Articulating ideas in writing based on English conventions may be one of the biggest challenges for English as a foreign language students, which makes corrective feedback (CF) an indispensable part in writing practice. In terms of providing CF, researchers have claimed that indirect CF has a number of advantages for the improvement of students'…

Studies in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) indicate that the use of discourse markers (DMs) in the academic writing of second language learners improves the overall quality of these texts by contributing to their cohesion and comprehensibility (Saif Modhish 2012; Jalilifar 2008; Intaraprawat & Steffensen 1995). However, despite the…

Researchers have found executive functioning (EF) to be important for reading and math performance but have paid less attention to their role in writing. Van Dijk and Kintsch (1983) identified three levels of writing: microstructure, macrostructure, and superstructure. The existing work on EF and writing has several limitations: researchers have…

This dissertation studies attitudes of the Saudi university learners studying English as a Foreign Language (EFL) toward using the Computer-assisted Writing (CAW) applications, e.g., up-to-date versions of word processing programs, for doing English writing assignments. Research has confirmed that CAW applications, e.g., up-to-date versions of…

This study investigates the multicomponential nature of L2 Arabic writing by adapting a number of direct measures of linguistic "complexity," "accuracy," and "fluency" (CAF) to the measurement of written Arabic texts produced by L2 Arabic learners and Arabic Native Speakers (NSs). Previous studies of L2 writing have…

Writing is a skill that has increased in significance for both researchers and classroom teachers due to changes in recent standards. Currently, many high school English Language Learners (ELLs) are struggling to master this priority skill. A strategy that has been shown to be effective for adolescent writers is Self-Regulated Strategy Development…

With the rapid development of Web 2.0 in the field of education, which allows users to interact and collaborate with teachers and peers on the web, many researchers have focused on exploring the developments of using Course Manage System (CMS) in service of L2 writing (e.g., Chun, 2011; Warschauer & Grimes, 2007). Simultaneously, participation…

There is an ongoing debate as to whether written corrective feedback (WCF) is effective for the improvement of adult second language (L2) writers' accuracy. Ever since Truscott (1996, 1999) began arguing against grammar correction in L2 writing courses, researchers have challenged his position (i.e. below). Although most of these studies show WCF…

The development of expertise in writing is a complex but important achievement for young children as they become literate. Writing is a critical component of literacy development, yet there are few accounts of change over time in early writing development that attend to both changes in writing behaviors, the complexity of written messages, and the…

Thirty-three students of fourth semester German at the University of Kansas participated in the study which sought to investigate whether focused written corrective feedback (WCF) promoted the acquisition of the German case morphology over the course of a semester. Participants received teacher WCF on five two-draft essay assignments under three…

Despite the growing interest in examining the link between peer-peer collaborative dialogue and second language (L2) development in recent years (Swain, Brooks, & Tocalli-Beller, 2002), much of the empirical work in this regard focused on face-to-face communication, leaving the operationalization of collaborative dialogue in text-based…

The objective of the current study is to compare how Thai EFL writers develop and express their oppositional ideas in arguments and to compare their use of oppositional connectors in arguments to those of published scholars in the field of health science. An investigation of thematic progression pattern was conducted to examine whether a certain…

The purpose of this study was to test the effect of one approach to writing pedagogy on second-language (L2) writing accuracy. This study used two groups of L2 writers who were learning English as a second language: a control group (n = 19) who were taught with traditional process writing methods and a treatment group (n = 28) who were taught with…