Multifaceted Rasch measurement was used in the present study with 91 student and 4 teacher raters to investigate how self- and peer-assessments work in comparison with teacher assessments in actual university writing classes. The results indicated that many self-raters assessed their own writing lower than predicted. This was particularly true for…

The language shortcuts used in text messages are becoming evident in students' academic writing assignments. This qualitative study sought to determine if the use of the shortcuts has an adverse impact on developmental students' spelling and grammar skills. This research was based on the constructivist theory, which rationalizes that students use…

In this Cross Talk, Mark Blaauw-Hara, the author of "Mapping the Frontier: A Survey of Twenty Years of Grammar Articles in 'TETYC,'" and one of the manuscript's reviewers, Andy Anderson, engage in a brief conversation about the essay, its content, and the processes of writing, reviewing, and revising. This article is presented in three sections:…

Drawing on the findings of an ESRC-funded research study, which included a detailed linguistic analysis of a large corpus of writing from secondary English classrooms, this article describes patterns of linguistic deployment at the level of the sentence. Given the limited number of applied linguistic studies which consider writing development in…

Text analysis traditions in France and the United States include discourse analysis, critical linguistics, French functional linguistics, Bakhtinian dialogics, and "generous reading." These frames have not been used, however, in cross-cultural analysis of university student writing. The author presents a study of 250 student texts from…

Errors made by language learners in learning a language are regarded as failure of competence. Linguists believe that errors are committed when the learner makes use of the learning strategies. By analyzing the learner's errors, we can better understand his inter-language and his learning process. It's necessary to understand the roots of errors…

This paper is a systematic review of research investigating help options in the different language skills in computer-assisted language learning (CALL). In this review, emerging themes along with is-sues affecting help option research are identified and discussed. We argue that help options in CALL are application resources that do not only seem…

Many English language learners (ELLs) require extra support to become successful writers. This book helps teachers understand the unique needs of ELLs and promote their achievement by adapting the effective instructional methods they already know. Engaging and accessible, the book features standards-based lesson planning ideas, examples of student…

This article illustrates how faculty and students can use the ACS Journals Search to examine assumptions about writing in chemistry. We examined common writing practices in chemistry including (i) the use of nominalizations, active and passive voice, and personal pronouns, (ii) words to avoid (e.g., researcher, very), (iii) words to use (e.g.,…

The purpose of this paper is to report on a usability study for ESL websites conducted to gain insights from learners of English as a second language (ESL) as they interacted with specific sites. Five carefully selected ESL sites were tested by 10 different users generating a total of fifty testing sessions. Two major research questions guided the…

Grounded in research and practical expertise, this volume helps K-6 teachers skillfully support all of their English language learners (ELLs)--from a single student to an entire classroom. Ideas for teaching ELLs across different grade and proficiency levels include ways to link instruction to students' lived experiences, use a variety of…

This article examines common lexicogrammatical problems found in Cantonese English as a second language (ESL) learners' written English output. A study was conducted with 387 student participants, who were asked to do two untutored and unaided free-writing tasks of about 200-300 words each. A range of lexicogrammatical error types commonly found…

Many composition teachers use the writing conference to provide feedback to their students; however, the existing literature on the subject indicates that teachers may unintentionally harm their weaker students by using this strategy. To better understand the effect of the writing conference on developmental writing students, the researcher…

This article discusses exchanges between a number of scholars during the 1990s centering on Min-Zhan Lu's controversial essay "Conflict and Struggle: The Enemies or Preconditions of Basic Writing?" In some ways, "Conflict and Struggle" blazed a trail for later work in "hybrid" or "mixed" forms of academic writing while at the same time igniting…

This paper reports on the development of a website tool aimed at helping Spanish small and medium enterprises (SMEs) staff to write their commercial correspondence in English. It describes the steps involved in the tool system design process, making an emphasis on the methodological criteria and rational that guided us to develop the site. In…