative learning, active learning, prompt feedback, time on task, high expectations, and respect for diverse talents and ways of learning. Information for assessing the seven principles came from the journals all members of the class wrote during the trip. Excerpts taken from students' journals identify how travel education expressed all seven principles.

What Works for Me: “Rotating Essays”: A New Kind of Expository Writing

What Works for Me: “Rotating Essays”: A New Kind of Expository Writing

Effects of Hand‐Drawn and Computer‐Generated Concept Mapping on the Expository Writing of Middle School Students with Learning Disabilities

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two forms of concept mapping, hand‐drawn and computer‐generated, on the descriptive essay writing of middle‐level students with learning disabilities. Twelve eighth‐grade students composed descriptive essays under three conditions: no‐map support, hand‐map support, and computer‐map support. The essays were compared on four measures: number of words, syntactic maturity, number of T‐units, and holistic writing scores. Writing attitude was also examined. Results showed that student descriptive essays produced in the hand‐ and computer‐mapping conditions demonstrated significant increases above baseline writing samples on number of words, number of T‐units, and holistic writing scores. Carry‐over effects were observed in the no‐mapping condition and provide an indication that students may have acquired writing skills that generalized into their essay writing when not using maps. Results showed that students’ attitudes toward writing were significantly more positive in the computer‐mapping condition when compared to no‐mapping and hand‐mapping conditions.

Phonics, Expository Writing, and Reading Aloud: Playful Literacy in the Primary Grades.

Despite the challenges primary grade teachers face in trying to include play in an already crowded curriculum, play has an important place in reading and writing instruction. Children whose early literacy experiences include pleasurable activities are more motivated to pursue the challenging tasks associated with learning and are more likely to develop a life-long love of reading and writing. In this article, a teacher and a teacher educator make a case for the value of play in early literacy and offer examples of the ways teachers can create more playful phonics, read aloud, and expository writing experiences.

Cohesive Features in the Expository Writing of Undergraduates in Two Chinese Universities

This study investigated the use of cohesive features in the expository compositions of Chinese undergraduates, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. One hundred and seven essays were collected from two Chinese universities and assessed by three raters. Halliday and Hasan's (1976) taxonomy of cohesive devices and their framework for analysis were used. Students employed in their writing a variety of cohesive devices with some categories of ties used more frequently than others. Lexical devices were the most frequently used, followed by conjunctions and reference devices. In terms of tie distances, the majority of the cohesive ties were either immediate or remote. There was no statistically significant relationship between the number of cohesive ties used and the quality of writing. Certain cohesive features were identified in the expository writing of Chinese undergraduates which included ambiguity in reference, overuse and misuse of conjunctions, and restricted use of lexical cohesion.

The Analysis of Student Expository Writing in Mathematics

The use of writing as a learning activity in mathematics has been the subject of many publications. However, little evidence has been presented to support the claims that writing enhances learning in mathematics. One difficulty in such research has been the lack of a detailed method for analysing the writing products of students. In the present study, a scheme for coding the parts of written mathematical presentations was developed. At the grade 8 level at which the study was conducted, a limited style of expository writing was found to predominate. The writing was shown to closely resemble the style of the typical mathematics textbook used by the students.

The Effects of Mood on Expository Writing

Past research has shown that analytical writing and problem solving may be influenced by mood and that experiencing intense mood states may be a catalyst for creativity. This experiment sought to test the hypothesis that good and bad moods have differential effects on expository writing. Sixty-two participants were asked to write a fictional story, a non-fictional story, or story of their choosing when they were in either a good or a bad mood. They then completed a questionnaire that assessed their mood again. The results of this study showed that good moods were associated with the stories that expressed positive emotions, used a narrative style, and conveyed concrete concepts, but bad moods were associated with the stories that expressed negative emotions, used a diary style, and discussed abstract concepts.

On the Aspects of Skills for Procedural Expository Writing

On the Aspects of Skills for Procedural Expository Writing

Explanatory Variables for EFL Students' Expository Writing

This study investigated factors that might influence Japanese university students’ expository writing in English. We examined 70 students of low‐ to high‐intermediate English proficiency along a variety of dimensions, namely, second language (L2) proficiency, first language (L1) writing ability, writing strategies in L1 and L2, metaknowledge of L2 expository writing, past writing experiences, and instructional background. We considered these multiple factors as possible explanatory variables for L2 writing.Quantitative analysis revealed that (a) students’ L2 proficiency, L1 writing ability, and metaknowledge were all significant in explaining the L2 writing ability variance; (b) among these 3 independent variables, L2 proficiency explained the largest portion (52%) of the L2 writing ability variance, L1 writing ability the second largest (18%), and metaknowledge the smallest (11%); and (c) there were significant correlations among these independent variables. Qualitative analysis indicated that good writers were significantly different from weak writers in that good writers (a) paid more attention to overall organization while writing in L1 and L2; (b) wrote more fluently in L1 and L2; (c) exhibited greater confidence in L2 writing for academic purposes; and (d) had regularly written more than one English paragraph while in high school. There was no significant difference between good and weak writers for other writing strategies and experiences. On the basis of these results, we propose an explanatory model for EFL writing ability.

Expository Writing Patterns of African American Students

ting because of cultural differences in language-use patterns or differences inistyles of interaction used to demonstrate knowledge. In our rapidly changing society, this issue meets a critical interface in upper elementary and secondary urban classrooms with predominantly African American student populations. For many reasons, these culturally and linguistically diverse students have historically not fared well in the American educational system. In spite of the considerable rhetoric over the past several years, recent research indicates that African Americans and other students of color are still

The Role of Using Expository Writing on the Mathematical Problem Solving Skills of the College of Teachers Students

The Role of Using Expository Writing on the Mathematical Problem Solving Skills of the College of Teachers Students

Cultural Preference and the Expository Writing of African-American Adolescents

Research by linguists and educators confirms the observation that aspects of the African-American experience are reflected in the grammatical, phonological, lexical, and stylistic features of African-American English and in the patterns of language use, including narrative, found in African-American speech communities. This study goes beyond prior research to investigate and characterize what Hymes refers to as the preferred patterns for the “organization of experience” among African-American adolescents. The results of the study revealed that, although subjects from several ethnic backgrounds stated a preference for using vernacular-based organizational patterns in informal oral exposition, African-American adolescents, in contrast to a group of Hispanic-American, Asian-American, and European-American adolescents, reported a strong preference for using vernacular-based patterns in academic writing tasks as they got older. These findings suggest that the organization of expository discourse is affected by cultural preference and years of schooling and that preference for organizational patterns can be viewed as an obstacle to or as a resource in successful literacy-related experiences.

Psychology of Computer Use: VI. Effectiveness of Computer-Assisted Instruction in Expository Writing

31 high school students were given writing assignments on a computer-writing program (WANDAH) or on a free writing control condition in a crossover design in which order of condition and writing topics were counterbalanced. Results indicated that students in the WANDAH condition wrote significantly more words, longer sentences, and showed significantly longer on-task behavior. However, the proportion of “be” (inactive) words per sentence and number of sentences written were apparently not affected by the WANDAH program. Significant differences in variances were also observed between conditions on number of words written per T-unit. Survey data indicated that students favored writing with this computer program over writing by hand.

Some Characteristics of Memorable Expository Writing: Effects of Revisions by Writers with Different Backgrounds

Some Characteristics of Memorable Expository Writing: Effects of Revisions by Writers with Different Backgrounds

The Structure of Written Communication: Studies in Reciprocity between Writers and Readers

Writing: Philosophical Assumptions Inherent in Current Cognitive Models of Writing. Reciprocity as a Principle of Discourse. What Writers Do. M. Nystrand, A. Doyle, and M. Himley, A Critical Examination of the Doctrine of Autonomous Texts. Necessary Text Elaborations. Learning to Write: M. Himley, Genre as Generative: One Perspective on One Child's Early Writing Growth. Where do the Spaces Go? The Development of Word Segmentation in the Bissex Texts. Learning to Write by Talking about Writing: A Summary of Research on Intensive Peer Review in Expository Writing Instruction at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. References. Index.

An Analysis of Errors and Strategies in the Expository Writing of Learning Disabled Students

This study examined the expository writing errors of learning disabled students and two groups of regular class students. The results suggested that learning disabled students did exhibit quantitatively and qualitatively different writing performances than normally achieving students, and to a lesser extent, than regular class students who were matched to learning disabled writers on IQ and reading achievement. Learning disabled writers had significant difficulty sustaining their expository writing efforts, and their errors suggested a reliance on the knowledge-telling strategy as a basis for expository discourse production.

A Causal Model of Reading Achevement and Expository Writing Performance among Selected College Freshmen

A Causal Model of Reading Achevement and Expository Writing Performance among Selected College Freshmen