Studying towards a postgraduate qualification is viewed as a booster that may usher employees towards management positions. We have found common mistakes in research proposals for master's degree students in a department at the University of Namibia. Our presentation shows the shortcomings in the research proposals of postgraduate students and…

Despite the increased use of integrated tasks in high-stakes academic writing assessment, research on rating criteria which reflect the unique construct of integrated summary writing skills is comparatively rare. Using a mixed-method approach of expert judgement, text analysis, and statistical analysis, this study examines writing features that…

This study sought to solve the puzzle of persistent occurrence of mechanical errors in pre-service primary school teachers' writings. Data consisted of short compositions from four intact classes (n=75) of second-year university students at the Higher Institute of Arts and Crafts of Tataouine (ISAMT), Tunisia. Results of data analysis revealed a…

The current study explores error fossilization in the academic writing of Saudi English as a Foreign Language (EFL) undergraduate learners. A manual textual analysis approach, employing corpus content analysis on writing across diverse genres including argumentative, expository, narrative, and descriptive essays was conducted to discover the…

With the change in socio-political and educational contexts in global academia, the trend of writing academic papers has arisen among Nepali students and educators in higher education. However, many of them are still unfamiliar with the basic standard to be incorporated in an academic paper. In this context, this study examined the post-graduate…

Grammatical errors are major concerns for many teachers and students. The first step in tackling these errors is to investigate what kinds of grammatical errors students make and how frequently they occur so that remedies can be sought. This study thus set out to analyze the essays written by Thai EFL students. The data used for analysis were 58…

This article describes the steps we went through in designing and validating an item bank to diagnose linguistic problems in the English academic writing of university students in Hong Kong. Test items adopt traditional item formats (e.g., MCQ, grammatical judgment tasks, and error correction) but are based on authentic language materials…

Previous corpus research on English for academic purposes (EAP) writing has analyzed how often additional language (L2) writers use words from the Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead, 2000), but few studies to date have explored how accurately those words are used. Therefore, the current study investigated how accurately and appropriately EAP…

Errors in writing are unavoidable while students are trying to develop their writing skills. There have been several studies on identifying writing problems or errors in students' writing. It is believed that identifying students' written tasks is an effective tool to explore the difficulties involved in learning language. This helps teachers'…

Metadiscourse is a tool for writers to guide and interact with readers through texts. Yet in most student texts, one of the points lacking is the interaction between writers and readers. In this study, frequency and type of interactive and interactional metadiscourse features were explored via students' research-based essays based on Hyland's…

This study examines the effectiveness of the provision of specific input on the use of verb conjugation and tenses to preparatory students at Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia. This is a well-documented grammatical issue for native Arabic speakers, and was undertaken due to this factor, as well as the students under…

This study determines the fine-grained bottom-up linguistic features involved in successful second language (L2) English academic group oral tutorial discussion through the use of a spoken learner corpus composed of more than 20 hrs of L2 production. Student performances were graded by teacher-raters using a can-do rating scale, which assessed…

This paper provides an example of close analysis of student attempts to fill the gaps that comprise a "cloze" test. Such analysis may assist diagnosis of the difficulties that groups of students experience with specific text in particular contexts and illustrate the impact of those difficulties. The paper briefly touches on the…

This study investigates the syntactic errors in speaking among an Arab L2 post-graduate student in an academic speaking context. Specifically, the objectives are to describe the syntax error patterns committed by the student while engaging in speaking and to explore the contributing factors that may affect the errors. To address these objectives,…

This study was conducted to identify and describe the written verb-form errors found in the EAP writing of 39 second year learners pursuing a three-year Diploma Programme from a public university in Malaysia. Data for this study, which were collected from a written 350-word discursive essay, were analyzed to determine the types and frequency of…