Most U.S. colleges and universities expect students to improve their writing ability by taking first-year composition (FYC) courses. In such courses, non-native English (L2) writers with diverse language backgrounds study alongside their native English (L1) speaking peers. However, it is not clear how different these populations are in terms of…

This study contributes to research on source integration in argumentative writing, with a focus on the understudied aspect of source choice and use in counterarguments. Using source-based argumentative essays written by 13 students in one English as a second language section of a first-year composition course in the United States, the author…

Institutions of higher education in the United States continue to witness a dramatic shift in the spectrum of diversity in their student populations. Multiple variables of difference that mixed student demographics bring to university campuses make internationalization work necessary both inside and outside the classroom. Internationalization of…

Although peer interaction has received attention in second language (L2) collaborative writing (CW) research, the manner and quality of peer interaction have been less investigated. Previous studies usually examined peer interaction by looking at language-related episodes, overlooking the ways students negotiate for different types of knowledge…

It is important to understand multilingual students' lived experiences and sense-making in their everyday written communication before rethinking the implementation of translingual writing in college composition classrooms. Unpacking multilinguals' written communication across social and academic contexts, this exploratory qualitative study…

This study explored ESL students' comments on teacher's written corrective feedback in a freshman composition class to find out whether they thought positively about the feedback and how they perceived the power relationship with the teacher. The study followed a qualitative design. Thirteen ESL students were asked to comment on the teacher's…

Özge Yol is a former composition instructor and ESL/EFL teacher. Currently a doctoral candidate in the Educational Theory and Practice program at Binghamton University, she describes a "write a letter to your friend" activity she designed using peer-feedback to facilitate student engagement through the use of guiding questions. The task…

This article reports on a pedagogical trial of teaching reporting verbs for source integration in a North American ESL (English as a second language) composition class. Source incorporation challenges many novice ESL writers in the academic context as they are unable to view writing as an interactional activity, which requires proper presentation…

L2 writers likely perceive "good academic writing" as impersonal (Hyland, 2002; Shen, 1989; Tang & John, 1999). Yet research has shown that every linguistic and rhetorical choice that a writer makes--including, the presence/absence and different forms of self-mention--potentially reveals the writer's authorial identity (Ivanic,…

Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) programs connect students at campuses in two or more different countries to investigate global realities from a cross-cultural perspective through asynchronous (e.g., digital forums) and/or synchronous (e.g., Zoom meetings) digital engagement. As many scholars have noted, COIL collaborations…

The present study aimed at exploring the differences in EFL learners' writing performance in two writing modes (direct and translated writing) in two writing genres (argumentation and narration) depending upon their L2 writing proficiency. For this study, 46 college freshmen (43.5% of high level and 56.5% of low level) performed four writing tasks…

This study reports on how the supplementation of online resources, informed by systemic functional linguistics (SFL), impacted English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) student writers' development of critical thinking skills. Through qualitative analyses of student-teacher interactions, interviews with students, and students' written documents, the…

The study utilised a fine-grained diagnostic checklist to assess first-year undergraduates in Hong Kong and evaluated its validity and usefulness for diagnosing academic writing in English. Ten English language instructors marked 472 academic essays with the checklist. They also agreed on a Q-matrix, which specified the relationships among the…

This study describes English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' use of vocabulary consolidation strategies and explores the connection between strategy use and vocabulary learning outcomes. This study included 218 participants who were students from five freshman English classes at a university in Taiwan. Students' self-reports on their use of…

First-year composition in U.S. higher education has been a major site of L2 writing research. Despite the historical division between mainstream first-year composition and L2 writing, there has been an increasing interest in integrating insights from L2 writing research into the professional literature in rhetoric and composition and writing…