This study investigates the lexical dimension of EFL writing by exploring the relationship between lexical diversity and EFL writing proficiency. The relationship is explored through an analysis of forty-five email texts written by Chinese high school students that were taken from a Chinese National Matriculation English Test (NMET) practice writing test. Type-token ratio (TTR) and D (a measure...

This study was conducted to probe the effect of the observer ring technique on the participants’ writing achievement. In so doing, the researchers utilized a quasi-experimental design with 20 participants in the control group and 18 in the experimental group. Instrumentation included a writing handout, an Oxford Placement Test (standard proficiency test), and a rating scale of writing. As a tre...

Placement tests, along with the growing interest in their validation, have become increasingly important in English as a Second Language programs. To this end, the present paper illustrates procedures in designing a placement test and using it to evaluate students’ language ability by means of statistical analysis. 29 participants from three proficiency levels (beginning, intermediate, and adva...

The current study sought to explore the impact of SFL-oriented register instruction on Iranian EFL learner’ writing performance with a central focus on their English proficiency level. As its secondary aim, the study delved deeply into the learners’ perception of the register-based instruction. To these ends, 50 intermediate and 50 advanced Iranian EFL learners were selected randomly and assign...

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...

Writing and speaking are the productive skills of a language and share similar components. However, there has been little attempt to investigate the impact of writing practice on the speaking proficiency of the learners. The present study using a pretest-posttest controlled group design in a quasi-experimental approach investigated the effect of guided writing practice on the speaking proficien...

This study purported to comparatively investigate the influence of collaborative writing on the quality of individual writing of four female Iranian and four female Malaysian students. The first semester students at a private university in Malaysia, who were comparable in terms of age, gender, study discipline, and language proficiency, were divided into two Iranian and two Malaysian dyads. The...