Abstract-This study presents a qualitative, comparative study of interactive metadiscourse in the academic writing of two groups of Native speakers of English and Native speakers of Arabic doctorate students working in the field of linguistics. It investigates the writers' capability to deploy the propositional discourse and interpretations in a coherent and convincing way appropriate to the projected readers' comprehensive abilities. A small-scale sample of 80 'discussion' and 'conclusion' chapters constitutes this corpus. This small-size corpus aligns with the contemporary trends in corpus-based work in the fields of English where smaller, more focused corpora, which have been set up for a specific research or pedagogical purpose, are much more likely to yield insights that are directly relevant to teaching and learning for specific purposes. Using Hyland's (2005) interpersonal model of metadiscourse, the discussion and conclusion chapters have been compared to examine the influence of intercultural and local institute academic culture contexts on the writers' use of interactive metadiscourse devices. The findings revealed a significant influence of the local institute culture on the Arab academic writing in most of the interactive subcategories.Index Terms-interactive metadiscourse, corpus-based approach, ESL writing, writer-reader interaction

Saudi Vision 2030 is a plan to steer the country towards prosperity through diversified economy, better government services and conducive environment for all to thrive. The study of wordlists, keyword lists, collocation analyses, identification of core issues on the basis of lexical fields and their reflection in 2018 English newspapers in Saudi Arabia qualifies the corpus-assisted present study for Critical Discourse Analysis. The corpora of 4.3 million words and 2.0 million words from the English Newspapers in Saudi Arabia published in 2013 and 2018 respectively have been compiled for the study. Saudi Vision 2030 has been treated as a specialized corpus to get frequency lists and collocations. The analyses identified the extraordinary use of second person plural pronoun 'we' 'our', modal auxiliary 'will' etc.; such explorations paved the way for entry into more qualitative investigations. On the basis keyword lists, key issues have been identified in all three corpora. Some key issues including the largest lexical field in newspaper corpora viz. 'Security' has been found missing in the said vision. The present study aims to bring forth a fresh insight into Saudi Vision 2030 and to advocate the corpus-assisted methodology for critical discourse analysis.

Many intensive English language programmes that English second language (ESL) students enrol in adopt a process approach to writing, interpreting writing as a cognitive process that is highly private or individualistic (Atkinson, 2003), where writers use specific cognitive phases, such as pre-writing, drafting, and revising, to generate their text. However, Lefkowitz (2009) claimed that the interpretation of the process approach is often superficial, focusing on improving grammatical accuracy, rather than on the generation, formation and revision of ideas. To tackle the problems of providing appropriate, regular feedback within a "socially and culturally situated" approach to writing, and to tackle the issues of motivation, attitude and confidence among ESL writers, which difficulties with writing are likely to engender, an e-portfolio system was used to support students on an ESL writing course as they worked through the key phases of the writing process. The system provided a framework within which they could write to and receive feedback from each other, as well as from the teacher. 46 ESL students from an English Centre were divided into a conventional group and an e-portfolio group. They submitted a series of essays over a number of weeks on which they received both peer and teacher feedback. Data were gathered using an online questionnaire, samples of writing, online tracking and interviews. The post-intervention test results indicated no significant improvement among the control group's motivational constructs and performance in writing, but significant differences were found in the experimental group's writing performance and in the students' perceived value with regard to writing, writing self-efficacy and writing process approach self-consistency. These findings suggest that e-portfolio software, by facilitating both writing, and the provision of regular peer and teacher feedback on writing, has the potential to encourage a significant improvement in ESL students' writing self-belief and writing performance.

The current paper investigates the validity of the motivational L2 self system tripartite model as to explaining the L2 motivational behaviours of a sample of Arab university level EFL students in southern Saudi Arabia. Dörnyei's L2 Motivational Self System (2009) is used as the theoretical framework. A survey was designed and administered to about 400 Saudi male undergraduate students majoring in English. The obtained data were coded and analysed. The results upheld the validity of the of the L2 Self System model's core components of Ideal L2, Ought-to L2 and learning experiences of English, as well as their relevance in the Saudi context. The findings indicated high significance levels and strong contributions from the Ideal L2 and Language Learning Experiences to the learners' reported efforts in learning English as the criterion measure. Both components make stronger contributions to explaining the variance than Ought-to L2 component.

Open learning aims to deliver different educational services and activities for learners throughout an organised set of policies and procedures. The ultimate objective of such policies is to minimise the geographical and time limitations that might affect the students' performance during his or her academic life. The Arab Open University in Saudi Arabia is one of the leading universities that deliver open learning education in the Middle East. To achieve its mission, AOU utilises virtual classes' technologies as a teaching mode for its learners. In this study, we study and analyse the students' academic performance in virtual classes against the traditional face-to-face classes. The usefulness of this study arises from its importance in directing the decision makers at AOU of the efficiency of virtual classes as a delivery mode of teaching and a set of recommendation for future enhancement.