Integrated writing has gained importance in both tertiary and secondary learning contexts. However, assessment tasks at secondary schools have received little attention. To obtain evidence of skill integration, a task-defining feature for integrated writing, we developed a comprehensive questionnaire study of an understudied task used in the…

Establishing relations between concepts and ideas is vital for university-level reading. However, students often understand expository text only superficially (Graesser, 2007), especially in the case of a second language (L2). Insufficiently developed linguistic competence, inadequate prior knowledge or weaker reading skills may all lead to a lack…

The feedback-seeking behavior (FSB) framework offers a novel perspective for analyzing second language (L2) learners' proactive agency in processing teacher feedback. While research has identified associations among language mindsets, goal orientations, and FSB in L2 speaking classes, this line of inquiry should be extended to L2 writing education…

This study examined the within- and cross-language relationships between intrinsic language learning motivation, home literacy environment (shared book reading, parental literacy involvement, and parent perceived child literacy interest), and receptive vocabulary in 185 bilingual preschoolers and 233 primary school children in Singapore. Age…

The present study examined the components of oral reading fluency (ORF) via various indices and their relationships with comprehension and learner-perceived difficulty of oral reading among Chinese second language (L2) learners. One hundred participants read aloud paragraphs, completed the comprehension test, and rated the difficulty of the oral…

Scoring rubrics are known to be effective for assessing writing for both testing and classroom teaching purposes. How raters interpret the descriptors in a rubric can significantly impact the subsequent final score, and further, the descriptors may also color a rater's judgment of a student's writing quality. Little is known, however, about how…

This study explored the effects of increasing the number of elements and the degree of reasoning on second language (L2) writing and also examined the relationship between writing motivational beliefs and anxiety and L2 writing in simple versus complex tasks. Sixty upper-intermediate L2 learners were invited to write simple and complex…

This study investigates the relationship between three discourse synthesis skills (i.e., quotation, summarization, and connection) and students' overall integrated writing performance in Chinese, students' first language, and English, their second language. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that 63.6% of the variance in students' overall…

This study evaluates the extent to which syntactic awareness contributes to reading comprehension in English-French bilinguals, considering both the potential for a direct relation, as well as an indirect one, through word reading. Participants were 146 first-grade students enrolled in early French immersion programs in Canada. While the children…

We assessed the relationship between word-to-text-integration (WTI) and reading comprehension in 7th grade students (n = 441) learning English as a second language (L2). The students performed a self-paced WTI reading task in Fall (T1) and Spring (T2), consisting of three text manipulation types (anaphora resolution, argument overlap, anomaly…

This study investigates the concurrent and longitudinal relationships between polysemous word knowledge and reading comprehension among bilingual students (n = 107) followed from seventh to eighth grade. Standardized tests were used to measure decoding skills, broad vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension. Data about students' polysemous…

This study examined the contribution of the constructs of orthographic processing (orthographic choice and orthographic choice in context), syntactic processing (grammaticality and sentence integrity), and verbal working memory (two reading span indicators) to written Chinese composition (narration, explanation, and argumentation) in 129…

The purpose of the current study was to explore longitudinally the bidirectional cross-language effects between morphological awareness and vocabulary development across English and French over one year. Participants included 81 Grade 1 students and 75 Grade 2 students. All were non-native speakers of French, and demonstrated average English word…