This paper briefly reviews the literature on writing skill in second language. It commences with a discussion on the importance of writing and its special characteristics. Then, it gives a brief account of the reasons for the weakness of students’ writing skill as well as addressing some of the most important topics in L2 writing studies ranging from disciplinary to interdisciplinary to metadisciplinary field of inquiry. In addition, it presents a historical sketch of L2 writing studies, consisting of approaches to teaching writing including behavioristic and contrastive rhetoric as well as discussing approaches to the study of writing including product-oriented, process-oriented, and post-process ones. It also introduces different types of feedback in writing consisting of peer feedback, conferences as feedback, teachers’ comments as feedback, and self-monitoring. Finally, it deals with holistic vs. analytic dichotomy in administration of writing assessment.

This research aims at investigating the relationship between writing skill and sub-skills of first language (Persian) and foreign language (English). Therefore, 50 upper-intermediate EFL learners in Iran who were majoring in the English language were asked to write on two different topics in Persian and English. Then, the compositions were evaluated based on ESL Composition Profile. Subsequently, using Pearson product-moment correlation, the correlation between the compositions overall scores in L1 and L2, as well as the correlations between each of five major components of writing, including content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics in the two languages were examined. The results displayed large correlations between the compositions overall scores as well as between the four writing sub-skills in L1 and L2. The highest correlations were observed between writing sub-skills of vocabulary, mechanics, language use, and content respectively. These findings entail some pedagogical implications for effective language learning in both L1 and L2, utilizing the enhancing effect of cross-linguistic transfer of writing.