Purpose: This study aims to explore computer-assisted language learning (CALL) activities to improve the English essay writing of Pakistani university students. It highlights the role of CALL in the language proficiency model cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP), which can enable second language learners to engage in more critical…

There are a number of functions paragraphs play in discourse studies. For example, it encourages a writer to give adequate focus to the various aspects of his or her message; and it facilitates the identification of one idea in an essay to another idea. Some classical second language writers (for example: Stern, 1976; Halliday & Hasan, 1976;…

Web-based writing tools, which allow multiple writers to share and edit the same document, have attracted significant attention as computer-assisted language learning tools in the past decade. However, how L2 writers contribute to the shared document as a social action for interacting with other cowriters remains underexplored in L2 research.…

The aim of this study is to investigate issues of Indonesian EFL students' writing skills, covering ability, problem and reason why they got problems in writing comparison and contrast essay. The convergent parallel of mixed methods was used to explore these issues by involving 52 EFL students of IAIN Samarinda who enrolled the academic essay…

In this study, we propose a link between L2 rhetorical concepts and ELF as a way of the analysis of the development of a single concept, of an EFL college student's rhetorical knowledge. Using Vygotskian sociocultural theory as analytical lenses, we examine whether L2 rhetoric can be mastered and internalized as a culturally neutral concept, i.e.,…

This classroom study examines whether English L2 writers' language use differs depending on the writing task (operationalized as paragraph type), and task conditions (operationalized as individual or collaborative writing). The texts written by English L2 university students in Colombia (N = 26) in response to problem/solution and cause/effect…

The Report of Chinese Students' English Writing Ability (2014) focuses on the Chinese students' English writing in the automated essay-evaluation context. The data and samples are primarily from a national-wide writing project involving 300,814 English as a Foreign Language participants from 452 schools in China during a period of April 10 to May…

This paper aims at proposing a technique for students learning English as a foreign language when they collaboratively write an argumentative essay in a wiki environment. A wiki environment and collaborative work play an important role within the academic writing task. Nevertheless, an appropriate and systematic work assignment is required in…

In order to motivate ESL students and engage them in different tasks effectively, it is necessary to make the tasks novel to the students. As one possible way of introducing novelty in the course, films could be used advantageously. In this study, a writing course integrated with videos of movies and cultural festival of different regions of the…

Writing is a very important skill that should be mastered properly by university students, especially pre-service language teachers (e.g. EFL student teachers). In order to present their ideas efficiently in the context of their academic study, they have to be trained well on how to write meaningful pieces (e.g. essays, academic reports,…

While vocabulary is the concern of beginning students of English as a second language (ESL) and essays are the focus of advanced students, syntax is the domain of the intermediate course, with an emphasis on sentence combining. One method divides the course into four segments: (1) using, varying, and rearranging connectors; (2) ordering thoughts…

This textbook attempts to augment the general handbook information needed in any composition class with specific information that the non-native speaker needs, for example, the distribution of determiners with the various noun subclasses, and the syntactical relationship of subordinator to subordinate clause; and to apply the techniques and…

This book has been written to help improve the composition skills of students of English as a second language or second dialect. It has been planned for students at the advanced secondary, college, and university levels who have had some previous training in English vocabulary and grammar; it is particularly suited for a one-semester course for…

A technique to help English as a second language students master the basic elements of expository prose is considered in terms of course objectives and the types of assignments used to accomplish them. A characteristic of many highly verbal students entering a college program is their propensity to "talk on paper" in an informal, ungrammatical,…