Assessing student writing is a complex task and experimental studies have shown that textual determinants, such as spelling or vocabulary, affect teachers' judgments of other analytic criteria in student essays. Among these elements, organisation has not been extensively explored. This experimental study examines how organisational quality…

This study aims to make a comparison between research article abstracts written by two groups in the field of English Language Teaching (ELT) by Turkish scholars and non-Turkish scholars working in Anglophone countries to find the rhetorical structure they employ in their abstracts. To achieve this purpose, 390 research article abstracts, 195…

This study examined the effects of relevance instructions on English as a foreign language (EFL) readers' text processing and memories. The participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: the experimental condition, where they read texts to identify a specific category of information, and the control condition, where they read texts…

Despite previous research suggesting that first language (L1) use fulfills important functions in collaborative writing (CW) tasks, research has yet to examine whether L1 or second language (L2) use may lead to variation in the lexico-grammatical aspects of learners' collaborative texts and the pair talk. Using a corpus-based approach, this study…

MA students often find writing the discussion section of a thesis (hereafter discussion writing) a difficult task (Bitchener & Basturkmen, 2006). Thesis advisors, research writing instructors, and graduate students are able to recognize the strength and weakness of discussion writing through established levels of quality. Therefore, grading…

Integration of technology which includes the use of a smartphone is currently one of the trends in ESL writing classes. Particularly in collaborative activities, it is assumed that the use of smartphones contributes to the attitude of the learners towards writing and their writing performance as well. Consequently, the present study investigated…

Reading comprehension performance is predicted by decoding skill and linguistic comprehension (e.g., Hoover & Gough, 1990; Joshi & Aaron, 2012; Scarborough, 2001). However, the type of strategies that readers recruit to build a discourse should also contribute to success in first and second language reading comprehension. Sixty-six French…

The difficulties with developing high-order reading comprehension skills negatively impact academic success across fields. The current study investigated whether the text structure strategy instruction, delivered through the Intelligent Tutoring of Structure Strategy (ITSS) to adult English learners as a foreign language (EFL), can improve reading…

Grounded in the three-tiered transdisciplinary SLA framework of the Douglas Fir Group (2016), we explore how the concept of 'semiotic resources' may be integrated into CALL activity designs. Starting at the macro level, we discuss how language ideology may influence where to situate semiotic resources within initial design considerations. We next…

This preliminary study explores how international students bring their cultural knowledge and experiences into relationship with other writers' ideas as they engage in an online discussion in response to a news text. This article focuses on a language excerpt from an online discussion group, including the assignment prompt, reading text, student…

In the past three decades, the construct of second language (L2) writing complexity has been theorized and refined in both second language acquisition (SLA) (Crossley, 2020; Housen, De Clercq, Kuiken, & Vedder, 2019; Lu, 2011; Norris & Ortega, 2009) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) research (Byrnes, 2009; Ryshina-Pankova, 2015;…

L2 student writers in UK universities often seek the services of a 'proofreader' before submitting work for assessment, and the proliferation of freelance proofreaders and online proofreading agencies has led to debates about the ethics of the proofreading of student writing in publications such as "Times Higher Education". This study…

This study examined optimal learning schedules for second language (L2) acquisition of a morphological structure. Sixty participants studied the simple and complex morphological rules of a novel miniature language system so as to use them for oral production. They engaged in four training sessions in either shorter spaced (3.3-day interval) or…

Email has become the most preferred form of business communication. Writing "good" email has become an essential skill required in the industry. "Good" email writing not only facilitates clear communication, but also makes a positive impression on the recipient, whether it be one's colleague or a customer. The aim of this paper…

Writing research articles is an important and demanding task for members of academia, and the introduction is generally considered the most difficult portion to write (Swales, 1990). Move analysis has proven useful in studying the communicative functions of introductions and other sections of research articles, and is thus beneficial in training…