The present research study aimed to explore covert processes of editing and revision which were involved in writing four different academic text genres (i.e. abstract, conclusion, data commentary, and cover letter) in English language. To this end, six EFL learners with Persian as their mother were recruited to participate in this study. All the participants attended an induction session and ea...

Lexical sophistication is an important component of writing proficiency. New lexical indices related to range, n-gram frequency, psycholinguistic word information, academic language, polysemy, and hypernymy have yielded new insights into the construct of lexical sophistication and its relationship with second language (L2) acquisition and writing. For example, recent studies have suggested that...

While writing performed by any body part is similar in style, indicating a common program, writing with the dominant hand is particularly skilled. We hypothesized that this skill utilizes a special motor network supplementing the motor equivalence areas. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in 13 normal subjects, we studied nine conditions: writing, zigzagging and tapping, each with the ...

Using optical topography (near-infrared spectroscopy: NIRS), relative changes in oxidized hemoglobin (oxy-Hb) were measured before and after the introduction of Role lettering. Tasks performed during measurements included antegrade (from the subject to other persons) and retrograde (from other persons to the subject) mental imaging and writing tasks. All subjects were junior high school student...

Argument maps as schematic representations of arguments and their logical and evidential relationships are effective diagrams for instruction in education as well as in L2 development. However, their use for teaching L2 writing in EFL contexts has not been adequately studied. Therefore, this study investigated the effect of argument mapping instruction on Iranian EFL learners’ writing achieveme...

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...

Task-based language teaching, which requires learners to transact tasks resembling their real life language needs, demands language learners to perform planning at different stages of their learning. Since various types of tasks can be used in task-based instruction, the present study examined the effect of task types and various participatory structures during pre-task planning on the quality ...

Controversy has not been yet resolved among researchers in second language research over the pedagogical efficacy of feedback in enhancing various features of learners’ writing skill. Research findings highlighting the significance of interactive tasks and learners’ engagement in improving the learning process stimulated the present study, the purpose of which was to explore the effect of task-...