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This book provides critical perspectives on issues relating to writing norms and assessment, as well as writing proficiency development, and suggests that scholars need to both carefully examine testing regimes and develop research-informed perspectives on tests and testing practices. In this way schools, institutions of adult education and universities can better prepare learners with differing cultural experiences to meet the challenges. The book brings together empirical studies from diverse geographical contexts to address the crossing of literacy borders, with a focus on academic genres and practices. Most of the studies examine writing in countries where the norms and expectations are different, but some focus on writing in a new discourse community set in a new discipline. The chapters shed light on commonalities and differences between these two situations with respect to the expectations and evaluations facing the writers. They also consider the extent to which the norms that the writers bring with them from their educational backgrounds and own cultures are compromised in order to succeed in the new educational settings.

Motivational regulation has long been recognized as an essential but insufficiently investigated aspect of self-regulated learning (SRL), especially in relation to learning English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) writing. This study intends to fill the gap by investigating the predictive effect of motivational regulation strategies on EFL students’ writing performance mediated by SRL strategies. Data were collected from undergraduate students in mainland China (N = 512) through self-report questionnaires and an English writing test. Results of structural equation modeling (SEM) confirmed a partial mediation model in which motivational regulation strategies, as a whole, not only had direct and indirect effects on students’ writing performance but were also significantly correlated with their reported use of SRL strategies relating to cognition, metacognition, and social behavior. In addition, only cognitive and metacognitive strategies were found to be significant mediators in the model while social behavior strategies were not. The findings suggest that cumulative knowledge of motivational regulation is an antecedent of the reported use of other SRL strategies in affecting EFL writing performance. The inclusion of SRL strategies in the mediation model also contributes to a clear understanding of L2 writing processes within the SRL mechanism for improving writing outcomes.

Prior studies have reported inconsistent findings with regard to the effects of small-group student talk on developing individual students’ English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) writing ability. To further explore the question under discussion, we designed a quasi-experimental study that included a pretest, a posttest, and a delayed posttest, and implemented it in two English-major groups at a university in China. We randomly assigned the students to an intervention group and a comparison group to investigate whether employing structured small-group student talk as collaborative prewriting discussions would effectively facilitate individual students’ EFL writing development and whether such effects could be retained. The immediate and sustained effects after the quasi-experimental study was completed were measured by the analytic scores on five components of the writing task (content, organization, vocabulary, language, and mechanics) and the holistic writing scores cumulated of all these components. Statistical analyses revealed that the two groups were significantly distinguished by their analytic and holistic scores, indicating that students in the intervention group outperformed their comparison group peers in writing performance. The effects of collaborative prewriting discussions in the form of structured small-group student talk were found statistically significant in facilitating students’ writing improvement in the content, organization, vocabulary, and language use, but not mechanics. The effects on content, organization, and vocabulary were retained as seen from the delayed posttest, while those on language use were not. The comparison group showed little improvement in their writing performance across the three tests. We concluded this study with a discussion on the implications for English-as-a-second/foreign-language (L2) writing instruction.

Ethnolinguistic minority students may have lower levels of metacognitive knowledge and English vocabulary knowledge than non-minority students. Nevertheless, few longitudinal studies have examined their growth trajectories of metacognitive knowledge and English vocabulary knowledge over time. Drawing upon a latent growth curve model, the present study aims to contrast two groups of students’ growth trajectories in metacognitive knowledge and breadth of English vocabulary knowledge: with a sample of 115 ethnolinguistic Yao minority and 108 ethnolinguistic majority Han students. The results showed that both groups improved their metacognitive knowledge and breadth of English vocabulary knowledge from third grade to sixth grade in a cumulative trend. Metacognitive knowledge predicted the breadth of English vocabulary knowledge throughout the examined school years. The results also highlighted differences in the students’ development of metacognitive knowledge and breadth of English vocabulary knowledge. The ethnolinguistic Yao minority students lagged behind their ethnolinguistic majority Han counterparts. The findings suggest a need for pedagogical interventions to enhance ethnolinguistic minority students’ metacognitive knowledge and English vocabulary knowledge.

While the relative effects of Processing instruction (PI) and various types of output-based instruction have been widely examined, the types of L2 knowledge generated after receiving instruction are under-researched. Moreover, the relationships between learners’ individual differences and the comparative effects of PI and output-based instruction have not yet been investigated. This study examined the types of L2 knowledge generated after three instructional methods and the relationships with individual differences in working memory capacity. A total of 86 adult beginning-level L2 Chinese learners were assigned into three experimental groups—processing instruction (PI), meaning-based output instruction (MOI), combined instruction (CI)—and a control group. An Untimed Grammaticality Judgment Test (UGJT) and an oral Elicited Imitation Test (EIT) were used to measure learners’ development of explicit and implicit knowledge respectively. A counting span task was employed to assess learners’ working memory capacity. The results demonstrated that the three types of instructional treatments brought about equal gains on the measure of explicit knowledge, and the meaning-based output instruction group made more gains on the measure of implicit knowledge. Working memory was negatively correlated with the UGJT for the MOI group. The results suggest that the three instructional treatments may aid the development of both explicit and implicit knowledge and the MOI group may have an advantage in facilitating the development of L2 implicit knowledge. The findings also suggest that learners with lower working memory capacity may benefit more from the MOI.

Beginning teachers are frequently heard making observations that the knowledge and skills they have acquired on the training programmes do not come handy when they want to apply them in their real-work situations. They have also reported lacking the ability to integrate theory and practice in reality. Henceforth, teacher-educators are faced with challenges of how to proportionally balance the two strands of pivotal knowledge that are necessarily connected with teacher-education curricula in pre-service teacher preparation. One of the approaches to examining the issue is to investigate student teachers’ dialogues for knowledge-construction to uncover the interaction patterns and strategies they use in negotiating lesson objectives and processes. Against such a background, this paper reports on a study of 24 student teachers receiving training in English language teaching on the Postgraduate Diploma in Education programme at a teacher education institution in Singapore. It was intended to find out the negotiation processes in relation to lesson-planning objectives and how student teachers positioned themselves and others in the processes in the pre-service teacher-education classroom. Results show that student teachers were more concerned about surviving the first lesson than about promoting pupil learning in constructing knowledge about language teaching. The stronger peers’ dominance in the discussion process was taken for granted, suggesting that learning took place in a mutually beneficial and constructive manner and that student teachers’ willingness to cooperate and readiness to express themselves were indicative of their intention to maintain group cohesion and dynamics. These, in turn, are necessary prerequisites for student teachers to become collaborative and reflective practitioners.

Drawing on the rhetorical/relational goal theory, this study examined the role of instructor clarity and non-verbal immediacy in affective learning through the mediation of instructor understanding. Data were gathered through close-ended questionnaires from 756 Chinese and 715 Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) students, the factor structure and cross-cultural validity of which were supported via confirmatory factor analysis and testing measurement invariance, respectively. Path analysis results indicated that clarity and non-verbal immediacy positively predicted instructor understanding and affective learning; instructor understanding positively predicted affective learning; and understanding was a significant positive mediator in the relationship of non-verbal immediacy and clarity with affective learning. Except for the positive association of non-verbal immediacy with understanding which was significantly higher for the Iranian group, no significant difference was found between the Chinese and Iranian groups in all other associations, providing empirical support for the role of EFL teachers’ positive interpersonal communication behaviors in EFL students’ affective learning, irrespective of the cultural context.

While many studies have investigated the effect of task complexity on L2 writing, little has been reported on the effects of intended task complexity manipulations on task-generated cognitive demands in L2 writing. This study, therefore, was designed to examine the relative effects of task complexity and cognitive demands on students’ L2 writing. Two argumentative writing tasks were manipulated with varying numbers of elements and reasoning demands to be distinguished either as a simple or complex writing task. Self-ratings and dual-task methodology were adopted to validate the manipulations of task complexity. Thirty-one L2 learners, in the single-task group, were asked to complete two writing tasks and a post-task questionnaire. Participants in the dual-task conditions (30 in Experimental 1 and 31 in Experimental 2) were required to simultaneously complete the primary writing tasks and the secondary tasks. Results from self-ratings and dual-task experiments supported the efficacy of the task complexity manipulations.

Little is known about the effects of various planning and revising conditions on composition quality in experimental or TESOL education research. This study examined the effects of planning conditions (planning, prolonged planning, free writing, and control), subplanning conditions (task-given, task-content-given, and task-contentorganization-given), and revising conditions (initial-essay-accessible and initial-essay-removed) on the text quality of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' argumentative writing. Participants were 108 19-year-old Chinese EFL learners. The researchers assigned the participants to the experimental and control conditions through stratified random sampling. Results show that the free-writing condition enhanced the quality of the learners' writing; the task-contentgiven condition and the task-content-organization-given condition produced significantly better quality texts than the task-given condition; and no significant difference in the text quality between the initial-essay-accessible and initial-essay-removed conditions was found. Free writing facilitated content retrieval, which enhanced the overall text quality. The task-content-given condition and the taskcontent-organization-given condition successfully reduced the cognitive load of the task on the EFL writers' working memory resources. The initial-essay-removed condition resulted in better quality final drafts, albeit with no statistically significant difference. Implications for further research are discussed.

This study explored the impact of explicit teaching of reading strategies on English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) students' reading performance in Iran. The study employed a questionnaire adapted from Chamot and O'Malley's (1994) cognitive and metacognitive strategies framework. To test the effects of explicit teaching of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies on reading performance and strategy transfer, the study has a quasi-experimental design involving a contrast group and a treatment group, with whom an intervention program was implemented. The treatment group achieved significantly better results than the contrast group after four months of strategy-based instruction. Results of paired-sample t-tests and independent r-tests and effect size showed that reading comprehension and reading strategy use improved with strategy instruction. Moreover, SPANOVA analyses showed that the participants in the treatment group performed better than those in the contrast group in reading comprehension and reading strategy transfer. Results also showed that strategy instruction contributed to autonomous reading behaviors. Recommendations for further research are discussed.