Providing both effective feedback applications and reliable assessment practices are two central issues in ESL/EFL writing instruction contexts. Giving individual feedback is very difficult in crowded classes as it requires a great amount of time and effort for instructors. Moreover, instructors likely employ inconsistent assessment procedures,…

Writing is one of the four important skills in learning a foreign language. However, most high school students find it uneasy to write due to many different both objective and subjective reasons. Finding effective solutions to this problem is always appreciated. This study, therefore, hopes to investigate whether peer feedback has any positive…

Since its first appearance in the 1970s, the concept of 'metacognition' has received much scholarly attention. This study aims to examine metacognition as a process related to second language (L2) writing, and presents an attempt to teach metacognitive strategies to students to understand their effectiveness in developing writing skill. A blended…

Writing is one of the productive skills for language learners. This study was conducted to design a unit for language students who were enrolled in the School of Foreign Languages in one of the most prestigious Turkish state universities located in Istanbul. These learners had been taught different academic essay types in this educational…

In this study, I investigate whether three A2 Key for Schools practice tests from Cambridge Assessment English for 6th-graders (11-12 years old) in Argentina measure growth and produce scores that are meaningful. Drawing data from three consecutive years, I analyze the scores of 80 children over a school year and consider whether the tests are…

Writing is an important language skill, and learning to write is not an easy endeavour, especially for English as a foreign language (EFL) students. An effective EFL writing instruction, therefore, plays a significant role in helping EFL students deal with writing problems efficiently and approach writing tasks effectively. Based on this premise,…

Although the results of the final examination in Indonesia were the dominant factor in determining high school graduation, the public still did not know how the examination was administered nor how results were used to determine student graduation. Despite its importance, no comprehensive studies about its implementation have been conducted. The…

In this study, we used Conceptual Metaphor Theory (henceforth CMT) for the benefit of English for Academic Purposes' teaching and learning. CMT underpins how in metaphorical expressions, one concept is understood in terms of another. We argue that CMT can help students understand and master argumentation skills and essay structure, although there…

The purpose of the study was to examine the effect of using Six Thinking Hats (STH) strategy on the development of writing skill and creativity of seventh grade EFL students. A pretest and posttest quasi-experimental research design was employed involving 65 (34 control, 31 experimental) seventh grade EFL students studying in one of the higher…

Lexical items that are encountered more frequently and in varying contexts have important effects on second language (L2) development because frequent and contextually diverse words are learned faster and become more entrenched in a learner's lexicon (Ellis 2002a, b). Despite evidence that L2 learners are generally exposed to non-native input,…

Being a configuration of logically interconnected statements realized in moves and stages, an argumentative essay is built around the notion of textual unity achieved through lexico-grammar and semantic associations. The study attempted to analyze the role of cohesion in the rhetorical structure of undergraduate EFL students. Hence, the 13 moves…

This study explored the effects of technology-mediated task-based language teaching (TMTBLT) in an English as a foreign language (EFL) writing course on students' descriptive writing performance. A quasi-experiment was conducted. Students in two writing courses were recruited and randomly assigned to an experimental or control group. The…

This study investigated the effectiveness of using a social learning programme facilitated by Facebook to develop some creative writing skills and motivation to learn English among secondary-one school students. Seventy students in secondary-one grade in Al-Shahid Hussein A. Abdul-Raouf Mixed Secondary School in Al-Maabda in the second semester of…

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…

This report describes the development of efficient second language (L2) writing assessment tasks designed specifically for low-proficiency learners of English to be included in the "TOEFL® Essentials"™ test. Based on the can-do descriptors of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages for the A1 through B1 levels of…