The language features of the second language (L2) English academic texts written by Indonesian graduate students enrolled in Hungarian higher education are employed in the present study. The study focuses on the level of abstraction and informational density in student assignments in particular. Seven high-stakes essays were collected from seven…

Purpose: There is limited research on the writing of young Spanish-English bilinguals and their writing in both languages. In the current study, we addressed whether written syntax features differed by language (English and Spanish) and varied as a function of grade level, English learner status, and instructional program (dual or English…

Purpose: There is limited research on the writing of young Spanish-English bilinguals and their writing in both languages. In the current study, we addressed whether written syntax features differed by language (English and Spanish) and varied as a function of grade level, English learner status, and instructional program (dual or English…

Recent second language acquisition research has demonstrated that language learning is in essence the learning of constructions, or form-meaning pairings. Compared to first language acquisition research, however, our understanding of how constructions in a second language (L2) emerge and develop with proficiency and/or experience is limited.…

This study explores how syntactic complexity and lexical complexity vary in argumentative essays written by L2 learners of English at B2 and C1 CEFR proficiency levels. We approach both syntactic complexity and lexical complexity from a multi-dimensional perspective, examining syntactic complexity at different levels (i.e., global, clausal, and…

This study explored the role of written languaging (WL) in response to automated written corrective feedback (AWCF) in L2 accuracy improvement in English classrooms at a university in China. A total of 254 freshmen enrolled in intermediate composition classes participated, and they wrote 4 essays and received AWCF. A half of them engaged in WL…

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…

Since the 1990s, grammatical complexity is a topic that has received considerable attention in various fields of applied linguistics, such as English for academic purposes, second language acquisition, language testing, and second language writing (Bulte & Housen, 2012). Many scholars in applied linguistics have recently argued that…

To achieve a high level of language fluency, learners need to possess sufficient collocational competence. However, collocation is considered a problematic area for many EFL learners, partly because of its arbitrariness. To gain more insight into the problems involving learners' productive collocational skills, the current study examines lexical…

Research and pedagogical materials focusing on the acquisition of the determiner/quantifier system in English frequently highlight countability as a locus of difficulty for English language learners, particularly learners whose languages do not overtly mark a count-mass distinction. The current study uses a document analysis approach to analyze…

Focusing on noun phrase complexity in writing, this study adopted Biber, Gray and Poonpon's (2011) hypothesized developmental stages to investigate the academic writing of Thai and native English university students by comparing their argumentative English essays as concerns their usage of noun modification. Prenominal modifiers and postnominal…

This article studies the use of support verb constructions (SVCs) in the written production of learners of Spanish. SVCs are lexical combinations whose content is similar to verbal predicates but is distributed between a verb and a noun, the noun being the carrier of the core lexical meaning of the predicate. Although there is considerable…

This study aims to clearly diagnose EFL "students' writing strengths and weaknesses." I adapted a diagnostic framework which comprises multiple writing components associated with three main dimensions of second language writing. The essays of 304 English learners who enrolled in an English language program were double-rated by 13…

Lack of knowledge in the conventional usage of collocations in one's respective field of expertise cause Taiwanese students to produce academic writing that is markedly different than more competent writing. This is because Taiwanese students are first and foremost English as a Foreign language (EFL) readers and may have difficulties picking up on…

The present study investigates the collocational profiles of (1) three series of graded textbooks for English as a foreign language (EFL) commonly used in Taiwan, (2) the written productions of EFL learners, and (3) the written productions of native speakers (NS) of English. These texts were examined against a purpose-built collocation list. Based…