This article follows the academic literacy learning trajectory of Farah, an undergraduate anthropology major at the American University in Cairo. In charting her path from the Egyptian public schooling system to a Western-based transnational university, this study offers a perspective in which a writer created and navigated a challenging…

Even small, taken-for-granted words can have a strong influence on the pedagogical effect of a writing conference. In this study, we examined how experienced and trained writing center tutors' use of the discourse marker so helped them to connect ideas and to manage their conferences with students. We examined the extent to which tutors' use of…

We conducted a comparative study to evaluate the efficacy of synchronous and asynchronous interaction modes when providing feedback for improving academic writing, achievement motivation and critical thinking. The participants undertook an academic writing task, and were given feedback by a mentor using one of three interaction modes:…

This corpus-based study aims to identify the interactional and interactive metadiscourse markers in terms of frequency in the abstract and discussion sections of research articles on linguistics, written in English by native, Egyptian, and Saudi researchers. To attain this aim, 60 research articles have been randomly compiled and analyzed…

This study examines the use of e-portfolios for ESL (English as a second language) learners. The data were collected by reviewing 11 empirical studies from 2010-2012 in order to synthesize meaningful information about e-portfolios for ESL/EFL (English as a foreign language) acquisition. The studies were coded into two main categories: learning…

This qualitative study aimed to identify the revision strategies among learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). It also examined the focus of these strategies and learners' participation and membership in an online community of practice (CoP). As part of shared practices in this online CoP via a Facebook group, these revision writing…

This qualitative study investigated peer writing revision among English as foreign language (EFL) Arab students in a Facebook group. Specifically, it aimed to identify the text revisions made by the learners and to determine their contributions to the learners' written texts and sense of online community outside the college classroom context.…

This paper reports on a design study conducted within the Egyptian context of pre-service EFL teacher education, which implemented a Community of Practice (CoP) design facilitated by Facebook, to integrate some new forms of online writing. Based on some preliminary empirical results triangulated with literature review, a preliminary design…

InWhile research in second language writing suggests that instructor feedback can have a positive influence on students' written work, the provision of such feedback on a regular basis can be problematic, especially with larger student numbers. A number of computer programs that claim to provide both automatic computer-based holistic scores and…

The author relates experiences from teaching abroad, highlighting the challenges and rewards of adapting to other cultures and new environments. In Poland, the writer cites a dichotomy among his fellow instructors in dealing with cases of plagiarism, from those who would fail students outright and for the entire course, to those who treated his…

Discusses ways to make writing enjoyable by making it significant. Journal writing became the means for encouraging students in one English-as-a-Second-Language class to write more. (Author/VWL)

Background: There is limited research on the FL composition writing of Egyptian experimental secondary students. Purpose: The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of the Whole Language Approach on developing the required composition writing skills in English for experimental secondary students. Setting: Salah Salem…