L2 writing

The field of second language writing (SLW) has embraced a wide variety of quantitative and qualitative research approaches. This is evidenced by a number of prominent researchers and theorists advocating for the continued expansion of the research methods that we welcome in our journals and that we nurture through graduate education (e.g., Connor, 2011). One family of research approaches that has enjoyed a growing place in our field has been ethnographic ones. They have been valued in part for their ability to engage with research topics on various levels by considering not only the phenomenon under examination but its place in a wider sociocultural milieu and the impacts of these contexts on the experiences being studied. Under-recognized (and utilized) in SLW, however, are autoethnographic approaches to researching L2 writing.

Along with the shift of the literacy education, the university writing center has evolved in its philosophy for writing instruction from a mechanical, error-correcting service to a collaborative process. From this pedagogical shift of writing instruction, proofreading has been prohibited from the services that the writing center can provide. Despite the policy, however, the proofreading request is still one of the most frequent requests that the tutor receives. Especially for L2 writers who have learned English grammar as explicit rules through exams, the 'no proofreading policy' of the writing center is not only ineffective but also incomprehensible. In this regard, this study investigates how L2 writers ask for proofreading and how the L1 tutor works with the forbidden request in a way that the center can provide. This study aims to understand the work of the writing tutorial and the philosophy of the writing instruction of the university writing center.

By combining my teaching experience in Japanese universities and my researches on fairy-tale retelling, in this essay I explore some strategies to teach L2 creative writing with Gianni Rodari's The Grammar of Fantasy.

LInk: https://ir.library.osaka-u.ac.jp/repo/ouka/all/71885/?lang=0&mode=0&opkey=R155745880237864&idx=10&chk_schema=3000&cate_schema=3000

This paper looks into the issues affecting students of English as a second language (L2) in their writing of academic level English reports and the difficulties that lecturers face in teaching and preparing students for quality assessment of their writing abilities. Consideration of the important features of academic writing must be worked into quality assessment rubrics and student guidance to provide consistency and equality.“Holistic” evaluation of essays in the literature seems to be a substitute for detailed scoring rubrics meaning that students are unclear on how to perform optimally. Logical structure of ideas, critical thinking, demonstrating understanding, clarity of expression and quality of argument are just some of the features which should be considered. Evidence of research, originality, individual effort, correct referencing, grammar, spelling, vocabulary and communication during the process all need to be further investigated.

This paper examines whether and to what extent data-driven learning (DDL) activities can improve the lexico-grammatical use of abstract nouns in L2 writing. A topic-based corpus was compiled to develop concordance learning activities, and 40 Chinese students majoring in English were randomly assigned to a control group or an experimental group. At the prewriting stage, both groups were given a list of five abstract nouns: the experimental group was provided with paper-based concordance lines to study the collocations of the words, while the control group was allowed to consult dictionaries for the usage of the words. The written texts of the pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test were analysed and compared between and within groups. The results showed that the written output by the experimental group, as compared with the control group, contained a higher variety of collocational and colligational patterns and had fewer linguistic errors in using the target abstract nouns. The post-experiment learning journals and questionnaires administered to the experimental group further confirmed that concordance activities encouraged usage-based learning, helped students notice the lexical collocations and prepositional colligations of the target words, and thus improved accuracy and complexity in their productive language. Despite these positive findings, potential problems of using concordance activities for independent learning were also reflected in the students' written output and reported in the learning journals.

This mixed-method study aimed to investigate the effect of Oral feedback (OF) vs. Written feedback (WF) on overall L2 writing performance and on the relevant sub-scores: organization, lexis, grammar, and coherence & cohesion. EFL (English as a Foreign Language) university students (N=74) from English Preparatory Program at a state Turkish University were selected and then divided into comparison (N=35) and experimental group (N=39) through convenient sampling. While completing three writing tasks on an argumentative essay for four weeks, the comparison group was exposed to traditional WF and the experimental group was exposed to OF. The quantitative data was collected from the scores of the first and last writing papers and was analyzed through independent and paired samples t-tests. The qualitative data was collected from semi-structured interviews with three participants from the experimental group and was analyzed through open and structural coding. The empirical findings indicated a significant effect of OF on both the overall writing performance and on the sub-scores. The qualitative results showed that the opportunity for meaningful interaction, clarification, and negotiation between the students and the teacher during OF helped the students from the experimental group to receive more detailed and constructive feedback, and to significantly improve their writing skills.

Online translation (OT) sites such as Free Translation and Babel Fish are freely available to the general public and purport to convert inputted text, from single words to entire paragraphs, instantly from one language to another. Discussion in the literature about OT for second-language (L2) acquisition has generally focused either on the pedagogical and ethical issues surrounding online translators or on anecdotal discussions of errors researchers have encountered on such tools. This dissertation takes a different approach by investigating the quantative and qualitative effects of OT use on L2 composition writing.

A study conducted among 32 third- and fourth-semester L2 French students compared the results of three conditions: participants who were allowed to use an online translator for writing tasks after attending a training session on OT (+translator, +training); participants who were permitted to use OT for their writing, but who had received no prior training (+translator, -training); and a control group whose participants had no training and were not allowed to use OT (-translator, -training). Each of the 128 compositions collected was scored by raters and evaluated on six features: overall comprehensibility, content, spelling, syntax, remaining grammar, and vocabulary. Additionally, raters were asked to judge whether or not, in their estimation, each composition’s writer had used an online translator.

The results showed that not only did OT use not have a negative effect on the mean scores of those who used a translator during the study, but the online translator groups performed as well as, if not better than, the control group on the experimental writing tasks both overall and on specific linguistic features. Specifically, the global scores of the translation group that had received training (+translator +training) were in fact statistically significantly higher (p < 0.05) on the second of two experimental writing tasks as compared to the control group (-translator -training). Additionally, on Tasks One and Two, one or both translator groups significantly outperformed the control group on four of the six components evaluated (overall comprehensibility, content, spelling, and remaining grammar). Raters were able to identify correctly, to a statistically-significant level, whether or not online translation was used for compositions; there were however cases where one or both raters scoring a given composition mistakenly suspected OT use, as well as some OT-aided compositions that escaped detection by raters.

This dissertation analyzes global and component scores of compositions written with the use of an online translator and those written without such aid; presents and discusses samples of student writing in light of rater comments and participant self- reports; and explores the implications of the study’s results for L2 learning and instruction.

In the present study, two sets of scripts from primary school students were collected, one written in English and the other in their native Chinese on the same topic. The Chinese scripts were translated into English by Google Translate (GT) and compared with the scripts written in English. Sentences in the two sets of passages that were clearly parallel in meaning were then extracted and compared for accuracy, vocabulary, substance and length. Findings revealed that in some cases the GT versions, i.e., those originally written in the native tongue, displayed language that was significantly better that what the students produced when writing in English. Patterns of improvement are analyzed and discussed.

This study investigates the benefits of collaborative writing tasks. Previous research from the perspective of the sociocultural theory of mind suggests that writing tasks completed in pairs offer learners an opportunity to collaborate in the solution of their language-related problems, co-construct new language knowledge, and produce linguistically more accurate written texts. Building on this research, the present study compares the performance of the same writing task by groups of four learners (n = 15), pairs (n = 15), and individual learners (n = 21). It examines the effect of the number of participants on the fluency, complexity, and accuracy of the written texts produced, as well as the nature of the oral interaction between the pairs and the groups as they collaborate throughout the writing process. The analysis of interaction focused on language-related episodes (LREs) reveals that although both groups and pairs focused their attention on language relatively often, groups produced more LREs and a higher percentage of correctly resolved LREs than pairs. As a result, the texts written by the groups were more accurate not only than those written individually, but also than those written in pairs. The implications of these results for the understanding of both collaborative writing tasks and collaborative problem solving activity are discussed.

Systemic functional linguistics along with genre has been applied in Indonesia since the implementation of the 2006 English curriculum. This paper explores how systemic functional linguistics (SFL) of the textual grammar of message, hereafter Textual Meaning, helps the students enhance their critical response to text they created. To put ideas into a written form is something that students feel so difficult. Moreover, they have to give a response to text they read or write critically. As Halliday suggested that textual meaning gives students’ ideas how to develop their texts not only of its content but also its coherence. According to Hammond et.al (1992) SFL has a number of tenets that make it particularly useful as a basis for developing literacy programs. This theory has been used by many linguists to analyze variety of texts through the use of context of situation and one of them is textual meaning/grammar. The idea of textual grammar including thematic progression and cohesion not only assists the students but also potential readers and writers to build their critical skill and to evaluate their own works. The data of this study were gained from twenty students’ hortatory texts where students were given a certain topic to write. In analyzing the data, the researcher applied a framework of textual meaning proposed by Butt (2000). Meanwhile, the findings of this study show that most students could edit their own writings or others using thematic progression and cohesive devices. In addition, they can make a clear information flow which is created a coherent text by employing both of them. Moreover, by applying them, the students also can share and develop their critical response to the topic given through its theme and thematic displayed in the text critically.

(p. 74-88). With the increasing availability of technology, one issue that has arisen in foreign language education is the use of online translation (OT) sites that claim to convert text from one language to another but are generally prohibited for classwork due to ethical and pedagogical concerns. In a study to explore the effects of OT usage, teacher raters were able to determine, to a statistically significant level, on which compositions OT was used; there were, however, a number of cases for which OT use went undetected and some instances it was incorrectly suspected. This article discusses the results of the study and implications for language instruction. Since compositions written with the help of OT cannot always be distinguished from those written with such aid, instructors and institutions may wish to review their approach to dealing with the issue of online translators in the classroom as well as policies concerning academic sanctions.

While much feedback research in L1 and L2 writing has been conducted in pre-university and university contexts, little attention has been paid to supervisors’ comments at the graduate level. Specifically, the nature and role of supervisors’ commentary on the writing of graduate-level academic genre is under-explored. Designed to fill such an important void in the existing research literature, the present study, framed by the socio-cultural theory, aims to explore the nature and role of supervisors’ written comments on doctoral research proposals. A primarily qualitative analysis of the drafts of three doctoral research proposals, the written comments in the drafts of these proposals, and interview data with three Phd applicants and two prospective PhD supervisors revealed that supervisors’ comments on doctoral research proposals were primarily feedback-oriented rather than assessment-focused. Such a commentary practice played an important role in facilitating the initiation of the applicants into the academic community through scaffolding the academic writing process, building a quasi-supervisory relationship, as well as enhancing motivation and confidence. The paper concludes with the implications of the study, as well as suggestions for future research.

The Critical Thinking (CT) component has by now secured a key place within EFL curriculum aims and objectives. The integration of a CT dimension into the teaching of the writing skill in particular has received considerable attention in research. However, research has also pointed to the failure of assessment practices to evaluate CT development. It is within this context that the present work advocates a standard based approach to the assessment of CT in EFL writing that aligns assessment criteria to the critical abilities articulated in the learning outcomes (i.e., standards). This fosters a conception of CT measures that associates components of CT with higher order writing skills. Accordingly, the first objective of the study is to empirically test the relationship between CT dispositions and metacognitive strategy use in an attempt to establish a model of writing (self-)assessment that combines these two dimensions. As assessment is viewed as a formative evaluation process subservient of learning, the study also targets the students' self-assessment strategies during the writing process. To this purpose, a questionnaire has been designed, and administered to 100 students at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences in Rabat to tap their perceptions and use of CT skills. The data analysis revealed that critical thinking development and assessment are metacognitive in nature; it follows that metacognitive skills such as planning, self-evaluating and reflecting are to be used as an essential vehicle in the development of Critical Thinking skills. This points to the paramount role of CT-informed formative (self-)assessment practices in benefiting ELT writing learners.

This book provides a unique reference and comprehensive overview of the issues pertinent to conceptualizing, measuring, researching and nurturing writing motivation. It covers these theoretical, practical and research issues by drawing on the literature related to the eight main constructs of writing motivation: writing apprehension, attitude, anxiety, self-efficacy, self-concept, learning goals, perceived value of writing and motivational regulation. Specifically, the book covers the historical research developments of the field, the measures of the main writing motivation constructs, correlates and sources of writing motivation, and profiles of motivated and demotivated writers. The book also describes the types of the instructional research of writing motivation, provides pedagogical guidelines and procedures for motivating students to write, and presents suggestions for advancing writing motivation research, measurement and pedagogy.  Detailed, up-to-date, and with a glossary which includes definitions of the main terms used in the six chapters, this book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of language education, applied linguistics, psycholinguistics and educational psychology.


Table of contents
Chapter 1: Writing motivation research: historical developments and conceptualisations of the constructs
Writing Motivation: Definition and importance
Motivational constructs researched in writing studies: Historical roots and developments
Defining writing motivation constructs
Chapter 2: Measuring writing motivation
Measures of attitudinal/dispositional constructs
Measures of situational constructs
Measures of writing ability belief constructs
Measures of writing learning goal constructs
Measurers of writing motivation sources
The qualitative approach to assessing writers’ motivation
Guidelines for developing and validating writing motivation measures
Chapter 3: Profiling motivated and demotivated writers
The role of personal variables in writing motivation
Performance, belief and behaviour correlates of writing motivation
Learning and instructional practices as sources of writing motivation
Characteristics of demotivated and motivated writers
Chapter 4: Instructional research of writing motivation
Technology-supported instruction
Strategy instruction
Feedback instructional treatments
Genre-based instruction
Task interest-based instruction
Therapeutic training
Chapter 5: Motivating students to write: Some research-driven guidelines
Nurturing and fostering students’ writing motivational perceptions, beliefs and goals
Using appropriate teaching materials and writing tasks
Meeting students’ language and writing performance needs
Integrating technological tools into writing instruction
Optimizing teacher feedback
Orchestrating peer assessment activities
Chapter 6: Advancing writing motivation measurement, research and pedagogy
Strengthening the conceptualisations and operationalisations of writing motivation constructs
Researching writing motivation correlates and sources
Developing writing motivation instructional research
Promoting effective writing motivation instructional practices

Glossary

Most universities in English-dominant countries have been competing to attract multilingual learners for some time, inspired by the dual need for brain power and income generation (Lee, Maldonado-Maldonado, & Rhodes, 2006). In the Canadian context, this has resulted in rising international student populations (Anderson, 2015) and the expansion of increasingly sophisticated academic language programs (Fox, Cheng, & Zumbo, 2014). Despite this, external research into the effectiveness and appropriateness of these programs from the perspectives of the students enrolled remains scarce (Keefe & Shi, 2017).

This multiple case study involves six multilingual learners enrolled in a newly-designed academic language program in a Canadian university. This first-year program provided content and academic language courses in two disciplinary areas (Arts and Sciences), which upon successful completion, qualified students for their second year in the university mainstream. In this study, I investigate how students responded to program design features and academic writing instruction. I incorporate multiple interviews with students, collection of their written assignments and feedback, observations of classrooms and other educational events, interviews with other program stakeholders, and collection of program documents.

Of the six student participants in this study, four were successful and two were less successful. For the four successful students, participation in the sheltered program was perceived as an overall beneficial experience that helped them make a positive transition to mainstream studies. However, responses to academic writing instruction and practice were highly variable and influenced by students’ backgrounds and their educational or disciplinary beliefs. For two less successful students, notions of agency, identity, and appropriation became influential in their transitions as they increasingly reported confusion, frustration, and conflict in meeting academic expectations. Results suggest there are several opportunities and challenges involved in the integration of sophisticated theoretical and pedagogical approaches, some of which may not be realized for some time after instruction has ceased. The study highlights an ongoing need to: 1) (re)consider the time needed and the degree of complexity involved in academic writing instruction and, 2) maximize alignment of pedagogical objectives with multilingual learners’ backgrounds as well as their perceived academic and disciplinary writing needs.

This study explores whether linguistic features can predict second language writing proficiency in the Michigan English Language Assessment Battery (MELAB) writing tasks. Advanced computational tools such as Coh-Metrix (Graesser, McNamara,
Louwerse, & Cai, 2004), the Tool for the Automatic Analysis of Cohesion (TAACO: Crossley, Kyle, & McNamara, under review), and the Tool for the Automatic Analysis of Lexical Sophistication (TAALES; Kyle & Crossley, in press) were used to automatically assess linguistic features related to lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity, cohesion, and text structure of writing samples graded by expert raters. The findings of this study show that an analysis of linguistic features can be used to significantly predict human judgments of the essays for the MELAB writing tasks. Furthermore, the findings indicate the relative contribution of a range of linguistic features in MELAB essays to overall L2 writing proficiency scores. For instance, linguistic features associated with text length and lexical sophistication were found to be more predictive of writing quality in MELAB than those associated with cohesion and syntactic complexity. This study has important implications for defining writing proficiency at different levels of achievement in L2 academic writing as well as improving the current MELAB rating scale and rater training practices. Directions for future research are also discussed.

Both language and music are highly ordered systems of communicative expression. Even so, language is by no means merely a structure for encoding, transmitting, and decoding information, and music is much more than a framework for the inscribing, performing , and hearing of sound and rhythm. Through acts of seemingly unbounded artistic creativity, language and music separately stimulate flights of human imagination as few other influences can. Then when combined together in song, language and music uniquely plumb the depths of the soul. It is little wonder that Scripture repeatedly urges God's people to "Sing to the LORD a new song" (Ps 96:1-2, 98:1, 149:1; Isa 42:10). This study examines songwriting from a fresh perspective, that of writing songs in the composer’s second language (in this case, Chinese) without reference to a pre-existing first language edition.

This study aimed at explicating the use of tense and aspect in the academic writing of Arab L2 learners of English. The scope was restricted to two absolute tenses (simple present and simple past), perfective and imperfective aspects, and verb-form errors arising from the deletion or addition of the third person singulars besides the omission of copula and auxiliary verbs. The study was conducted on the basis of a comparative, quantitative analysis of the target forms between a learner corpus and a similar-sized native one. In pursuing and achieving the stated objectives, it also concentrated on the types and sources of the tense, aspect and verb form errors in learners' performance. In addition to the significant disparity between the two corpora in terms of the frequency count and percentage of most of the target forms, the findings confirmed learners' tendency to use more verbs than native speakers. Results also showed that learners' use of the preterit (simple past), and perfective and imperfective aspects were largely constrained by their L1 grammar and semantic interpretation of verbs (independent of the target language norm). Moreover, the findings revealed some common inconsistent erroneous forms attributed to the omission or addition of the third person singulars and the omission of copula and auxiliary verbs. Several main factors were identified as potentially responsible for learners' errors, that is, inconsistency inherent in L2 rules, learners' limited exposure to (authentic) L2, overgeneralization, redundancy reduction, and language transfer. The findings suggest the need to introduce appropriate pedagogical methods to best present the target language rules.

Online translators have become an ever-present component of language learning. Recent research has found that online translators are used for graded work at least sometimes by 87.7% of intermediate students learning Spanish and French (O'Neill, 2019). The same percentage of students self-reports using online dictionaries. Given how widespread these tools are, the impact of their usage needs to be explored. Although some research has looked into the effects of online translation on writing, no previous study has compared the composition scores of students using online translators with those using online dictionaries. This article reports the results of a study with over 1,000 compositions written by students in one of five groups: online translation use after training, online translation use with no training, online dictionary use after training, online dictionary use without training, and writing with the use of neither of these tools. The results (p < 0.05) show that students who used Google Translate after training scored the highest of all five groups on both experimental writing tasks, followed by those who used an online dictionary with prior training. The group that fared the least well was that which used neither tool. A posttest and delayed posttest however showed mixed results for online translators. Based on these findings, and given the difficulty of prohibiting the use of these tools on graded work outside the classroom, the author argues for training students in the responsible use of online dictionaries and translators for second language writing.

Martin and White's (2005) appraisal theory explores the ways interpersonal meanings are expressed when researching evaluative aspects of language use. Despite numerous discourse analyses using appraisal, there is little research comparing appraisal resources deployed by L1 and L2 English writers in discourse produced under the same conditions and on the same task. 60 argumentative essays across two writing prompts were collected from a larger corpus of Asian L2 English writing, to which the present study applied the appraisal model as part of a Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (Granger, 1996, 2015) comparing the evaluative stance construed in L1 and L2 English texts. The findings show significant variation in the evaluative resources used in L1 and L2 essays. L1 English writers demonstrated a consistent reliance on engagement resources in general and showed a heavier dependence on these devices than L2 writers in their essays. In contrast, Hong Kong L2 English writers used a significantly higher frequency of negative attitude resources than L1 English writers. These contrastive corpus-informed results offer further evidence of differences in L1/L2 written evaluative stance that educators may take into account during writing instruction.

Recognizing the importance of vocabulary in English-medium disciplinary writing, this article presents a descriptive, corpus-informed case study of technical vocabulary use in the writing of both native and non-native English speaker (NES and NNES) students during their early socialization into a Master’s program in theology. Using data collected over one semester from 5 NNES and 7 NES volunteers in an intact, required first year course at a graduate school in central Canada, it first describes the study’s background, research context, and procedures. It then addresses three research questions on 1) how well participants define technical terms in the vocabulary section of their written mid-term and final examinations, 2) the distribution of general, academic, technical and other (low frequency) vocabulary in their term papers, and 3) ways that NNES and NES students’ knowledge and use of vocabulary are similar or different. Both groups scored well, overall, on their definitions, particularly for the final exam. Corpus analyses of the term papers revealed surprisingly few differences in the distribution and use of four types of vocabulary in NNES versus NES writing, yet concordance analyses examining the use of seven target technical vocabulary items in participants’ papers noted generally similar use but some differences, particularly in relation to collocations. Results are discussed with examples from participants’ writing, and possible implications for teachers and students are considered.

This study investigated the effect of face-to-face and computer-mediated peer feedback on L2 introverted and extroverted learners’ writing ability and language-related episodes. Eighty-six L2 intermediate English language learners were randomly assigned to two different treatment groups: computer-mediated and face-to-face peer feedback. In computer-mediated classes, the participants exchanged peer feedback and discussed comments using Google Docs platform. Meanwhile, in the face-to-face group, the participants exchanged comments on paper; they also gathered once a week to discuss comments face-to-face. The results revealed that the introverts in the computer-mediated group improved more significantly than the introverts in the face-to-face group. However, the extroverts of both face-to-face and computer-mediated groups improved equally. The findings also indicated that both introverts and extroverts in the computer-mediated group produced more language-related episodes than their counterparts in face-to-face group. Further, the pairing patterns of introverted and extroverted learners were found to have effects on the number of language-related episodes generated by them.

This article outlines findings from a case study investigating attitudes toward English as the dominant language of scientific research writing. Survey and interview data were collected from 55 Latin American health and life scientists and 7 North American scientific journal editors connected to an intensive scholarly writing for publication course. Study findings point to competing perceptions (scientists vs. editors) of fairness in the adjudication of Latin American scientists' research at international scientific journals. Adopting a critical, plurilingual lens, I argue that these findings demand a space for more equity-driven pedagogies, policies, and reflective practices aimed at supporting the robust participation of plurilingual scientists who use English as an additional language (EAL). In particular, if equity is indeed a shared goal, there is a clear need for commitment to ongoing critical self-reflection on the part of scientific journal gatekeepers and research writing support specialists. Keywords English for academic purposes, English for specific purposes, scientific writing, second language writing, English as a foreign language, multilingualism, plurilingualism, scientific knowledge production

Using needs analysis as a research methodology, this study attempted to design a 20 hour academic writing (AW) course for Level 2 Foundation Year Saudi EFL students. Needs analysis was based on a diagnostic test, structured questionnaires, and researcher's observation to obtain information on students' language and skills needs, profile, levels of motivation, and learning styles and preferences. The results showed that the students did not have the writing proficiency for producing longer compositions and, therefore, the course should focus on appropriate language systems and skills to help learners with writing paragraphs based on two rhetorical strategies: cause and effect; and exemplification. The course content provides for the appropriate language systems and skills as voiced by the students and needed for writing these two types of paragraphs. The study also points to a course evaluation strategy that can be used for validation and future use of the proposed course.

Aim: The main purpose of this study is to study the written proficiency of SFI students at different morphological learning levels, and their ability to conjugate verbs, nouns, and adjectives using a wordless children's book (frog-story).
Theory: This study tries to link SFI levels of written proficiency to the levels of the Pienemann hierarchy of language learning. Processability theory is a universal theory of L2 that is applicable to different languages. This theory has been adopted to cover not only the process of L2 acquisition but also the development of grammatical forms. PT demonstrated which L2 forms and which variants of grammatical forms are processable at every developmental stage.
Method: The study is a linguistic study within language-learning using a combination of primarily quantitative and qualitative methods. It utilizes a commonly used pictorial frog-story (Mayer,1969) and an accepted taxonomic model of language acquisition, the Pienemann model of processability hierarchy. The morphemes written by SFI students were identified from qualitative data (narratives) and then processed via a quantitative method (independent sample t-test).
Results: The study shows that the Pienemann model can be applied to the writing skills of the students of C and D levels of SFI.
In this study, the SFI students’ narrative abilities, the numbers of morphemes written, and students’ competences to conjugate and put in agreement three main word classes (verb, noun, and adjective) were evaluated. Independent Samples T-test​ was used to confirm that writing competences of advanced-level (D level) students are higher than writing competences of beginner-level (C level) students. The analysis of the morphemes produced by the students revealed that beginner level (C level) students demonstrated the 1st, 2nd and 3rd levels of Pienemann model of processability hierarchy, while advanced-level students demonstrated higher results at the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th levels of the model.

e case studies in this article represent the work of two elementary teachers who integrated their students' identities into the literacy curriculum. Drawing on Cummins' (2001) concept of identity investment, academic engagement, and multiliteracies theory, I discuss and analyze samples of students' dual language writing and document the teaching practices that made these identity texts possible. Interview data from student participants and examples of their work illustrate the ways in which students re-imagine their identities by engaging with writing in both languages. e work of these students demonstrates the power that writing can have as a medium for students to express their identities. is study further shows that teaching writing through the use of personal narratives and cultural stories affords students opportunities to build their own cultural capital in relation to the expectations of academic writing.

This paper reports on an SFL-based writing intervention in a university global histories course and examines differences in developmental trajectories among students after the intervention. Based on our previous research on writing in this course, we developed three Systemic Functional Linguistics-based workshops to explicitly teach valued linguistic resources necessary for meeting the expectations of writing historical arguments. We examine how student writing developed among nine focal students both quantitatively and qualitatively using an SFL-based rubric that we developed for the purposes of this study. We focus closely on two students, a novice and an experienced writer of academic English, by providing a detailed analysis of how they progressed differently towards incorporating the targeted linguistic resources. Our analysis suggests that explicit disciplinary writing instruction can help close the gap between novice and experienced academic writers; however, experienced writers also showed gains. Given the limited research on how intervention studies affect writing, particularly at the university level, this study can help teachers and researchers respond to the needs of the increasingly linguistically diverse students in higher education.

English Writing Proficiency among Three Types of Students in an ESL Composition Course 




Maxine E. Goldburg
Alliant International University
San Diego, California, USA





Abstract 
This article reports the findings of a study that identified similarities and differences in the perceived second language writing proficiency generation 1.5 students, immigrant/refugee students, and international student brought to an advanced ESL composition course at a local community college in Southern California.  Under quantitative investigation was (1) students’ perceptions of their L2 writing proficiency as determined by self-rated perceived writing attitude, perceived writing ability, perceived word processing/computer skills, and perceived writing behaviors scores, (2) the regionalized distribution of participants’ overall L2 writing proficiency as determined by the sum of the four component scores, and (3) students’ actual writing ability and gain in writing ability as determined by teacher-graded in-class essay scores. G1.5 students maintained realistic perceptions of their L2 writing proficiency, IMR students overrated perceptions of their overall L2 writing proficiency, and IS students underrated perceptions of their L2 writing proficiency. The results suggested that the experiences and perceptions of academic literacy for different types of ESL students may not match ambitious standards and expectations of the American ESL college-level reading-to-writing curriculum.
Keywords:  L2 writing attitude, L2 writing, L2 writing behavior, L2 electronic literacy

"In the writing classroom, peer response (Liu & Hansen, 2002) is used as a method of developing learners’ language awareness and editing abilities, as well as their meta-cognitive strategies and interpersonal skills. However, few studies have looked at whether the number and type of revisions made depends on the types of comments received and the proficiencies of the writer and also the reviewer (Ferris, 2010), even though proficiency is likely to influence the number and type of revisions made (Chaudron, 1983; Connor & Asenavage, 1994). Moreover, although most studies have focused on peer response in academic contexts, none have directly addressed its suitability as a method for helping raise awareness of register-appropriate language, which is a primary aim of many English for Academic Purposes courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
The present study involves the analysis of general and register-related revisions made by students following peer response, with a statistical analysis of the impact of writer and reviewer proficiency upon the distribution and types of revisions. The first and second drafts of written research reports from 70 first-year undergraduate university students were collected and the number and type of revisions were coded. In addition, we used a computational tool, Coh-Metrix, to analyse the differences in the textual qualities of initial and revised drafts (such as average sentence length, the number of words before verbs and lexical diversity). This analysis provides further evidence to the role of peer review in the creation of more complex and register-appropriate texts. 
Results revealed both general and register-related revisions with significant differences in both the type and number of revisions being related to proficiency. Based on these findings we will discuss the importance of training at different stages of peer response and how to support learners at different levels of proficiency in this process. "

ライティングプロセス記録・分析ソフトウェアである WritingMaetriX（WMX，草薙・阿部・福田・川口，2013）では学習者のライティングにおけるキー入力およびその入力された時間を記録し，その記録されたキー入力を元に語数の時系列変化を棒グラフで図示したり，動画再生と同様の操作でライティングプロセスを再生したりすることが可能となる。
ライティングの記録は拡張子が.klg のテキストファイルとして出力されるが，この.klg ファイルは txt ファイルと同じタブ区切り構造でできており，一般的な表計算ソフトウェアで簡単に処理することが可能となっている。本稿では，WMX を用いてのライティングプロセスデータの収集および表計算ソフト（Microsoft Office Excel）と WMX によって出力された.klgファイルを用いたライティングプロセスの分析方法や，今後の研究の展望を報告する。

Abstract
Throughout this essay I address and illustrate the need to bridge the gap between teaching and learning styles for L2 students in the academy. Zhenhui Rao’s (2002) study revealed 6 of the most common and basic learning styles of International students which are: introversion, closure oriented, analytical field independent, visual, thinking-oriented and reflective, and concrete-sequential . Considering international students’ learning styles, writing instructors have a responsibility to determine the effectiveness of process writing taught in writing classes, in comparison to product writing found in specific disciplinary settings, such as business and computer sciences, and merge those pedagogies in a fashion that benefits non native speaking students. According to George Pullman (1999) writing classes teach process writing, while the majority of University professors (outside the Humanities) favor product writing, which indicates the need to either disregard one writing style or combine both pedagogies.  This essay is comprised of a literary review from scholars in the process/product writing arena, and determines a way to combine the approaches to assist in the transfer of writing skills from introductory writing classes to disciplinary specific settings. The primary conclusion encompasses the use sustained content language teaching in combination with a process writing approach that will enable L2 students  to recycle their knowledge into an authentic voice that encourages inclusion into mainstream classroom settings.

"This study was an attempt to determine the effect of task-based approach vs. traditional approach on the narrative and expository writing of the Iranian EFL learners. There were two control groups and two experimental groups in the current study. In the two control groups i.e., G1 and G2 narrative and expository writing were taught respectively using the traditional approach. But in the two experimental groups, i.e. G3 and G4 narrative and expository writing were taught respectively based on task-based approach. After the treatment, a narrative writing post-test was given to the two narrative groups (G1 & G3) and an expository writing post-test was given to the two expository groups (G2 & G4).Data analysis showed that experimental groups outperformed control groups .So it was concluded that task-based approach was more effective in teaching narrative and expository writing compared to the traditional approach. It was also found that although there was a difference between the narrative and expository experimental groups (G3 & G4) in favor of the narrative group, this difference was not statistically significant.
Key Words: Task; Task-Based Language Teaching; Writing Mode; Narrative Writing;
Expository Writing"