Vygotsky-inspired sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1962) indicates that human learning is mainly a social and cultural process that occurs through meaningful negotiation and interaction (scaffolding) between learners. The present study investigates whether training student reviewers can help them provide stronger scaffolding for their peers through providing feedback of a higher quality than those who do not undergo such training. In other words, this study investigates the effect of training student reviewers on the quality of their feedback and the effect of their comments on the quality of the revisions as well as their writing in the long run. To this end, two groups of Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners ( n = 56) were randomly assigned to a trained group and an untrained group. The students in the trained group participated in two training sessions as well as student–teacher conferences, where they learned how to review a paragraph and provide effective feedback on it. The two groups then proceeded to review their peers’ writing. The results suggested that the trained students shifted attention from mere focus on formal aspects of writing to global comments (comments on the content and organization of writing) after training, while the feedback provided by untrained students mainly addressed formal errors. The results also indicated that the trained group made significant improvement in their writing in the long run and wrote paragraphs of a much higher quality as compared to the untrained group.

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The aim of the present study was to investigate the frequency and the type of discourse markers used in the argumentative and expository writings of Iranian EFL learners and the differences between these text features in the two essay genres. The study also aimed at examining the influence of the use of discourse markers on the participants' writing quality. To this end the discourse markers used in two essays (an argumentative and an expository) written by the participants of the study were analyzed. The results indicated a hierarchy of use of discourse markers in both essay types with elaborative markers (mainly "and") the most frequently connectors used in both essay types. Next came contrastive and inferential markers; reason, exemplifier, and conclusive markers, respectively, were the least frequently used connectors. The results, moreover, indicated that, on the whole, the mean of discourse marker use was significantly higher in argumentative essays than in expository essays. As for discourse marker categories, contrastive and conclusive markers were used more frequently in argumentative than in expository essays. The results, nonetheless, showed that the use of discourse markers cannot be a significant predictor of the writing quality in argumentative and expository compositions of Iranian undergraduate EFL students.

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The purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact of feedback on writing accuracy over time and examine the relevance of the students' mother tongue to the feedback effect. To this end, the study compared two groups of Iranian English majors (N = 56) over a period of four months: one with indirect grammar feedback and the other with no grammar feedback whatsoever. The results of the study did not show a significant effect for the teachers' feedback. However, the results showed a main effect for practice and the interaction of practice and feedback as a result of which both groups improved their writing accuracy over the course of one semester, with the feedback group making more improvement. The results also showed significant differences between the two groups in reducing their errors in various grammatical categories. The study further revealed that the success ratio of error reduction in each category was highly sensitive to cross-linguistic differences. The students' views, elicited after the study, support the findings obtained from the analysis of the quantitative data.