In order to motivate ESL students and engage them in different tasks effectively, it is necessary to make the tasks novel to the students. As one possible way of introducing novelty in the course, films could be used advantageously. In this study, a writing course integrated with videos of movies and cultural festival of different regions of the…

Writing plays a significant role in language learning. Previous research has reported on the effectiveness of several approaches to develop writing skills to enhance writing competence, but little attention has been given to the paragraph writing of elementary students. The present qualitative action research study used artifacts, teacher's…

This study aimed to investigate problems facing Palestinian Arab students from Israel who are majoring in teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in developing well-written paragraphs in English. They usually transfer the stylistic features of their first language, Arabic to the target language, English. For example, they tend to write long…

Traditionally, at universities, English as a foreign language instructors have used a series of approaches to teach students how to write academic texts in English from both teacher preparation and regular programs. In spite of this, students continue to have problems writing the academic texts required of them in the different courses. Concerned…

Two methods of outlining are suggested for college-level students of English as a second language (ESL) who need the tools to master rhetorical patterns of academic written English that may be very different from those in their native languages. The two outlining techniques separate the four logically distinct tasks in the process of outlining:…

One portion of a course in English for Science and Technology (EST) designed for foreign nuclear engineers studying at Oregon State University dealt with the conceptual paragraph, considered a basic unit of discourse in EST. The conceptual paragraph is defined as a group of rhetorically related concepts developing a generalization to form a…

Superordinates in Halliday and Hasan's analysis of cohesion are lexical items which refer to preceding terms, ideas, or actions, or to whole stretches of discourse, by naming a more inclusive category or class within which the antecedent is included. In written texts the interrelationships between superordinates and more specific terms, or…

An approach to teaching expository writing in English as a Second Language (ESL) to native speakers of Chinese is offered. It is based on a comparison and classification of rhetorical patterns in the two languages. Chinese rhetoric contains a wide variety of methods of presentation, including both direct and indirect, or metaphoric, forms. It is…

While vocabulary is the concern of beginning students of English as a second language (ESL) and essays are the focus of advanced students, syntax is the domain of the intermediate course, with an emphasis on sentence combining. One method divides the course into four segments: (1) using, varying, and rearranging connectors; (2) ordering thoughts…

A curriculum for intermediate composition for students of English as a second language is presented based on the use of levels of specificity as an organizing principle. The course objective is for students to write well-planned, coherent paragraphs acceptable to the American academic audience, within limited formats. Two additional fundamentals…

An approach to teaching logical organization of ideas in English through paragraph writing is presented. The approach is designed for Japanese high school and college students, for whom native language writing strategies and objectives are different from those of English-speakers. Four overall goals of the process of paragraph writing include: (1)…

The purpose of this book is twofold: to present important coherence models and to suggest how insights from coherence theory and research can be introduced to the classroom. The book is organized into four sections: theoretical overview, coherence models, studies of student writing, and pedagogical approaches. Articles include: "Seven Problems in…