Objective: The objective of this study was threefold: (a) to create a rubric for response complexity (RC), defined as an admixture of response length, grammatical diversity, categorisation, and sophistication; (b) to measure behavioural and cognitive engagement through students' written responses on a school-based written activity, and (c) to…

In this study at a research-intensive public university, a group of eight instructors across a range of disciplines designed a writing assignment in which students (n=104) chose to write to one of three audiences--the teacher, a novice, or an adjacent expert. Students were then asked to complete a questionnaire that included open-ended questions…

While many studies have investigated the effect of task complexity on L2 writing, little has been reported on the effects of intended task complexity manipulations on task-generated cognitive demands in L2 writing. This study, therefore, was designed to examine the relative effects of task complexity and cognitive demands on students' L2 writing.…

In this paper, we present a system for automatic evaluation of the quality of a question paper. Question paper plays a major role in educational assessment. The quality of a question paper is crucial to fulfilling the purpose of the assessment. In many education sectors, question papers are prepared manually. A prior analysis of a question paper…

Task design features have different effects on second language (L2) production and can be adopted for different pedagogical purposes. However, the synergistic effects of task features were left unexplored in the extant task-based literature. The present study investigated the synergistic effects of two task design features, namely, prior knowledge…

In this laboratory activity, students were tasked with determining the heat of combustion for each of three common sugar substitutes: saccharin, aspartame, and sucralose. The heats of combustion were determined via three different methods: bomb calorimetry, heats of formation derived from semiempirical calculations, and tabulated average bond…

The involvement load hypothesis (ILH), which predicts the lexical learning potential of tasks, assumes that writing sentences (SW) and compositions (CW) using novel target words (TWs) lead to similar lexical gains. However, research on the issue is scarce and contradictory. One possibility is that the higher cognitive load of CW hinders learning…

The article presents a lexical study that investigates the lexical demands of academic written texts at different levels of writing. By employing the British National Corpus/ Corpus of Contemporary American English (BNC/COCA) word list and the Academic Word List (AWL), the present study analyzed data from the British Academic Written English…

This paper presents the adaptation of the POMAS classification of spelling errors (Silliman et al., Developmental Neuropsychology 29:93-123, 2006, Bahr et al., Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research 55:1587-1599, 2012; International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 18:73-91, 2015) to Polish orthography. We identified the…

In the later years of undergraduate study, students read, process, and evaluate primary literature within specific fields of study. Shifting from textbooks to the vast amounts of peer-reviewed current literature can be difficult for students. This article details an innovative approach to helping students successfully make this transition through…

The focus of the current study was to explore and describe the shared experiences of international students as they adapted academically and socially to a Christian university in North Texas. The research focus resulted from the gap identified in the literature review: the lack of knowledge about the experiences of international students as they…

Students face challenging texts and concepts across the disciplines in higher education, and many students lack the reading skills and strategies to make sense of them. The aim of the small study described in this article was to explore the benefits, if any, of the difficulty paper, a written formative assessment that asks students to explore…

This study explored the effects of increasing the number of elements and the degree of reasoning on second language (L2) writing and also examined the relationship between writing motivational beliefs and anxiety and L2 writing in simple versus complex tasks. Sixty upper-intermediate L2 learners were invited to write simple and complex…

The increasing prevalence of students' use of Google Translate has been the catalyst for re-developing the language classroom. Through progressive adaptations, Google Translate has been integrated to help support meaningful language learning, academic rigor and intellectual curiosity. Five key steps form the foundation of the ADAPT approach:…

The purpose of the study was twofold. First, it investigated the kinds of writing tasks in textbooks used by senior high school students in Japan. Second, it examined the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) levels of the writing tasks in English-language textbooks for Japanese senior high school students. The study focused…