Despite the crucial role of introductory sections in argumentative academic writing, the effects of genre- based approaches to writing introductory paragraphs have not been much explored yet. The present study aimed to investigate whether the provision of genre knowledge through modeling and non-modeling could enhance learners’ ability in writing introductory paragraphs of argumentative essays....

Task-based language teaching (TBLT) can provide learners with more authentic communicative activities, particularly in foreign language context, where learners may experience few such opportunities. From the perspective of sociocultural theory (SCT), scaffolding is a process of supportive interaction that occurs when learners are communicating with each other. There are situations in which the ...

This paper employs qualitative and quantitative methods to study verb phrase errors made by Chinese non-English majors in their writing, collected in Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC), on the basis of contrastive analysis and error analysis. The purpose is to offer English learners methods to help improve their English proficiency and put forward some suggestions on English language teachin...

Vocabulary acquisition is one of the hottest research fields in English learning, which has aroused researchers’ great attention in recent years. However, their focus is on vocabulary size, vocabulary learning strategies and receptive lexical ability, seldom to productive lexical ability. Writing is an important productive ability for EFL learners, and a myriad of writing researches show that i...

This paper discusses the development of writing skills of Dutch students of English and Spanish as foreign languages. Essays written in three consecutive years were analyzed for essay length, word length, and type/token ratio — reflecting linguistic competence. A selection of essays was analyzed for argument structure and the use of cohesive devices. These same essays were ranked holistically b...

On the basis of the corpus of English Majors’ Composition of Ludong University (EMC corpus), this thesis analyzes the errors in Chinese English Majors’ English writing and the reasons resulting in the errors. The research reveals that in the EMC corpus the proportion of “grammatical errors” ranks the highest, followed by “wrong usage”, “syntactic errors” and “errors of discourse constructions a...

Recently tasks, as the basic units of syllabi, and the cognitive complexity, as the criterion for sequencing them, have caught many second language researchers’ attention. This study sought to explore the effect of utilizing the cognitively simple and complex tasks on high- and low-proficient EFL Iranian writers’ linguistic performance, i.e., fluency, accuracy, lexical complexity, and structura...

english passive has always been regarded as a challenge by farsi-speaking efl learners. despite the presence of many linguistic and pedagogical approaches in studying and teaching english passive, there still appears to be a pedagogical gap facing farsi-speaking efl learners dealing with this construction. taking up the cognitive-construction grammar perspective, the present article aims to inv...

The present study investigated any probable relationship between theidentity processing styles and L2 literacy of advanced Persian EFL learners. Theparticipants included 160 (female = 109, male = 51) advanced EFL Iranian learners.The instruments used included a simulation of the TOEFL iBT test, measuring theparticipants’ L2 literacy-related proficiency, reading, and writing, and the identitysty...

Written corrective feedback has been subject to increasing attention in recent years, in part because of the conceptual controversy surrounding it and in part because of its ubiquitous practice. This study takes a meta-analytic approach to synthesizing extant empirical research, including 21 primary studies. Guiding the analysis are two questions: Does written corrective feedback help to improv...