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Previous studies have examined benefits of collaborative writing, but the effectiveness of collaborative planning in academic writing courses has not been adequately addressed. Thus, this study examined Chinese-speaking ESL pre-university students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of collaborative planning in an academic writing course in the Malaysian ESL context. This study is a qualitative research in which data were collected using journal writing. The students in an academic writing course were requested to keep journals throughout the course. Specifically, they were requested to write about collaborative planning in terms of its effectiveness, challenges they faced, and suggestions for its improvement. Data were coded and analysed thematically. The analysis of the data revealed that Chinese-speaking ESL pre-university students perceived collaborative planning as an important instructional approach in which they could share ideas, develop their writing skills, and build their self-confidence. The study also showed that the students encountered some challenges, which resulted from their unfamiliarity with this approach. Suggestions for the improvement of collaborative planning given by the participants reveal that they enjoyed working collaboratively in groups at the planning stage of writing.

This cross-sectional study examined the effects of English language proficiency on Jordanian EFL students’ production and comprehension of apology strategies. The participants were 270 Jordanian EFL learners and 90 native speakers of English. Data were collected using Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) and Multiple-choice Discourse Completion Test (MDCT). Descriptive statistics and the Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient (rho) test were used to analyse the data. Results showed that Jordanian EFL learners’ production and comprehension of apology strategies is influenced by their levels of English language proficiency. A small to large negative correlation relationship was reported between Jordanian EFL learners’ language proficiency and the production of explicit apology strategies and non-apology strategies. On the other hand, the study revealed a small to medium positive correlation relationship between Jordanian EFL learners’ language proficiency and the production of less-explicit apology. The study also showed a significant correlation relationship between proficiency and the comprehension of apology strategies. Thus, teachers of English at Jordanian schools may need consider focusing on classroom activities that can help EFL learners enhance their pragmatic knowledge of apology strategies.