How should digital tools for writing be evaluated? : Reflections from digital pedagogies and applied linguistics

The use of digital tools in academic literacies remains an emerging field, having advanced greatly in recent years. This dialogue responds to Schcolnik (2018), by arguing the benefits of considering the use of such tools in light of advances in digital pedagogies and applied linguistics. Going beyond understanding how academic writing developers engage with digital tools, an important next step is to consider whether their use of such tools is effective

Developing Learners as Global Citizens::Reflections on the Affordances of Digital Pedagogies in Language Education

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted language education globally. Issues of equity and access to education have emerged in the literature, spotlighting the exacerbation of extant socio-economic divides in education access and attainment. Among these issues was a global online pivot, with educators and students turning to online education and distance learning. Though largely a response to the immediate challenges faced in the education sector, this transition to distance and online education offered opportunities for language education to respond to the emerging challenges and future needs in global education. With this in mind, this paper argues that distance and online education can facilitate holistic, intercultural, and immersive language learning by offering opportunities for personalised and autonomous learning, and creating digitally enhanced intercultural spaces for engaging with and addressing global issues in language education

Stance nouns in COVID-19 related blog posts:A contrastive analysis of blog posts published in The Conversation in Spain and the UK

Research dissemination through academic blogs creates opportunities for writers to reach wider audiences. With COVID-19, public dissemination of research impacts daily practices, and national and international policies, and in countries like the UK and Spain, The Conversation publishes accessible COVID-19 themed research. Such academic blogs are important to the global academy, yet the role of authorial stance therein is notably under-investigated. This paper presents a corpus-based contrastive analysis of “stance nouns + that/de que” in a comparable corpus of English and Spanish COVID-19 themed academic blogs from The Conversation. The analysis identifies similarities and differences across languages that reflect how COVID-19 is framed in each language. For example, Spanish academics use Possibility and Factualness nouns when self-sourcing their stances with expanding strategies, while English academics use Argument and Idea nouns with external sources in contracting strategies. Overall, this paper adds to current linguistic knowledge on academic blogs and scientific communication surrounding COVID-19

How should digital tools for writing be evaluated? Reflections from digital pedagogies and applied linguistics

The use of digital tools in academic literacies remains an emerging field, having advanced greatly in recent years. This dialogue responds to Schcolnik (2018), by arguing the benefits of considering the use of such tools in light of advances in digital pedagogies and applied linguistics. Going beyond understanding how academic writing developers engage with digital tools, an important next step is to consider whether their use of such tools is effective

Adverbs on the move:Investigating publisher application of corpus research on recent language change to ELT coursebook development

While the role of corpus linguistics (CL) in language teaching and learning continues to evolve, its use in the language teaching industry remains somewhat unclear. The specific ways in which ELT publishers use CL research to inform materials development are under-studied, meaning that it is not known whether CL is being used by publishers to its full potential. This study investigates the use of CL research by a major international ELT publisher by conducting research into recent change in adverbs in casual spoken British English and sharing the findings with editors from the publisher. Through our analysis, we find evidence of major recent changes in the use of frequent adverbs. Following the corpus analysis, we conducted in-depth interviews with the editors and a review of the materials they subsequently produced using the corpus findings. In so doing, we find some evidence of effective use of corpora in materials development but reveal limitations in current corpus research which prevent editors from employing CL research more effectively

Academic Writing in Times of Crisis: Refashioning Writing Tutor Development for Online Environments

This paper builds on a discussion launched by the EATAW 2021 conference panel, ‘Writing Tutor Development: Challenges and Opportunities in the Current State of the Art’. As a critical discussion of the panel’s themes, the paper engages with academic writing in times of crises by zooming in on infrastructures of writing support, namely the complex system in which Academic Writing Tutoring takes place, contextualised within the Centre for Academic Writing (CAW) at Coventry University, UK. Beginning with a consideration of what constitutes a ‘writing tutor’ in contemporary contexts and at CAW, the paper outlines a range of academic writing support identities and roles, unravels the institutional drivers that shape them, and offers perspectives on reconciling apparently disparate roles. Next, the paper addresses the issue of agency in terms of the challenges of enculturating writing tutors into communities of practice, discourse communities, and research networks. This is done with a view to reflecting on the practices in CAW and beyond, thus demonstrating the need for varied development and support pathways to facilitate the move towards online delivery amid, and after, a time of global crisis, namely, the COVID-19 pandemic. The discussion centres on how challenges can be overcome through sustained professional development, focusing on the role of technology in not only refashioning academic writing support, but also the roles and practices of Academic Writing Tutors at CAW. Issues of digital pedagogies, technologies, and digital literacies permeate this discussion of the online pivot and crisis pedagogies, offering analysis, reflections, and questions to guide future directions in (online) Academic Writing Tutor development and Academic Writing (crisis) Pedagogies research

Questions in English and French research articles in linguistics: a corpus-based contrastive analysis

Although research on evaluation in academic writing has profited from developments in contrastive linguistics since the late 1980s, very little empirical research has been conducted with respect to questions in contrastive studies. The aim of this study is to investigate the functions of questions as a means of reader engagement in academic research articles in English and French in the discipline of linguistics. To do this, a corpus-based contrastive analysis of two subcorpora of KIAP (Fløttum et al. in Academic voices across languages and disciplines, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2006) is conducted. The English and French subcorpora are assessed using Hyland’s model of stance and reader engagement in terms of questions and their seven functions as evaluative markers of reader engagement (Text 22(4):529–557, 2002; Discourse Stud 7(2):173–192, 2005b), including their form and distribution within the text. This analysis focuses on two particular functions of questions, namely ‘framing the discourse’ and ‘organising the text’. The results suggest that, although there is some degree of homogeneity in the use of questions in terms of function, form and distribution, there is also evidence of important differences between the two languages. These findings illustrate some distinctions in writing in these two discourse communities and their potential for informing language pedagogy in both English for academic purposes and Français langue académique

Intelligent CALL systems for writing development: Investigating the use of Write & Improve for developing written language and writing skill

Technological innovation in supporting feedback on writing is well established in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) literature. Regarding writing development, research has found that intelligent CALL systems that respond instantly to learners’ language can support their production of better-written texts. To investigate this claim further, this chapter presents a study on learner use of Write & Improve (W&I). The study, based on learner engagement with W&I and learner and teacher surveys and focus groups, demonstrates that learners find W&I to be engaging and motivating. Moreover, there is evidence of improvements in learner writing practices and written language proficiency. For teachers, W&I can render feedback more efficient, allowing them to focus on more complex aspects of learner texts, while spelling and syntactic accuracy are addressed by W&I. Issues also emerge in the use of W&I, which present problem areas for teachers and learners and which signal important future considerations for CALL research