While feedback is widely considered essential for second language (L2) writing development (Bitchener & Ferris, 2012), teachers may not always be able to provide their learners with immediate and frequent corrective feedback. Automated writing evaluation (AWE) systems can help respond to this challenge by providing L2 learners with written…

This article provides introductory, step-by-step explanations of how to make a specialized corpus and an annotated frequency-based vocabulary list. One of my objectives is to help teachers, instructors, program administrators, and graduate students with little experience in this field be able to do so using free resources. Instructions are first…

This article reports on a study examining the extent to which pedagogical activities can affect students' cosmopolitan communicative competence (CCC) through online transnational encounters. A total of 58 students from a Hong Kong university and 25 students from an American university were divided into 25 transnational groups. They communicated…

As familiar and widely used elements of second language pedagogy that can be leveraged in interesting new ways through the use of digital technology. The focus is on a set of affordances offered by Google Drive, a popular online storage and document-sharing technology. On the assumption that dynamic collaboration with peers, teacher feedback, and…

Technology is an ever-increasing part of how teachers and learners work on language and texts. Indeed, computers, the Internet, and Web 2.0 applications are revolutionizing how texts are consumed, discussed, and produced in classrooms. This article focuses on a specific technological innovation emerging from this digital revolution: the use of…

The language settings used on personal computers interact with the spell-checker in Microsoft Word, which directly affects the flagging of spellings that are deemed incorrect. This study examined the language settings of personal computers owned by a group of Canadian university students. Of 21 computers examined, only eight had their Windows…

Rationalizes using software not designed for English as a second language (ESL) instruction for such application. Criteria for evaluating such software are identified, and some general software that seem to have potential ESL applications are listed. (CB)