While learners may have access to reference tools during second language (L2) writing, the latest developments in machine translation (MT), such as "Google Translate" requires examination as to how using the tool may factor into the second language learners' writing products. To this end, the purpose of this study was to examine how MT…

This report discusses AERO's 2022 analysis of student writing data -- the most extensive investigation into this area ever conducted in Australia. AERO's researchers analysed more than 10 million NAPLAN writing results, spanning 2011 to 2021, and 366 samples of students' NAPLAN writing. Overall, our research suggests that students' writing skills…

In 2022 Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) researchers analysed more than 10 million NAPLAN writing results, spanning 2011 to 2021, and 366 samples of students' NAPLAN writing. Overall, the research suggests that students' writing skills have declined over 7 years (2011 to 2018), with many high school students significantly behind…

Demonstrative "this" is worthy to investigate because of the role of "this" as a common cohesive device in academic writing. This study attempted to find out the variables underlying the realization of demonstrative "this" in graduate-student writing of Semarang State University, Indonesia. The data of the study were…

A key concern for writers is the creation of cohesion in a text, and writers are told by style manuals to avoid the use of demonstratives ("this," "that," "these," "those") as pronouns in order to maintain cohesion. However, previous corpus-based investigations have already revealed that authors of academic texts use demonstratives as both…

The relevance of English as a Second Language (ESL) courses to the "real world" of college writing is an ongoing issue for those who teach ESL. Ideally, ESL composition classes should help students make connections between what they learn about writing and the ways they might need to write later on in their academic careers. Unfortunately, as with…

This study claims that Arab ESL students writing in English transfer L1 rhetorical modes of text organization into their English compositions. Fifty academic research papers were analysed in terms of the transition words and cohesive devices used, on the assumption that differences at the level of these language forms reflect differences at the…

Students in grades 4, 5, or 6 can learn to write more concretely, accurately, and deliberately by employing three strategies: (1) elimination of those words or phrases that garble meaning or repeat unnecessarily; (2) substitution of more specific, concrete, and generally more appropriate expressions for ones that are vague and unimaginative; and…

Coherence and cohesion are fundamental considerations of the composing process that help to define the global and local components of texuality. Global text coherence centers on those aspects of the familiar rhetorical situation. Coherence operates at the paragraph and essay levels, answering questions about focus, tone, mode, topic, and thesis.…

This investigation provides descriptive information about the developmental characteristics of syntactic and morphological structures found in the written Spanish language of native Spanish-speaking students in fourth to ninth grades. A sample population composed of 34 male and 56 female Spanish-speaking students was randomly selected from two…

Two articles on sentence construction and eight on the paragraph comprise this publication. Francis Christensen contributes four articles on (1) the use of loose, cumulative sentences, (2) sentence openers, with illustrations from Hemingway, (3) a generative rhetoric for the paragraph, and (4) the formation of principles of paragraph composition…

The experimental program in remedial composition described in this interim report was designed on the assumption that students could best learn to write minimally acceptable compositions by imitating paragraph and essay models which have been divided into a series of incremental steps. The objectives of the program were to develop a heuristic…

A coding scheme developed by M. A. K. Halliday and R. Hasan was used in a study that investigated how students in grades 4, 6, and 8 developed meaning within narrative texts. Students, after being presented with a visual stimulus, were asked to describe what was happening and say what happened before and after the picture. Next, an oral assignment…