• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.67-89
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• 2005

Writing is a difficult skill for many people, both for children and adult alike and generally most people find it difficult to write down their thoughts effectively. Numerous studies have revealed that teachers find it frustrating to teach writing and many failed to help ESL students develop their writing ability. The theoretical emphasis on process oriented writing instruction has, in general brought about positive changes in the way writing is taught and has become widely accepted in the teaching of English as a second or foreign language (ESL/EFL). Although the interpretation and implementation of the process approach varies considerably from instructor to instructor, nevertheless, the emphasis on process writing has brought about significant and beneficial changes in teachers' orientations to writing. Despite the theoretical recognition of writing as a recursive process, many ESL/EFL classrooms continue to teach writing as a linear sequence of planning, pre-writing, writing, revising and editing and has not enhanced ESL/EFL students writing ability to the desired level. There appears to be a missing link in helping students to crystallize their thoughts before writing. Studies have shown that incorporating visual thinking tools into the process approach of ESL writing can enhance students' ability to write. This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study on the effects of using visual thinking tools in enhancing ESL students writing.

• Educational Technology International
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.71-94
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• 2011

How can an automated essay scoring (AES) program, which provides feedback for essays, be a formative tool for improving ESL writing? In spite of the increasing demands for English writing proficiency, English writing instruction has not been effective for teaching and learning because of a lack of timely and accurate feedback. In this context, AES as a possible solution has been gaining the attention of educators and scholars in ESL/EFL writing education because it can provide consistent and prompt feedback for student writers. This experimental study examined the impact of different types of feedback for a college ESL writing program using the Criterion AES system. The results reveal the positive impact of AES in a college-level ESL course and differences between the teacher's feedback and the AES feedback. The findings suggest that AES can be effectively integrated into ESL writing instruction as a formative assessment tool.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.59-85
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• 2007

This study examined patterns of engaging in "reading in connection to writing" (hereafter reading-writing practices) in the context of two ESL college composition classrooms. The purpose of this study was to explore whether the L2 proficiency level could be a key construct in explaining similarities and differences in reading-writing practices which students engaged in during the composing process. Multiple sources of data collected over the semester included interview protocols, written products, and observational notes. The results showed that the three proficiency groups under examination differed widely in the ways reading was connected to writing and in the types of intermediate texts produced during the composing process. The students in the high proficiency group produced more intermediate texts through an engagement in reading-writing practices connected to each other. On the contrary, the students in lower proficiency groups engaged in a limited range of reading-writing practices without support of intermediate texts. This study provides insight into the different ways ESL college students coordinate reading and writing while composing essays.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.147-166
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• 2006

This study investigates the effect of misplacement in a written Computer-delivered ESL Placement Test (CEPT) context. The study aims to address the following two research questions: a) which scoring rubric features cause the misplacement of ESL learner's writing scores? and b) which scoring rubric features improve ESL learner's writing scores? Thirty-four international examinees took the test and participated in surveys at the University of Illinois. Twelve examinees of them attended the CEPT workshop test. In the workshop test, they carried out self-evaluation on their first essays using a scoring rubric and compared with expert raters' results. After the workshop, the examinees responded to a survey and interview. For the first research question, the results of the survey and interview addressed that the majority disagreed with the raters' rating results. The self-evaluation results also indicated that their misunderstanding of organization feature caused the misplacement. For the second question, the CEPT workshop scores were improved due to the score improvement in the organization feature while the contribution of other features to the total scores was little. Most of the examinees pointed out that a lesson on the scoring rubric enhanced their understanding of the writing features of the rubric so that their placement scores were generally improved.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.125-146
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• 2011

Within a framework of sociocultural approaches to writing process, this study examined six ESL graduate students' writing processes in depth based on individual interviews and their narratives of writing process. The narratives and interviews were analyzed to discover salient aspects of the students' writing processes and to understand the socially situated nature of the writing processes. First, it was observed that these six students displayed multiplicity in terms of their representations of writing process, episodes, textual practices, and concerns. Several factors including the writing task, students' familiarity with genre, literacy skills, attitude toward writing, and involvement in interaction contributed to individualized trajectories of writing process. It was also revealed that writing is unavoidably a socially situated practice. Students were situated in their cultural arenas as well as their disciplinary arenas, and these contexts helped the students serve as active agents producing and sharing knowledge. The confluence of personal, cognitive, and social factors observed in their writing processes suggests that writing process should be understood from multiple perspectives.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.39-56
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• 2005

This study is a small-scale replication study of Kubota (1998). Kubota discovered that L1 rhetoric was not the main cause of L2 writing problems. The conclusion of Kubota's study was in contrast to that of contrastive rhetoric research that claimed that the use of L1 rhetorical styles in L2 writing negatively affects the quality of L2 writing, in particular, at the organizational level. According to Kubota(1998), the use of Japanese rhetorical styles did not deteriorate the quality of English writing. By investigating Korean ESL learners, this replication study examined whether L1 and L2 writings have the same rhetorical styles and how L1 rhetorical styles affect the L2 writing quality. The study analyzed Korean and English persuasive writings written by 12 Korean ESL learners in terms of organization. The results show that Korean learners of English used different rhetorical styles in their L1 Korean writing and L2 English writing. However, there was a positive relationship between L1 Korean and L2 English organization scores.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.87-108
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• 2007

Given that various classroom contextual factors influence the nature of writing instructional practices, it would be worthwhile to explore these factors to generate better environment for learning to write. Among many factors, this study examined teachers' beliefs and knowledge, which would operate as a very influential contextual factor in that changes in principles and methods of teaching writing would be the results of their underlying beliefs and knowledge related to teaching writing. Three professional teachers who teach second- and third-grade English language learners (ELLs) were interviewed, and the analysis of teacher interviews was conducted. The research findings indicated that basically all of the teachers perceived the role of writing in second language learning as very important, sharing the belief that the ultimate goal of teaching writing is to have their students gain fluency in writing and that some of instructional methods such as integration of writing and other language aspects, content-based writing, and providing scaffolding are important. In addition, some beliefs that two ESL teachers shared included the importance of ample and continuous opportunities to write, vocabulary knowledge, and explicit instruction about writing. Other beliefs, including the importance of creating a comfortable writing environment and opportunities for writing for varied purposes and genres were represented.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.221-238
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• 2006

This study investigates the reliability of plagiarism measurement in the ESL essay writing context. The current study aims to address the answers to the following research questions: 1) How does plagiarism measurement affect test reliability in a psychometric view? and 2) how do raters conceive the plagiarism in their analytic scoring? This study uses the mixed-methodology that crosses quantitative-qualitative techniques. Thirty eight international students took an ESL placement writing test offered by the University of Illinois. Two native expert raters rated students' essays in terms of 5 analytic features (organization, content, language use, source use, plagiarism) and made a holistic score using a scoring benchmark. For research question 1, the current study, using G-theory and Multi-facet Rasch model, found that plagiarism measurement threatened test reliability. For research question 2, two native raters and one non-native rater in their email correspondences responded that plagiarism was not a valid analytic area to be measured in a large-scale writing test. They viewed the plagiarism as a difficult measurement are. In conclusion, this study proposes that a systematic training program for avoiding plagiarism should be given to students. In addition, this study suggested that plagiarism is measured reliably in the small-scale classroom test.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.255-284
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• 2007

This study explored the ESL college learners' perceptions on integrating reading and writing in the context of the reading-to-write composition classroom. Using the panel survey (N=60) that repeatedly measured the same set of individuals at three different times during a semester, this study examined whether students' perceptions on reading-writing integrations were reshaped over the course of classroom practices. The survey instrument was developed to assess the perception scores from less integrative continua to more integrative continua on a 5-point Likert scale. A two-factor ANOVA with repeated measures was performed to evaluate mean differences across the perception groups and over the three treatment times. The results do not demonstrate a significant treatment effect, suggesting that L2 learners' integrative perceptions were stable over the course of the semester. The dynamics in the perception changes differed widely across the perception groups. This result provides insights into understanding students' reading-writing practices and thus into instructional practices applicable to the classrooms. The present study argues for 12 learners' perceptions on integrating reading and writing as a key construct to understand their literacy practices involved in the composing process.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.163-197
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• 2018

The present study suggests ways to improve the Korean proficiency screening test through an analysis of WIDA tests. A review of WIDA Screener, WIDA MODEL, and W-APT reveals that each of these three tests consists of four or five tests, corresponding to grade-level clusters. In addition, the WIDA screening tests assess both English for social communication and academic English, according to WIDA's five English Language Development (ELD) standards. Thematic folders of the ELD standards have different ranges of item difficulty, and the WIDA screening tests are adaptive tests. Lastly, the writing tests consist of performance-based tasks, and the rubric is holistic. As suggestions for improvement for Korean screening tests of the KSL curriculum, this study proposes (a) to devise items to assess academic Korean, so as to evaluate students' overall proficiency more accurately, (b) to utilize an adaptive method to screen students' proficiency more efficiently, and (c) to revise the writing tasks and rubric of the current KSL screening tests.