Ambiguity in discourse is pervasive, yet mechanisms of production and processing suggest that it tends to be compensated in context. The present study sets out to analyze the combination of discourse markers (such as "but" or "moreover") with other discourse signals (such as semantic relations or punctuation marks) across three…

While the bulk of feedback studies have focused on written corrective feedback, oral feedback in teacher-student writing conferences in EFL context has been underexplored. This article investigated teacher oral feedback based on the tenets of sociocultural theory. It examined the impact of teacher-student writing conferences on students' accuracy…

Due to the rise of World Englishes, one of the principal challenges of teachers of English today is to keep paced with language variation (Crystal, 2013). Such variation influences their choices on the variety of English in instructional texts that they use in teaching ESL/EFL academic writing. Grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics, this…

The article is devoted to the actual problem of teaching students of non-linguistic majors to write in a foreign language. The purpose of the study is to assess the students' level of written language competence. In 2018 and 2019, the Academic Competition (AC) of foreign languages "Prometheus" was held at South Ural State University…

Cohesion Theory of Halliday and Hasan has been widely applied in different parts of language teaching. As many cohesive devices are used in language, it's very necessary for language learners to understand and identify those devices. Now in China, a large number of college students have to take part in the CET-4 test every year. Thus, it is of…

Research has shown that testing during learning can enhance the long-term retention of text material. In two experiments, we investigated the testing effect with a fill-in-the-blank test on the retention of text material. In Experiment 1, using a coherent text, we found no retention benefit of testing compared to a restudy (control) condition. In…

This study examines the effect of enhanced input of lexical chunks on the performance of Arabic-speaking English learners' writings. Lexical chunks, containing their forms, meanings, and functions, stored and recovered as a single component in brains, may alleviate language processing problems and increase language proficiency. The research…

One of the inspirational forms of integrating technology into Second Language (L2) teaching is using 'corpora'. In this study, corpora were used to develop printed instructional materials to teach grammatical cohesive devices that are not sufficiently represented in L2 English course books. Specifically, the aim was to understand whether the…

The goal of this study was to assess the relationships between computational approaches to analyzing constructed responses made during reading and individual differences in the foundational skills of reading in college readers. We also explored if these relationships were consistent across texts and samples collected at different institutions and…

This study aims at exploring new norms as to the textual additions in parentheses (=TAiPs) in the translation of a Quranic text as writer-oriented devices of textuality. Coding for this sort of information could be useful in establishing an impact on any decision-making process on the TL version; such TAiPs can give a translated text of the Quran…

Educational technologies with multimedia content can support effective learning, but these outcomes are moderated by learners' level of cognitive engagement or self-regulation. As a way to encourage deeper cognitive engagement without redesigning or redeveloping software (e.g., building more prompts, scaffolds, or automated support), this study…

The quality of any academic essay highly depends on cohesion and coherence since they affect the overall quality and the tone of the writing to a great extent. Conjunctive adverbials are among the types of devices which logically help linking sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into essays. Conjunctive Adverbials ultimately affect the…

This study describes the use of a game-based writing environment (GWE) to increase textual cohesion in students' writing and improve their writing attitude. The participants were 113 third-grade students in Taiwan; the study was conducted over two semesters. A GWE was used for the experimental group (n = 56), and a conventional writing environment…

This study compared gender groups on the processes used in writing essays in an online assessment. Middle-school students from four grades responded to essays in two persuasive subgenres, argumentation and policy recommendation. Writing processes were inferred from four indicators extracted from students' keystroke logs. In comparison to males, on…

Tackling mathematics tasks often involves reading and interpreting different semiotic resources such as natural language (words), mathematical notation, and images. This study aims to enhance knowledge of how meaning relations, in the form of "cohesive ties" between and within different semiotic resources, are related to how difficult it…