The current study aimed to investigate the tendency to use temporal markers (TMs) in English writing by three different levels of Thai writers. Data used in this study were based on the Corpus of Thai Writers of English. The corpus size of approximately 8,800,000 words consisted of essay writing produced by intermediate and advanced student…

This corpus-based study explores the expression of gratitude in the acknowledgement section of doctoral dissertations in both English and Arabic. The objective is to analyse how gratitude in academic discourse is structured in these languages and to explore any differences related to gender. The study examines 80 dissertations (40 in English and…

Linguistic complexity serves as an important measure of second language (L2) writing development. Complexity indices, however, rarely feature in the studies of learner languages other than English. Additionally, L2 writing studies have been criticized for the lack of consistency in defining proficiency. The current study addresses these gaps by…

Despite solid work on the structural, sociolinguistic and political legitimacy of the Englishes of the world, the fact remains that some Englishes are more privileged than others. Thus, the circulation of different Englishes in the classroom demands a call to dismantle the symbolic and material infrastructures of unequal Englishes. This paper…

Writing is one of productive skills and a way of conveying information considered to be the most complex and the most challenging skill for EFL English learners to acquire, hence many studies have been conducted on the revelation of the characteristic of writings of EFL learners and how to improve them. Among them, pronoun study has attracted…

Writing studies scholarship has long understood the need for context-based studies of student writing. Few studies, however, have closely examined how students use intertextual relationships in the context of learning to compose argumentative essays. Drawing on a 17-day argumentative writing unit in a ninth-grade humanities classroom, this article…

While teaching written communication to international business school students in Korea, the author received an email from a student to lacked thoroughness and clarity. He decided to use the email as a learning opportunity for his students to rewrite it. He discovered that while the results were good, there was an inability to write in a register…

Demonstrative "this" is worthy to investigate because of the role of "this" as a common cohesive device in academic writing. This study attempted to find out the variables underlying the realization of demonstrative "this" in graduate-student writing of Semarang State University, Indonesia. The data of the study were…

Students with writing difficulties and learning disabilities struggle with many aspects of the writing process, including use of sentence-level skills. This literature review summarizes results from 19 published articles that used single-case or group-experimental and quasi-experimental designs to investigate effects of intervention on the…

Students in higher learning institutions need to write lots of reports based on the projects done. Since they are at the tertiary level of education, they are required to use English in their reports. This is to ensure that they are able to function well in English later at the workplace. Writing requires students to apply rules regarding sentence…

Reviews and compares views of grammarians, usage experts, and authors of technical writing books concerning "dangling participles." Finds many unattached clauses are unacceptable, some are less objectionable, and still others are acceptable. Notes that cultural (and perhaps gender) differences between humanistic teachers and…

Four different kinds of grammars that can define crossing dependencies in human language are compared here: (1) "context sensitive rewrite" grammars with rules that depend on context; (2) "matching" grammars with constraints that filter the generative structure of the language; (3) "copying" grammars which can copy structures of unbounded size;…

Constructed on the premise that the teacher with a written assignment to evaluate seeks procedures and activities for remediating the errors present in that assignment, this handbook is designed as a tool for the teaching of remedial composition in grades five through twelve. The handbook is composed of a checklist and a diagnostic grid, followed…

A conscious understanding of the grammar system can have value for student writers. Unfortunately, the positive value of teaching grammar in an instrumental, or functional, way has been overshadowed by the negative and irrelevant data concerning "formal grammar." However, if teachers were to use "rhetorical grammar" and emphasize the importance of…

Intended for writing teachers, this paper shows how "pithy prescriptions" for writing, such as "use definite, specific, concrete language," can be misleading or wrong. To support this thesis, the paper examines a technical writing book advocating short sentences and finds that it has sentences averaging 27.8 words in one section and 30.18 in…