Structured Literacy (SL) approaches are often recommended for students with dyslexia and other poor decoders (e.g., International Dyslexia Association, 2017). Examples of SL approaches include the Wilson Reading System (Wilson, 1988), Orton-Gillingham (Gillingham & Stillman, 2014), the Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing Program (Lindamood &…

This study has two aims: one is to examine whether or not there are individual differences in motivation to read English as a Foreign Language (EFL) among Taiwanese adolescents, and the other is to scrutinize whether or not a gender gap exists among those readers. A total of 252 adolescents, half of them female and the other half male,…

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…

This study used a multiple probe design across behaviours to determine if four high school students with learning disabilities could plan post-school transition goals using a modified "GO 4 IT … NOW!" intervention while learning essential paragraph and essay writing skills. The results of this study indicate a functional relationship…

Recently-adopted standards call for more emphasis on writing in early elementary grades. Rubrics may assist students in attending to important characteristics of effective writing, but research data on their use in early childhood is lacking. This study explores the effects of rubric use on writing instruction of opinion paragraphs for 20 first…

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…

Sudanese students seem to lack proficiency in writing English. In addition, teachers continue to use traditional, teacher-centered methods in teaching English as a second language (ESL). The flipped learning (FL) approach where video lectures are assigned as online homework before class, followed by learning activities during class, might be able…

Writing plays a significant role in language learning. Previous research has reported on the effectiveness of several approaches to develop writing skills to enhance writing competence, but little attention has been given to the paragraph writing of elementary students. The present qualitative action research study used artifacts, teacher's…

This study aims to explore the effectiveness of a paradigm to teach native Cantonese-speaking university students the hierarchical structure of expository prose to improve paragraph coherence. Most of the diagnostic argumentative essays the participants in this study wrote in the course were incoherent, failing to meet readers' expectation of…

Writing is an important experience through which we are able to share ideas, arouse feelings, persuade and convince other people (White & Arndt, 1991). It is important to view writing not solely as the product of an individual, but as a cognitive, social and cultural act. Writing is an act that takes place within a context, that accomplishes a…

The value of grammar instruction in improving students' writing has been debated for at least 150 years, and is showing no signs of tiring. But would teaching grammar actually improve writing? In fact, study after study has shown that the study of grammar does not translate to improved student writing. Indeed, the basic skills of writing are not…

This study aimed to investigate problems facing Palestinian Arab students from Israel who are majoring in teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in developing well-written paragraphs in English. They usually transfer the stylistic features of their first language, Arabic to the target language, English. For example, they tend to write long…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of the simultaneous prompting procedure in teaching paragraph composition to 4, 5th grade students identified with emotional behavioral disorder (EBD) and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The instructor taught students how to construct and proofread a 5-sentence paragraph…