Previous studies have drawn some results concerning the way in which second language (L2) students use their first language (L1) when producing texts in their L2. Therefore, this study examines the influence L1 written structure has on L2 written structure when students are asked to carry out assignments in the L2. To answer this question, twenty…

The use of a blog as a pedagogical aid for the learning of foreign languages is gaining support among teachers' communities (Soubrie, 2006; Tome, 2007) as it can help students develop online interactions and authentic productions. The current study is analysing the use of such a multimedia setting in a group of Master's students in France,…

Background: In an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course offered to a department in a university in Hong Kong preparing the students for their internship, students were expected to learn to write and engage in spoken activities related to a number of documents over a period of 13 weeks. Having to achieve so many learning outcomes within so…

Post-secondary writing teachers in composition and English as a second language (ESL) writing programs are likely familiar with multi-draft composing. Both composition and ESL writing programs share nearly identical multi-draft models despite the very unique and different cultures of each group. We argue that multi-draft composing as it is…

Studies on second language (L2) learners writing in English have found that composing is a recursive process requiring planning, formulating and revising. Of particular note among the many studies that have explored the composing processes of L2 writers are two characteristics: 1) They examine the composing processes of writers in real-time while…

This study investigates Web-based, project oriented, many-to-many collaborative writing for academic purposes. Thirty-eight Fulbright scholars in an orientation program at a large Midwestern university used a Web-based word processing tool to collaboratively plan and report on a research project. The purpose of this study is to explore and…

The goal of this study was to investigate the culturally afforded contradictions that ten advanced English as a Second Language (ESL) learner encountered when they posted their paper topics and exchanged feedback strategies online and contextualized some of these strategies to draft their papers. Using Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT),…

The purpose of the conference presentation upon which this paper is inspired was to present an innovative approach to motivate students to write in a second language during a first-year Spanish class. Usually, students comply with writing exercises that convey basic thoughts, due to constrained vocabulary and limited knowledge of grammatical…

The advance of digital video technology in the past two decades facilitates empirical investigation of learning in real time. The focus of this paper is the combined use of real-time digital video and a networked linguistic corpus for exploring the ways in which these technologies enhance our capability to investigate the cognitive process of…

Language minority students' writing is often measured solely in terms of its distance from native speaker norms, yet doing so may ignore the process through which these texts are realized and the role that the first language plays in their creation. This study analyzes oral interactions among adolescent second language writers during an extended…

For research into language development in L2 writing to have any relevance, it has to be situated within a framework of decisions in writing pedagogy. Furthermore, a perspective on L2 language development cannot be limited only to accuracy levels. Even if this is the case, it is counter-intuitive that further input may be detrimental to language…

The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed analysis of how lexical differences related to cohesion and connectionist models can distinguish first language (L1) writers of English from second language (L2) writers of English. Key to this analysis is the use of the computational tool Coh-Metrix, which measures cohesion and text difficulty at…

This study examined the effectiveness of reformulation and model text in a three-stage writing task (composing-comparison-revising) in an EFL writing class in a Beijing university. The study documented 10 university students' writing performance from the composing (Stage 1) and comparing (Stage 2, where students compare their own text to a…

Second language (L2) learners notoriously have trouble using articles in their target languages (e.g., "a", "an", "the" in English). However, researchers disagree about the patterns and causes of these errors. Past studies have found that L2 English learners: (1) Predominantly omit articles (White 2003, Robertson 2000), (2) Overuse "the" (Huebner…

The field of English language education has seen developments in writing pedagogy, moving from product-based to process-based and then to genre-based approaches. In Vietnam, teaching secondary school students how to write in English is still lagging behind these growing developments. Product-based approach is commonly seen in English writing…