This paper reports on a study exploring English language teachers' stated beliefs on coded unfocused corrective feedback in improving learners' writing accuracy at King Abdulaziz University (KAU). A questionnaire with both closed and open ended items was taken by ten participants. The results of the study indicate that many participants in the…

The term 'voice' has been a pivotal metaphor in the fields of composition studies and applied linguistics, and it still has a strong implicit and/or explicit presence in the U.S. classroom. This critical case study examines 6 Saudi graduate student writers' voices in various U.S. universities. Data were collected by analyzing texts of students'…

In spite of Krashen's (1985) claims that the only way to acquire a second language is through non-stressful comprehensible input, Swain (1995, 1998, 2005) and others propose that the production of language (speaking or writing), under certain circumstances, is a significant part of the second-language acquisition process. Swain also states that…

The 21st century has seen the emergence of blogs as an authentic writing practice that provides students with a sense of immediacy by allowing them to document their lives as stories or to engage their classmates with real or imaginary tales. In this study, Saudi EFL students were asked to post their writing in a blog and collaborate with their…

The present research offers an assessment of the online open source tools used in the L2 academic writing, teaching, and learning environment. As fairly little research has been conducted on how to best use online automated proofreaders for educational purposes, the objective of this study is to examine the potential of such online tools. Unlike…

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…

Online teaching and learning became popular with the evolution of the World Wide Web now days. Implementing online learning tools within EFL contexts will help better address the multitude of teaching and learning styles. Difficulty in academic writing can be considered one of the common problems that students face in and outside their classrooms.…

The researcher in this study attempted to identify the objectives of the National Educational and sources to derive educational objectives and the methods and means to achieve the objectives of National Education and the subjects and courses that are taught in the subject of national education in the levels of education in a range of countries:…

This study reports the types of spelling errors made by the beginner learners of English in the EFL context as well as the major sources underpinning such errors in contextual writing composition tasks. Data were collected from written samples of 122 EFL students (male and female) enrolled in the intensive English language programme during the…

In recent years, a number of studies have attempted to assess the English vocabulary knowledge of high-school students and undergraduate university students in contexts where English is a foreign language (EFL). The present paper explores the lexical development of Arab undergraduates at a Saudi University where EFL is the medium of instruction.…

In recent years there have been a growing number of studies on written corrective feedback (WCF), particularly in terms of the efficacy of different types of WCF. However, few of these studies have investigated what shapes teachers' WCF practices and how they align with students' preferences. This study, conducted with staff and students in a…

Although pair work is advocated by major theories of second language (L2) learning and research findings suggest that pair work facilitates L2 learning, what is unclear is how to best pair students in L2 classes of mixed L2 proficiency. This study investigated the nature of pair work in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) class in a college in…

This is the book of abstracts for the conference held in 2017 entitled: ''METADISCOURSE ACROSS GENRES: MAPPING INTERACTION IN SPOKEN & WRITTEN DISCOURSES'', also known as MAG2017. The 1st International Conference on Metadiscourse Across Genres took place in METU Northern Cyprus Campus, Cyprus between 30 March-1 April 2017 with the…

The purpose of this paper is to identify the discourse markers used by Saudi EFL learners in their paragraph writing. The study was conducted on fifty students of the Preparatory Year Program at Qassim University. Data were collected from one hundred paragraphs written by the students at the end of the first and second semesters of the academic…

L1 habits often tend to interfere with the process of learning a second language. The vowel habits of Arab learners of English are one such interference. Arabic orthography is such that certain vowels indicated by diacritics are often omitted, since an experienced reader of Arabic knows, by habit, the exact vowel sound in each phonetic…