Citation practice provides justification for arguments and allows a writer to indicate a rhetorical gap for her/his research and adopt a tone of authority. Claims must be supported with evidence, and writers must demonstrate an understanding of approaches and knowledge in their fields of specialisation, in order to persuade the examiners that the…

The scripts of 288 television episodes were analysed to determine the extent to which vocabulary reoccurs in television programs from the same subgenres and unrelated television programs from different genres. Episodes from two programs from each of the following three subgenres of the American drama genre: medical, spy/action, and criminal…

It is often assumed that the academic genres taught by EAP specialists at universities are fixed and stable, provide easily accessible exemplars for student writers and feature in programmes running prior or parallel to the students' courses. This paper describes a collaborative writing initiative in which these assumptions were challenged. A…

While press materials, are widely used both as an ESP materials resource and as a research source by ESP practitioners, press headlines in English confront the Non Native Speaker (NNS) and to some extent the Native Speaker (NS) with a notorious paradox: headlines are crafted to raise communication potential and yet, rather than communicate, they…

The role of (written) corrective feedback (CF) in the process of acquiring a second language (L2) has been an issue of considerable controversy among theorists and researchers alike. Although CF is a widely applied pedagogical tool and its use finds support in SLA theory, practical and theoretical objections to its usefulness have been raised…

Recently we have witnessed a large growth in research on written corrective feedback (WCF). However, the question posed here is: are researchers and L2 writing teachers now any wiser about the efficacy of WCF? I begin with a summary of early studies and some of their major shortcomings. I then examine more recent studies and conclude that,…

Considerable attention has been given to written corrective feedback (WCF) in second language writing (L2) over the past several decades. One of the central questions has focused on the appropriateness of its use in L2 writing. In these academic discussions, scholars frequently describe how WCF is utilized in the classroom. However, many of these…

Approaching peer review from a process and contextualized perspective, this exploratory case study investigates two Chinese EFL learners' decision-making patterns while evaluating peers' texts in an online peer review and factors influencing these patterns. Detailed qualitative case study data were collected through think-aloud protocols,…

Written feedback on drafts of a thesis or dissertation is arguably the most important source of input on what is required or expected of thesis-writing students by the academic community. Despite its importance, relatively little is known about what type of information supervisors focus on when giving feedback. This article presents the findings…

This article provides an overview of the contributions made to this special issue on feedback by the seven papers, examining how they reflect both the growing interest in different areas of research into feedback on writing and the continuing search by teachers for more effective feedback practices. Focusing first on the papers by Van Beuningen,…

The present study investigated how noticing is related to composing and subsequent feedback processing in individual and collaborative EFL writing. Participants were Spanish secondary school pupils at a low-intermediate proficiency level who completed a three-stage writing task that included writing a picture-based story (Stage 1), comparing their…

InWhile research in second language writing suggests that instructor feedback can have a positive influence on students' written work, the provision of such feedback on a regular basis can be problematic, especially with larger student numbers. A number of computer programs that claim to provide both automatic computer-based holistic scores and…

The concepts of "explicit" and "implicit" (knowledge) are at the core of SLA studies. We take "explicit" as conscious and declarative (knowledge); "implicit" as unconscious, automatic and procedural (knowledge) (DeKeyser, 2003; R. Ellis, 2005a, 2005b, 2009; Hulstjin, 2005; Robinson, 1996; Schmidt, 1990, 1994). The importance of those concepts and…

Framed in a cognitively-oriented strand of research on corrective feedback (CF) in SLA, the controlled three-stage (composition/comparison-noticing/revision) study reported in this paper investigated the effects of two forms of direct CF (error correction and reformulation) on noticing and uptake, as evidenced in the written output produced by a…

In this essay, I argue for viewing mental representation and skill as distinct components of language acquisition. My claim is that language is not a monolithic entity--not a new concept, but one that is often overlooked by instructors and some scholars. I examine language as being (minimally) composed of mental representation and skill.…