Essay exams offer many benefits for instructors who seek to vary their assessment methods and engage students in critical discourse, yet they also pose many challenges and require thoughtful construction and evaluation. The author provides an extensive overview of the literature to illuminate best practices for designing and assessing effective…

This article describes a writing assignment called Conversations with Myself (CWM) in which students "talk back" to subtractive dominant narratives through a two-part process of text analysis and autobiographical, dialogic writing. The author presents a case study of Stephen (all names are pseudonyms) to illustrate how literacy supported…

Science teachers can always benefit from efficient tools that help students to engage with the subject and understand it better without significantly adding to the teacher's workload nor requiring too much of class time to manage. Reflective writing is such a low-impact, high-return tool. What follows is an introduction to reflective writing, and…

Science is full of amazing facts, but at times it may be difficult to fully appreciate their significance without an understanding of the scientific practices that gave them meaning. The teaching of evolution may be an example of this situation; there are many interesting facts to consider, but it is equally important for students to learn where…

This study sought to better understand students' experiences with instructor feedback on writing assignments. Undergraduate students (n = 162) completed an online survey about the frequency, type, and nature of feedback they received from instructors, their feedback preferences, their satisfaction with feedback, and their use of feedback. Findings…

The present study investigates the usage of speech like expressions in written works of Turkish learners of English. It also aims to find out the differences between C1 and B1 level learners in terms of the frequency and types of speech like expressions. The participants in this study were 21 B1 and 33 C1 level students at a state university in…

Science writing, such as lab reports, allows students to form a meaningful understanding of scientific concepts. However, students often view scientific writing as unimportant and utilize surface level approaches when completing writing assignments. The current study implemented three experimental interventions (directly-communicated,…

The present study examines the ways Chinese high school EFL learners organize information in their writing. A class of 50 students at grade 9 from a local high school in Guangzhou, China, were recruited as participants. The students' writing at grade 9 was collected as a corpus, comprising ten writing tasks from different text types. In order to…

Clipping is a word formation process in which a word is reduced/shortened to one of its parts as in exam, math, grad, lab, Sue while still retaining the same meaning and same part of speech. Clipping is classified into: (i) Initial clipping: phone (telephone), net (Internet); (ii) Medial clipping: fancy (fantasy), ma'am (madam); (iii) back…

With the wide introduction of English-medium instruction (EMI) to higher education institutions throughout East Asian countries, many East Asian universities are using English proficiency tests that were not originally designed for this context to make admissions and placement decisions. To support the use of these tests in this new EMI context,…

To understand complex disciplinary texts, students need to possess a rich store of background knowledge. But what happens if students don't have that knowledge? In this article, Doug Buehl explores frontloading strategies that can bridge the gap between what students know and what they need to know to comprehend a disciplinary text. He outlines…

This study explores how Deleuzian concepts of assemblage, affect, and rhizome can inform, and transform, our understanding of how technology shapes second language academic writing. More specifically, it focuses on the practice of L2 academic writing as novice writers compose a source-based research paper in an English for Academic Purposes…

Second-language learners increasingly need effective writing skills in English for academic and professional purposes, as well as for personal and social purposes. To date, peace education (PE) activities in the English language classroom have mostly focused on speaking. This article presents an activity that can help fill the gap in the lack of…

Although the behavior and impacts of instructor reflection in writing classes have been extensively studied over the past few decades, a significant proportion of the work has concentrated on students' attitudes and utilization of all such responses, as opposed to teachers' perspectives, self-assessments, and actual text comments given. Research…

Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) presents postsecondary educators with a conundrum: how to design and support small-group activities without stifling deep and meaningful learning. The literature indicates that students are not consistently practicing higher-order cognitive activities, educators are not reliably designing or…