The general aim of this study is to better understand aspects of using reference tools for writing and to identify technologies that can assist foreign language writers. The specific purpose of this study is to look closely at how English as a Second Language (ESL) students from Korea use a corpus as a reference tool in conjunction with dictionaries when paraphrasing English newspaper articles. The participants were Korean graduate students with advanced English proficiency (N=10). Their task was to paraphrase an English newspaper article. The results show that purposes for using a concordancing program include collocations, definitions, context, and parts of speech. The subjects looked for a variety of information in a concordancing program, including prepositions, authentic samples, and the context in which the search terms were used. Reasons for using dictionaries include definitions, parts of speech, and sample sentences. The most common strategy was to combine reference tools, while the second most common was to use a specific search word. Subjects who used more than one tool for a search or performed multiple searches were more successful in finding what they were looking for. A concordancing program enabled users to see multiple examples of everyday language use. By using the concordancing program, learners were able to see words that were used most frequently, their patterns, and collocations. Learners took more responsibility for their language learning, as they became researchers in their own right. They gained confidence as L2 writers as they had inside access to linguistic resources. The subjects became more independent and were able to solve their own writing and linguistic problems as they became more aware through the use of authentic texts. In this study, the subjects found the corpora to be useful for sentence-level composition and revision. Overall, the use of reference tools led to an improvement in the accuracy of writing. A concordancing program played an important role in defining the structure and context of English phrases and sentences.

A hybridized society, Kuwait meshes Islamic ideologies with western culture. Linguistically, English exists across both foreign language and second language nomenclatures in the country due to globalization and internationalization which has seen increasing use of English in Kuwait. Originally consisting of listening, speaking, reading and writing, the first grade English curriculum in Kuwait was narrowed in 2002 to focus only on the development of oral English skills, and to exclude writing. Since that time, both Kuwaiti teachers and parents have expressed dissatisfaction with this curriculum on the basis that this model disadvantages their children. In first grade however, the teaching of pre-writing has remained as part of the curriculum. This research analyses the parameters of English pre-writing and writing instruction in first grade in Kuwaiti classrooms, investigates first grade English pre-writing and writing teaching, and gathers insights from parents, teachers and students regarding the appropriateness of the current curriculum. Through interviews and classroom observations, and an analysis of curriculum documents, this case study found that the relationship between oral and written language is more complex than suggested by either the Kuwaiti curriculum reform, or international literature concerning the delayed teaching of writing. Intended curriculum integration across Kuwait subjects is also far more complex than first believed, due to a developmental mismatch between English pre-writing skills and Arabic language capabilities. Findings suggest an alternative approach to teaching writing may be more appropriate and more effective for first Grade students in the current Kuwait curriculum context. They contribute also to an emerging interest in the second and foreign language fields in the teaching of writing to young learners.

In this study, individually written essays are compared with interactively written chat texts with the aim to investigate, describe and to some extent explain what happens to the language and the writing during a chat session. Students in a Swedish upper secondary school studying Spanish A2 completed two jigsaw tasks through writing and the texts were analyzed from a descriptive grammatical and stylistic perspective through variable analysis. In the results, the essays tended to be more complex syntactically whereas the chat texts showed more variation and accuracy regarding verb conjugation. As to fluency (text length), number of clauses and verbal forms there were no major differences. Chatting in school environment seemed to become semiformal in this study, with many incomplete sentences and interjections, but with few extra-linguistic signs and only some decline in the usage of accents. A challenging feature of the chat practice is that the interactivity makes the final text result an inseparable entity of two individual texts both regarding content and language. At the same time the interactivity could be the reason for the higher variation and accuracy of the verb conjugation in the chat texts of this study.

Grounded in sociocultural theory, peer feedback can help students engage in interaction and negotiation of meaning, which serve as a basis for the construction of knowledge (Vygotsky, 1978). It can also contribute to the development of self-regulation, as well as of reflection on one's own learning (Doolittle & Hicks, 2003). Its strategic incorporation into foreign language instruction can help students use the language they are in the process of acquiring to mediate language acquisition (Shrum & Glisan, 2005). Research shows that peer feedback can help students develop and advance their Zone of Proximal Development through their engagement in collaborative interaction with their peers (De Guerrero & Villamil, 1994, 2000; Donato, 2004; Lantolf, 2004; Lantolf & Thorne, 2006; Liu & Hansen, 2005). Peer feedback can also help students improve their writing proficiency, including organization of their texts and awareness of the mechanics of the language necessary for successful communication of the intended message (Kinsler, 1990; Hu, 2005; Williams, 2005). Framed within a sociocultural perspective on foreign language learning and development, and following a manuscript approach, this dissertation consists of a series of studies that aim to explore: (a) whether participation in a peer feedback experience has a positive impact on students’ foreign language writing proficiency; (b) whether guidelines plus training in how to provide meaningful feedback have a different impact on students’ foreign language writing proficiency than guidelines alone; (c) around what themes students focus the feedback they provide to their peers; and (d) what students’ perceptions of the peer feedback experience are. The results of the first the study, which consisted of a pre-test post-test quasi-experimental design, showed that students significantly improved their writing proficiency after participating in a peer feedback experience, regardless of training. Further the results of this study indicated that, on average, trained and untrained students provided written peer feedback focused mainly on global aspects rather than local aspects. The results of the second study, which consisted of a mixed methods approach, showed that, on average, students had high perceptions of the peer feedback experience and that they perceived that their partner's feedback had helped them improve the global aspects of their composition more than the local aspects. Students expressed that what they liked the most about the experience was getting a different perspective on their writing, and what they liked the least was that they felt they were not proficient enough in the foreign language to provide meaningful feedback to their peers. / Ph. D.

Kent Fredholm (2015). Eleverna, datorn och språket: Studier av skoldatoriseringens effekter på elevers attityder, skrivstrategier och textproduktion i spanskundervisningen på gymnasiet. (The Pupils, the Computer and the Language: Studies of the Effects of School Computerisation on Pupils’ Attitudes. Writing Strategies and Written Text Production in Upper Secondary School Spanish Classes.) Stockholm University, Studies in Language Education 12. ISBN 978-91-7649-090-7. Written in Swedish, English and Spanish with abstracts in the three languages and a summary in English. The present work is based upon three studies performed between 2012 and 2014 at the Swedish upper secondary school with pupils studying Spanish as a foreign language. The first study investigates through lesson diaries and an online survey the pupils’ attitudes towards and perceptions of computer use in language learning at large, and specifically of online grammar exercises as compared to paper-based exercises. The participating pupils showed mixed attitudes towards using online exercises for grammar practice, with high demands on websites’ design and user friendliness, as well as for the correctness and reliability of automated corrections. A majority preferred mixed teaching methods (including computer use, teacher-led explanations and the use of paper- and pen-based exercises, especially translation tasks). The major advantage of using computers was considered to be for essay writing and information search. The second study investigates how a group of pupils use online resources when writing essays in Spanish, focussing on their extensive use of online translation services such as Google translate. The writing strategies of these pupils with free access to the Internet are compared to the strategies of another group working without Internet access. The third study examines effects of the use of online translation on the language in the pupils’ essays. The texts written with online translation are compared to texts written without Internet access, but with access to printed dictionaries. Few statistically significant differences can be seen between the two groups. These concern grammatical and lexical complexity and accuracy. The most clear differences regard spelling and article/noun/adjective congruence (with higher degrees of accuracy among the users of online translation), and syntax (with fewer errors in the group writing without online translation). The grammatical complexity was also somewhat higher in the online translation group. As for fluency (text length) and complexity, differences can be correlated to the pupils’ proficiency in Spanish, whereas no such correlation can be seen regarding accuracy.

The purpose of this research synthesis is to investigate how using blogs and Facebookin foreign language teaching can improve pupils´ writing skills in the target language.According to the theoretic framework around which the results of this researchsynthesis are organized, linguistic, pragmatic, intercultural and strategic competence arepart of writing skills. The results show that out of the 8 studies included in the researchsynthesis five showed an improvement in linguistic competence, three out of those fiveshowed an improvement in pragmatic competence as well, and another three studiesalso showed an improvement in pragmatic competence. None of the studies showed animprovement in intercultural or strategic competence.

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