This true longitudinal study explored the lexical development of L2 university English major students in Thailand using two learner corpora. This study analyzed the natural learners' English language writing assignments from two writing courses and tracked their lexical development over a relatively long period (three years with five batches of…

Written language occupies a uniquely important space in the university. The present investigation concentrates upon variation in the situations and language that characterize the different varieties of writing produced at the undergraduate level in the English department. The aim of such an investigation is to identify and characterize the…

Clipping is a word formation process in which a word is reduced/shortened to one of its parts as in exam, math, grad, lab, Sue while still retaining the same meaning and same part of speech. Clipping is classified into: (i) Initial clipping: phone (telephone), net (Internet); (ii) Medial clipping: fancy (fantasy), ma'am (madam); (iii) back…

While the use of machine translation (MT) in the classroom has been explored from various perspectives, the relationship between language proficiency and MT use regarding learners' behaviors and beliefs remains unclear in the research literature. This study focused on four Japanese learners with various language proficiencies from a fourth-year…

Conditional sentences are difficult for EFL students to understand because of their complexity in both form and function. By analyzing the performances and opinions among EFL learners, the pedagogical contribution may be beneficial for both EFL students and teachers. The use, errors, and perceptions of Thai EFL students regarding conditional…

Syntactic complexity is a crucial aspect of linguistic proficiency and thus understanding and supporting such development in learners is a keen concern for language teachers. Research conducted has shown growing sophistication of noun phrase structures by writers of different abilities in academic writing (Biber & Gray, 2010; Liu & Li,…

Previous research has shown that developing second language (L2) academic writers use a limited set of reporting verbs in comparison to more advanced writers (Biber & Reppen, 1998; Hinkel, 2003; Kwon, Staples, & Partridge, 2018; Neff et al., 2003; Staples & Reppen, 2016). These writers also tend to rely on verbs that are typical for…

This study examines the intellectual consequences of writing about data in relation to disciplinary concepts. We collected and studied written assignments from sixteen students in which they had to analyze data provided by the instructor in a general education linguistics course. We also surveyed them at the beginning, middle, and end of the…

This paper explores the expression of certainty in a set of high- and low-rated Geography argumentative essays. Using one aspect of Hunston's (1989, 2000) concept of the evaluation of status, the paper compares the statement types used to construe the writer's expression of certainty in the construction of arguments. Drawing on the framework,…

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…