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Flipped learning is believed can open valuable class time to higher-level activities. However, the findings of previous studies on the effects of flipped learning on the teaching of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) are sometimes mixed. Hence, this study investigates the effect of flipped learning on EFL tertiary students' ability to write opinion essays and their perceptions. It employed a quasi-experimental design that examined the difference in EFL tertiary students' writing ability with flipped learning and those taught without it. Data were taken from the opinion essay writing tests and questionnaires of 58 third-semester Indonesian university students. The students in both classes showed significant improvement (p < 0.01, [eta][superscript 2] = 0.52), but a significant interaction between teaching style and overall improvement was not found (p = 0.12, [eta][superscript 2] = 0.01). However, interaction was found between teaching style and sub-category scores (i.e., sentence structure and mechanics). Students who were taught using flipped learning mostly had positive perceptions of it. However, there was no association between the students' positive feelings and writing improvement. The findings suggest that flipped learning should be used more widely to benefit from its impacts on learning but that more research is required to maximize its benefits in the future.

The circumstances associated with high levels of achievement in undergraduate studies has not been thoroughly explored in the Australian context. This study investigated factors predicting high academic achievement, defined as maintaining a Distinction average, at undergraduate level. Findings revealed several factors that predicted achievement after two semesters of study. These factors included essay writing skills, with students having satisfactory writing 5.16 times more likely to maintain a Distinction average compared to those with below satisfactory writing; faculty, with students enrolled in Health Sciences 4.63 times more likely compared to students from other faculties; language background, with English-speaking background students 1.67 times more likely compared to English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D) students; gender, with females 1.45 more likely compared to males; and age, with older students 1.03 times more likely to achieve high performance compared to younger students. Creating a profile of students likely to excel academically assists decision makers in allocating resources to students less likely to achieve. This research opens the door to further studies investigating whether these factors play a role in predicting student achievement at university.

Students' scientific literacy may be improved by the integration of social issues into biology courses, enabling them to make informed decisions on social issues in the context of their scientific knowledge. Additionally, this may allow students to recognize the connection between science and society. Although there are a number of benefits with having students learn about social issues in biology courses, most undergraduate courses may follow a traditional curriculum, which emphasizes the scientific content without framing it in a social context. Here, we investigated whether undergraduate students have been exposed to social issues in previous biology courses and examined how their perceptions changed before and after taking a biology course that incorporated social issues. In surveys, most students reported having no exposure to social issues in biology courses. Most students, especially females and persons excluded because of their ethnicity or race (PEERs), agreed with the integration of social issues in biology courses before taking the course. Students found reflection essays to be a useful tool in allowing them to think and share their thoughts on social issues as well as relate the course content to their personal lives. These results highlight students' interest in learning about social issues from a scientific perspective and how reflection essays may be used to practice applying their knowledge to real-world issues.

This paper introduces a project to develop a digital academic writing tool at Leeds Beckett University (LBU). Essay X-ray is an interactive online tool designed to help students get to grips with the structure and style of academic writing and was developed using the Articulate Storyline 360 platform. The aim was to expand LBU's academic skills support for students tasked with essay assignments, especially at Level 4 (first year, undergraduate), enabling independent learning using a self-paced format available open access and 24/7. This would complement existing academic skills provision (one-to-ones, workshops, drop-ins, static online resources), with the interactive element facilitating active, hands-on learning (Lumpkin, Achen and Dodd, 2015). Following a successful development, review and rollout process, the utility of Essay X-ray as an independent learning tool but also as a classroom resource was reported by students and colleagues. Tentative talks about additional versions (Dissertation X-ray, Report X-ray) have taken place, indicating its potential for rollout to other subject areas and assessment types. Finally, in-house digital academic skills tools like Essay X-ray are posited as a potential response to the recent upsurge in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools. Essay X-ray requires users to think critically about essay structure, style and content to create their own original pieces of writing, thus responding to questions about the maintenance of academic integrity in a digital world. These features enable users to develop their essay writing skills, in contrast to passive engagement with a GenAI programme that merely writes an answer for them.

This paper discusses the implementation of exemplar essays within an undergraduate first-year diagnostic radiography module to encourage active learning and the development of academic literacies. Nine essays ([approximately]400 words each) were provided over six sessions, using lecturer-guided discussion to explore the academic virtues and pitfalls demonstrated alongside assessment criteria. Exemplars were based upon a fictitious baking profession to illicit student interest and eliminate the risk of imitation or plagiarism. The quality of essays varied, with overt examples of common mistakes in spelling, essay structure and selection of appropriate literature. Upon completion of the sessions, and prior to summative assessment, students were surveyed with regard to their opinion of the teaching intervention. Feedback was obtained from 65% of the cohort (n=31/48), who reported an improvement in essay writing confidence. Students found the marking of the essays in class useful and the baking analogy was well received. Not all students found the classroom activities engaging though, with some wishing greater interactivity due to boredom and repetition. Furthermore, there was a slight reduction in pass rates and average marks across the cohort when compared to the previous module delivery. Nevertheless, there was a substantial increase in students attaining marks of 80% or more. This study highlights exemplar essays as a low-tech, low-cost option to increase assessment literacy but accepts the wide diversity in student learning preferences and experience. The efficacy of exemplar essays cannot be guaranteed, and teaching staff must be cognisant of individual student learning needs.

The purpose of this multiple intrinsic case study was to describe how Northeastern United States middle school teachers and students engaged with a new automated writing evaluation tool used to score and provide feedback on extended essay assignments to improve teaching and learning writing. Richard Elmore's (1993) instructional core framework is the theory guiding this study. The study's central research question is: How do public and private middle school students and teachers engage with the automated writing evaluation program WisdomK12? The study leveraged an intrinsic case study design and triangulated data from educational artifacts, individual interviews, and questionnaires. Results indicated that students and teachers found WisdomK12 to save time, provide relevant, encouraging, and authentic feedback, and inspire them to write more. Implications and future research are discussed.

Inspired by Rebecca Oxford's thought-provoking reflections on language learning strategies, and particularly her orchestra metaphor on how the strategies work together, I conducted a study that seeks to understand how non-native writers employ, configure, sequence and combine individual writing strategies when creating a text in the target language. Four dyads of undergraduate students of English were video-recorded while jointly writing an argumentative essay. The transcripts were analyzed using a general inductive approach to uncover writing strategies emerging in the writing process and to explore how individual strategies are coordinated in task completion. The most important finding is that writers do not randomly sequence the strategies, but they orchestrate them to attain the desired goal. Metaphorically, learners combine writing strategies into 'symphonies of strategies', mirroring the way different instruments of an orchestra create music.

The correct use of collocations and prepositions plays an essential role in writing. Previous research has demonstrated that students, who master these lexical elements, have a better language awareness, improve their reading and listening comprehension, and are more creative when making a composition. However, little specific work has been done in this regard in Colombia, especially with adolescents. This action research study explores the affordances of a corpus in English as a foreign language writing of fourteen students at the high school level. Surveys, teacher's journals, and classroom artifacts were used to collect data. Findings show that the corpus contributed positively to L2 writing in two ways. The participants could self-correct their mistakes associated with the use of collocations and prepositions, and the tool amplified participants' autonomy, decision-making, and data analysis skills. Although a corpus represents an alternative for error correction processes, it requires a well-structured instructional design process to deal with difficulties related to using commands derived from a corpus-based strategy.

This study attempted to discern the factor structure of the achievement goal orientation and goal structure constructs across the domain-specific task of essay writing in an Iranian EFL context. A convenience sample of 116 public university learners participated in a single-session, in-class study of an essay writing sampling and an immediate post-task inventory completion. Cronbach's alpha reliability estimates for all the goal subscales ranged from 0.86 to 0.92, and the factor analysis results divulged that 33 items from the goal orientation and goal structure scale produced valid and reliable scores, with the seven-factor solution found to be well-fitted for the observed data. Principal component analysis revealed a two-factor model separating the goal subcomponent variables into a binary orientation and dichotomy of mastery and performance. Findings provided cultural and contextual support for the stability and applicability of the four-factor (2x2) achievement goal model; namely, mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance in specific domain of writing. The findings provided evidence that the three-factor goal structure is also invariant in the Iranian EFL context. All told, the findings imply the need for bridging the research gap on the interplay of person- and structure-related goals.

This study seeks to clarify whether teachers are able to distinguish between essays written by English L2 students or generated by ChatGPT. 47 instructors who hold experience teaching English to native speakers of Japanese in universities or other higher education institutions were tested on whether they could identify between human written essays and ChatGPT generated essays. The ICNALE written corpus (Ishikawa, 2013) was used to find and randomly select the essays of four Japanese university students' written work who studied English at roughly CEFR A2 level. The AI chatbot, ChatGPT, was used to generate four essays utilizing prompts which directed the chatbot to mimic grammar mistakes common to nonnative speakers of English. Teachers were requested to identify which of the eight essays they believed to be human written or ChatGPT generated. On average, the teachers were able to identify 54.25% of items accurately. This result is slightly better than random chance, and implies that most teachers cannot make an accurate assessment on a ChatGPT generated essay when ChatGPT is prompted to make grammar mistakes.

In postsecondary education institutions, where innovative technologies continually reshape research and pedagogical approaches, the integration of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools presents promising avenues for enhancing student learning experiences. This study assesses the efficacy of integrating GenAI tools, specifically chatbots, to ameliorate learning outcomes and mitigate test anxiety among postsecondary students. Within the context of an introductory psychology course, 40 participants engaged with chatbots as supplementary "study confidantes" for exam preparation and as facilitators for an essay grading task. The results from surveys administered to the participants indicated that most students found the chatbots helpful in aiding comprehension of course materials. Moreover, a substantial proportion of respondents reported an enhanced understanding of how to structure an academic paper because of their essay grading activity. Despite the favourable perception of chatbot assistance with learning course material and fostering insights into structuring scholarly essays, no discernible alterations in the levels of test anxiety among students were observed. Overall, this research underscores the latent potential of chatbots as pedagogical adjuncts, furnishing instructive insights for educators aiming to innovate instructional methodologies and optimize student learning paradigms within the domain of postsecondary education.

The study examined the types of language errors made by learners in the English narrative essays. It also assessed the feedback techniques employed by teachers of English in the handling of language errors in the English narrative essays. A descriptive research design was employed to examine errors of English narrative essays of 181 form two learners obtained through stratified random sampling and simple random sampling techniques. The eight teachers of English selected through purposive and simple random sampling completed interview schedules. Qualitative data generated from the essays of the learners was analyzed using Error Analysis and Content Analysis. The findings reveal that a total of seven categories of language errors which include: word order, verb tense and form, subject -- verb agreement, spelling, plurality, word choice, and capital letter errors were made by the learners in their English narrative essays. The most preferred corrective technique was to involve the learners actively by encouraging them to read extensively and write severally on various narratives in the target language. The findings will provide reliable feedback to teachers of English because it will guide on the development of teaching methods and evaluative measures to narrative essays. The study will also be useful to curriculum developers in designing materials for teaching English language in secondary schools. It will also be of invaluable benefit to learners of English as it will guide on the way narrative essays need to be written.

There is a current debate about the extent to which ChatGPT, a natural language AI chatbot, can disrupt processes in higher education settings. The chatbot is capable of not only answering queries in a human-like way within seconds but can also provide long tracts of texts which can be in the form of essays, emails, and coding. In this study, in the context of higher education settings, by adopting an experimental design approach, we applied ChatGPT-3 to a traditional form of assessment to determine its capabilities and limitations. Specifically, we tested its ability to produce an essay on a topic of our choice, created a rubric, and assessed the produced work in accordance with the designed rubric. We then evaluated the chatbot's work by assessing ChatGPT's application of its rubric according to a modified version of Paul's (2005) Intellectual Standards rubric. Using Christensen et al.'s (2015) framework on disruptive innovations, our study found that ChatGPT was capable of completing the set tasks competently, quickly, and easily, like a "magic wand". However, our findings also challenge the extent to which all of the ChatGPT's demonstrated capabilities can disrupt this traditional form of assessment, given that there are aspects of its construction and evaluation that the technology is not yet able to replicate as a human expert would. These limitations of the chatbot can provide us with an opportunity for addressing vulnerabilities in traditional forms of assessment in higher education that are subject to academic integrity issues posed by this form of AI. We conclude the article with implications for teachers and higher education institutions by urging them to reconsider and revisit their practices when it comes to assessment.

Students from underrepresented populations--females, working class, and youth from marginalized racial/ethnic groups--are less likely than their middle-class Asian and White male peers to study computer science (CS) in college. The dearth of CS undergraduates from these groups contributes to projected labor force shortages. Sources of the dilemma include weak or absent inspiration and CS preparation in middle schools and negative stereotypes suggesting certain groups do not belong in CS. This case study describes three years of a community collaboration between a local university and a nearby middle school attended by primarily low-income students of color. The University of North Carolina Charlotte/Wilson STEM Academy Partnership focused on undergraduates majoring in CS teaching monthly workshops designed to inspire and academically prepare the middle schoolers for college and CS majors by teaching them coding and computational thinking while also challenging stereotypes about who belongs in CS. Post-workshop assessments, reflective essays, interviews, and administrative data were thematically coded. Findings suggest the workshops sparked interest in college and CS, undermined toxic stereotypes, and nurtured the academic self-confidence of middle schoolers. The Partnership provided the undergraduates with opportunities to meet their own academic goals while "paying it forward." Results suggest that the Partnership can serve as a model starting point for disrupting the disproportionalities in female and underrepresented minority students in CS.

The need to create more efficient approaches to teaching L2 writing has grown due to the increasing demands placed on English writing proficiency in a global setting. The present investigation aimed to explore the impacts of the ENGAGE Model and task-based language teaching (TBLT) method on Iranian EFL learners' overall L2 writing performance. According to their performance on the standard Oxford Quick Placement Test, 67 Iranian female EFL learners between 18 and 25 years old were chosen for this quasi-experimental study. The participants were divided into three groups at random: the ENGAGE group (N=22), the TBLT group (N=24), and the control group (N=21). The participants were given a writing pretest to verify their L2 writing homogeneity. Then, they went through 12 sessions of instruction. After the treatment, the participants received the writing posttest to measure the learners' development in L2 writing. One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) revealed that the ENGAGE model more substantially impacted Iranian EFL learners' overall L2 essay writing skills than the TBLT. ELT professionals, curriculum designers, English teachers, and learners can utilize the study's findings to solve linguistic and metalinguistic problems.

This study examines the use of ChatGPT, in conjunction with other applications, Grammarly and Quillbot, as an automated writing evaluation (AWE) tool in a Recount and Narrative essay course for 18 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students in Indonesia. The primary objective was to investigate the impact of these tools on the development of learners' feedback literacy. A single, qualitative case study design was employed, gathering students' voices through a semi-structured interview, reflective journals, and artifacts comprising writing e-portfolios and the feedback evidence. The data analysis utilized an inductive deductive approach to identify themes and patterns in the qualitative data. The findings revealed that the AWE tools complemented each other in supporting almost all aspects of students' feedback literacy, with "feedback processing" being the aspect that ChatGPT could potentially enhance or diminish, contingent upon students' feedback-seeking behavior. Furthermore, as the result of the inductive coding of the qualitative data, the study offers an "AWE Tools Integration Framework," namely six elements that educators could consider when incorporating AWE tools, notably generative AI, in their writing classes. This study concluded with a call for greater support of students' digital literacy, equal access to technology, and ethical use of Artificial Intelligence in the classroom.

This study explores undergraduate students' use of ChatGPT when writing essays. Three students were tasked with writing two essays each for a coursework component for a Cambridge qualification facilitated by access to ChatGPT. After writing the essays, they participated in semi-structured interviews about their experiences of using the technology. Researchers compared the transcript of the chatlog between the students and ChatGPT with the submitted essays. Analysis showed that the students relied on ChatGPT outputs to different extents, although they followed a similar process of engagement. The students shared their misgivings and points of appreciation for the technology.

This study aimed to analyze common syntactic errors found in the argumentative essays of third-year English major students at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Van Lang University, Vietnam. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to obtain data in this study. The quantitative approach involved counting and calculating the frequency, percentage, and ranking of syntactic errors, while the qualitative method was adopted to explain these errors. The instrument for collecting data was argumentative essays written by 37 third-year English majors enrolling in Writing-5 at Van Lang University. Microsoft Word was used to collect and analyze syntactic errors and sentence structures, while Microsoft Excel was employed to calculate the frequency and rank of these errors and structures. The results found that the five most frequent errors in their essays were at the noun phrase and sentence levels. These errors included run-on sentences, preposition errors, article errors, sentence fragments, and pronoun errors. Through error analysis, it was indicated that the majority of errors made by students were due to the negative transfer from their first language and the literal translation. Based on the findings, language teachers and syllabus designers could use these results as guidance to design appropriate teaching methods and materials.

Research has suggested that the type of feedback learners receive can impact on whether learners understand the feedback, the extent to which they engage with it, and whether they incorporate it in their revised drafts. However, to date, only a small number of studies have investigated learner engagement with corrective feedback provided by automated writing evaluation tools, and of those few have considered in greater depth the impact of the type of automated feedback on engagement. This multiple-case study examines two EFL learners' engagement with the two forms of corrective feedback provided by Criterion categorised as generic and specific and factors that can explain the nature of their engagement. Data were collected from learners' first and revised drafts of multiple essays on Criterion, screencasts of students' think-aloud procedures while revising essays, and stimulated recall interviews. Findings indicate the learners' higher uptake rate and more successful error corrections in response to generic versus specific feedback. However, their mental effort expenditure differed when cognitively engaging with the feedback, which could be explained in terms of individual learning goals, feedback quality, and the nature of tagged errors. These findings have relevant implications for utilising automated corrective feedback in L2 writing classes.

The outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted educational institutions worldwide. This study aimed to examine how students constructed discourses about COVID-19 and related terms in their cause-and-effect essays. The sample consisted of 89 essays written by English majors at a large public university in Northern Thailand who completed the English Essay Writing course. This study employed Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as the main theoretical framework in which texts were analyzed by using a combination of corpus and content analyses. The findings revealed that students did not explicitly provide a definition of the term "COVID-19" in their essays at the lexical level, but the implications were inferred based on content word selection. The discourses surrounding COVID-19 were classified into four main categories: economy, health, government, and education. In addition to the main discourses, the essays highlighted the concept of global citizenship, as students expressed their opinions about the government as citizens, calling for practical actions to address the challenges faced during the pandemic. In addition to describing these challenges, the essays also reflected a discourse of hope, implying positive psychological responses to the crisis.

The researcher in this study applied the notions of quantitative method, theoretical linguistics and applied linguistics to examine the correlation between the linguistic theory of end-weight principle and English adjective clauses in Q1-SCOPUS applied linguistics articles and Thai EFL learners' descriptive essays. The significance of this study is that structure and use in writing should be learned simultaneously. This current study also innovatively supports Thai EFL learners to examine their linguistic competence in structuring information in their English writing. The data collection in this study was divided into two datasets. The first dataset was 20 Q1-SCOPUS applied linguistics articles published between 2022 and 2024. Approximately 200,000 words provided 117 sentences containing adjective clauses in the final position or VPpostmodifiers. On the other hand, the second dataset was 67 descriptive essays written by Thai EFL highschool learners from both public schools and private schools under the supervision of the Ministry of Education, Thailand. The original theory of the end-weight principle proposed by Quirk et al. (1972) is followed in this study. The syntactic structure of adjective clauses follows Radford (2009) who analyzed adjective clauses as complementizer phrases (CP). The inferential statistical analysis of correlation follows SPSS 29. The results showed that there was a statistically significant relationship between the datasets of applied linguistics articles and EFL learners' descriptive essays where the p-values were reported at 0.01 and 0.02, respectively. Not only do these statistical relationships show that English is an end-weight language, but also Thai EFL learners can follow the norm accurately. This is due to the positive effect of the mother tongue interference since the Thai language is an end-weight language. The pedagogical implication of the study to EFL learners is that information structures should be contributed to grammar classes. For future studies, it is recommended to test the hypothesis of the end-weight principle with reduced adjective clauses in the medial position of sentences.

Conceptualized in formative assessment and sociocognitive theory, peer feedback and self-regulated learning (SRL) instruction were used in this mixed-method study to investigate their effects on Thai EFL university students' essay writing ability and their self-regulation. During the 12-week online instruction period, 35 third-year students majoring in Business English at a public university were taught essay writing using the integration of peer feedback activities and SRL. An essay writing test, a self-regulation questionnaire, and semistructured interviews were used to collect data. Findings revealed that students' essay writing ability and self-regulation had significantly improved after the intervention. Our findings shed light on the feasibility and necessity incorporating the interdisciplinary dimensions of education such as instruction, assessment, and social-cognitive theory, in enhancing learners' academic performance and their lifelong learning strategies. Our findings also suggest that students can be trained in peer feedback and SRL strategies via online platforms, which has implications for the continuing tendency towards online instruction in the post-pandemic era. Pedagogical implications are also provided to help teachers improve their students' writing performance and self-regulation. [Note: The publication year (2023) shown in the citation on the PDF is incorrect. The correct year is 2024.]

This mixed-methods study aims to investigate the bias in peer feedback. Thirty-two English as an additional language learners gave each other anonymous feedback on their texts. Half of the participants received feedback from their teacher disguised as peer feedback, while the other half received actual peer feedback. Data were collected through drafts of two essays, feedback, and a questionnaire. Results indicate that although participants reported trusting teacher feedback more, the quantitative uptake of feedback was similar regardless of the source. Data analysis suggests that the teacher's and peers' social representation plays a more significant role in uptake than the feedback itself.

There is a consensus in language learning and teaching that the concept of authenticity in the classroom is beneficial to the learning process. This phenomenology case study explored 31 EFL high school students' perceptions about the authenticity of using English as the language of instruction during synchronic lessons with U.S. teachers. Data was collected from two synchronous interactive lessons and students' open-ended reflections. A thematic content analysis was adopted to examine themes on perception, motivation, and participation. The findings revealed students' insights into their learning experiences through synchronous interactions with teachers, highlighting how authentic learning gave them opportunities to practice communication strategies and learn vocabulary incidentally. This study provides pedagogical implications for integrating authenticity in foreign language classrooms.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been evolving since the mid-twentieth-century when luminaries such as Alan Turing, Herbert Simon, and Marvin Minsky began developing rudimentary AI applications. For decades, AI programs remained pretty much in the realm of computer science and experimental game playing. This changed radically in the 2020s when commercial vendors such as OpenAI and Google developed generative AI programs (ChatGPT and Bard) using large language modelling (LLM). As a result, generative AI is now being considered for use in all walks of life, including education. In spring 2023, when ChatGPT burst into the public psyche, twenty-five education students in the author's graduate seminar were invited to participate in a qualitative study using ChatGPT as an essay-writing tool. Fifteen accepted the offer. The purpose in doing this was to give students in this seminar the opportunity to use ChatGPT in a supportive environment and to collect qualitative data via descriptive written evaluation and a focus group to comment on their experiences using ChatGPT. All of these students have master's degrees in education and experience as teachers in New York City schools. Their training and experience give them keen insights into pedagogical practice making them ideally suited to evaluate ChatGPT as an essay-writing tool. This article reports on the results of this study. Key findings indicate that the vast majority of these students had a good experience in using ChatGPT for their essays. Many, especially the secondary school teachers, would use it in their own classes.

This qualitative study investigated the influence of Metawriting, or "writing about writing," on fifth-grade students' knowledge of writing and proficiency in composing informative essays. Using a Think-TalkWrite model, students explored their existing writing knowledge and experiences, analyzed their essays using genre-specific tools, and discussed their insights with peers. Students kept a Metawriting journal to document their self-assessment experiences, capture their observations and create writing goals. An analysis of the data revealed that the iterative process of the Think-Talk-Write model to teach Metawriting guides students through well-defined stages, enhancing their metacognitive declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge of writing. By thinking, talking, and writing about their writing, students became more aware of who they are in the writing process, enhanced their knowledge of informative text structures, and exhibited increased self-regulatory skills.

The current study examined Thai EFL Mattayom learners' pragmatic discourse of givenness via A-movement constructions. While previous studies focused on Thai undergraduate students and their error production in passive voice, this study innovatively contributes to the field by selecting a different group of participants. The participants in this study were 67 Mattayom students in Thailand, of which 45 were from public schools and 22 were from private schools. The participants were asked to write an academic essay on the topic of Thai Soft Power, which is the Thai government's campaign for tourism and culture from 2023 to 2024. The data analysis follows the principle of pragmatic discourse of givenness. The SPSS version 29 was used for the data analysis to seek a correlation between the production of passive voice by EFL learners and pragmatic discourse of givenness via A-movement constructions. The study showed that there is no statistically significant relationship between the production of passive voice by EFL Mattayom learners and pragmatic discourse of givenness where the p-value is reported at 0.79. It seems that Thai EFL Mattayom learners have not yet acquired the pragmatic discourse of given and new information in producing A-movement constructions in English. The discussion is given in the scope of a lack of experience of writing passive voice with other discourses. In addition, the traditional styles of teaching active and passive voice as interchangeable structures in Thai schools do not support the actual use of A-movement constructions in practicality. It is recommended that pragmatic discourse of givenness via A-movement constructions should be built into the curriculum for Thai EFL learners to develop cohesion in writing academic texts.

The aim of the research was to verify whether the techno-pedagogical design based on flipped learning and collaborative writing (TPD-FLACW) improves the level of academic essay production in university students. The research approach was quantitative, explanatory-experimental, and quasi-experimental in design. The sample consisted of 109 students enrolled in the faculty of engineering of a university in Tacna. In the experimental group (A=40) TPD-FLACW was implemented and in the control groups traditional individual writing (B=29) and traditional team writing (C=40) were applied. TPD-FLACW was validated by 16 expert judges (CVCtc=0.934, k=0.392, p=0.000) and applied between September and December 2022-II. A rubric was used to assess the pretest and posttest. The results indicate that in the pretest there were no significant differences between the three groups (H=0.286; p>0.05), but in the posttest, the experimental group obtained a high and significant improvement in the level of academic essay production (H=24.863, p<0.05, [epsilon][superscript 2]>0.200) in comparison with groups B and C. There are also significant differences in the dimensions of superstructure, macrostructure, microstructure and textual stylistics. The students rate the proposal positively and recommend it. In conclusion, TPD-FLACW improves the level of academic essay production of university student.

Teaching middle school students with learning disabilities strategies for writing essays that incorporate information from source texts helps prepare them for academic success. The purpose of this pilot study was to investigate the effects of self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) writing instruction using technology tools implemented by special education teachers on the source-based argumentative writing performance of middle school students with learning disabilities. In this quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest design study, three middle school special education teachers engaged in online Practice-Based Professional Development. The teachers then implemented SRSD writing instruction to teach source-based argumentative writing with technology tools. Implementation of the SRSD writing instruction by special education teachers positively impacted the number of argumentative elements, quality, number of transitions and length of students' source-based argumentative essays. Teachers implemented the intervention with high fidelity and quality and felt that the intervention supported their students' writing. Teachers and students were positive about the SRSD writing instruction. This study adds to the evidence base that SRSD is an effective writing intervention for middle school students with learning disabilities.

In a randomized trial that collects text as an outcome, traditional approaches for assessing treatment impact require that each document first be manually coded for constructs of interest by human raters. An impact analysis can then be conducted to compare treatment and control groups, using the hand-coded scores as a measured outcome. This process is both time and labor-intensive, which creates a persistent barrier for large-scale assessments of text. Furthermore, enriching one's understanding of a found impact on text outcomes via secondary analyses can be difficult without additional scoring efforts. The purpose of this article is to provide a pipeline for using machine-based text analytic and data mining tools to augment traditional text-based impact analysis by analyzing impacts across an array of automatically generated text features. In this way, we can explore what an overall impact signifies in terms of how the text has evolved due to treatment. Through a case study based on a recent field trial in education, we show that machine learning can indeed enrich experimental evaluations of text by providing a more comprehensive and fine-grained picture of the mechanisms that lead to stronger argumentative writing in a first- and second-grade content literacy intervention. Relying exclusively on human scoring, by contrast, is a lost opportunity. Overall, the workflow and analytical strategy we describe can serve as a template for researchers interested in performing their own experimental evaluations of text.

Various current trends in education highlight the importance of pedagogies that address societal and environmental questions while preparing and inspiring students to take action. Meanwhile, how we view the future influences how we act, and how we act influences the future. Research on young people's images of the future has shown how technology plays a central role in how we imagine the future and the changes that shape it. This suggests a need to address the role of perceptions of future sociotechnical change and agency in students' thinking, as it may instruct the development of action-oriented critical scientific literacy. Thus, in this study, we examine how images of the future reflect students' perceptions of sociotechnical change. Employing abductive qualitative content analysis on 58 upper secondary school students' essays describing "a typical day" in the future, we focused on how students' depictions of future sociotechnical change vary along three dimensions: from static futures to radical transformation, from nonproblematic change to issues deeply relevant to societal deliberation, and various framings of who, if anyone, has agency. We found that students' images of the future contained wide variation in the discussed range of sociotechnical change, while technology was discussed typically in nonproblematic and sometimes in more critical, problematised ways. Indications of agency were mostly vague, but students occasionally attributed agency over sociotechnical change to the general public, specialised experts and themselves. We conclude by discussing the potential implications of the results in regard to recent definitions of scientific literacy as well as future-oriented pedagogies in science education.

In this work, we explore the use of digital technologies and statistical analysis to monitor how Italian secondary school students' writing changes over time and how comparisons can be made across different high school types. We analyzed more than 2,000 exam essays written by Italian high school students over 13 years and in five different school types. Four indicators of writing characteristics were considered--text length, text complexity, and two indicators of source use, all extracted using natural language processing tools--which provided insights into students' citation practices over time and in different school contexts. In particular, we measured the portion of students' essays that included text from source material as well as the amount of copied text that was not properly referenced. We found that student essays became shorter in length over time while also getting more complex. We also found that the tendency to copy uncited text in the essay decreased. High school curricula predict different writing strategies: essays written by students attending scientific and humanistic high schools are longer and less subject to incorrect citations. We argue that such text analysis enables the study of writing features in high school classes and supports the evaluation of curricula.

Developing students' source-based argument writing skills is a vital educational goal for the 21st-century information society. Consequently, researchers and educators continually seek ways to understand and improve students' capacities for advancing arguments and synthesizing multiple documents, texts, or sources in a range of subject areas in secondary schools. This study examined differences between middle and high school students' argument essays (N = 207) in multiple dimensions of source-based argument writing in history, the dimensions writing in history, and the relations of identified dimensions to overall writing quality. Using multivariate analysis of covariance, middle and high school students' writing significantly varied in areas of writing related to language use, the presentation of ideas, and evidence use. Their writing varied less so for skills related to historical thinking, indicating a lack of development in these skills across secondary school. Findings from confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling showed a bifactor model with a general factor and 4 specific factors--Presentation of Ideas, Evidence Use, Language Use, and Historical Thinking--best represented writing in this genre, with the general factor strongly predicting holistic writing scores. Implications for both research and educational practice are discussed, including the importance of attending to developmental variation in discrete writing skills.

The demands of learning in the twenty-first century require being skilled in the use and comprehension of multiple documents. Some individual factors such as the metacognitive skill of theory of mind (ToM) are related to this ability. This study investigated the relationship between university students' ability to comprehend multiple documents, measured through an argumentative essay task, and their ToM. The participants were 84 undergraduates. We assessed their ToM (using the strange stories task) and their mental state talk (using a think-aloud protocol during the reading of multiple documents--MST[subscript R]--and through the content of their subsequent written essays--MST[subscript W]). The relation between students' ToM and their MST[subscript W] was mediated through MST[subscript R]. In addition, students' ToM was significantly associated with the quality of the essays, through MST[subscript R], and the relation between MST[subscript R] and the argumentative quality was mediated through MST[subscript W]. MST[subscript W] was the only significant predictor of the quality of the essays. The involvement of ToM in multiple-document comprehension suggests, from an educational perspective, the possibility to support multiple-document comprehension by scaffolding mental state talk.

This study examined how 44 preservice teachers reflected on their teacher self-identities through exploring multicultural children's books, which are published in different time periods, with a focus of analyzing characterization of main characters. The researcher collected data, including a multicultural book project, pre- and post-surveys on multicultural children's literature and teacher identities, and a reflection paper. Data analysis consisted of looking for and coding emergent themes. The findings of the study showed that preservice teachers analyzed multicultural books from authentic perspectives, focused on how the authors used appropriate language, and examined trends in cultural details and illustrations published in different time periods. They analyzed characteristics of main characters by parsing the facts, by examining the context of the story, and by examining the personalities of main characters. They also refined their teacher identities and strengthened their commitment to become culturally responsive teachers by reflecting on the importance of equity, diversity, and inclusion and embedding high-quality multicultural children's books into the curriculum. Implications and recommendations are also shared.

Automatic essay scoring (AES) is an essential educational application in natural language processing. This automated process will alleviate the burden by increasing the reliability and consistency of the assessment. With the advances in text embedding libraries and neural network models, AES systems achieved good results in terms of accuracy. However, the actual goals still need to be attained, like embedding essays into vectors with cohesion and coherence, and providing student feedback is still challenging. In this paper, we proposed coherence-based embedding of an essay into vectors using sentence-Bidirectional Encoder Representation for Transformers. We trained these vectors on Long short-term memory and bidirectional long short-term memory to capture sentence connectivity with other sentences' semantics. We used two datasets: standard ASAP Kaggle and a domain-specific dataset with almost 2500 responses from 650 students. Our model performed well on both datasets, with an average quadratic weighted kappa score of 0.76. Furthermore, we achieved good results compared to other prescribed models, and we also tested our model on adversarial responses of both datasets and observed decent outcomes.

Purpose: There is limited research on the writing of young Spanish-English bilinguals and their writing in both languages. In the current study, we addressed whether written syntax features differed by language (English and Spanish) and varied as a function of grade level, English learner status, and instructional program (dual or English immersion). We also examined whether Spanish and English syntax features were related cross-linguistically and related to writing quality within languages and whether these relations to writing quality were moderated by grade level, English learner status, and instructional program. Method: We examined written syntax features of Spanish and English essays by simultaneous and emergent bilinguals in Grades 1, 2, and 3 in either Spanish-English dual immersion or English immersion instruction in the United States (N = 278). Essays were scored for quality and evaluated for mean length of T-units, number of verbs, number of noun agreement words, and number of subject agreement words accurately conjugated. Results: Written syntax features significantly differed by language and varied as a function of grade level, English learner status, and instructional program. Grades 2 and 3 wrote longer utterances, more verbs, and greater noun agreement accuracy than Grade 1. Syntax features were related to writing quality within languages, but Spanish relations were weaker for English learners than non-English learners and for dual immersion students than English immersion students. Conclusion: Our findings suggest written syntax features may be useful for evaluation of English-Spanish simultaneous and emergent bilinguals' writing.

This paper discusses the creation and implementation of an experiential learning assignment focused on the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12, which aims to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns. Using a grounded theory approach that combines analyzing 90 senior-level marketing students' reflective essays alongside 63 pre- and post-assignment survey responses, we develop the "RESCUER" framework which combines active and passive learning elements. We demonstrate how active learning layered on top of passive methods can be an effective means to generate more responsible consumer behaviors within a complex food supply system. Students begin with passive learning components in the form of readings and lectures (labeled Resources), before Engaging with mindfulness in an active learning activity that involves the selection, purchase, and preparation of perishable food for a salad. The framework also includes the important effects of Social influence and its role in how Cognizance and Underlying problem salience are generated. Finally included are factors that Expedite the process of generating cognizance and problem salience such as the ready availability of relevant facilities (e.g., the existence of a garbage sorting system), which can enable more Responsible consumer behaviors.

Background: The emergence of Generative Artificial Intelligence has brought a number of ethical and practical issues to higher education. Solid experimental evidence is yet inadequate to set the functional rules for the new technology. Objectives: The objective of this study is to analyse the experience of undergraduate students' interaction with ChatGPT and contribute to identifying the problems arising from the widespread use of artificial intelligence. Methods: Junior university students (N = 25) were assigned the task of working on their seminar essays with the aid of ChatGPT. Most students were novices with this tool (the study was conducted in the spring of 2023). Their essays were analysed qualitatively, according to the principles of the general inductive approach. Results and Conclusions: The initial attitudes towards artificial intelligence were almost equally distributed from enthusiastic to indifferent and cautious, with one student refusing to interact with the chatbot on ideological grounds. After the first experience, most of the students declared themselves adopters of the new technology. We have found some evidence for enhancing critical thinking competence when using ChatGPT, as well as examples of unquestioned reliance on its outputs. The tendency to personification of the chatbot was apparent in the students' essays. Implications: The findings show how easily the students embrace artificial intelligence and suggest a failure of any attempts for its strict regulation. This, on the other hand, underlines the need for emphasis on personal and research-oriented approaches in teaching and learning.

Scaffolds that support self-regulated learning (SRL) have been found to improve learning outcomes. The effects of scaffolds can differ depending on how learners use them and how specific scaffolds might influence learning processes differently. Personalized scaffolds have been proposed to be more beneficial for learning due to their adaptivity to learning progress and individualized content to learning needs. The present study investigated finer-grained effects of how personalized scaffolds driven by a rule-based artificial intelligence system influenced SRL processes, especially how students learned with them. Using a pre-post experimental design, we investigated personalized scaffolds based on university students' real-time learning processes in a technologically enhanced learning environment. Students in the experimental group (n = 30) received personalized scaffolds, while the control group (n = 29) learned without scaffolds. All students completed a 45-minute learning task with trace data recorded. Findings indicated scaffold effects on students' subsequent learning behaviour. Additionally, only scaffold interaction correlated to essay performance and suggests that the increase in frequencies of SRL activities alone does not contribute directly to learning outcomes. As guidelines for real-time SRL support are lacking, this study provides valuable insights to enhance SRL support with adaptive learning technologies.

In order to make appropriate educational recommendations, psychologists must understand how cognitive test scores influence specific academic outcomes for students of different ability levels. We used data from the WISC-V and WIAT-III (N = 181) to examine which WISC-V Index scores predicted children's specific and broad academic skills and if cognitive-achievement relations varied by general intelligence. Verbal abilities predicted most academic skills for children of all ability levels, whereas processing speed, working memory, visual processing, and fluid reasoning abilities differentially predicted specific academic skills. Processing speed and working memory demonstrated significant interaction effects with full-scale IQ when predicting youth's essay writing. Findings suggest generalized intelligence may influence the predictive validity of certain cognitive tests, and replication studies in larger samples are encouraged.

This article provides three major contributions to the literature: we provide granular information on the development of student argumentative writing across secondary school; we replicate the MacArthur et al. model of Natural Language Processing (NLP) writing features that predict quality with a younger group of students; and we are able to examine the differences for students across language status. In our study, we sought to find the average levels of text length, cohesion, connectives, syntactic complexity, and word-level complexity in this sample across Grades 7-12 by sex, by English learner status, and for essays scoring above and below the median holistic score. Mean levels of variables by grade suggest a developmental progression with respect to text length, with the text length increasing with grade level, but the other variables in the model were fairly stable. Sex did not seem to affect the model in meaningful ways beyond the increased fluency of women writers. We saw text length and word level differences between initially designated and redesignated bilingual students compared to their English-only peers. Finally, we see that the model works better with our higher scoring essays and is less effective explaining the lower scoring essays.

Background: Upon returning to in-person teaching at Kingsborough Community College after the pandemic, I realized something profound had shifted in my students. The well-documented drop in community college enrollment attributed to the pandemic seemed to reflect deeper disjunctures that had led students to an existential questioning of the purpose and value of a college degree. Purpose, Objective, Research Question, or Focus of Study: This study explores 30 community college students' evolving perceptions of the purpose of college as they navigate through a first-year composition course with a curriculum that explicitly engages them in reading, writing, and researching various perspectives on the purpose, value, and challenges of pursuing a college education. Research Design: This qualitative, exploratory study involved redesigning my Composition I and II curricula to engage students in reading, writing, and thinking about the purpose of college; researching the challenges they and other community college students face in pursuing a degree; and proposing student-generated solutions to the community college enrollment and retention crisis. Data collected include two semesters of student essays, discussion boards, annotations on course readings, class activities, and notes from in-class discussions. Data analysis for this essay centered on student writing and followed a grounded theory approach with a focus on identifying salient themes related to student beliefs around college purpose and the impact of academic momentum policies on their college experience. Conclusions or Recommendations: The data from this study show that (1) community college students' understanding of the purpose of college is diverse and malleable and (2) academic momentum policies that press students to attend college full time, despite their many life exigencies, are undermining community college students' passions and purpose in pursuing a college education.

In this single-case research design study, we investigated the effects of student-directed writing goals with adolescent writers who were developing their writing proficiency. Two students with a learning disability and two multilingual writers engaged in a pre-baseline condition to learn the functional elements of a persuasive essay. Once they reached criterion for a stable baseline, they began a self-directed goal-setting intervention. As part of the intervention, students received feedback as to the number and quality of the persuasive writing elements that they wrote in a previous session. Based on this instructor feedback, they identified strengths and areas for improvement. Then, they created a writing goal for the next essay that they wrote. A functional relation was established with the primary dependent measure, the number of functional elements, and a more distal measure, holistic writing quality. Furthermore, we found that student-directed writing goals were an effective tool for teaching writing, as evidenced by the percentage of cumulative goals students met across the writing sessions. Future research and implications for writing instruction are discussed.

This study examined the role of writing task types and L2 reading proficiency on young English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' writing performances. The participants were 185 students (Grades 7 and 8) from Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands. The students responded to a descriptive and an email writing tasks that assessed their writing ability. The written responses were scored holistically and analyzed for aspects of lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity, writing fluency, and idea development. The students were grouped into strong or emergent readers based on their performances on an English reading comprehension test. Results showed that the students' writing performances differed across task types and were associated with their reading proficiency. The students produced more unique and concrete words and more complex syntactic structures and wrote longer essays in the descriptive writing task. Strong readers outperformed the emergent readers in both tasks and in writing fluency and idea development. Findings corroborate previous research on the connection between reading and writing skills and highlight the importance of strengthening young EFL learners' reading skills to support their writing development.

This article describes a three-year qualitative study on how youth of color in one community-based organization, Durham Community Youth, used the mentor text, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "What's your life's blueprint?" speech, as a reflective tool to transform themselves and their community. Using a critical literacy framework, the authors situate the study within the rich history of the Black community in Durham, North Carolina and examine how students' writing advocated for their communities by speaking out against oppressive forces. The article offers implications on how educators can reimagine the implementation and intentionality of mentor texts for youth.

The five-paragraph essay is highly controversial, and yet it has also been a useful format for composition. In this essay we explain why, despite its limits, students need to go along with the format to make what use and get what advantage of it. We then demonstrate that valuing the philosophical, historical, cultural, and educational backgrounds of our students can help navigate away from the restrictive nature of the format and lead to equitable learning for all students. Finally, we introduce a few curriculum designs and instructional practices to expand the epistemological and pedagogical frontiers of the format. In short, we conduct a culturally responsive discussion of issues students with non-Western backgrounds--Asian American students in particular--may encounter when writing the five-paragraph essay. By sharing student learning-focused approaches, we aim to improve Asian American students' learning experiences.