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This study investigated the effect of (a) direct written corrective feedback (WCF) and (b) opportunities for revision on the development of second language learners’ explicit and implicit L2 knowledge in an EFL setting. Twenty-six intermediate-level university students were randomly divided into three groups: two treatment groups (direct feedback, direct feedback + revision), and a control group (no feedback). In a pretest-posttest design, over the span of six weeks, participants completed picture-prompted writing tasks, timed grammaticality judgment tests and error correction tests. Participants also produced two new writings with members of the direct feedback + revision group being given an opportunity to revise their writing. The results for the direct feedback group indicated accuracy gains in posttests. There was also some evidence that these gains were dependent on the structure targeted. However, there was no comparable improvement in the direct feedback + revision group. Therefore, it was not possible to interpret these effects as strong evidence for development of learners’ L2 knowledge. Conversely, there was evidence that the direct feedback + revision group had benefitted from the opportunity to revise their writing.

Despite the widespread consensus among researchers that readers whose first language is Arabic frequently experience major difficulties with word recognition when reading in English, there is little research into the strategic behaviour of first language (L1) Arabic readers when encountering unknown vocabulary in texts written in English. This paper reports a study designed to contribute to our understanding of the types of reading strategy employed by L1 Arabic speakers when reading in English and in particular the types of knowledge sources and contextual clues they rely on when encountering unfamiliar English words. The following research questions were addressed: 1. What are the principle lexical processing strategies employed by Arabic-speaking university students when encountering unfamiliar vocabulary in academic English texts? 2. To what extent does the employment of these lexical processing strategies result in successful identification of the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary? A pre-test was conducted to provide a measure of the participants' overall reading proficiency and to ensure the unfamiliarity of the target words. Subsequently, individual reading tasks with concurrent think-aloud sessions were conducted to enable the identification of lexical processing strategies. Two main findings emerged: first, the participants in this study made use of three strategies when dealing with unfamiliar vocabulary; second, these strategies were frequently employed in a noticeably ineffective manner and, in consequence, many of the participants' attempts at inferencing were conspicuously unsuccessful. The pedagogical implications of these findings are briefly discussed.

Despite the widespread consensus among researchers that readers whose first language is Arabic frequently experience major difficulties with word recognition when reading in English, there is little research into the strategic behaviour of first language (L1) Arabic readers when encountering unknown vocabulary in texts written in English. This paper reports a study designed to contribute to our understanding of the types of reading strategy employed by L1 Arabic speakers when reading in English and in particular the types of knowledge sources and contextual clues they rely on when encountering unfamiliar English words. The following research questions were addressed: 1. What are the principle lexical processing strategies employed by Arabic-speaking university students when encountering unfamiliar vocabulary in academic English texts? 2. To what extent does the employment of these lexical processing strategies result in successful identification of the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary? A pre-test was conducted to provide a measure of the participants' overall reading proficiency and to ensure the unfamiliarity of the target words. Subsequently, individual reading tasks with concurrent think-aloud sessions were conducted to enable the identification of lexical processing strategies. Two main findings emerged: first, the participants in this study made use of three strategies when dealing with unfamiliar vocabulary; second, these strategies were frequently employed in a noticeably ineffective manner and, in consequence, many of the participants' attempts at inferencing were conspicuously unsuccessful. The pedagogical implications of these findings are briefly discussed.