The potential of wikis for learning has recently begun to capture the attention of English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) research. While students' collaboration, attention to form, and perceptions of wikis in document mode have been widely addressed in previous research, the educational value of wikis used in thread mode, as discussion…

The goal of this study was to design and evaluate fluency-based training units to help students eliminate inconcision. Participants first completed a 1.5-hr lesson on writing concisely and then a 5-min test during which they edited sentences containing inconcise text from the training units. Subsequently, participants were randomly assigned to an…

The present study investigates heritage learners' recognition of native-like and non-native-like mood selection in Spanish volitional constructions along two dimensions: age of onset of bilingualism in English (operationalized as age of arrival) and language use. Thirty-two heritage learners completed a grammaticality judgment (GJ) and an editing…

A number of studies have found that writers produce text in bursts of language. That is, when creating a text, writers produce a few words, pause, produce a few more words, pause, and so on. Chenoweth and Hayes (2003) hypothesized that language bursts occur when writers translate ideas in to new language. This study tested this hypothesis against…

Defining "functional documents" as those such as regulations, contracts, and policies that people must read in order to act, this paper posits the need for a revision principle by which writers can structure such documents to meet readers' needs. The first part of the paper describes a research project that uncovered some needs of…

To determine if people who wrote legal documents could read such documents with understanding and rewrite them to be understandable to the general public, eight experienced government writers were asked to rewrite a portion of a government regulation for a general audience. The writers--four lawyers and four nonlawyers--were audio recorded as they…

Cognitive and affective responses to one authentic and three edited texts were examined with four levels of university-level learners of Spanish. Results indicated that all students comprehended significantly more from the authentic passage than from the edited ones and also responded more favorably to the authentic passages. (Contains 47…

Work of students identified as basic writers was studied and analyzed to determine students' perceptions about composition. Results suggest that progress is linked to the ability to develop and elaborate ideas while writing, to the ability to generate acceptable English automatically, and to the ability to rewrite, edit, and revise. (Author/LMO)

Editorial, like clerical, proofreading cannot be left to chance; the know-how, what and why must be reviewed, recalled, reinforced, and refined daily. There are four avenues of daily activities available to the teacher to establish these skills: (1) homework reading assignment, (2) dictation-for-control material, (3) dictation for…