Given the significance of questioning as a high-level cognitive strategy in language teaching and learning in the literature on TEFL as well as in education in general, this study sought to make a systematic review of research studies conducted in the span of the last three decades on the issue of questioning across different disciplines with a…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of portfolio assessment as a process-oriented mechanism on the autonomy of Iranian advanced EFL learners. A particular concern was to examine the potential effect of gender on portfolio assessment by taking the learners' writing ability into account. The participants were 80 male and female…

To examine the importance of manual character writing to reading in a new writing system, 48 adult Chinese-as-a-foreign-language students were taught characters in either a character writing-to-read or an alphabet typing-to-read condition, and engaged in corresponding handwriting or typing training for five consecutive days. Prior knowledge of…

We investigated the relationship between Chichewa (L1) and English (L2) literacies in Malawi. Through our use of hierarchical linear modeling, we found that cross-language literacy transfer between Chichewa and English did occur, but that the pattern and the strength of the relationships varied depending on the literacy domain (i.e., reading or…

Almost no language test is void of grammar items, and the reason is probably the assumption that there exists a positive correlation between examinees' grammar knowledge and the actual demonstrable level of accuracy in communication. Meanwhile, examples abound where many examinees relatively do well on grammar knowledge tests despite failing to…

This analysis of 83 scoring rubrics and grade definitions from writing programs at U.S. public research universities captures the current state of the struggle to define and measure specific writing traits, and it enables an induction of the underlying theoretical construct of "academic writing" present at these writing programs. Findings suggest…

Although the importance of reading in developing writing ability is undeniable, few competent readers in EFL contexts develop into competent writers. Since students are not aware that reading can assist them in writing, this study examined the effect of reciprocal teaching--which focuses on four reading comprehension strategies, namely…

The purposes of this research were to: 1) to compare the effects of different sequences of feedback types on the students' writing ability and their effect size; 2) to compare the effects of the levels of general English proficiency (high, moderate, and low) on the students' writing ability and their effect size; 3) to investigate the interaction…

A much under-researched issue in higher education is the extent to which English-medium university courses help students improve their English proficiency in an ESL context. Adopting a longitudinal, mixed methods design in which quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analyzed, the current study tracked English language improvement,…

The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines are descriptions of what individuals can do with language in terms of speaking, writing, listening, and reading in real-world situations in a spontaneous and non-rehearsed context. For each skill, these guidelines identify five major levels of proficiency: Distinguished, Superior, Advanced, Intermediate, and…

Research into portfolio assessment ("PA") typically describes teachers' development and implementation of different portfolio models in their respective teaching contexts, however, not much attention is paid to student perceptions of the portfolio approach or its impact on the learning of writing. To this end, this study aims to…

When writing an argumentative essay, writers develop and evaluate arguments to embody, initiate, or simulate various kinds of interpersonal and textual interaction for reader consideration (Wu & Allison, 2003). This is quite challenging for English as a second language (ESL) learners. To improve the quality of their writing, students need to…

The study compares EFL writers' processes in composing reading-based writing (RW) and graph-based writing (GW) tasks developed for a university English proficiency exam. Think-aloud protocols and interviews of ten university-level nonnative English-speaking writers were collected to explore writers' composing processes. The results revealed that…

Dynamic assessment research, with its roots in Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development, is still in its infancy (Lantolf and Poehner, 2004; Poehner, 2008). It came to the attention of scholars to break away from a static, incomplete and unfair form of assessment to the dynamic form of assessment in order to more comprehensively uncover learners'…

The current study explored the effect of portfolio assessment on the improvement of the Iranian students' writing. Additionally, students' attitudes towards using portfolio were investigated. Participants of the study were 46 pre-intermediate Iranian male and female university students who were chosen from a larger group of 70 students. They were…