Google Docs, a free web-based version of Microsoft Word, offers collaborative features which can be used to facilitate collaborative writing in a foreign language classroom. The current study compared writing abilities of students who collaborated on writing assignments using Google Docs with those working in groups in a face-to-face classroom.…

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…

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 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…

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…

Past experiences influence how teachers identify as teachers, writers, and teachers of writing and impacts what they do in their classrooms, including their motivation and effectiveness in teaching writing. When teachers fail to identify as writers, they tend to spend less time teaching writing and may find it difficult to model a genuine passion…

Over three days, 180 junior and senior high school English teachers, postsecondary (university and college) writing instructors, workplace (corporate and small business) writing instructors, and government officials who are responsible for portfolios related to workforce training and literacy met to understand from a broad systems-level…