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This paper aims to highlight a research on integrating technology into teaching and learning of second/foreign language writing.

In total, 18 empirical studies, involving a total of 1,281 second and foreign language learners, have been reviewed. These studies are selected from the following two databases: Web of Science and Google Scholar. The meta-analysis investigates how effect sizes vary depending on these moderators as follows: stage of writing, language context, learners’ educational level and language proficiency level.

The findings of this meta-analysis have indicated that technology has a large effect on second/foreign language writing (d = 1.7217). These findings have also revealed that the two stages of writing, drafting and editing, have received most of the researchers’ concern. In addition, high school and university learners have achieved a larger effect size of using technology in writing learning; beginner learners have achieved the smallest effect size.

To sum, the previous meta-analyses and reviews tried to explore the effect of computer on writing skills. However, some of them were limited to special groups (Williams and Beam, 2019) and some others analyzed very few studies (Little et al., 2018). Therefore, a comprehensive analysis of the effect of implementing technology in writing skills is needed. The purpose of this study is to perform a meta-analysis of the primary studies about the integration of technology into writing skills. The primary goals of this meta-analysis were to: examine the overall effects of implementing technology in writing; synthesize the relationship between technology and a number of moderators such as stages of writing, language context, learners’ target language proficiency and learners’ educational level (school and university).

Having a certain degree of assessment literacy is crucial for today's language teachers. The main aim of this paper is to provide that knowledge as it pertains to the writing skill. More specifically, the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the main practical issues that teachers often face when evaluating the written work of their students. It will consider issues and solutions in five major areas: test design; test administration; ways to assess writing; feedback to students; and the effects on pedagogy.

The author took a very practical and principled approach to the complete process of assessing the written work of our students in a foreign or second language.

The cyclical relationship between teaching and assessment can be made entirely positive provided that the assessment is based on sound principles and procedures. Both teaching and assessment should relate to the learners' goals and very frequently to institutional goals.

Good teachers spend a lot of time ensuring that their writing assessment practices are valid and reliable. The author deals with the fundamental issues that underlie good test design in a very practical and understandable way and later suggests practical steps to ensure smooth and reliable test administration before dealing with ways to assess a range of different writing tasks. Then, the crucial issue of how best to provide useful developmental feedback to students is considered. She concludes by discussing how best testing practice should seek to accommodate the requirements of test takers.

This topic is significant as assessing foreign/second language writing skills is one of the most problematic areas in language testing. It is made even more important because good writing ability is very much sought after by higher education institutions and employers.

Language training has assumed a higher profile over the last five years, yet many employers still appear to lack understanding of the needs, motivations, and attitudes of staff who undertake a course in a modern language. This study was carried out over a six‐month period (1991‐1992), specifically to obtain data on participant attitudes, and the various positive and negative influences on their linguistic performance. Of greatest interest to industrial trainers is the way in which the findings detail those influences which motivate or demotivate those already working, to learn a foreign language – information which could be invaluable when designing language programmes for specific individuals or job‐functional areas within an organization.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and compare the effects of group-to-whole student-led oral discussion and small-group collaborative drafting as pre-writing tasks on Iranian intermediate English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ writing performance. Additionally, the difference between the writing components was examined.

To achieve these objectives, a group of 120 intermediate EFL learners participated in a pretest–posttest study in which they were randomly assigned into two experimental groups and one control group. The students in all three groups were tasked with writing a textbook evaluation report for the pretest and posttest. The pre-writing process in the first experimental group consisted of a group-to-whole student-led oral discussion, while the second experimental group engaged in small-group collaborative drafting.

The results indicate that both pre-tasks were effective in improving the participants’ writing skill, while collaborative drafting was even more efficient. Furthermore, it was observed that more writing components improved through collaborative drafting. It is concluded, therefore, that the social atmosphere created through oral discussion and the scaffolding resulting from collaborative drafting can help in writing improvement.

The findings herein can have implications for first language (L1) composition instruction and second language (L2) writing teaching and, thus, underscoring the utility of the social constructivist approach to writing instruction.

As there has been no study conducted to explore the effects of group-to-whole student-led oral discussion on EFL learners’ writing skill and to compare its impacts to those of small-group collaborative drafting, the results of this study fill this gap in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the teachers implemented innovative feedback approaches in their writing classroom and the extent to which the innovative feedback approaches impacted upon student attitude and performance in writing. In the writing classroom, teacher feedback serves as an assessment as well as a pedagogical tool to enhance the teaching and learning of writing. While there is no shortage of literature on the topic of feedback per se, there is scant research on teachers’ attempts to implement change to conventional feedback practices, as well as the impact of such feedback innovation on student learning. Drawing on data gathered from individual teacher interviews, student questionnaires, student focus group interviews, pre-and post-writing tests and classroom observations, this study seeks to explore two teachers’ change initiative in their writing feedback approaches.

The study used multiple sources of data including individual teacher interviews, student questionnaires and student focus group.

The results suggest that the innovative feedback approaches helped to enhance the motivation and writing performance of the students. The paper concludes with implications and insights to help teachers implement similar feedback innovations in their contexts.

First, the findings suggest that focused written corrective feedback is a viable option for responding to student writing, especially for low proficiency students in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts. Second, teachers might consider the option of removal or delay in the reporting of scores, where appropriate. Third, more intensive training might be necessary to help students improve their peer evaluation skills and their ability to write more constructive comments for their peers.

The significance of the study lies in the contribution it can make to existing writing feedback research that pays insufficient attention to teacher feedback in real classroom contexts, uncovering the process through which teachers attempt to bring improvement to conventional feedback practices, as well as the impact of feedback innovation on student learning in naturally occurring classroom contexts.

Many scholars have recognized the cultural dependency of the concept of plagiarism and have investigated the influence of cultural attitude on university students' plagiarism; however, since the findings are inconsistent and because plagiarism is a major concern in academic institutions in Asia, we were motivated to examine the understanding and prevalence of plagiarism among Canadian and some Asian language students.

To elicit the data, the questionnaire developed by Maxwell et al. (2008) was adapted for this study. The scale included three sections. In the initial section, the students' background information was inquired. Section two included 10 scenarios, all of which consisted of two levels; understanding and experience. Section three of the scale consisted of five open-ended questions. In fact, the questions intended to complement the survey findings. Finally, in the fourth section, five yes/no questions were asked. Because the respondents could evade answering some open-ended questions, we developed five questions with yes/no answers in order to probe deeper into the participants' answers.

The results showed significant differences among the participants concerning both understanding and prevalence of plagiarism. Most of the differences were between Canadian and Asian students in that Canadians had a higher level of understanding. They also enjoyed a lower rate of incidence of plagiarism. Nevertheless, further analyses revealed that the students' academic misconduct is probably influenced by other factors including lack of proper education rather than cultural differences.

The findings lead us to argue that cultural differences may not be the main source of the prevalence of plagiarism across nations and that Asian language university students plagiarize mainly due to a lack of understanding of the principles of plagiarism. Therefore, Asian universities should take measures to make sure that they promote language students' understanding regarding the misconduct.

Apart from a few studies, no other study has scrutinized plagiarism across cultures. As such, our study attempted to shed more light on the student, especially language students' plagiarism across different nations.

The aim of this study is to explore students' expectations and perceived effectiveness of computer-assisted review tools, and the differences in reliability and validity between human evaluation and automatic evaluation, to find a way to improve students' English writing ability.

Based on the expectancy disconfirmation theory (EDT) and Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning (ICALL) theory, an experiment is conducted through the observation method, semistructured interview method and questionnaire survey method. In the experiment, respondents were asked to write and submit four essays on three online automated essay evaluation (AEE) systems in total, one essay every two weeks. Also, two teacher raters were invited to score the first and last papers of each student. The respondents' feedbacks were investigated to confirm the effectiveness of the AEE system; the evaluation results of the AEE systems and teachers were compared; descriptive statistics was used to analyze the experimental data.

The experiment revealed that the respondents held high expectations for the computer-assisted evaluation tools, and the effectiveness of computer scoring feedback on students was higher than that of teacher scoring feedback. Moreover, at the end of the writing project, the students' independent learning ability and English writing ability were significantly improved. Besides, there was a positive correlation between students' initial expectations of computer-assisted learning tools and the final evaluation of learning results.

The innovation lies in the use of observation methods, questionnaire survey methods, data analysis, and other methods for the experiment, and the combination of deep learning theory, EDT and descriptive statistics, which has particular reference value for future works.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the students’ opinion on their proficiency in one or more foreign languages, and the importance they attribute to their foreign language competence because the adaptation to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) implies the promotion of the mobility of teachers and students.

A qualitative and quantitative approach conducted at the University of Extremadura in Spain. The method used was to triangulate the data resulting from three quite different procedures: promoting the participating students’ awareness of the issue through a seminar on the importance of mastering other languages and their relevance for graduate employability; inquiring into the students’ impressions when receiving an English class with a focus group; and a questionnaire on their opinions about the importance of proficiency in foreign languages.

The findings highlight how teaching in English in European universities could bring real opportunities for the development of the EHEA. Furthermore, the development of foreign languages competences have to be a priority line of innovation in higher education in order to build a more meaningful relationship between education institutions and the European project.

The study is a first attempt to analyse the need to teach in English in European higher education institutions. Results are not completely generalizable because the study has been conducted in one university, in the field of social sciences in the branch of Economics and Business, and it has been examined only the views of students.

The paper draws attention to the need for, and suggestions on how higher education institutions can be more aware to the needs of developing studentś English competences when designing programmes in the EHEA.

Illustrates the rising significance of foreign‐language training with respect to employment opportunities in commerce and industry. Draws on a wide‐ranging and diverse base of literature in order to indicate the value of learning a foreign language, the manner in which such training can be utilized and several other fundamental considerations relating to language and employment. Issues analysed include: the linkage of linguistic with other skills, which students are likely to benefit the most from language training, the impact of various levels of proficiency, language for business as opposed to general language training and the cultural element in terms of career prospects. Makes objective and subjective evaluations as to the significance of these various issues with the aim of assisting students, employees and educational institutions in assessing the benefits and costs, advantages and shortcomings of different types and levels of language education.

This study aims to explore how university language students evaluate different sustainability themes and examine the overall relevance of ecological, social, cultural and economic sustainability dimensions in language education.

A questionnaire was designed to study Finnish university language students’ (n = 55) order of priority for sustainability dimensions and their sub-themes and the justifications for the priority orders using a mixed methods design. Qualitative content analysis was conducted using NVivo software, and weighted rankings were used to analyse the quantitative data.

The findings of the study showed that language students evaluated the social and cultural dimensions as the most relevant in language teaching. In all dimensions, students approached sustainability mainly by prioritising larger issues and advancing towards smaller ones. Most non-directional responses appeared in the economic dimension. In addition, individual prioritising and justification approaches varied between different sustainability dimensions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous studies have examined language students’ evaluations of and justifications for all four sustainability dimensions. The results highlight the need to use multiple, holistic approaches and systems thinking to incorporate education for sustainable development.