Debating in English is a vital part of second-language acquisition. Not only does it help students with their speaking skills, but it also is an excellent way to prepare them to write opinionated essays. This article explores how educators can use "place mats" to organize a debate that gives each student the chance to speak, and then how…

Writing in second Chinese writing is viewed as one of the least used skills in classroom practice for educators (Kubler, 1997). While writing research has emphasized the importance of regarding writing as a social activity, mainstream writing instruction and task design remain to decontextualized and monologic (Liu, 2015). This dissertation…

Several barriers hinder students from producing clear and impactful written work. Writing assignments are often given on an individual basis, similar to homework, and without any assistance. Students in a classroom context have access to both their classmates and the teacher while they are working in groups or pairs as part of their assignments.…

This research inspects the allocation of involvement load to the evaluation component of the involvement load hypothesis, examining how three typical approaches to evaluation (cloze-exercises, sentence-writing, and composition-writing) promote word learning. The results of this research were partially consistent with the predictions of the…

This article introduces a pedagogical intervention that includes a set of creative activities designed to improve the oral and written production of students in the English classroom, especially those who have shown a lack of interest or attention. It was observed that participants initially seemed careless about studying the language. Eventually…

This study investigates the benefits of collaborative writing tasks. Previous research from the perspective of the sociocultural theory of mind suggests that writing tasks completed in pairs offer learners an opportunity to collaborate in the solution of their language-related problems, co-construct new language knowledge, and produce…

The current study investigates the applications of the pinyin input system, a Chinese word processing method, for writing on Facebook in order to help CFL (Chinese as a foreign language) learners from two Irish universities to improve their handwriting in Chinese characters on paper. The data were collected from writing activities conducted over…

In this paper we report a case study of two first-year students at a university in Hong Kong doing the same writing assignment that required the use of sources. We explore the students' understanding of plagiarism, their strategies for composing, the similarity between their texts and source texts, and the lecturer's assessment of their work. The…

Languaging that second language (L2) learners engage in while producing and comprehending language is a major source of L2 learning [Swain, M., 2006. "Languaging, agency and collaboration in advanced language proficiency." In: Byrnes, H. (Ed.), "Advanced Language Learning: The Contribution of Halliday and Vygotsky." Continuun,…

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…

This study investigates whether L2 instruction on the Spanish aspectual system containing a recognition task of the learners' L1 (Dutch) aspectual system helps the learner to understand and interiorise the L2 system. Second year Dutch university students (N = 20) took part in the experiment. In weekly groups of two to four, the students received…

Describes writing exercises in which students transform a simple text into their own original, more complex production. (EKN)

A variety of classroom activities and homework assignments for French-language learning are presented, including games, word puzzles, television program summary writing, and student-conducted cultural opinion polls. (MSE)

Describes a method of writing instruction that not only helps students write successfully in the target language and leaves them willing to write again but also helps develop reading, listening, and speaking skills in the prewriting stages. (EKN)

Reports on a study of errors made in dictation exercises (German as a foreign language, Hamburg University). Notes that aural misunderstandings lead to erroneous original interpretations which distort the message of the text. Calls for caution and further research on the use of dictation. (IFS/WGA)