Recognizing the importance of formative assessment, this mixed-methods study investigates how four teachers and 100 students respond to the new emphasis on formative assessment in English as a foreign language (EFL) writing classes in Norway. While previous studies have examined formative assessment in oral classroom interactions and focused on…

The quality of teacher-student relationships greatly affects students' academic life. Students need to be recognized by their teacher. One way through which such need may be fulfilled is receiving strokes (teacher attention). In a broad sense, stroke is known to be a unit of human recognition (Berne, 1988). Accordingly, the current mixed-methods…

This action research study examines the impact instruction informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) with a particular focus on tenor and socio-cultural theory has on sixth, seventh and eighth grade English language learners in an urban school. Over the course of seven and 1/2 months I used Systemic Functional Linguistics with a focus on…