One of the distinguishing features of advanced-level L2 learners is that they can “direct their writing to specific audiences, and they demonstrate an ability to alter style, tone, and format according to the specific requirements of the discourse” (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, 2001, p. 2) and use “language flexibly and effectively for social purposes, including emotio...

This study used a new computational linguistics tool, the Coh-Metrix, to investigate and measure the differences in cohesion and lexical network density between native speaker and non-native speaker writing, as well as to investigate L2 proficiency level differences in cohesion and lexical network density. This study analyzed data from three corpora with the Coh-Metrix: the International Corpus...

Lewis (1993) recognized significance of word combinations including collocations by presenting lexical approach. Because of the crucial role of collocation in vocabulary acquisition, this research set out to evaluate the rate of collocations in Iranian EFL learners' writing production across L1 and L2. In addition, L1 interference with L2 collocational use in the learner' writing samples was st...

There is little research on the task-based teaching approach in senior secondary L2 English writing classrooms. This study carried out an exploratory sequential mixed methods study to explore the suitability and adaptations of task-based language teaching in the domain of secondary schools in small cities. First, the researcher surveyed six EFL senior secondary teachers of different teaching ex...

In this paper, we present an approach to the automatic identification and correction of preposition and determiner errors in nonnative (L2) English writing. We show that models of use for these parts of speech can be learned with an accuracy of 70.06% and 92.15% respectively on L1 text, and present first results in an error detection task for L2 writing.

This paper reports on a preliminary study on second language (L2) learners’ interlanguage pragmatic (ILP) development in academic written discourse by examining how epistemic modality is used by non-native speaker (NNS) writers compared with NS writers in both native speaker (NS) and NNS corpus data. This study also investigates how NNS writers gradually develop interlanguage pragmatic competen...

Yu-Hua Chen and Paul Baker Lancaster University This paper adopts an automated frequency-driven approach to identify frequently-used word combinations (i.e., lexical bundles) in academic writing. Lexical bundles retrieved from one corpus of published academic texts and two corpora of student academic writing (one L1, the other L2), were investigated both quantitatively and qualitatively. Publis...

Cuiqin Xu, Nanjing University Yanren Ding, Nanjing University The advance of computer input log and screen-recording programs over the last two decades has greatly facilitated research into the writing process in real time. Using Inputlog 4.0 and Camtasia 6.0 to record the writing process of 24 Chinese EFL writers in an argumentative task, this study explored L2 writers’ pausing patterns in com...

As an important and a challenging source-based writing task, synthesizing offers rich opportunities to explore the connections between reading and writing. In this article, we report findings from a qualitative study of two Chinese students’ learning experiences with academic synthesis writing in a university ESL composition course. Specifically, we discuss how the two students’ understanding o...