All students and professors need to write, and many struggle to finish their stalled dissertations, journal articles, book chapters, or grant proposals. Writing is hard work and can be difficult to wedge into a frenetic academic schedule. In this practical, light-hearted, and encouraging book, Paul Silvia explains that writing productively does not require innate skills or special traits but specific tactics and actions. Drawing examples from his own field of psychology, he shows readers how to overcome motivational roadblocks and become prolific without sacrificing evenings, weekends, and vacations. After describing strategies for writing productively, the author gives detailed advice from the trenches on how to write, submit, revise, and resubmit articles, how to improve writing quality, and how to write and publish academic work.

Richard Wright [RL 6 IL 10-12] A poor black boy acquires a very disturbing symbol of manhood--a gun. Theme: maturing. 38 pages. Tale Blazers.

'Practical Action Research' is a compilation of critical commentaries that offer practical steps for understanding and implementing action research. The contributors demonstrate how educators can reflect, collect data, and create alternative ways to improve their practice in the classroom and schoolwide.

This practitioner-based book provides different approaches for reaching an increasing population in today’s schools - English language learners (ELLs). The recent development and adoption of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects (CCSS-ELA/Literacy), the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, the C3 Framework, and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) highlight the role that teachers have in developing discipline-specific competencies. This requires new and innovative approaches for teaching the content areas to all students. The book begins with an introduction that contextualizes the chapters in which the editors highlight transdisciplinary theories and approaches that cut across content areas. In addition, the editors include a table that provides a matrix of how strategies and theories map across the chapters. The four sections of the book represent the following content areas: English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies. This book offers practical guidance that is grounded in relevant theory and research and offers teachers suggestions on how to use the approaches described.

A great way to help students learn your content is to have them write about it. Writing is a way for students to review their own learning, organize their thinking and evaluate how well they understand what has been taught. Use the 81 tools in this binder to help students in every grade and subject become actively engaged in their own learning. The binder contains everything teachers need to begin using these strategies immediately. Each strategy includes complete how-to-use instructions, teacher materials for classroom use, classroom examples, and a template for student assignments.

Despite prodigious developments in the field of language assessment in the Middle East and the Pacific Rim, research and practice in these areas have been underrepresented in mainstream literature. This volume takes a fresh look at language assessment in these regions, and provides a unique overview of contemporary language assessment research. In compiling this book, the editors have tapped into the knowledge of language and educational assessment experts whose diversity of perspectives and experience has enriched the focus and scope of language and educational assessment in general, and the present volume in particular. The six ‘trends’ addressed in the 26 chapters that comprise this title consider such contemporary topics as data mining, in-class assessment, and washback. The contributors explore new approaches and techniques in language assessment including advances resulting from multidisciplinary collaboration with researchers in computer science, genetics, and neuroscience. The current trends and promising new directions identified in this volume and the research reported here suggest that researchers across the Middle East and the Pacific Rim are playing—and will continue to play—an important role in advancing the quality, utility, and fairness of language testing and assessment practices.

This study had a research purpose and a pedagogical purpose. Research disclosed the dynamic, changing nature of (learner-internal and learner-external) variables that influence strategic competence for developing EFL/ESL writers. This competence was found necessary for international graduate students to move from writer-centered learning to reader-centered communication. The research instruments proved to be practical tools for guiding learners' processes of learning and writing a scholarly paper or article and avoiding plagiarism. The implication for teachers and program administrators is a systematic approach for developing self-regulation (control) in EFL/ESL writing. The first part of the book reports on the mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) research. The second part gives an in-depth report of the 6 cases used in the research. The third part presents tools for systematically developing self-regulation in scholarly (and academic) writing with (a) student and teacher checklists for formative assessment that are valid and reliable; and (b) a model syllabus for teachers that can be adapted across disciplines and genres. These tools deal with learning strategies and their applications to writing and writing instruction.