ESL and EFL Writing Instruction: Challenges and opportunities

Udostępnienie publikacji Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego finansowane w ramach projektu „Doskonałość naukowa kluczem do doskonałości kształcenia”. Projekt realizowany jest ze środków Europejskiego Funduszu Społecznego w ramach Programu Operacyjnego Wiedza Edukacja Rozwój; nr umowy: POWER.03.05.00-00-Z092/17-00

Two decades of research in L2 peer review

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Examining Scientific Writing Styles from the Perspective of Linguistic Complexity

Publishing articles in high-impact English journals is difficult for scholars around the world, especially for non-native English-speaking scholars (NNESs), most of whom struggle with proficiency in English. In order to uncover the differences in English scientific writing between native English-speaking scholars (NESs) and NNESs, we collected a large-scale data set containing more than 150,000 full-text articles published in PLoS between 2006 and 2015. We divided these articles into three groups according to the ethnic backgrounds of the first and corresponding authors, obtained by Ethnea, and examined the scientific writing styles in English from a two-fold perspective of linguistic complexity: (1) syntactic complexity, including measurements of sentence length and sentence complexity; and (2) lexical complexity, including measurements of lexical diversity, lexical density, and lexical sophistication. The observations suggest marginal differences between groups in syntactical and lexical complexity.Comment: 6 figure

The Efficacy of Three Different kinds of Error Feedback on EFL Students’ Writing in China: Teacher’s Explicit and Implicit Feedback and the Guided Peer Review

Feedback is very important for learners to improve their writing but providing effective feedback is not an easy job for the teachers who teach English writing. This is particularly true in tertiary education in Chinese context. Teacher’s explicit feedback (TEF), implicit feedback (TIF) and the guided peer review (GPR) are three types of feedback commonly used by English teachers in the EFL writing classes in China. This paper aims to examine the effects of these three different types of feedback on college students’ writings in Chinese context by using a pretest and posttest treatment, questionnaires and a case study. The qualitative results reveal that the three types of feedback are all valued by students and do help to improve their writing. GPR and TIF are preferred mostly by advanced learners but GPR triggers more self-initiated revisions and more unsuccessful revisions are found in the TIF class. TEF is mostly favored by students with lower language abilities and more successful revisions are reported in this class. These findings are consistent with the results of the pretest and posttest from the three classes. The quantitative data show that GPR contributes the highest mean score to students’ writing, and TEF the second while TIF the last. The implications of these findings are also discussed

Using Peer Review to Improve English as a Second Language College Students\u27 Writing Scores

This study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of peer-review in college English as Second Language writing classes to improve ESL students’ writing scores. It also investigated a statistically significant difference in college ESL students’ writing scores between those who use the self-check list and peer review worksheet and those who only use the self-check list in writing paragraphs and essays. More specifically, this study was conducted to determine the influence of different areas on students’ English writing scores, i.e., format/content/structure, grammar, vocabulary, and spelling. In addition, this study explored students’ attitudes and opinions on peer-review in writing class. This research was a mixed-methods study with a quasi-experimental design, including qualitative and quantitative components. The quantitative part included participants’ essay writing scores on the baseline writing and post-writing assignments. The quantitative component was an online survey for the treatment group. There were two groups of participants (n=25) in this study. There were 13 students in the comparison group and 12 students in the treatment group. The independent variables in this research design were the peer-review worksheets and the self-checklist interventions. The dependent variables in this study were students’ writing scores on the baseline writing assignment, which used a self-review checklist, and the post writing assignment, which used a peer-review editing worksheet. The results show no statistically significant difference in the baseline writing scores between the treatment and comparison groups. The corresponding significance values for F/C/S scores, grammar scores, spelling scores, vocabulary scores, and the total scores were 0.953, 0.758, 0.955, 0.846, and 0.857, respectively. Those values were much higher than 0.05, demonstrating that the students’ English writing skills were similar between the treatment and comparison groups on all criteria. There was a statistically significant difference in grammar scores, spelling scores, and total scores between the self-review results and peer-review results for the post writing scores within the treatment group. Corresponding significance values were 0.016, \u3c0.001, and \u3c0.001, respectively. For F/C/S scores and vocabulary scores, the corresponding significance values were 0.093 and 0.071, respectively. Therefore, there was no statistically significant difference in F/C/S scores and vocabulary scores between self-review and peer-review results. There was a statistically significant difference in grammar scores, spelling scores, and total scores between the treatment group (with peer-review) and the comparison group (with self-review) for the post writing scores between the two groups. Corresponding significance values were 0.029, 0.002, and 0.002, respectively. For F/C/S scores and vocabulary scores, the corresponding significance values were 0.066 and 0.078, respectively. Therefore, there was no statistically significant difference in F/C/S scores and vocabulary scores between the two groups. There was also a statistically significant difference in absolute score changes between the treatment group and the comparison group for grammar scores, spelling scores, and total scores regarding the score improvement from the baseline writing scores to the post writing scores. Corresponding significance values were 0.049, 0.004, and 0.028, respectively. The corresponding significance values for F/C/S and vocabulary score changes were 0.184 and 0.449, respectively. Therefore, there was no statistically significant difference in F/C/S and vocabulary score changes. Similarly, there was also a statistically significant difference in the percentages of the score improvement between the treatment group and the comparison group for grammar scores, spelling scores, and total scores. Corresponding significance values were 0.045, 0.029, and 0.047, respectively. There was no statistically significant difference in F/C/S and vocabulary score-change percentages between the two groups since the corresponding significance values were 0.289 and 0.434 (which were all higher than 0.05). Feedback from the treatment group student’s survey also revealed that students had a positive attitude toward peer-review. More students found that peer-review can better help them improve their English writing scores. Survey results also indicated that more students would like to recommend using peer-review to other students. This study has implications and provides recommendations for future research and practice in second language acquisition, writing skills, language research, educational technology, and teaching methodology

Peer editing in composition for multilingual writers at the college level

The goal of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of a guided peer editing activity for multilingual college freshman. This was an example of action research that began winter quarter 2013. The study used an activity where peer writers and responders identified and corrected errors in essays. Writers then choose which suggestions were errors to change and which did not need change. The study took place at Eastern Washington University in an English 112 class. English 112 is English for Academic Purposes (EAP) which is an English composition class. It took a total of four class periods in two different classes to complete the study. The subjects were taking this course in preparation for English 101 composition. A total of 18 students participated in the study, and they were mainly from Saudi Arabia, but a few were from Japan, China, and Pakistan. Students were divided into pairs for the guided peer-editing activity and had to complete three parts which were forms A, B, and C. This included practice with reading to understand content, identification and correction of errors, and a reflective journal on the process with the benefits and challenges. Students had both cultural similarities essays and argumentative essays to use for this activity. A mixed methods approach was used that employed both qualitative and quantitative methodology. Findings of the study suggest that guided peer response is a positive activity for students and it contributes to improvement with grammar, error identification, and the writing of multilingual writers at the college level. Collaborative learning with community building is also a positive outcome. Finally, the results of the present study provide useful insights into teaching writing to multilingual students and ideas for training peers for this kind of activity --Document

Peer mediation for conflict management: a Singaporean case study

The burgeoning interest in conflict and its management has recently begun to impact on schools and school systems worldwide. Motivated by a concern for increasing levels of violence in schools and student�student conflict, many school administrators are looking at conflict management programs as a means of dealing with the problem. Most of the more widely used programs have their origins in the United States; their appropriateness and effectiveness in other countries and cultures is, at best, unknown, and in some respects open to conjecture. In this paper the cultural appropriateness of a peer mediation program in a primary school in Singapore is the subject of investigation. The study also addresses, in an exploratory manner, the effectiveness of peer mediation as a mechanism for student�student conflict management

A review of research on student self-assessment in second / foreign language writing

The present article reviews the research on writing Self-Assessment (SA) conducted in the period of 2000 - 2020. The article discusses the theoretical foundation for SA following the review of conceptualization of SA by various researchers. We were particularly interested in (i) examining whether the concept of SA has witnessed an expansion during the two decades in English as a foreign/second language (EFL/ESL) writing and (ii) determining the components that were found interconnected to the concept of SA in the writing context. The findings related to the first objective indicate that the SA has expanded in its conceptualization; however, its definition and application are expected to broaden. As a result of analyzing the studies, based on the second objective, the following themes emerged: SA and training students, SA and the dialogue between students and teachers, SA and teacher training, SA and affective variables, SA and cultural components, SA and age, SA and instrumentation, SA and exemplars, SA and teacher feedback, SA and prior experience, SA and conducive environments, SA and contextualizing SA items. The review shows an important role of the components in the concept of SA in the EFL/ESL writing context; however, studies in this regard are scarce. Another group of studies that emerged was those that examined perceptions towards SA. We conclude with a critical reflection on the reviewed literature and recommend new directions for further studies