Given that grammatical and spelling errors have been found to influence perceived competence and credibility in written communication, this study examined how a student's grammar and spelling errors affect how other students respond to the student's postings in four online debates hosted in asynchronous threaded discussions. Message-response…

This paper examines whether and to what extent data-driven learning (DDL) activities can improve the lexico-grammatical use of abstract nouns in L2 writing. A topic-based corpus was compiled to develop concordance learning activities, and 40 Chinese students majoring in English were randomly assigned to a control group or an experimental group. At…

Argues that comparing standard English usage to systems of standardization students are familiar with from their technical training forces technical writing students to understand the need for consistent signaling in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and other language conventions. Includes an example from early American literature written in…

Analyzes discourse features of compositions written in Spanish by secondary school students in Mexico, draws comparisons with those written in English by Anglo-American students in the United States, and discusses the implications of the results for teaching and evaluating composition skills in Spanish language programs. (29 references) (GLR)

A study of the discourse of book reviews in several academic disciplines examines how interaction of text and context varies across disciplines. Sixty academic book reviews in linguistics, chemistry, and economics were analyzed for rhetorical structure and for the communicative goal of the genre, that of evaluating knowledge production. The book…

Discussion of one form of pragmatic competence, projecting a sense of stylistic voice into texts, explores how writing in a non-native language affects the ability to express stylistic voice and enter into social dialogue with readers. Using the published reflections of authors writing professionally in a non-native language, the analysis shows…

This study investigated the nature of students' discussion in peer response sessions in an English-as-a-Second-Language composition class in Taiwan. Subjects were 17 university students, divided into four writing groups. Half of the 16 peer response sessions were computer-mediated (CM), the other half in face-to-face interaction (FF). Analysis of…

Using a comparative rhetoric model, a study examined the discourse behavior of native speakers of American English conducting peer review discussions in English and that of native speakers of Chinese performing the same task in Chinese. Data are drawn from audiotape recordings of peer review discussions of eight college students, conducted in…

This study analyzed the English discourse organization of sixty academic book reviews in three disciplines (linguistics, chemistry, economics) published in 1990, to help define book reviews as an academic written genre. Analysis revealed that although book reviews show regularities in information form, function, and content, some variation occurs…