The purpose of the current dissertation is to map the relationships between first language (L1), writing quality, and syntactic complexity, accuracy, lexical complexity, and fluency (CALF) in second language (L2) writing. CALF are characteristics of language production that have been of significant interest in L2 writing research for the past few…

With the wide introduction of English-medium instruction (EMI) to higher education institutions throughout East Asian countries, many East Asian universities are using English proficiency tests that were not originally designed for this context to make admissions and placement decisions. To support the use of these tests in this new EMI context,…

Achieving sufficient proficiency in academic writing is critical in university level setting. It is not surprising hence, that the admission to English speaking universities is usually conditioned not only by a particular total score from Standardized tests of English proficiency, e.g., TOEFL or IELTs but also a specific band score in writing. To…

During the academic year in the state of Georgia, EL students in public schools take the Georgia Milestones End-of-Grade and the ACCESS 2.0 assessments, which are in line with the state-mandated subject area standards in mathematics, science, language arts, and social studies, as well as English language proficiency standards (Georgia Department…

Language immersion programs are becoming more available as a form of school choice in both private and public education in the United States and beyond. While there is research on the benefits of immersion education regarding overall intelligence, there is still much skepticism as to why parents would place their child in an immersion program vs.…

Using de-identified data, this study investigated the relationship between racial categories with curriculum-based early writing measures (CBM-W), which included word dictation, picture word sentence writing, and story prompt tasks for over 300 participants in Grades 1, 2, and 3. Words written, words spelled correctly, correct letter sequences,…

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of the English Language Learner (ELL) pull out program on student achievement. Schools are facing the unprecedented challenge to educate a multicultural and multilingual student body with varied abilities and backgrounds of learning. The independent variables in this study were the…

Many national reports indicate that more attention needs to be placed on writing and the teaching of writing in schools. The purpose of this quantitative study was to, first, examine the structure of the DWA and, second, to use the scores from the DWA to examine the relationship between ELL status and writing proficiency. Five major research…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a professional development intervention conducted with mainstream middle school teachers of English language learners (ELLs) in a North Texas school district. Teacher change was examined in the context of this intervention. Three groups of teachers participated in this study. Group 1 (n =…

The facilitation of peer feedback on academic writing is often lauded for its myriad cognitive, affective, social, and linguistic benefits. However, educators face conflicting research results when seeking empirical guidance on efficient methods to support peer feedback, particularly for their English language learners. This study contributes to…

In writing assessment, there are quite a number of factors influencing the marking stability and the reliability of the assessment such as the attitude towards marking and consistency of markers, the physical environment, the design of the items, and marking rubrics. Even the methods to train markers have effects on the reliability of the…

Performance assessments have become the norm for evaluating language learners' writing abilities in international examinations of English proficiency. Two aspects of these assessments are usually systematically varied: test takers respond to different prompts, and their responses are read by different raters. This raises the possibility of undue…

Adult English as a second language (ESL) students learning English outside of traditional academic settings are an understudied population of second language learners. The purpose of the research reported here is to contribute to meeting the instructional needs of these students more effectively by investigating the relationships between their…