Researching Innovations in English Language Writing Instruction: A State-of-the-art Review

Abstract

Abstract-With academic writing viewed as an important aspect of language instruction, there is an increasing interest on how writing education could be improved to better accommodate the needs of multilingual learners. To evaluate the empirical evidence from published research studies, we conducted a systematic synthesis of the published research that has examined innovations in English-as-a-foreign language writing instruction in China, in contexts including tertiary, secondary, and elementary schools. General claims emerged across our analyses of 56 empirical studies published in the SSCI journals in English from 2005-2015. Each claim is supported by empirical evidence: (1) corpus-based approaches are useful in analyzing students' writing; (2) students' affective and cognitive factors may influence the outcome of writing instruction; (3) training may help teachers improve confidence in teaching writing; (4) differences may appear between assessment-oriented teacher feedback and non-assessment-oriented teacher feedback; (5) assessment for learning influences student learning of writing; (6) instruction may help writers acquire skills and knowledge of writing for publication; (7) technology-enabled instruction can help students in their writing process; and (8) novel and authentic writing tasks can promote students' critical thinking ability.

A Hierarchical Mentoring Program Increases Confidence and Effectiveness in Data Analysis and Interpretation for Undergraduate Biology Students

“…We found that whether or not English was a student’s primary language only affected overall communication effectiveness due to changes in composition ability. The program already used some approaches that have been shown to improve the outcomes of English language writing instruction for those who are not native speakers, including feedback at multiple steps in the writing process ( Evans and Hartshorn, 2010 ) and providing “novel and authentic” writing assignments ( Zhang and Cheung, 2018 ). These approaches included increasing motivation by allowing students autonomy in choosing their study system and research question (students were assigned to mentor groups based on their ranked preferences), integrating feedback from multiple sources (i.e., peers, mentors), and providing opportunity for revision.…”

“…Scientific writing involves many steps and skills, creating a challenge for undergraduate students who have had little opportunity for practice (see Sampson and Walker, 2012 ). Furthermore, students’ opinions about the writing process could decrease their confidence and effectiveness ( Zhang and Cheung, 2018 ; Dowd et al. , 2019 ).…”

Interrogate Indonesian EFL Learners’ Needs on Academic Writing Instruction

“…The demands of the texts the students need in particular area are essential that 'before developing a genre-based program, the teacher or institution would need to conduct an analysis of the teaching/learning context [20]. Thus, this analysis served the improvement of the students' learning motivation as [21] state that 'much research has indeed demonstrated that individuals offered choice will show more enjoyment of, better performance on, and greater persistence at a variety of activities.…”

“…In addition, it is also important that the students know and understand what he or she will do with WCF since 'feedback that the student does not understand cannot help him or her to improve [15]. Thus, academic writing teacher should consistently provide students with clear WCF on their attempts in evaluating their work [20]- [23].…”

Increasing the Competence of Scientific Publications of Technology-based Primary School Teachers in Indonesia

“…Instruction may help writers acquire skills and knowledge of writing for publication. Training may help teachers improve confidence in teaching writing [3]. Teacher competency in scientific publications is closely related to teacher activity in participating in training on scientific publications.…”