This study proposed a set of measures for assessing noun phrase (NP) complexity in second language (L2) Chinese writing and compared the predictive power of these measures for L2 Chinese writing quality to that of a set of syntactic complexity measures based on the topic-comment unit (TC-unit). Our data consisted of 101 narratives written by…

Multi-word combinations are crucial for the production of various discourse types as well as for the construction of a credible and persuasive academic persona. This study investigates the frequency, structure, and function of the most frequently occurring 4-lexical bundles in writings from the field of linguistics. Following Biber et al.'s (1999)…

The study explored the correlation between teaching lexical bundles and improving writing skills in English composition courses. The study addressed two research questions. First, to what extent can the explicit teaching of lexical bundles facilitate greater comprehension and retention of the elements of the bundles? Second, the study investigated…

Syntactic complexity has been extensively approached in the fields of corpus linguistics and academic discourse studies. However, works focusing on disciplinary variation in terms of linguistic complexity and comparison of professional and novice academic writing are scarce. Addressing these issues is likely to have important implications for…

This study examines the effect of enhanced input of lexical chunks on the performance of Arabic-speaking English learners' writings. Lexical chunks, containing their forms, meanings, and functions, stored and recovered as a single component in brains, may alleviate language processing problems and increase language proficiency. The research…

This experimental study, using a pretest-treatment-posttest design, compared the effects of focused direct written corrective feedback and additional writing practice on L2 learners' written syntactic complexity. The participants were 60 Iranian elementary EFL learners, whose L2 proficiency as well as L2 writing syntactic complexity and accuracy…

Knowledge of collocations is essential for English academic writing. However, there are few academic collocation referencing tools available and there is a pressing need to develop more. In this paper, we will introduce the ACOP (Academic Collocations and Phrases Search Engine), a newly developed corpus-based tool to search large academic corpora.…

Second language (L2) writing has been determined to be influenced by what is read, with language learners tending to borrow words and short phrases from input texts while writing (e.g., Wang & Wang, 2015). This phenomenon is referred to as lexical alignment. Only one empirical study has investigated the influence that the linguistic complexity…

Recent research in SLA indicates that collocations are an indispensable aspect of language learning. Its importance in learners' writing ability is, therefore, undeniable. Thus, the present study attempted to explore the effect of explicit teaching of collocations on learners' awareness and use of them in their writing. It differed from previous…

This mixed-methods study explored the effects of employing a genre-based approach (GBA) to descriptive report writing on the understanding of text structure and ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings among Japanese university students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) over a 15-week course divided into three units. Applied within a…

Over the past decade, digital multimodal composing (DMMC) in the language learning context has received growing attention. DMMC entails teaching writing as the social practice of meaning making using various semiotic tools (Siegal, 2012). Despite its potential benefits as a way to teach a meaning-making process in the current digitalized era, much…

Although corpora and corpus linguistics have been applied for quite long in foreign and second language settings, there is still limited understanding about how EFL learners use corpus tools along with dictionaries to enhance their collocation knowledge. This study aims to gain insight into the effectiveness of corpus-based pedagogy in comparison…

In this study, the participants learned English as a foreign language (EFL) in the classroom and then worked on five learning tasks to apply their newly learned knowledge to unfamiliar environments. The participants took photos of people, objects, situations or scenarios and described them in detail using a mobile learning system. Familiarization…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of continuation writing on the usages of the second language in the argumentative writing. The research questions in this study are as follows: 1) Whether the language application of the second language learner exists in coordination with the reading text; 2) Whether the continuation writing…

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…