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Although much research has reported the effectiveness of task repetition on oral performance (Bygate, 2018), few studies have investigated its effectiveness on writing performance (Manchón, 2014), especially in languages other than English. For instance, Nitta and Baba’s (2014) longitudinal study revealed that EFL undergraduates considerably progressed their syntactic complexity and lexical aspects, but not fluency, through repeating a timed writing task. In relation to the task repetition, however, whether and how L2 learners develop their grammatical accuracy and communicative adequacy (Pallotti, 2009) has remained unclear in the literature. Furthermore, in addition to the linguistic measurements and the qualitative assessments, scant research has attempted to investigate whether any significant changes are brought about in terms of learners’ perceptions through repeating language tasks. <br>Therefore, the current study has shed new light on the developmental changes in the writing performance of Japanese-as-a-foreign-language (JFL) learners. It investigated whether any remarkable changes are brought about in terms of overall complexity, complexity by subordination, accuracy, and fluency through repeating a weekly “15-Minute Writing Task” throughout one academic semester (16 weeks) and one academic year (32 weeks). The writing task topics were considered in terms of the Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson, 2001), which states that different cognitive demands of tasks will lead to different L2 output. Regarding this point, this study explored whether there were any significant differences between two task types: descriptive and argumentative essays. JFL learners who were enrolled in an intermediate-level course at an American university engaged in the two different types of timed writing tasks.<br>First, the one-semester investigation, based on the pre/posttest analysis, revealed different patterns between the two types of writing tasks. For the descriptive essays, despite the improvements in overall complexity, complexity by subordination, and fluency with a large effect size (r ≥ .6) (Plonsky & Oswald, 2014), no significant findings were confirmed for accuracy. In contrast, in the argumentative essays, the learners improved all the linguistic aspects but with a medium effect size (.4 ≤ r < .6).<br>Second, in the one-year investigation, the JFL learners significantly improved overall complexity, complexity by subordination, and fluency during the study period. The dynamic systems approach (Verspoor & van Dijk, 2011) also unraveled the developmental trajectories to show how different variables interacted in the two different types of writing tasks, respectively, throughout the measurement period. Although there were no statistically significant differences in grammatical accuracy measures, the process of L2 writing development showed fluctuations, demonstrating that the improvements in syntactic complexity seemed to have caused many grammatical errors temporarily. Lastly, the learners’ compositions, which were also assessed qualitatively by two native Japanese speakers in terms of readability, indicated significant improvements in communicative adequacy.<br>Finally, to investigate any changes in the learners’ beliefs toward Japanese writing before and after the task repetition, the JFL learners completed the Belief Questionnaire About Writing in Japanese (Ishibashi, 2009). In addition, to examine any changes in foreign language anxiety with a focus on Japanese writing, the learners were required to complete the second-language version of the Daly-Miller Writing Apprehension Test (Cheng, Horwitz, & Schallert, 1999). The study found that the extensive writing experience had a positive impact on the JFL learners’ confidence and willingness when writing in L2 Japanese.<br><br>

Daily journal entries completed by ten first grade bilingual Hmong children were collected and studied. The Hmong children were of interest because their cultural back ound involves the use of oral traditions, and a newly developed written language system. This study investigated the ability of the Hmong children to use the English written language to document their thoughts and feelings through daily journal writing. One hundred journal entries for each of the ten students were considered in this study. Children completed their daily journal independently, and freely selected the topic of their journal. Writing samples were categorized in various stages of writing as described by many child development experts. The stages include: 1) pre-communicative, 2) semiphonetic, 3) phonetic, 4) transitional, and 5) correct stage of writing. Three other stages were added to account for all journal entries. They include: 1) non-writing, 2) copying, and 3) application. The degree to which invented spelling occurred in the journal entries was investigated. Results indicated that the Hmong children were able to document their ideas through writing in English. The Hmong children experienced all of the stages of writing except the correct stage. Although invented spelling was evident in the journal entries, no more than twenty-six percent of the words were invented. Thus, a conclusion of this study is that this sample of Hmong children had the ability and interest in spelling words correctly, either through copying or memorization. Daily journal writing was an activity in which the Hmong children had the opportunity to express themselves freely through written language, and it provided the teacher insights into the English writing development of the first grade Hmong children.

<p>“Generation Z” multilingual writers are caught up in a globalized/globalizing and superdiverse linguistic and cultural contact zone as well as a neoliberal political and institutional environment. To understand how they inhabit their idiosyncratic literate worlds and practice their differences, I aligned myself with an ethnographic case study approach and investigated four writers’ ecologically situated and distributed literacy practices and experiences on and off the campus of an internationalized U.S. university. Through a conceptual framework I call “affordancescape” (a spatiotemporally stabilized ecological representation of structural, semiotic, experiential, social, bodily, and material relations that enable the human actors to rhetorically act and react) and methodology I name “trans-scape tracing,” I conducted semi-structured interviews and observations, videotaped writing ecologies, analyzed multimodal artifacts. Then, I reconstructed the four writers’ literate worlds that are always emerging and knotworked, rhetorically powerful, and rich in ecological affordances. These literate worlds define, bound, afford, constrain, tie and untie, mediate and remediate these writers’ practices of rhetorical differences.<br></p><p>The following three overarching research questions guided my data collection and analysis:<br></p><p>1.What does it mean to be “different” in the international multilingual students’ own terms? How do they practice self-perceived differences through various literate activities?<br></p><p>2.What are the ecological affordances that enable these students to practice their differences? How are these affordances knotworked? How do their practices of difference position nd reposition themselves?<br></p><p>3.How do we move toward a new understanding of international multilingual students’ practices of difference through literate activities?<br></p><p>Ultimately, I argue it is imperative to (re)examine international multilingual students’ practices of difference through literate activities against the global context characterized by the resurgence of nationalism and growing transnational migration, and the local institutional context characterized by internationalization and neoliberal corporatization, as the global and local trends deeply affect students’ bodily experiences in small and large ways. In Chapter One, I lay out in broad strokes the global and local contexts, the emerging issues, and the current scholarly responses to the issues. In Chapter Two, I introduce the analytical framework that I call “affordancescape.” Chapter Three is dedicated to the description of the research methodology that builds on the approach of ethnographic case study, which I call “trans-scape tracing,” as well as detailed data collection and analysis procedures. Chapter Four through Seven constitute the narratives of individual cases: Janus, Manna, Bohan, and Yang. In Chapter Eight, the last chapter, I revisit the individual cases through a holistic lens and provide suggestions for a new understanding of students’ practices of difference.<br></p><p><br></p>

Thesis (M.A. (English Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / The study explored essay writing errors of English First Additional Language (EFAL) FET rural learners. The aim of the study was to analyse essay writing errors of the EFAL FET learners in rural schools. EFAL Grade 11 learners together with their educators from 4 circuits in Mopani West District of Limpopo Province (LP), South Africa (SA), participated in the study. The learners’ 40 essays were analysed. Additionally, the learners and educators were interviewed and the data generated were analysed. A qualitative Content Analysis (CA) research method was used to collect data. The sample was made up of 3 instruments; an essay checklist for the 40 essays, EFAL learners’ group interviews that consisted of 4 equal groups made up of 10 learners per school, and interviews with 4 educators from each of the school represented. N – Vivo was used for data transcription, storage and analysis. Errors populated in the checklist were arranged into smaller units, identified, analysed, described and reported. Data obtained through semi-structured interviews with EFAL learners and educators were transcribed and analysed thematically. The analysis of the EFAL FET rural learners’ essay writing errors revealed weaknesses pertaining to choice of essay topics, proofreading, spelling, punctuation and grammar.

This study examines the use of the Test of Written English (TWE), the essay portion of the TOEFL, as an indicator of academic readiness at Portland State University.

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This dissertation investigates the challenges faced by learners of English for academic purposes (EAP) when required to complete writing assignments that use source texts. In order to address this problem, I explore the issue from the perspectives of applied linguistic researchers, writing program administrators, and classroom composition instructors. These three perspectives are highlighted in distinct articles that build on one another to create a more complete understanding of the challenges that EAP students face when writing from sources. The first article contains a literature review of relevant studies that explore the reading-to-write construct. Experts suggest that unintentional plagiarism, or patchwriting, can be attributed to a lack of cultural and linguistic competence. In order to address these limitations, researchers identify several reading and writing subskills that are integral to success in academic source writing. The literature review concludes with recommendations for teaching and testing contexts. The second article details a rater training evaluation study that resulted in unexpected, but welcomed, recommendations. Teacher-raters provided feedback that influenced how the institution made use of benchmark portfolios to train teacher-raters as well as inform students about writing achievement standards. The increased use of benchmark portfolios also helped to clarify classroom and program standards regarding citation, attribution, and anti-plagiarism policies. The final article is a practical guide for classroom composition instructors. I outline a recommended curriculum for teaching source writing to EAP students. The guide incorporates the findings of the literature review and the evaluation study into a collaborative and iterative pedagogical model. This recursive approach to EAP writing instruction helps students to diagnose and develop the advanced literacy subskills required for successful source integration into their writing. As a set, the three articles demonstrate that effective solutions to instructional issues can be developed when a problem is approached from multiple perspectives. Indeed, linguistics-based research, program administration, and teacher experience can be combined to produce a model for writing instruction that acknowledges principles of second-language advanced literacy and accounts for learner struggles as students develop source writing skills.