Writing a good essay typically involves students revising an initial paper draft after receiving feedback. We present eRevise, a web-based writing and revising environment that uses natural language processing features generated for rubric-based essay scoring to trigger formative feedback messages regarding students' use of evidence in…

Previous research has shown that developing second language (L2) academic writers use a limited set of reporting verbs in comparison to more advanced writers (Biber & Reppen, 1998; Hinkel, 2003; Kwon, Staples, & Partridge, 2018; Neff et al., 2003; Staples & Reppen, 2016). These writers also tend to rely on verbs that are typical for…

The study focuses on the use of short story via phone application among second language learners. The samples of the study consist of 21 subjects from two classes of Malay language. The subjects were given a story entitled "The Fox" from the phone application. The subjects were to watch the story for three weeks. Then, the subjects…

Plagiarism hinders student success because it shortcuts genuine writing practice and incurs penalties when discovered. Although students are aware of its potential consequences, plagiarism continues. This article reflects on the polyconundrum of empathizing with the many hindrances to student writing while deploying strategies to reduce plagiarism…

This study investigates how and whether information about students' writing can be recovered from basic behavioral data extracted during their sessions in an intelligent tutoring system for writing. We calculate basic and time-sensitive keystroke indices based on log files of keys pressed during students' writing sessions. A corpus of prompt-based…

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…

Reading-integrated writing is known as an effective approach to teaching and learning vocabulary as it allows students to transfer vocabulary from a source text to writing. This study examines whether vocabulary transfer from an input text to writing varies according to the two types of tasks: essay writing and synchronous text chat. One hundred…

Word clouds can be used as an effective tool for the teaching and learning processes in language learning, as the visual input during schemata activation, and other parts of the lesson, serve as manageable and meaningful target language input. There are emerging studies that explore their effectiveness, but less so with respect to their use in the…

This study investigated and analyzed the use of rhetorical appeals, and the presence of hedges, and boosters in the argumentative essays of ESL learners. It is aimed at exploring the linguistic differences between male and female writers in terms of how they put forward their claims in an argument and how they appeal to their audience. The study…

Typically developing writers in fifth (n = 110, M = 10 years 8 months) or seventh (n = 97, M = 12 years 7 months) grade wrote informative, compare and contrast, and persuasive essays for which the content was held constant--two mountains with a history of volcanic eruption. Relevant background knowledge was provided by reading text and showing…

Peer learning is often used in classrooms to help and support knowledge and skill acquisition. One form of peer learning, peer assessment, involves the quantitative (i.e., peer ratings) or qualitative (i.e., peer feedback) evaluation of a learner's performance by another learner among students. While we might be concerned about the quality of the…

The dissertation paints a cultural-historical portrait of the New Criticism, a formalist school of twentieth-century literary criticism. My case study revisits the trajectory of this vital school of thought through a fine-grained textual comparison of critical essays produced by principal affiliates. Using "genre" as a guiding concept, I…

This article explores the learning experiences of two students in the same college-level English course at Urban Serving Community College (USCC) (pseudonym). The objective was to understand how one student met with success and the other failure despite both successfully completing their developmental English course the semester prior. I observed…

This paper presents an investigation of score prediction based on natural language processing for two targeted constructs within analytic text-based writing: 1) students' effective use of evidence and, 2) their organization of ideas and evidence in support of their claim. With the long-term goal of producing feedback for students and teachers, we…

In many academic writing textbooks and style guides the use of personal pronouns is not encouraged. This is particularly problematic for non-native speakers of English trying to express themselves in a second language as, although personal pronouns are a clear signal of the writers' identity and presence in a text, they are usually advised not to…