The purpose of this research is to study how second language (L2) learners' metacognitive knowledge on first and second language reading and writing would differ according to L2 language proficiency levels. Extending the study conducted by Carrell (1991) and Victori (1999), this research draws on interview data collected from Japanese learners of…

The Writing Pal (W-Pal) is an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) designed to provide students with explicit writing strategy instruction and practice. W-Pal includes a suite of educational games developed to increase writing engagement and provide opportunities to practice writing strategies. In this study, first (L1) (n = 26) and second (L2)…

This study investigates the writing revision strategies used by 16 Saudi English as foreign language (EFL) students. Two research methods were employed. First, think-aloud reporting was used to gain insight into the thought processes utilized by the students, and to study the revision strategies that Saudi male university students make use of…

Studies on out-of-class language learning strategies (OCLLSs) are usually divorced from the activities in class. Thus, this study addresses the connection of the two entities. The participants in this study were nine international postgraduate students who were undergoing their English language proficiency course in an institution in Malaysia.…

Direct corpus use by learners or learner concordancing has been hailed as one of the promising areas that can revolutionize L2 writing and language pedagogy as a whole ([Conrad, 2000] and [Hyland, 2003]). It has been discussed to promote data-driven learning (Johns, 1988), to provide authentic contexts in which linguistic items are used, and to…

With the increasing use of integrated tasks in assessing writing, more and more research studies have been conducted to examine the construct validity of such tasks. Previous studies have largely focused on reading-writing tasks, while relatively little is known about graph-writing tasks. This study examines second language (L2) writers'…

Although translation in learning a foreign or second language is frowned upon by many language practitioners, it is nonetheless used by language learners as a viable strategy. To date, few studies have investigated the effect of translation on writing. This study explored the use of translation by Iranian university students, particularly with…

This study aims to capture both how the participants' genre awareness becomes embedded in their stances through genre-based writing instruction in an EFL context and also how viable multi-genre portfolio use is in genre-based EFL writing instruction. The qualitative data were gathered from several sources: (1) the participants' annotations of…

Teaching writing has always been a controversial issue in the field of Foreign Language Teaching. And while there are a number of approaches and techniques for teaching writing in an English as a Second Language or English as a Foreign Language (SL/EFL) setting, very few comprehensive frameworks exist for an ESL/EFL writing teacher. The present…

Writing is an essential academic skill. Effective writing is a complex process requiring the skillful use of techniques and strategies (Zimmerman and Reisemberg,1997). Unlike skilled writers, struggling writers lack certain strategies and techniques that could help them become effective writers. The present study investigates the effectiveness of…

This study aimed at investigating whether applying pre-writing strategies would affect the quality of L2 learners' compositions. Twenty three adult EFL students from Jahad-e-Daneshgahi English centre in Iran participated in this study. They were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups, including 11 and 12 participants in each. They…

This study compares second-year Japanese university students' strategies to write kanji by hand with their strategies to produce the kanji characters on a computer, taking into account factors such as accuracy in writing, the amount of kanji used, the complexity of the kanji used, as well as how the characters used compare with the sequence…

Over the last decade, a small body of SLA research has examined the effects of task planning on L2 production. This research has revealed positive results concerning the effect of pre-task and online planning on oral and written production. However, no studies to date have investigated the joint effects of pre-task and online planning. In…

Integrated writing tasks that involve different language modalities such as reading and listening have increasingly been used as means to assess academic writing. Thus, there is a need for understanding how test-takers coordinate different skills to complete these tasks. This study explored second language writers' strategy use and its…

There are still many South African teachers who are challenged by the implementation of the relatively new system of education. They have to explore a variety of strategies as they try to transform their pedagogy to enhance learning in their classrooms. This post-apartheid system also challenges educators to be transformative individuals who…