Even small, taken-for-granted words can have a strong influence on the pedagogical effect of a writing conference. In this study, we examined how experienced and trained writing center tutors' use of the discourse marker so helped them to connect ideas and to manage their conferences with students. We examined the extent to which tutors' use of…

Design thinking (DT) could provide a viable method to develop 21st-century skills in English as Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms; however, its potential is not clearly understood. To explore this potential, two Japanese university teachers developed a DT course in which students built a creativity measure and wrote academic reflections. Student…

The present study attempts to identify difficulties that Japanese students encounter with metadiscursive nouns in writing second language (L2) argumentation essays. Metadiscursive nouns are abstract and unspecific nouns which can serve as cohesive markers by retrieving their meanings in the text where they occur. Using a selected number of nouns…

This study applied a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) model to explore how 27 first-year university students in two different English proficiency groups improved their lexicogrammatical choices and metafunctions for writing analytical exposition essays during a 15-week course. To explore how "the teaching learning cycle" influences…

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…

Since 2000, I have been coordinating a web based virtual exchange project, Project Ibunka. Ibunka means different cultures in Japanese. It aims to provide opportunities of authentic interaction among EFL/ESL learners all over the world. The project has been giving English language learners from various countries opportunities to use English for…

To date, very little research on L2 peer review of L2 essay composition has focused on the issue of whether the choice of L1 or L2 use in the peer review process facilitates or hinders students' transmission and reception of productive commentary on their essay drafts. This study was designed to ascertain the impact of language choice in written…

Though generally under-utilised in spoken English, the passive voice plays a crucial role in formal, written English (Biber et al., 1999). An understanding of how the passive voice operates in English writing is therefore a vital skill for EFL learners in secondary and higher education so that they may be able to both understand and produce fluent…

The authors present a project that aims at understanding the way language learners write in social media in their every day lives using the target language. How do our students proceed when writing a Social Network Site (SNS) post? What resources do they use for references on word, sentences and text level? By answering these and related questions…

We report on a case study of high Japanese student failure rates in an online MBA programme. Drawing on interviews, and reviews of exam and assignment scripts we frame the problems faced by these students in terms of a "language as social practice" approach and highlight the students' failure to understand the specific language games…

Study abroad is an under-researched domain of language learning. Moreover, most investigations of this phenomenon adopt traditional structuralist approaches, wherein outcomes of study abroad are assessed solely in terms of proficiency gains as measured through conventional exams. The present study builds upon an emerging body of poststructuralist…

This is the book of abstracts for the conference held in 2017 entitled: ''METADISCOURSE ACROSS GENRES: MAPPING INTERACTION IN SPOKEN & WRITTEN DISCOURSES'', also known as MAG2017. The 1st International Conference on Metadiscourse Across Genres took place in METU Northern Cyprus Campus, Cyprus between 30 March-1 April 2017 with the…

Despite having studied English for some 33 months, the students at the private junior high school in Japan described in this paper had never before been asked to write original compositions in the language. The researchers undertook a quasi-experimental pilot study in which the 156 (n= 156) participants were each asked to write four compositions,…

This study examines how novice foreign language (FL) writers develop their genre awareness, linguistic knowledge, and writing competence in a genre-based writing course that incorporates email-writing tasks. To define genre, the study draws on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) that sees language as a resource for making meaning in a particular…

This article reports on a critical discourse analysis of Japanese English as a foreign language (EFL) students' written reflections on their experience of a simulated racial inequality exercise at a university in Japan. Initially, the reflections were compared thematically with previously published narratives by people who had experienced racism.…