This paper discusses the development and implementation of a locally-sourced corpus to address the specific needs of an ESL writing program. The paper begins with a description of the motivation and development of the "Corpus of Ohio Learner and Teacher English" (COLTE), a large in-house corpus consisting of assessed ESL student writing…

As an important instructional affordance, teacher written feedback is widely used in second language (L2) writing contexts. While copious evidence has shown that such a pedagogical practice can facilitate L2 learners' writing performance, especially their writing accuracy, little is known about how novice writing teachers conceptualize and enact…

This action research study investigates the effectiveness of a model based on the theory of systemic text analysis for the teaching of EFL writing. Employing students' pieces of writing and a teachers' survey as data collection instruments, the writing performance of a group of monolingual intermediate level adult students enrolled on a private…

Describes two techniques that use poetry written by foreign language students to help them gain a greater understanding of poetry. The first technique elicits students' reactions to their own poetry, while the second approach uses students' poetry to teach about poetry. (CB)

Reviews studies of native-language writing programs and argues that the teaching of writing in the disciplines should be left to the teachers of those disciplines; English-as-a-second-language composition teachers should focus on general principles of inquiry and rhetoric, with emphasis on writing from sources. (Author/CB)

Suggestions for helping students learn to write in a foreign language are offered. Areas for the teacher to consider include recognizing students' basic needs, rewarding risks that students take, listening for content before correcting, introducing vocabulary and usage, and writing with the students. (12 references) (LB)

One teacher's conference method of teaching a freshman English-as-a-second-language (ESL) composition course uses a system of periodic fifteen-minute student-teacher conferences instead of written comments on compositions. The conferences are followed by student revision and resubmission of the composition as many times as necessary. During the…

This collection was written by the students of English as a second language at Streatham and Tooting Institute, London, England. Some of the work is by advanced students, some by people who have only just begun to learn English. Some students who are not yet confident of their ability to write in English dictated what they wanted to say. The…

The teaching of writing in the American Indian-English bilingual classroom is hampered in that most Amerindian languages have only recently been alphabetized. There are two problems: (1) What standard or orthography will be adopted? (2) What standards of style will be developed? Usually, there are several different writing systems for any one…

Describes the method and some of the exercises in a course in French composition for adults pursuing an advanced degree in French in evening courses. The practices discussed are journal keeping, a research paper, and exercises geared to these particular students. Samples of student writing are included. (AMH)

A student-centered noncredit writing course for students of English as a second language, designed to alleviate the problems of diverse class membership, consists of a series of composition assignments with topics determined by class interests and composition length determined by the student. The entire class participates in prewriting activities;…

A unit used in an Australian school to teach English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students how to write a discussion is described. The 3-week unit was planned and implemented jointly by an ESL resource teacher, class teacher, and teacher librarian. The class was divided into three heterogeneous groups, two of which were observed for this study and…

"Unheard Voices" was a project designed to provide adult educators with specific guidelines and ideas for integrating a creative writing component into an existing program of adult basic education, General Educational Development, or English as a second language. The project also collected and published student poetry and fiction in…

This paper describes the use of collaborative writing software and simultaneous electronic chats in an English as a Second Language (ESL) class. Most ESL students have little experience using word processing software, and most have no keyboarding experience. Using electronic chat sessions assists ESL students with sentence construction, vocabulary…

This curriculum is designed to be a flexible enrichment project for adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) education by harnessing the dynamic power of letters for language learning purposes. The goals of the project are to help teachers assisting students in developing communication skills, encourage social interaction as a means of building…