This study investigates the benefits of collaborative writing tasks. Previous research from the perspective of the sociocultural theory of mind suggests that writing tasks completed in pairs offer learners an opportunity to collaborate in the solution of their language-related problems, co-construct new language knowledge, and produce…

English as an Additional Language (EAL) students' textual borrowing in disciplinary writing has attracted wide research interest in recent years. However, much of the research was conducted in the regular curriculum setting while the relevance of the issue in a writing-for-publication context has largely been overlooked. In particular,…

In this paper we report a case study of two first-year students at a university in Hong Kong doing the same writing assignment that required the use of sources. We explore the students' understanding of plagiarism, their strategies for composing, the similarity between their texts and source texts, and the lecturer's assessment of their work. The…

Intertextuality is a prominent feature of academic writing, and the ability to use sources effectively and appropriately is an essential skill which novice writers must acquire. It is also a complex skill, and student performance is not always successful. It is presumably beneficial for students to receive consistent messages about what source use…

Understanding how individuals interact with texts in situated writing acts and what goes into the process of writing in various social, cultural, and educational contexts has recently been laid out as a broadened research agenda for cultural studies of writing within the framework of intercultural rhetoric. However, there is a paucity of classroom…

Writing is often seen as having a minor role in second language learning. This article explores recent research that suggests that writing can have a facilitative role in language development. In particular, it focuses on three features of writing: (1) its slower pace, and (2) the enduring record that it leaves, both of which can encourage…

Although the role of individual differences in second language (L2) speech has been extensively studied, the impact of individual differences on the process of second language writing and the written product has been a neglected area of research. In this paper, I review the most important individual difference factors that might explain variations…

The controversies surrounding written error correction can be traced to Truscott (1996) in his polemic against written error correction. He claimed that empirical studies showed that error correction was ineffective and that this was to be expected "given the nature of the correction process and "the nature of language learning" (p. 328, emphasis…

Although the concept of metacognition has received considerable attention for its impact on learning across disciplinary areas, it has not been sufficiently discussed in the context of L2 academic reading and writing. In this paper, we bring together two theoretical frameworks, genre analysis and metacognition theory, and discuss the concept of…

In this paper, we argue that discussions of transfer in L2 writing and composition studies have focused primarily on the reuse of past learning and thus have not adequately accounted for the adaptation of learned writing knowledge in unfamiliar situations. In an effort to expand disciplinary discussions of transfer in L2 writing and composition…

This study examines how novice foreign language (FL) writers develop their genre awareness, linguistic knowledge, and writing competence in a genre-based writing course that incorporates email-writing tasks. To define genre, the study draws on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) that sees language as a resource for making meaning in a particular…

This study investigated the effectiveness and students' perceptions of collaborative writing (CW) in second language (L2). The study involved 38 first year students in two intact classes at a large university in the UAE (United Arab Emirates). One class consisted of 18 students and was considered the experimental group, and the second consisted of…

The present study investigates EFL students' perceptions of power differentials and their negotiation strategies when communicating with native English-speaking students via emails. The study involved 28 Taiwanese and American undergraduates who participated in a semester-long cross-national email writing activity. Findings show that students in…

Negotiating stance and carrying on social interaction in writing in educational contexts has been characterized by the choice of linguistic means away from explicit expressions of opinion representative of the informal relationship with the addressee towards the language that strives to conceal a subjective viewpoint and construes a formal…

The ESP School of genre study has been noted as increasingly bridging the linguistic and the rhetorical traditions in genre studies. However, some genre theorists have characterized the ESP genre approaches as treating rhetorical contexts as mainly, if not merely, the background for explicating texts. This paper explores this issue through…