The Writing-Reading Nexus

Source-Based L1 Student Writing Development: Analyzing the Relationships Among Functional Dimensions of Source Use and the Quality of Source Use

“…Source-based writing development requires more than just learning the two separate skills of reading and writing. It also involves developing a complex, hybrid ability to organize source concepts in relation to students' own writing, select the appropriate source material for support, and connect ideas within and across the source texts and the student writing (Nelson, 2008). It is well established that learning to write effectively from sources can require years of practice for postsecondary students, as they work through "naïve strategies" such as overrelying on quotations, and copying source material (Cumming et al, 2016); however, while scholarship has identified sourcebased writing development as challenging and incremental, much remains to be learned about the development of source-based writing skills by English as a first language (L1) writers entering the university.…”

Learning through reading and writing tasks in higher education: what do students use, paper or screen? (El aprendizaje a través de la lectura y la escritura en la educación universitaria: ¿qué usan los estudiantes, papel o pantalla?)

“…Without any doubt, the tasks that students perform to learn the contents of a certain degree course are relevant to help them construct more solid and perdurable knowledge, and still the vast majority of tasks they perform are based on reading and writing. In other words, not all the tasks that students are instructed to perform (and the ones they perform on their own account for such purposes) have the same potential to generate meaningful learning, given that not all of them facilitate the emergence of complex cognitive processes that lead to deeper learning (Nelson, 2008;Tynjälä, 2001). Thus, the tasks that are termed hybrids (Nelson, 2008), which require both reading and writing, appear to have a higher potential of promoting learning than others that only involve reading, oral discussion or simple note-taking.…”

“…In other words, not all the tasks that students are instructed to perform (and the ones they perform on their own account for such purposes) have the same potential to generate meaningful learning, given that not all of them facilitate the emergence of complex cognitive processes that lead to deeper learning (Nelson, 2008;Tynjälä, 2001). Thus, the tasks that are termed hybrids (Nelson, 2008), which require both reading and writing, appear to have a higher potential of promoting learning than others that only involve reading, oral discussion or simple note-taking. The tasks that require, at most, information-selection processes and do not require a great deal of written composition (such as identifying main ideas, answering literal questions or note-taking) tend to involve superficial processing of the sources employed.…”

“…La lectura y la escritura son poderosas herramientas de aprendizaje (Nelson, 2008) pero, ¿cómo las utilizan los estudiantes universitarios para estudiar el contenido de una materia determinada? ¿Qué tipo de soporte (impreso o digital) utilizan para estudiar?…”

“…Reading and writing are powerful instruments for learning (Nelson, 2008), but how do undergraduate students use these tools to learn the contents of a specific discipline? Which type of support (print or digital) do they use to study?…”