The present study explores the status of argumentative essay writing strategy use and identifies the problems a convenient sample of Iranian EFL learners face while writing argumentative essays in English. Adopting a complementary process-genre approach and a mixed-methods research design, the researcher designed a genre-specific argumentative…

This study attempted at classifying common errors found in the written performance of lower- and upper-intermediate Iranian EFL learners. It engaged a rich corpus of EFL writing samples collected over a course of 20 years (between 1992 and 2011) from lower- and upper-intermediate EFL learners studying at various Iranian universities to provide a…

A compelling body of evidence suggests that EFL students have problem with logical connectors' appropriate use in writing. This study explored Iranian EFL students' adversative connectors use in their essay writing course. To this end, a Learner Corpus of 60393 words consisting of 156 essays was compiled. LOCNESS was chosen as the criterion…

This study investigated and analyzed the prevalence and presence of indirectness markers in Korean and Persian English Essays. The researchers analyzed the prevalence of the indirectness markers as a set of politeness strategies employed by the Korean and Persian university bound students in their English compositions. Furthermore, the researchers…

The present study was an attempt to investigate the differential effect/s of three different planning time scenarios (i.e. 0 min, 10 min, & 20 min), as well as three task conditions of (1) topic given, (2) topic and ideas given, and (3) topic, ideas and macrostructure given on EFL learners L2 writing complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF).…

This study sought to explore the formality styles of writing among intermediate EFL Iranian learners to scrutinize their competence in the writing skill. A convenience sample of 30 students were chosen through Oxford Quick Placement Test (2001) from among 60 university students. The first group sent their messages (essay tasks) through e-mail and…

This study investigates the potential of individual, collaborative, and E-collaborative writing modalities on the development of syntactic complexity (SC), their sustained effect on SC development, and the potential meditating role of SC of L1 (First Language) in SC of L2 (Second Language). To this end, 90 Iranian intermediate EFL learners…

Integrated writing tasks have gained considerable attention in ESL and EFL writing assessment and are frequently needed and used in academic settings and daily life. However, they are very rarely practiced and promoted in writing classes. This paper explored the effects of source-based writing practice on EFL learners' composing abilities and…

Undergraduate students' experience of assessment in universities is usually of summative assessment which provides only limited information to help students improve their performance. By contrast, formative assessment is informative and forward-looking, possessing the leverage to inform students of their day-to-day progress and inform teachers of…

Academic plagiarism exists in all academic spheres, but contextual factors determine the level, intensity, and forms of it. Over the last few years, the phenomenon of "Ghost Authorship" has become widespread in Iran, and concerns have been expressed regarding this issue, not only by academicians but also by officials. In this study, 143…

This study aims at finding the effect of group work on Iranian EFL learners' writing accuracy. Moreover, the effect of gender on text production has also been investigated. Over a month, sixty Iranian EFL learners were chosen as the participants of this study. They were divided into two groups. The experimental group wrote collaboratively while…

Based on Robinson's (2005) Cognition Hypothesis and Skehan and Foster's (2001) Limited Attentional Capacity Model, the current study attempted to investigate the effect of manipulating task complexity on argumentative writing quality in terms of lexical complexity, fluency, grammatical accuracy, and syntactic complexity. Task complexity was…

This study is an attempt to investigate the effect of direct and indirect feedback on the writing performance of Iranian learners of Japanese as a foreign language. During one academic semester, three indirect feedback types including underlining, coding and translation were used as well as direct type of feedback in order to see which one makes a…

The potential of wikis for learning has recently begun to capture the attention of English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) research. While students' collaboration, attention to form, and perceptions of wikis in document mode have been widely addressed in previous research, the educational value of wikis used in thread mode, as discussion…

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of two task types on foreign language written production. Particularly it addressed the issue of how three aspects of language production (i.e. fluency, complexity, and accuracy) vary among two different task types (i.e. argumentative writing task and instruction writing task). One hundred sixty…