The study investigates the incorporation and effectiveness of student written feedback and their attitudes towards peer feedback in writing class. Taking a qualitative case study approach, this study followes closely a class of thirty-two English juniors over one semester. Data sources include composition drafts, student written feedback and…

This study investigates a service-learning program for university students seeking teacher certification examined through the lens of sociocultural theory. Data was collected from teacher candidates (TCs) in the form of surveys and an open-ended writing assignment. Administrators from the partner schools were also interviewed to provide their…

An action research study was conducted among 24 Form 4 level Malaysian students, aged 16. The duration of the study was five months and constituted 16 one-hour literature lessons (short stories from the secondary level Malaysian English Language Upper Secondary Level school syllabus). This paper describes my experience as a teacher-as-researcher…

For Vygotsky, language is a cultural-psychological concept emerged from social interactions and is applied for higher cognitive functions such as thinking, meaning making, and knowledge construction. In this study, a sociocultural perspective was applied to analyze the language produced by 40 sophomore Iranian EFL learners during dialogic…

This exploratory computer assisted-language learning (CALL) study used a computer-mediated communication (CMC) interface to allow English as a foreign language (EFL) writing students in classes at two universities to give each other anonymous peer feedback about essay-writing assignments reacting to selected news stories. Experts also provided…

Most educators are aware that some students utilize web-based machine translators for foreign language assignments, however, little research has been done to determine how and why students utilize these programs, or what the implications are for language learning and teaching. In this mixed-methods study we utilized surveys, a translation task,…

With the availability of Web 2.0 technologies, blogs have become useful and attractive tools for teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in their writing classes. Learners do not need to understand HTML in order to construct blogs, and the appearance and content can be facilitated via the use of photos, music, and video files (Vurdien,…

Writing has always been regarded as playing a prominent role in learning a second language. UAE university writing center provides a key support service within the institution, and as such must find ways to evaluate the impact of the instruction they provide. However, many studies of tutorial effectiveness lack adequate analyses of tutorial…

Over the past decade aspects pertinent to the area of feedback have been extensively explored by researchers. While some of the studies show positive effects of peer review, others discuss its problematic areas. In spite of the controversies the new ways of integrating peer feedback in ESL classrooms are being explored. Researchers show an…

In this paper we report a case study of two first-year students at a university in Hong Kong doing the same writing assignment that required the use of sources. We explore the students' understanding of plagiarism, their strategies for composing, the similarity between their texts and source texts, and the lecturer's assessment of their work. The…

The current study explores how integrating a social networking website called Facebook with peer feedback in groups supports student learning, investigates the nature of feedback students received on their writing, and examines their attitudes towards the use of Facebook for peer feedback. The study involves 30 undergraduate students who…

Lexical phrases are both numerous and functionally important in written texts. Despite this, L2 learners often find their use problematic, typically overusing a limited number of well-known phrases, while at the same time lacking a diverse enough phrasal repertoire to employ lexical phrases in a native-like manner. While a number of studies have…

Blog technology is a potential medium for encouraging reflective writing through self-expression and interactive exchange through social networking. This paper reports on a study using blogs as out-of-class assignments for the development of learners' language competence. The study involved seventeen university students at advanced level who kept…

Investigates the context of writing instruction in a second-year, second-semester German course. Focusing on a children's story project, the researchers describe how writing is taught in the course; the relationship of writing assignments to the rest of the course curriculum; and the perceptions of foreign language writing, including its purpose,…

This lesson plan contains four activities based on the theme of newspapers and journalism. It includes a lesson to familiarize students with newspapers, journalistic writing, interviewing, and creating a class newspaper. The activities can be used as individual lessons or a larger project of creating a class newspaper.