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Assessing students' writing performance is essential to adequately monitor and promote individual writing development, but it is also a challenge. The present research investigates a benchmark rating procedure for assessing texts written by upper-elementary students. In two studies we examined whether a benchmark rating procedure (1) leads to reliable and generalisable scores that converge with holistic and analytic ratings, and (2) can be used for rating texts varying in topic and genre. Results support evidence that benchmark ratings are a valid indicator of text quality as they converge with holistic and analytic scores. They are also associated with less rater variance and less task-specific variance, leading to reliable and generalisable ratings. Moreover, a benchmark scale can be used for rating different tasks with the same reliability, at least when texts are written in the same genre. Taken together, a benchmark rating procedure ensures meaningful and useful information on students' writing.

The ability to read in a second language (L2) for academic purposes is essential for higher education students. Dutch colleges increasingly use materials in English or teach in English. This can be challenging for L2 readers, especially students entering higher education from vocational studies, who may have less experience with L2 academic reading. Teaching L2 reading programmes containing explicit instruction of reading strategies may benefit higher education students in L2 academic reading, particularly since reading strategies learned in the first language (L1) may not transfer to the L2. In this 7-week L2 reading strategy intervention, 801 first-year polytechnic students learned to use seven reading strategies that were effective according to a meta-analysis of L2 reading strategy studies. Data regarding students reading skills were collected over one academic year, from three treatment waves, using a regression discontinuity design. Three tests of equal difficulty were given to participants. In each wave students completed reading tests several weeks before the intervention, at the beginning and directly after the intervention. Results show that in all three waves the improvement in reading comprehension scores between the second and third measurement (due to the experimental course) significantly exceeded the increase between the first two measurement occasions. Although the intervention was shown to be effective, the effects were to some extent mediated by the previous education level. This study supports the explicit instruction of strategies in L2 reading for students in higher education and welcomes more research into L2 reading strategy interventions for students from vocational backgrounds.

In this study we examine process configurations in synthesis tasks. We study whether these configurations are students traits or vary within students per task. In a national survey with a representative sample of 658 Dutch upper-secondary school students, we collected writing tasks, registered students' writing behaviors (via keylogging) and their task perceptions and assessed the quality of their texts. Each participant completed two informative and two argumentative synthesis tasks. Writing process configurations were based on a preselected set of writing behaviors that proved to be related to text quality: time spent on sources and production activities, switching between sources and between sources and text production, and speed of production; with reference to the phase in the process (first, mid, final part). Latent profile analyses distilled four process configurations, some of which were more likely to occur with the informative genre. One process configuration, that is, "Fast text production," was related to qualitatively higher text quality scores than the others. Additionally, at the age of 16-18 a writing process configuration is not a student trait: in most instances, we observed two or more task configurations within students. Writers' task experiences such as topic knowledge and topic interest predicted the occurrence of certain process configurations which could indicate adaptivity. The finding that writing configurations of writers vary even between similar tasks has important implications for the generalizability of (synthesis) writing research on the basis of a single writing task and process per student.

In the Netherlands, the quality of the reading curriculum is currently under debate because of disappointing results on national and international assessments of students' reading skills and motivation. In a mixed-method study, we analyzed the content of Dutch textbooks for reading comprehension instruction (i.e., the implemented curriculum) and teachers' evaluation and use of these books (i.e., the enacted curriculum). A materials analysis of reading comprehension lessons (N = 80) in eight textbooks for grades 4 and 5 was complemented with semi-structured teacher interviews (N = 29) and lesson observations (N = 11), with a focus on the quality of reading strategy and text structure instruction in the curriculum. Main findings are (1) a lack of alignment between lesson goals, theory, and assignments, (2) a strong focus on practicing strategies, (3) limited declarative knowledge about strategies and text structure, (4) little opportunities for self-regulated strategy application. The teachers that were interviewed mention similar problems, but still hardly deviate from the textbook's content and pedagogical guidelines. We make recommendations to improve the quality of the curriculum.

Inflectional morphology causes persistent difficulties for second language (L2) learners (Montrul, Silvina & Kim Potowski. 2007. Command of gender agreement in school-age Spanish-English bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingualism 11(3). 301–328; Montrul, Silvina, Israel de la Fuente, Justin Davidson & Rebecca Foote. 2013. The role of experience in the acquisition and production of diminutives and gender in Spanish: Evidence from L2 learners and heritage speakers. Second Language Research 29(1). 87–118). Learners operate with a default gender value, and overgeneralize the masculine forms of determiners and modifiers (White, Lydia, Elena Valenzuela, Martyna Kozlowska-Macgregor & Ingrid Leung. 2004. Gender and number agreement in nonnative Spanish. Applied Psycholinguistics 25(1). 105–133; Schlig 2003). 111 essays written were collected containing 799 correct uses and 281 errors from Dutch students whose written ability in Spanish is A2 (Common European Framework). The results show that singular masculine nominal agreement marking at the determiner is significantly better produced by Dutch L2 learners of Spanish than when the marking of nominal agreement is plural, feminine or at the adjective. This study corroborates the previous results where learners operate with a default gender value and overgeneralize the masculine forms of determiners. Also these results show that L2 learners of Spanish are significantly less accurate in gender agreement with adjectives than with determiners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]