Motivational research identifies utility value, or the importance of a learning task to future goals, as central to motivation to learn. This study analyzed survey data (N=86) collected from adult literacy learners to examine their utility value of writing improvement in grammar and spelling skills, word processing skills, and planning, drafting,…

Motivational research identifies utility value, or the importance of a learning task to future goals, as central to motivation to learn. This study analyzed survey data (N = 86) collected from adult literacy learners to examine their utility value of writing improvement in grammar and spelling skills, word processing skills, and planning,…

This study sought to examine the pre-task planning and post-task revising practices of adults with low literacy and how those practices affect overall writing quality. Seventy-six adults with low literacy composed essays in response to a prompt and were given time for pre-task planning and post-task revising. Results showed that participants with…

This paper reports on the first phase of our research into the potential merits of a collaborative writing/feedback/revision activity. The study compared the quantity and quality of the feedback provided, collaboratively and individually, by adult EFL learners in Saudi Arabia. Our analysis showed that learners provided more feedback, including…

In spite of Krashen's (1985) claims that the only way to acquire a second language is through non-stressful comprehensible input, Swain (1995, 1998, 2005) and others propose that the production of language (speaking or writing), under certain circumstances, is a significant part of the second-language acquisition process. Swain also states that…

An important element of open educational resources (OER) is the permission to use the materials in new ways, including revising and remixing them. Prior research has shown that the revision and remix rates for OER are relatively low. In this study we examined the extent to which the openly licensed "Flat World Knowledge" textbooks were being…

The 1772 execution of the Mohegan sailor Moses Paul served as the occasion for Samson Occom's popular "Sermon," reprinted in numerous editions. Recent work by Ava Chamberlain seeks to recover Paul's version of events from contemporary court records. This article argues that Paul's "firsthand" account of the case and autobiographical narrative…

This paper reports the findings of a case study that explores the relationship between feedback and revision in the online teaching of two EFL adult writers. The model of feedback adopted was one of content-based feedback followed by form-focused feedback in a series of multidraft compositions. A quantitative analysis of minimal terminal units…