No. 2015/1

SIG Writing Newsletter

Spring/Summer 2015

Volunteer to be SIG

Writing Coordinator

Required

The two SIG Writing coordinatorsserve for a period of four years. Rui Alves’term as coordinator will be complete atthe EARLI Bienniall conference in August2015. Therefore, SIG Writing needs a newcoordinator to serve with the remainingcoordinator, Vince Connelly, and the ju-nior assistant coordinator, Teresa Limpo.

The post is an important one for thehealth and future of the SIG and involvesworking with colleagues across our groupas well as liaising with the EARLI o�ce inLeuven. Formally the duties are (a) tak-ing a leadership role in further develop-ment of our SIG; (b) serving as a liaisonand a communication channel betweenthe members of our SIG, the EARLI Ex-ecutive Board, and the rest of the EARLIcommunity; (c) helping organize SIG ac-tivities, such as seminars, newsletters orother publications, consistent with theEARLI scientific mission and strategy; (d)organizing the SIG symposia during theEARLI conference. All EARLI memberswith a minimum period of 4 years of mem-bership and established research experi-

ence documented by a record of publica-tions in a field of relevance, are eligibleto stand for election as SIG coordinator.The two SIG-coordinators need to workin di�erent countries. No more than onecoordinator can be non-European.

If you are interested in volunteering,keep an eye on the SIG writing websitefor details on how to apply for the posi-tion and contact Vince Connelly (vcon-nelly@brookes.ac.uk) to discuss the po-sition. There was a formal call for vol-unteers in June 2015. If there is morethan one volunteer an election processwill be put into place. The new coordina-tor will start their term at the SIG mem-bers meeting of the Biennial EARLI con-ference in Limassol (Cyprus) in August2015.

In the meantime we thank Rui for hisdedicated service as coordinator to theSIG and wish him all the best for the fu-ture. Many thanks!

Event: 7th Junior

Researcher Meeting in

Applied Linguistics

The conference focuses on language

use, especially writing, in digital environ-ments within and across educational, aca-demic, professional, and everyday set-tings. The Junior Researchers Meetingallows early-career applied linguists topresent their research and to network inan interactive and informal internationalenvironment. Junior Researchers includethose working on their Master’s and PhDtheses as well as those who have gradu-ated within the last three years.

At the conference, each session willhave designated senior researchers ascommentators to foster questions anddiscussion. Christina Gitsaki, Troy Hicks,Daniel Perrin, and Wibke Weber willpresent as plenary speakers. The pro-gram will also include workshops on var-ious aspects of academic careers, suchas publishing and funding. That is why at-tending the conference provides also ben-efits for junior researchers who missedthe call for papers.

The conference is hosted by theZurich University of Applied Sciences inWinterthur (Switzerland) from Septem-ber 10 to 12, 2015. Register soon, earlybird registration is available until July 30,2015: goo.gl/ox8FCW

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Event: SIG Writing

Conference 2016

Liverpool Hope University, UK, is look-ing forward to hosting the 15th SIG Writ-ing Conference, July 4 to 6, 2016. Theconference will be preceded by a re-search school. The conference website iswww.hope.ac.uk/sigwriting2016.

It is being organized by Lorna Bourkeand Simon Davies, researchers in cog-nitive factors and writing developmentin the Department of Psychology at Liv-erpool Hope University. They are verymuch hoping to build on the great suc-cesses achieved by previous conferencesheld by SIG Writing members.

Proposal submission will be open fromSeptember 1st to December 15, 2015.The organizers are hoping to o�er a var-ied academic program and encouragesubmissions from investigators research-ing the:• underlying processes that support writ-

ing skills development,• implementation and evaluation of in-

struction and intervention programs• usefulness of writing to investigate is-

sues in a number of real world contexts.

The program for the research schooldesigned for junior researchers has yetto be confirmed and the organizers wel-come any suggestions that you mighthave. In the meantime, if you have anyquestions about the conference you cancontact the organizers via email: SIGwrit-ing2016@hope.ac.uk.

JoWR: Articles now

DOI-indexed

JoWR is now a DOI-member. Fromthe seventh volume on a DOI-number willbe assigned to each article. Moreover, allarticles published so far now have a DOI-number. The main advantage is that DOI-articles are stored in a central database,providing more stable linking than simplyreferring to a URL.

A digital object identifier (DOI) is acharacter string that is used to uniquelyidentify a manuscript. Metadata aboutthe object is stored in association withthe DOI name. This metadata includesthe URL of the JoWR article, togetherwith author(s), title, keywords, volume,issue and page numbers. The DOI there-fore provides a permanent reference toa specific article.

This also makes JoWR-articles eas-ier to refer to and also easier to findvia search engines. If you cite or referto an article published in JoWR, then in-clude the DOI-code (most journals re-quire that reference lists contain DOI-numbers). The citation export links foreach article facilitates this (see citationoptions at the bottom of the abstractpage). The editors hope this will furthercontribute to the visibility of the journaland to writing research in general.

Book Series: News from

the Editors

The editors of our book series Stud-ies in Writing are expecting to receivevolume proposals on any area of writ-ing research. Monographs as well asedited volume proposals can be submit-ted. The editors will especially welcomebooks on writing activities (new formsof writing: texting, chats, etc.; note-taking; learning to write synthesis; pro-fessional/technical/commercial writing;second language writing; connections be-tween reading and writing), on method-ological or theoretical backgrounds (af-fective factors in writing, research meth-ods), or on key elements of writing andwriting skills (metacognition, writing andthe brain, learning processes in writing,early writing processes). Before con-structing a proposal, contact the series’editors (Raquel Fidalgo, rfidr@unileon.es,and Thierry Olive, thierry.olive@univ-poitiers.fr) to get detailed informationon the editing process.

There are some volumes in prepara-tion:

• Design Principles for Teaching E�ec-tive Writing, edited by R. Fidalgo, K.

Harris, & M. Braaksma. Analyzes microand macro-design features of strategy-focused programs for learning to writeand writing to learn other skills.

• Graduate Pedagogies and ResearchLiteracies: The Teaching and Learningof Graduate Student Writing, editedby C. Badenhorst & C. Guerin. Exam-ines current research-based contribu-tions on a key focus of research in aca-demic writing, like post/graduate re-search writing pedagogies.

• Writing for Professional Development,edited by M. Betrancourt, G. Ortoleva,P. Tynjälä & S. Billett. Explores how thetask and process of writing can be usedas tools for professional developmentin the initial preparation for occupa-tions and in the ongoing developmentwithin them.

Book Series: Learning and

Teaching Writing Online:

Strategies for Success

Mary Deane (Oxford Brookes Univer-sity, UK) and Teresa Guasch (Open Uni-versity of Catalonia, Spain) edited theStudies in Writing volume 29 on Learn-ing and Teaching Writing Online: Strate-gies for Success. This book takes a freshlook at the challenge of supporting writ-ers online, and reports on research fromaround the world to o�er a range oflearning and teaching strategies. Themain themes are feedback in online envi-ronments, collaboration through online

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environments, and course design for on-line environments. This book is designedfor higher education practitioners whoare interested in exploring pedagogic ap-proaches for giving feedback and sup-porting collaborative writing online. Itwill also appeal to researchers of writingdevelopment and technology enhancedlearning.

See also goo.gl/4pXWpk.

Book Series: Multimodality

in Writing: The State of

the Art in Theory,

Methodology and Pedagogy

Arlene Archer (University of CapeTown, RSA) and Esther Breuer (Universityof Cologne, Germany) edited the Studiesin Writing volume 30 on Multimodalityin Writing: The State of the Art in The-ory, Methodology and Pedagogy. Thisbook attempts to generate and applynew theories, disciplines, and methods toaccount for semiotic processes in textsand during text production. It showcasesnew directions in multimodal researchand theorizing writing practices from amultimodal perspective. It explores texts,producers of texts, and readers of texts.It also focuses on teaching multimodaltext production and writing pedagogyfrom di�erent domains and disciplines,such as rhetoric and writing composition,architecture, mathematics, film-making,science, and the newsroom.

Looking Back: Research

School on Writing

Research 2014

One of the highlights of 2014 was theResearch School on Writing Research inUtrecht. In the slipstream of the SIG Writ-ing Conference on Writing Research in

Amsterdam, the team created a learn-ing and network opportunity for juniorresearchers.

The Research School focused on Con-ceptualization of Writing: Urgent Issuesand Best Solutions. Nearly 50 young andpromising researchers, from Jamaica toNew Zealand indulged in lectures, work-shops, and expert meetings around fourthemes: assessing text quality, learnercharacteristics and learning outcomes,writing processes, and teaching of writ-ing, provided by eleven experts in thefield. Between scheduled meetings therewas plenty of time for consultation, net-working, and socializing. Friendships de-veloped, plans for future collaborationwere made, and tips and tricks of thetrade were exchanged in a friendly andopen atmosphere. Participants indicatedthat they learned a lot during this two-day event and that enjoyed themselvestremendously. The organizers think thata research school like this is certainlyworth repeating, and perhaps it couldbe made a biennial tradition in combi-nation with future SIG writing confer-ences? See also http://cowr.org/researchschool/

Arabic Handwriting

Assessment

The Research and Diagnostic Lab ofWriting Functions at the Hebrew Univer-sity of Jerusalem (Israel) completed thedevelopment of an Arabic HandwritingAssessment (A-HAT), which is, to the bestof our knowledge, the first standardizedArabic handwriting assessment. The A-HAT was developed with the purpose ofevaluating elementary-school students’

handwriting performance in Arabic. In itsdevelopment it took into considerationthe unique features of Arabic-languageorthography, while maintaining the prin-ciples of handwriting performance as-sessment. It includes three letter tasks:(a) Naming, (b) Copying, and (c) Writ-ing the alphabet from memory, and twowriting tasks: (d) Copying and (e) Writ-ing to dictation. Scoring of the writingtasks relates to speed and legibility (i.e.,functional legibility and legibility com-ponents: spatial organization and letterformation). In addition, the writing pro-cess is observed. The assessment under-went initial examination of construct va-lidity and reliability (a journal paper byMatar, Basal, Nashaf, & Weintraub hasbeen submitted). For more informationsee goo.gl/M7YXuf or contact NaomiWeintraub.

Teaching Writing:

Communication Students

Improve Their Writing

through Research

How do I write, how do I assess textquality and what does my readershipthink of my writing? In a seminar series atthe Zurich University of Applied Sciences(Switzerland), students of journalism andpublic relations investigate their writingprocesses by applying progression analy-sis.

Instructed by Daniel Perrin, ThomasGantenbein, Aleksandra Gnach, andMathias Fürer, the students write textsand capture their writing processes us-ing screen recording software. Then theyrecord and analyze in a retrospective ver-bal protocol what they focused on whilewriting and how they conceptualize theirwriting activity.

In one of the seminars, for example,one group of students wrote abstracts ofscientific publications. The other group,in the role of addressees, used guided in-terviews to assess the text quality from areaders’ perspective. In another seminar,the students wrote a report and a me-dia release and assessed the text qualitybased on functions of newswriting, suchas: finding the sources, limiting the topic,taking own positions, staging the story,and establishing relevance for the audi-ence.

In all the seminars, the studentsshared a cloud corpus of writing processdata and were asked to use the avail-able data to identify rich points of newscommunication. In their term papers,they formulated best practices based on

SIG Writing Newsletter m http://sig-writing.org Page 3

these rich points explaining what worksfor whom under which circumstances.

The seminars are taught on a regularbasis.

Publication: Books

Zoi A. Philippakos, Charles A.MacArthur, and David L. Coker Jr. pub-lished a book about writing instructionin grades 3-5 (ages 8-11): Developingstrategic writers through genre instruc-tion: Resources for grades 3-5. Theinstructional approach in the book isbased on the extensive research on self-regulated strategy instruction with astrong emphasis on writing across mul-tiple genres. Students learn systematicstrategies for planning, drafting, eval-uating/revising, and editing togetherwith strategies for self-regulation. In-struction addresses three major typesof writing—narrative, informative, andargumentative—with consideration ofmultiple genres within each category.Genres are introduced through read-alouds and discussions of mentor texts,and genre features are included in plan-ning strategies and in evaluation criteria.The book o�ers complete lesson planswith materials for three units of instruc-tion together with guidance for teachersto develop their own lessons for addi-tional genres.

See also goo.gl/fRFTil6.

Inputlog Major Update: New

Possibilities for your

Keystroke Logging

Research

The Inputlog team is happy to an-nounce version 7.0 of Inputlog! You ben-efit from several new and improved fea-tures. A selection of these features:• Fluency analysis (new) The dynamic

character of writing processes is ana-lyzed in the fluency analysis, includinga graphical representation.

• Linguistic analysis (new) The loggingdata is not only analyzed at the letterlevel, but also at the word level. UsingNLP-tools, the output now shows wordcategories (Part-of-Speech, POS), fre-quencies, syllabification and relatedprocess time information. This featureis available for Dutch and English.

• Pause analysis (improved) The basic al-gorithm to identify pause locations hasbeen replaced by a more “intelligent”finite-state machine (FSM), resulting ina more precise detection of pause lo-cations.

• Bigram analysis (new) The bigram anal-ysis allows researchers to study lowlevel writing processes at the bigramlevel (e.g., intra-bigram intervals re-lated to bigram frequency). This fea-ture is available for English, French,German, and Dutch.

• Data Management (improved) Largeamounts of logged data can now beanalyzed in bulk, (time) filtered, andmerged for further analysis in statis-tical programs.

Please consult the website http://www.inputlog.net for a detailed de-scription of all the new features and havea look at the extended manual.

Member: Martine Braaksma

Martine Braaksma has resigned fromher position in the Research Team on Lan-guage, Literature and Arts at the Uni-versity of Amsterdam, and is leaving thewriting research field. On May 1st, 2015,she started working as a a senior consul-tant for the National Council of Educa-tion, an independent organization thatadvises the Dutch minister of educationon all education related issues, on theminister’s request or on its own initiative.

Martine was an active membersof the SIG Writing community since1996, and participated in all confer-ences SIG Writing organized, startingwith Barcelona 1996. She organizedmany symposia at these writing confer-ences and at EARLI conferences, andwas a co-organizer of the Conference onWriting Research in Amsterdam in 2014.

Fortunately, we will still be hearingfrom her. She just finished editing a spe-cial issue on Writing to Learn for JoWR,she is currently editing a volume in theStudies of Writing series on Design Prin-ciples in Writing Research, with RaquelFidalgo and Karen Harris, and has also or-ganized the SIG WRITING invited sympo-sium at EARLI 2015, this August in Cyprus.

She also submitted some research pa-pers which are awaiting revisions and fi-nal publication. So she will still be aroundin print, but not in person, which her re-search colleagues regret very much, asthey highly value Martine as a very loyalcolleague, a tireless researcher, who is al-ways full of initiatives, and, above all, sheis what you call in Dutch “gezellig.” Shewill be missed!

Martine Braaksma at the EARLI conference inCyprus (right) and her colleague Tanja (left), pre-senting her world famous Yummy Yummy TeachingScript

How to join SIG Writing

Not a member yet? You do writing-related research? You enjoy exchangingideas, findings, and data about writing?Then come and join us! Find all informa-tion about SIG Writing on our website:http://www.sig-writing.org.

SIG Writing is a special interestgroup of EARLI, the European Associ-ation for Research on Learning and In-struction (http://www.earli.org).To become a member of SIG Writ-ing, please first join EARLI (all informa-tion about EARLI membership can befound at http://www.earli.org/membership). Membership of the SIGsis open to all EARLI members. A list of allSIGs appears on the membership applica-tion form. To become a member of SIGWriting, tick the check-box. Of courseyou can join other EARLI SIGs as well.

Thanks to L. Bourke, R. Bouwer, M. Fürer, T. Guasch,M. Leijten, M. Koster, Ch. MacArthur, G. Rijlaars-dam, L. van Waes, and N. Weintraub who con-tributed to this edition of the newsletter.Please send your contributions for the next edition(Fall 2015) by e-mail to the editor Cerstin Mahlow(cerstin@mahlow.ch). Please include your contribu-tion in the mail text, do not send Word documents!Image Coyprights by Martine Braaksma, MonikaKoster, and Cerstin Mahlow. Graphics Copyright byBrill, Guilford, EARLI, and SIG Writing.July 17, 2015

European Association forResearch on Learning andInstruction

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