This study compared the effects of teacher feedback (TF) and online automated feedback (AF) on the quality of revision of English writing. It also examined the strengths and weaknesses of the two types of feedback perceived by English language learners (ELLs) as a foreign language (FL). Sixty-eight Chinese students from two English classes…

We investigated the dimensionality and relations between L1 (a speaker's first language) and L2 (a speaker's second language) writing skills in narrative and informational genres and higher order cognitive skills--inference, perspective taking, and comprehension monitoring--for Spanish-English dual language learners in primary grades. Dimensions…

Syntactic complexity is a crucial aspect of linguistic proficiency and thus understanding and supporting such development in learners is a keen concern for language teachers. Research conducted has shown growing sophistication of noun phrase structures by writers of different abilities in academic writing (Biber & Gray, 2010; Liu & Li,…

For decades, there has been a debate over the effectiveness of written corrective feedback in second language writing pedagogy. Recently, research on the issue has gradually turned from whether to give corrective feedback in L2 writing to how it can be effective; however, pursuit for effective pedagogical practices are still underway. To address…

In this study, the participants learned English as a foreign language (EFL) in the classroom and then worked on five learning tasks to apply their newly learned knowledge to unfamiliar environments. The participants took photos of people, objects, situations or scenarios and described them in detail using a mobile learning system. Familiarization…

Grammatical and lexical cohesion are necessary conditions to guarantee a text's coherence (Halliday and Hasan 1976). Grammatical cohesion is classified into four types of relation: reference, conjunction, substitution, and ellipsis. This study aims to investigate the use of the cohesive device of reference in written discourse produced by…

This classroom-based study examined the effect of collective peer scaffolding activity on self-revised as well as new narrative and descriptive paragraphs developed by 32 EFL university students in a paragraph writing course in Iran. Each genre was discussed and practiced every other week and was followed by a collective peer scaffolding session.…

This study investigated how task complexity influences second language (L2) writing. Specifically, it focused on the possibility that prompts can create different demands at different stages of L2 writing production and on ways that prompts may affect learners' engagement in the revision of their writing. Fifty-one English as a foreign/second…

Discourse markers improve the quality of writing and increase the comprehension of text. This paper attempts to throw more light in measuring the students' knowledge about Discourse Markers. This paper aims to exponentiate the Discourse Markers in ESL students' essay writing. The Qualitative data was collected from intermediate students of grade 9…

Here, we present a module to introduce student peer review of laboratory reports to engineering students. Our findings show that students were positive and felt that they had learnt quite a lot from this experience. The most important part of the module was the classification scheme. The scheme was constructed to mimic the way an expert would…

Recent studies have shown that languaging contributes to second language skill development. Feedback is often used in combination with languaging as a prompt of verbalization during writing revision, and this combination has shown the effect of increasing the quality of writing. The present study tested whether and how indirect feedback helps…

The small amount of work on workplace writing assessment has focused almost entirely on student readiness for professional writing or included case studies of employer expectations for new writers. While these studies provide insight into current pedagogies for technical writing and writing instruction in general, the main conclusion to be drawn…

Writing is a crucial means of communicating with others and thus vital to success and survival in modern society. This article provides an overview of recent research and key findings about writing, including the roles of cognitive and social processes during writing, and educational research on how to improve writing proficiency. Writing…

Email has become the most preferred form of business communication. Writing "good" email has become an essential skill required in the industry. "Good" email writing not only facilitates clear communication, but also makes a positive impression on the recipient, whether it be one's colleague or a customer. The aim of this paper…

Deaf students often differ from their hearing peers in written language development. Providing developmentally appropriate instruction is ideal, yet current methods of writing assessment do not provide teachers with sufficient information regarding the written language (i.e., syntactic) development of deaf students. In this research, we use a…