This study intended to explore the different types of phraseological units in IELTS academic writing task 2 and probe into the IELTS candidates' perceptions of phraseological competence. To this end, a corpus entailing 100 essays (26,423 words) written for IELTS writing task 2 was scrutinized, through which phraseological units were extracted and…

Bilingual students are underrepresented in gifted and talented (GT) programs, and language/literacy research on these students is scarce. This study examined academic language in expository writing of 65 GT students, including 32 bilinguals, in Grades 4-8. Outcomes at the word, phrase, sentence, and text levels were compared for bilinguals' versus…

The use of appropriate of words in writing, particularly frequently occurring four words combinations in academic register, is very important because it is an effective building block of academic text used by expert writers for effective communication. Yet teaching of four-word lexical bundles is rarely discussed in ESL writing textbooks. Recent…

Reading critically involves examining the language choices authors make to "get the job done" -- in other words, to communicate effectively in specific ways with particular audiences. Not all students in middle and high school intuit this type of reading and may experience challenges when they go to write for academic purposes. Their…