This paper supports the view that language instruction should be evidence and principle-based. Key facts about second language acquisition will be presented highlighting the main implications for language instruction. A principled and evidence-based approach to language instruction is one which takes into consideration the following: (i) a clear…

Although the literature on collaborative writing has revealed the advantages of collaboration in improving the writing quality of learners, few studies have examined the development of the interaction qualities during collaboration. Thus, the present study tracked the development of scaffolding episodes (SEs) in the collaborative performance of…

Students' engagement plays a pivotal role in how they respond to teacher's written feedback on their writings. Despite the ubiquity of prior research on teacher's corrective feedback in EFL writing classrooms, university students' engagement with the teacher's written corrective feedback (WCF) in tertiary writing classrooms receives scanty…

Grammar has always been considered by language learners as well as by those engaged in language education as an essential component of language, and their expectations from and planning for any language education programs have been conditioned accordingly. The definitions of the term grammar and its categories in all languages go back to…

Recent discussions in language communication indicate the effectiveness of technology and computer-mediated communication. Research also highlights the central role of synchronous and asynchronous modes of interaction in second and foreign language development. Gaining insights from Vygotskyan sociocultural theory of mind, the present study…

Since its inception, pragmatic competence has been studied vastly; the majority of these studies, however, have examined pragmatic production, and pragmatic comprehension is chiefly under-researched. This lack of adequate research also stands true for the underlying pragmatic comprehension processes and strategies. Therefore, the present…

The effectiveness of written corrective feedback (WCF) in the improvement of language learners' grammatical accuracy has been a topic of interest in SLA studies for the past couple of decades. The present study reports the findings of a three-month study investigating the effect of direct unfocused WCF on the grammatical accuracy of elementary…

Pawley and Syder (1983) pointed out that idiomatic expressions can be discussed in terms of nativelike selection (NLS), which refers to the ability of the native speaker to express his/her intended meaning using an expression that is not only grammatical but also nativelike. In the current study, Pearson's correlation coefficients were used to…

Based on Robinson's (2005) Cognition Hypothesis and Skehan and Foster's (2001) Limited Attentional Capacity Model, the current study attempted to investigate the effect of manipulating task complexity on argumentative writing quality in terms of lexical complexity, fluency, grammatical accuracy, and syntactic complexity. Task complexity was…