Based on the concepts of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), this study compared the effects of feedback given from teacher and senior students on Thai EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students' writing. The research participants were 33 students majoring in English who were undertaking an English Essay Writing Course and 22 senior students who have already passed the course. The data were collected from a questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, a group discussion, and the students' writing drafts. The results showed that students found the senior feedback helpful to improve their writing drafts, and they felt comfortable to receive feedback from senior students; however, they had low confidence towards the comments. With regards to teacher comments, students found them helpful to raise their awareness in terms of tenses, grammar, and structure. However, the limitations of teacher feedback were pointed out in terms of confusing comments, stress, and timing. Finally, the analysis of the effects of feedback types on students' improvements showed that metalinguistic corrective feedback (CF) made by both teacher and senior students led to most of the effective corrections. Based on the findings, the implications and directions for future research will be discussed.

This study compared the effects of employing the senior review activity in two modes of anonymous and non-anonymous reviews. There were seven senior students who have made reviews on the essay writing drafts of two junior classes on the same topic. It was found that the two groups of junior students had positive attitudes toward the mode of reviews they participated in and that senior students had made more constructive comments on junior students’ writing when their names were not disclosed. The findings on senior students’ attitudes also informed that even though they had no problems with the review conditions of either being anonymous or non-anonymous, they preferred to know whose work they were reviewing. The paper discusses some implications for the application of a review activity in a writing classroom as well as directions for future studies.

This article sets out to explore the potential of journalistic attitudinal positioning in dis/aligning readers into different feeling and moral communities in traumatic news event. To do so, it utilises the appraisal framework to examine how the Bangkok Post and the New York Times present and represent ‘attitude’ of different news actors in the coverage of the Bangkok Blast. Analytical findings show that while journalistic attitudinal positioning constitutes a means of political empowerment through bringing in otherwise marginal and silenced voices, it also opens up a space for journalists to evaluate risks and negotiate responsibilities. News reports of the Bangkok Blast eventually construe the Thai society as divided by representing the event as a blame game. The findings also extend the conceptual scope of symbolic codes of victims, villain and hero by resorting to attitudinal resources.

This paper reports on students' writing improvements after the application of the Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) genre-based approach. The research participants were 37 students who enrolled in the English Report Writing Course. In this study, the approach was employed in the teaching of three genres (description, report, explanation). Similar findings were shown after analysing students' writing drafts of the three genres in that students gained control over the key features of the required genres, however, grammatical mistakes at clause level still existed. This paper discusses how the approach helps students improve their writing. Due to the limitation of space, students' writing on one genre (description) will be illustrated and discussed. This paper will also discuss some implications in terms of language learning and teaching.

The preparation for English language teaching materials in Thai secondary schools rely primarily on the use of western-published textbooks. Reasons are given by teachers that the books have assured the accuracy of the language (Ulla, 2019), and they provide proper models of language use (Tomlinson, 2008; Ulla, 2019). By using these textbooks, one of the ultimate goals for every school is to prepare students for the Ordinary National Educational Test (O-NET) in the final year of their secondary education (Grade 12). It is therefore interesting to examine whether or not the textbook series equip students with the knowledge and skills of language which align with the secondary school final year assessment. The preliminary investigation of this study (Sritrakarn, 2021) found that the English O-NET test items designed during the years 2016-2019 were partially aligned with the learning domains of the basic education core curriculum. This present study examined further the alignments of the O-NET tests and the school’s equipped knowledge through textbook series. Taking the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) genre-based approach, the texts and discourses used in the textbook series of one school were compared with those found in the O-NET test items. This paper discusses the findings and the implications of how to prepare the sources of input knowledge for the national assessment.