This case study investigated feedback, interaction, and knowledge creation in an asynchronous discussion forum in which learners of English provided peer feedback on short argument essays for the IELTS test, a gatekeeper English exam used for immigration or university entrance. Over eleven months, a small but active group of intermediate and advanced learners from many countries changed participation from seeking feedback to giving complex macro-level feedback on each other’s writing, changing their perceptions of peer editing and improving their own writing, while a much larger group engaged primarily in lurking. The research was exploratory at first, since it was not known whether learners would join or provide feedback, but as members joined, peer feedback loops and varying patterns of interaction emerged. To investigate these processes, both content and structure were examined, with forum posts examined using thematic units as the unit of analysis, and server logs providing structural data such as membership duration and posting patterns. Semi-structured interviews were carried out to gain further insight into member perceptions. Feedback was viewed as a process with benefits for both givers and receivers, rather than as a product given by an expert. Lurking was a key form of participation for both active and less-active members, while changes in roles and participation were mainly associated with longer membership and more feedback. Because of the informal learning setting and high turnover, models from outside educational settings were used as theoretical lenses: organizational citizenship (Bateman & Organ, 1983) and organizational commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1991), to investigate roles and behavior; and Nonaka’s SECI framework (1994), to examine knowledge conversion and creation. Applying citizenship behavior to online settings posed problems due to the difficulty of distinguishing between discretionary or supra-role behavior and the core intent of a knowledge community. In contrast, a modified SECI framework appeared to be a useful metaphor, emphasizing peer feedback as socially-constructed knowledge.

Gender equality has long been an issue for gender and language research from as early as the 1970s to the contemporary era in the 2010s, and gender stereotyping in textbooks is an issue in many different countries (Davis, 1995; see also Blumberg, 2007, 2008). While secondary English Language textbooks published in Hong Kong have already been investigated by Lee and Collins (2008), primary English Language textbooks have rarely been investigated (but see Au, 1992; Au, 2004). Therefore, the present study investigates gender representation in two widely-used primary English Language textbook series, Step Up and Primary Longman Express, by examining two subgenres that can be widely found in all language textbooks: reading passages and dialogues, and visuals. In other words, textual (lexis and grammar), discourse and visual representations of gender are analysed. A combination of different methods is used in this study. First, to answer the research question of how gender is represented in the reading passages in the Step Up and Primary Longman Express series in terms of lexis and grammar (Research Question A), content, linguistic and discourse analyses are conducted. Then, pragmatics and conversation analysis are used to analyse how the discourse of male and female speakers is represented in the dialogues in the two textbook series (Research Question B). Finally, to analyse the representation of gender in the visuals in the two textbook series (Research Question C), the method of visual analysis is used. To make sure that the quantitative results obtained are significant, the chi-square test is also used and log-likelihood values are calculated. The results of this study are encouraging in that males and females are represented similarly and fairly, and show an improvement over previous textbook studies in gender representation. In textual representation of gender, at the lexical level, though males were represented more often than females in terms of having a higher frequency of occurrence of node words, nomination, and pronouns when counted as ‘tokens’ in the two series, both males and females were portrayed as having jobs outside home and engaging in household chores (even if only playing a supportive role for males). At the formal grammatical level, the ‘generic’ use of masculine pronouns to refer to human beings in general could not be found in the two textbook series either. As regards gender representation in dialogues, the results vary between the two textbook series and across different dialogue subgenres. Male/female invisibility and domination in dialogues do not exist, and there are no instances of gender stereotyping in the analysed dialogues of the two series. Finally, in visual representation of gender, though males were represented more than females in the illustrations in the two textbook series, the phenomenon of gender stereotyping in terms of occupations and activities engaged in the illustrations in the selected books of either textbook series is not prominent.

The research explores an aspect of writer-reader interaction in native and non-native speaker student argumentative essays. Based on the assumption that writing is inherently a dialogue between writers and readers, this study looks in detail at key aspects of the ways in which Iranian and British students interact with their readers, bring them into the text, and involve them in the construction of the discourse and the arguments in order to contribute to the interactiveness and persuasiveness of the text. Three linguistic resources – interactant pronouns, questions, and directives – are looked at in a corpus totalling 334 short argumentative essays produced by Iranian EFL writers (at two proficiency levels of high and low and two test versions of Academic and General) and British A-level students. The texts are analyzed using specially devised analytical frameworks and with the help of WordSmith Tools, a corpus analysis software. The results reveal that both language groups use the three linguistic devices for fairly similar purposes, indicating the generic similarities in the writings of both groups of students. The findings, however, show noticeable quantitative differences: the British students use questions more frequently than the Iranian students, whereas the Iranian students use interactant pronouns and directives considerably more frequently than the British students. The quantitative differences seem to be related to distinct cultural conventions as well as the Iranians’ overall lower proficiency level. Within the Iranian sub-corpora, Iranian high-scoring and Iranian Academic students use the three interactive resources more frequently than their low-scoring and General counterparts. The pedagogical implications of the study for novice EFL writers are outlined.