English as Foreign Language (EFL) writing is challenging for students due to the lack of related lexical resources to inspire them for meaningful writing besides grammar feedback. Moreover, it is crucial to design personalized feedback based on students' original writings in helping to improve their writing abilities. Therefore, we developed Smart…

Many international students in American universities are required to take writing courses in English as a second language (ESL) before participating in a mainstream first-year composition (FYC) course. Given that the goal of ESL writing course is to prepare students for FYC course, the connection between ESL and FYC courses is significant. This…

Many EFL teachers spend a lot of time marking students' written assignments and correcting their spelling, grammatical, punctuation, organization and idea generation errors in detail. The more mistakes students make the more meticulously they mark and correct mistakes. Despite meticulous error correction, students continue to make the same…

Many EFL students have difficulty generating ideas for writing topics. Writing instructors tend to select topics that are too abstract, repetitive, uninteresting, vague, too broad or unfamiliar. To help students generate ideas for writing topics, the present study suggests the integration of participation goals in writing instruction.…

While the use of machine translation (MT) in the classroom has been explored from various perspectives, the relationship between language proficiency and MT use regarding learners' behaviors and beliefs remains unclear in the research literature. This study focused on four Japanese learners with various language proficiencies from a fourth-year…

This paper examines the English grammatical errors and their patterns in the written assignments of a General Education course at City University of Hong Kong. Subjects are 60 local and non-local (exchange) undergraduate students who are all L2 learners with diversified education and disciplinary background (i. e. their major of study) which are…

English 382 is a multimodal composition course that counts as a "C" credit, a composition course that fulfills one of the courses mandated as general education requirements. The writing program administration at the university created this course as one in a series of four new multimodal composition courses in response to increasing…

This study tested whether writing skills, knowledge, motivation, and strategic behaviors (within the context of robust writing instruction) each made a statistically unique contribution to predicting fifth-grade students' (123 girls, 104 boys) composition quality and length on a persuasive writing task involving source material, after variance due…

Writing analytically about text is a valued skill reflected in current academic standards. The quality of text-based writing opportunities in U.S. elementary schools, however, is generally weak, with variation in the rigor of the writing tasks teachers assign. Previous research suggests that teachers' beliefs about instruction significantly…

How can secondary English teachers assign and teach argumentative writing to foreground its significance for students and their life trajectories? This article compares three approaches -- formalist, structured process and conversational entry -- in the light of this aim. Through analysis of exemplar assignments, the comparison illustrates the…

Despite university policies and classroom procedures designed to deter student plagiarism, upper-division students seemed to be violating the rules in growing numbers. Recent research suggested that student plagiarism results from a complex mix of factors, including a need for instruction, but offers little guidance regarding effective teaching…

A central objective of many writing courses is to prepare students to effectively communicate in their personal, professional, and public lives, but writing instruction can seem disconnected from contemporary societal practices that constitute civil public discourse. This project aims to explore the connections between instructors' perceptions and…

In this pilot study, two second year writing classes at a university in Japan completed two group writing tasks using Microsoft Word and Google Docs. After both tasks were completed, the students (N=45) completed a short survey containing Likert scale items about their preferences when writing under the different conditions. Willing individuals…

This study examined the effect of feedback, feed up (comments on goals and students' success in achieving goals) and feed forward (comments on the next step in learning during the semester) on writing motivation, writing self-efficacy, and writing anxiety. Two hundred and ten female intermediate language learners (age[subscript mean] = 17.2) were…

We report results of a national survey of secondary teachers who teach special education and/or English language arts in the United States. A total of 50 teachers from 27 different states completed the survey. In the survey, we asked teachers about their experience delivering distance and in-person instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. We…