This article investigates the effects of blogging as an approach to journal writing in the EFL writing classroom by means of a 16-week comparative experiment involving two groups of EFL college students. The experimental group (EG) was required to blog daily while the control group (CG) was asked to do so using traditional pen-and-paper methods.…

This quasi-experimental study examined whether there was any difference in the quantity and quality of the written texts produced by two groups (N = 18) of intermediate Chinese language learners. Over one semester, students in the experimental (E) group wrote weekly updates and comments in Chinese on a designated Facebook group page, while…

Mina Shaughnessy continues to exert powerful influences over Basic Writing practices, discourses and pedagogy thirty-five years after her death: Basic Writing remains in some ways trapped by Shaughnessy's legacy in what Min-Zhan Lu labeled as essentialism, accommodationism and linguistic innocence. High-stakes writing tests, a troubling hallmark…

This study examined the influence of prompt characteristics on the averages of all scores given to test taker responses on the TOEFL iBT[TM] integrated Read-Listen-Write (RLW) writing tasks for multiple administrations from 2005 to 2009. In the context of TOEFL iBT RLW tasks, the prompt consists of a reading passage and a lecture. To understand…

Automated Essay Scoring (AES) has garnered a great deal of attention from the rhetoric and composition/writing studies community since the Educational Testing Service began using e-rater[R] and the "Criterion"[R] Online Writing Evaluation Service as products in scoring writing tests, and most of the responses have been negative. While the…

This analysis of 83 scoring rubrics and grade definitions from writing programs at U.S. public research universities captures the current state of the struggle to define and measure specific writing traits, and it enables an induction of the underlying theoretical construct of "academic writing" present at these writing programs. Findings suggest…

The "e-rater"® automated essay scoring system is used operationally in the scoring of the argument and issue tasks that form the Analytical Writing measure of the "GRE"® General Test. For each of these tasks, this study explored the value added of reporting 4 trait scores for each of these 2 tasks over the total e-rater score.…

The curriculum for teaching undergraduate university students in Iran majoring in English generally includes paragraph writing in the second year and essay writing (4-5 paragraphs) in the third year. The first-year course 'Grammar and Writing (I & II)' offered in two consecutive semesters covers grammar only, despite the inclusion of writing…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the problem-based learning approach (PBL) on students in language classes in two areas: course content and language development. The study was conducted on 128 students, grouped into the experimental and control groups, and employed an experimental research design. The syllabus, textbook,…

The purpose of this study was to determine if first language interference does play a significant role in the use of articles in English by native speakers of Arabic as compared to other ESL learners. An error analysis was conducted on the use of English articles in essays taken from two groups of advanced ESL learners. The essays were composed by…

This study explores the construct of a summarization test task by means of single-group and multigroup structural equation modeling (SEM). It examines the interrelationships between strategy use and performance, drawing on data from 298 Taiwanese undergraduates' summary essays and their self-reported strategy use. Single-group SEM analyses…

"Race and Writing Assessment" brings together established and up-and-coming scholars in composition studies to explore how writing assessment needs to change in order to account for the increasing diversity of students in college classrooms today. Contributors identify where we have ignored race in our writing assessment approaches and explore…

The purposes of this study were to investigate the effects of the use of paper-based and weblog-based electronic portfolios on the writing achievement of limited English proficiency students, to survey the students' attitudes towards the use of the portfolio assessment, and to compare the viewpoints of the students in the control and experimental…

This paper reports findings from a researcher-practitioner partnership that assessed the readiness for postsecondary reading and writing demands of 211 students in developmental reading and English courses in two community colleges. An assessment battery was designed for the study, comprising two standardized tests and five projectdeveloped tasks.…

The purpose of this study was to examine the Exit Exam of Writing Proficiency (EEWP) and the variables that may impact the probability of a student passing the EEWP. The EEWP is one of the graduation requirements for all undergraduate students at a mid-sized four-year university in the mid-Atlantic region. The purpose of the EEWP is to ensure that…