This study examined the efficacy of an electronic essay-writing strategy to improve the expository writing skills of 20 young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities enrolled in a program at an institute of higher education in the midwest. A pretest and posttest experimental design with random assignment to treatment or control…

In the 21st century where information has become easily available and accessible, education has shifted its attention to teaching students how to process and think critically about the information they receive. Welcoming the changes that education constantly witnesses, the field of English Language Teaching (ELT) has embraced the integration of…

Source-based essays are evaluated both on the quality of the writing and the content appropriate interpretation and use of source material. Hence, composing a high-quality source-based essay (an essay written based on source material) relies on skills related to both reading (the sources) and writing (the essay) skills. As such, source-based…

Peer review is a reciprocal process in which writers both give and receive feedback. Both activities may contribute to student learning; however, few studies have examined the effects of giving feedback separately. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of giving feedback on the quality of the reviewers' own persuasive writing.…

Social media can benefit English as a foreign language (EFL) learning, but learners need a deliberate approach to pursue deeper learning. To this end, the aim of this study was to design a prewriting activity using a mobile-based concept map to assess participants' writing performance in different aspects of writing. The designed prewriting…

With the integration of new technologies in the foreign language classroom, the practice of collaborative writing has gained renewed attention, although some questions still remain unanswered regarding the extent to which these tools help learners in their writing when compared to more traditional learning contexts (Elola & Oskoz, 2010). In…

This two-week quantitative experimental study aimed at making a comparison among the effects of individual and collaborative pre-task planning, both with and without receiving teacher feedback on structural organization and clarity of argumentative essays. The participants were 120 Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, assigned…

Thematic progression (TP) patterns used in English leaner essays provide clues as to how they organize information and develop important concepts in their essays. This quasi-experimental research proved that instruction in TP produced positive effects on Chinese college students' use of linear progressions, constant progressions and new Themes.…

This study first briefly describes an instructional approach to teaching grammar known as X-Word Grammar and then compares its effectiveness in assisting students in achieving grammatical accuracy with traditionally taught grammar. Two groups of L2 pre-college students were taught using curricula and practice procedures in two different grammar…

Central to argument are evidence-based claims, requiring coordination of a claim with evidence bearing on it. We advocate a dialogic approach to developing argument skills and in the work reported here examine the further scaffold of prompts that exemplify functions of evidence in relation to a claim. This scaffold was successful in accelerating…

Several studies have reported the benefits of peer reviews in English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL) writing classrooms. However, there has been little empirical research on whether such peer reviews improve students' writing abilities. The current study investigated the effects of peer review on the development…

Source-based essays are evaluated both on the quality of the writing and the content appropriate interpretation and use of source material. Hence, composing a high-quality source-based essay (an essay written based on source material) relies on skills related to both reading (the sources) and writing (the essay) skills. As such, source-based…

Focus on Form (FonF) instruction places dual emphasis on meaningful interaction and overt reference to problematic or more complex forms in L2 classes. One way to draw attention to such forms is through incidental preemptive FonF. As an attempt to expand the scope of teacher-initiated preemptive FonF, the present quasi-experimental study explored…

The study aimed at identifying the impact of employing brainstorming strategy on improving writing performance of English Major Students at Balqa Applied University in Jordan. The sample of the study which consisted of 80 male and female university students was distributed into two groups; experimental (taught by brainstorming strategy) and…

The present study investigated the effects of the explicit teaching of formulaic sequences (i.e., academic and topic-induced) on L2 writing. The research examined separately the effects of the treatment on the students' abilities to produce the target formulaic sequences in controlled (i.e., C-tests) and uncontrolled situations (i.e.,…