The purpose of the present study was to explore the effectiveness of raising Iranian learners’ pragmatic awareness of intercultural rhetoric in enhancing their L2 writing ability, complexity, and accuracy. To this end, two 25-member groups of EFL learners who were taking Basic Writing course at Islamic Azad University, Roudehen Branch, were selected based on their performance on a language prof...

the purpose of this research was to analyze efl writing tasks in the most popular esol (english for speakers of other languages) exam preparation courses in iran: ielts, toefl, fce and cae. having collected the criteria of writing task appropriateness in light of the process-oriented approach to writing instruction, 114 learner participants were asked to rate efl writing tasks based on a checkl...

Since Ellis Page (1966) published his landmark article, “The Imminence of Grading Essays by Computer,” the issue of using computers to grade writing and provide feedback has been a great concern for researchers in language testing and writing instruction. Research has been done for the creation and development of systems for automated essay evaluation (AEE), or automated essay scoring (AES), wh...

Strategy-focused instruction is one of the most effective approaches to improve writing skills. It aims to teach developing writers strategies that give them executive control over their writing processes. Programs under this kind of instruction tend to have multiple components that include direct instruction, modeling and scaffolded practice. This multi-component nature has two drawbacks: it m...

This study intended to investigate the interplay of critical thinking explicit instruction, academic writing performance, critical thinking ability, and critical thinking dispositions of Iranian students. To this end, 140 students of Jahrom University of Medical Sciences (73 males and 67 females) were selected. They were divided into the experimental and control groups. Both groups received ins...