The idea that task-based learning can be facilitated through negotiated interaction has been a major object of research amongst scholars interested in task-based language teaching for at least 30 years. In this article, I focus largely on one particular type of negotiation--the negotiation of form (hereafter NoF). My purpose is not to cast doubt…

This research was conducted to investigate how frequently Turkish advanced learners of English use the logical connector "thus" in their academic prose and to investigate whether it was overused, underused or misused semantically in comparison to English native speakers. The data were collected from three corpora; Corpus of Contemporary…

This paper examines the different types of writing errors performed by 16 international postgraduate students undertaking an intensive English course at a public university in Malaysia. It was mandatory for international postgraduate students who obtained less than IELTS Band 6 to undertake an Intensive English Course (IEC) offered by the…

Without proper linguistic competence in English language, academic writing is one of the most challenging tasks, especially, in various genre specific disciplines by L2 novice writers. This paper examines the role of diction and expression through error analysis in English language of L2 novice writers' academic writing in interdisciplinary texts…

This paper attempts to demonstrate the differences in writing between International English Language Testing System (IELTS) bands 6.0, 6.5 and 7.0. An analysis of exemplars provided from the IELTS test makers reveals that IELTS 6.0, 6.5 and 7.0 writers can make a minimum of 206 errors, 96 errors and 35 errors per 1000 words. The following section…

Expressing causal relations plays a central role in academic writing. While it is important that writing instructors assess and provide feedback on learners' causal discourse, it could be a very time-consuming task. In this respect, automated writing evaluation (AWE) tools may be helpful. However, to date, there have been no AWE tools capable of…

Heritage speakers (HSs) of Russian in the United States form a very complex and diverse group of learners. Research in heritage linguistics has examined key parameters of the HSs' oral production. Important work has been done in heritage language (HL) pragmatics, morphology, and lexicon. However, very few studies have been conducted to…

This paper analyses the use of the word "where" in texts written by Malay-speaking learners of English. Data from a learner corpus is compared with data from two corpora of academic writing by native English-speaker writers. Considerable over-use of "where" is found: this is explained as a consequence of various patterns of misuse of "where" and…