This article presents the development of a specialized data set for analyzing Estonian metadiscourse markers in academic usage, extending Hyland's interpersonal metadiscourse model to a non-Indo-European language. Our goal is to show how metadiscourse, as a feature of a writing tradition, can reveal aspects of writing in languages other than…

This study was conducted in the province of Québec, Canada, among French-speaking Grade 6 students (n = 175) in the context of a school curriculum that does not clearly address text structure and main idea instruction. It aims to understand whether these students can identify informative text structures and main ideas in isolated paragraphs,…

Reading rate, usually measured in words per minute, is a common operationalization of reading fluency in second language (L2) research and pedagogy. However, the impact of word length is often not addressed. This paper presents two studies showing how the number of characters in a text influences L2 reading time, independent of word counts, within…

Cognitive organizers (COs) are text aids which represent objects, concepts, and their relations by the use of symbols and spatial arrangements without adding to semantic content. The present study examines language learners' text comprehension through outlines, a popular CO, compared with text-only condition, and further investigates the effect of…

The authors examined naturally occurring reading comprehension strategies instruction (RCSI) across four consecutive lessons in 47 Norwegian language arts classrooms at the lower secondary level via video observations (n = 178). Although numerous studies have examined the effectiveness of RCSI for improving reading outcomes, few studies have…

The development of an appropriate authorial voice is considered to be fundamental to successful academic writing in the target language. Voice research in second language (L2) writing, therefore, seeks to delineate voice salience in L2 academic texts, the relationship between voice and high quality academic writing, the second language writer's…

Mira Bai, a saint-poet of North India is an important figure in medieval Hindi literature. Her "bhajan"-s (songs) profoundly represent the transforming of consciousness working through conceptual metaphors which fall in the realm of religious poetry wherein target domains are generally abstract. Since, the working of the mind is more…

The paper deals with the issue of computational psycholinguistic analysis (CPA) and its experimental application in basic psychological and pedagogical assessment. CPA is a new method which may potentially provide interesting, psychologically relevant information about the author of a particular text, regardless of the text's factual (semantic)…

Discourse-based approaches to EFL reading have shifted the students' passive role to become 'text resistant'. This paper examines the extent to which Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) enhances analytical reading practices in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) reading context among Preparatory Year students at Najran University. The paper…

Content is related to other aspects of writing, but exactly how they are related has remained unclear or has not received sufficient critical attention. Consequently, in most writing assessments, content has been treated as just one among several relatively distinct but equal elements. However, in this study, the authors have quantified these…

The aim of this study was to examine the contribution of transcription skills, oral language skills, and executive functions to growth in narrative writing between fourth and sixth grade. While text length and story content of narratives did not increase with age, syntactic complexity of narratives showed a clear developmental progression. Results…

This study aims to understand how EFL learners in different reading proficiency levels comprehend L2 texts, using five-component skills involving measures of (1) vocabulary knowledge, (2) drawing inferences and predictions, (3) knowledge of text structure and discourse organization, (4) identifying the main idea and summarizing skills, and (5)…

Writing an essay is a very important skill for students to master, but a difficult task for them to overcome. It is particularly true for English as Second Language (ESL) students in China. It would be very useful if students could receive timely and effective feedback about their writing. Automatic essay feedback generation is a challenging task,…

In this study, the purpose was to determine whether there was concordance among raters in the assessment of the writing performance using analytic rubric; furthermore, factors affecting the assessment process were examined. The analytic rubric used in the study consists of three sections and ten properties: External structure (format, spelling and…

Writing research has long attempted to define and assess coherence in written prose; however the researchers have often ignored or inadequately met the needs of writing students who require a simple definition of coherence that they can use to revise their own prose. One exception is Joseph Williams, author of "Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity…