Phraseology has been flourishing in the field of English writing studies in recent years. However, the focus has primarily been on items with less variability, such as ngrams or lexical bundles. To address this gap, this study investigates concgrams (Cheng et al., 2006), which encompass both constituency and positional variations, in advanced…

Artificial intelligence (AI) for supporting second language (L2) writing processes and practices has garnered increasing interest in recent years, establishing AI-mediated L2 writing as a new norm for many multilingual classrooms. As such, the emergence of AI-mediated technologies has challenged L2 writing instructors and their philosophies…

In this article, we focus on the design of a second language (L2) formative feedback system that provides linguistic complexity graph reports on the writings of English for special purposes students at the university level. The system is evaluated in light of formative instruction features pointed out in the literature. The significance of…

In synchronous computer-mediated contexts, peer-to-peer interaction at the microlevel has received little scrutiny. In applying a conversation analysis approach, this study scrutinizes the precise nature of peer-to-peer advice giving and receiving. In this process, an advice giver can be viewed at certain moments as more competent to evaluate a…

This paper reports on the development of an analysis engine for the Research Writing Tutor (RWT), an AWE program designed to provide genre and discipline-specific feedback on the functional units of research article discourse. Unlike traditional NLP-based applications that categorize complete documents, the analyzer categorizes every sentence in…

This classroom-based study employs a mixed-methods approach to exploring both short-term and long-term effects of Criterion feedback on ESL students' development of grammatical accuracy. The results of multilevel growth modeling indicate that Criterion feedback helps students in both intermediate-high and advanced-low levels reduce errors in eight…

Genre serves as a useful lens to investigate the range of evidence derived from automated writing evaluation (AWE). To support construct-relevant systems used for writing instruction and assessment, two investigations were conducted that focused on postsecondary writing requirements and faculty perceptions of student writing proficiency. Survey…

Learner perceptions toward and utilization of L1 glossed feedback in an automated writing evaluation (AWE) program were investigated in an Intensive English Program (IEP) class. This small case study focused on two Chinese students who responded to weekly surveys, semi-structured interviews, and screen capture videos of their revisions over a…

This study investigated the application of "WriteToLearn" on Chinese undergraduate English majors' essays in terms of its scoring ability and the accuracy of its error feedback. Participants were 163 second-year English majors from a university located in Sichuan province who wrote 326 essays from two writing prompts. Each paper was…

In the past decade, a new wave of writing assessment has evolved as a result of advances in computer technology, highlighting the potential of automated writing evaluation (AWE) in the L2 writing curriculum (Warschauer & Ware, 2006). Today's innovative AWE programs offer ESL instructors promising solutions for providing immediate feedback and…

This study utilized a theory proposed by Mohan, Slater, Luo, and Jaipal (2002) regarding the Developmental Path of Cause to investigate AWE score use in classroom contexts. This "path" has the potential to support validity arguments because it suggests how causal linguistic features can be organized in hierarchical order. Utilization of…

The purpose of this study is to explore the nature of feedback that English as a Second Language (ESL) students received on their writings either from an automated essay scoring (AES) system or from the teacher. The participants were 12 adult ESL students who were attending an intensive English center at a university in Florida. The drafts of the…

In a project-based approach to teaching a foreign language at the university level, students are often required to participate in several task-based writing activities. In doing so, language learners not only write incorrect forms, but also correct forms of the same structures, both of which provide useful information on their strengths and…

In this paper we present a system for automatic correction of errors made by learners of English. The system has two novel aspects. First, machine-learned classifiers trained on large amounts of native data and a very large language model are combined to optimize the precision of suggested corrections. Second, the user can access real-life web…

We built a natural language processing (NLP) system implementing a "virtual writing conference" for elementary-school children, with German as the target language. Currently, state-of-the-art computer support for writing tasks is restricted to multiple-choice questions or quizzes because automatic parsing of the often ambiguous and fragmentary…