Although many studies modelled writing quality by analysing basic skills (spelling, grammar, etc.), few focused on top-down compositional strategies at the discourse level. We propose that using both narrative and argument discourse modes in an argumentative essay (a multi-discourse mode [MDM] strategy) capitalizes on their complementary…

The past few decades have foregrounded cooperative learning and its pedagogical implications for students' academic, psychological, and social gains, particularly, in the Western context. These gains, nonetheless, were sometimes questioned and doubted in the Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC) countries such as China. This study adopts Norton's…

The present study investigated the potential of writing in English as a foreign language (EFL) for language learning by manipulating cognitive task complexity based on related models and hypotheses. English essays written by 59 Chinese postgraduate EFL students from different subject areas were analysed with reference to writing complexity,…

Although prior studies have suggested the benefits of a collaborative approach to providing peer feedback in EFL writing, little is known about how students engage in collaborative peer feedback (CPF) activities. This paper reports on a case study involving five Chinese EFL students who collaboratively provided feedback on five argumentative…

This study introduces a mobile-assisted Seamless Chinese Vocabulary Learning (SCVL) framework and examines its efficacy through the implementation of a "sentence-paragraph-essay" artifact-making writing process designed to enhance vocabulary growth among tertiary-level students. Employing a design-based research methodology, the study…

As the development and application of large language models (LLMs) in physics education progress, the well-known AI-based chatbot ChatGPT4 has presented numerous opportunities for educational assessment. Investigating the potential of AI tools in practical educational assessment carries profound significance. This study explored the comparative…

Many studies have addressed the needs and challenges of international students in their host countries; however, there is relatively less work on the potential contributions these students make to their curricula. This article presents a bibliographic analysis of the academic references (n = 7,273) used by Chinese students to construct their final…

It is widely believed that raters' cognition is an important aspect of writing assessment, as it has both logical and temporal priority over scores. Based on a critical review of previous research in this area, it is found that raters' cognition can be boiled to two fundamental issues: building text images and strategies for articulating scores.…

There now exists an established body of work outlining the challenges international students can face as part of the acculturation process, including a range of academic and non-academic pressures to overcome. For many students, writing essays in academic English for the first time is problematic. This article considers pedagogical approaches for…

Automated writing scoring can not only provide holistic scores but also instant and corrective feedback on L2 learners' writing quality. It has been increasing in use throughout China and internationally. Given the advantages, the past several years has witnessed the emergence and growth of writing evaluation products in China. To the best of our…

This study explored the relationship between linguistic features and the rated quality of letters of application (LAs) and argumentative essays (AEs) composed in English by Chinese college-level English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. A corpus of 260 LAs and 260 AEs were analyzed via a confirmatory factor analysis. Latent variables were EFL…

This paper proposes to use depth perception to represent raters' decision in holistic evaluation of ESL essays, as an alternative medium to conventional form of numerical scores. The researchers verified the new method's accuracy and inter/intra-rater reliability by inviting 24 ESL teachers to perform different representations when rating 60…

Metaphors are known to present both opportunities and challenges for second language learners, but relatively little is known about learners' awareness of them. To investigate this, we analyzed 72 argumentative essays written in English by a group of 37 intermediate Chinese university students of English. We identified metaphors using an…

This corpus-based study investigates lexical richness in English writing by Chinese senior high school students. Lexical uses in 303 compositions were compared across three grades in terms of lexical sophistication, variation, density and errors. Timed compositions were sampled from Writing Corpus of English Learners, and the sample sizes of three…

The mixed-method study firstly drew on regression analysis to check what influential variables were in constructing authorial voice of 45 Chinese MTI students (postgraduates) in an EFL writing course, and then based upon quantitative findings, qualitatively examined how students' EFL writing may resonate with voice teaching in the course with data…