Writing instruction in Jordan: Past, present, and future trends

Exploring the Linguistic and Institutional Contexts of Writing Instruction in TESOL

“…This difference may also be attributed to a lower emphasis on writing as a discrete language skill in many EFL settings because of the important role that classrooms play in providing exposure to oral language. Our results also echo other studies’ findings that instructors in EFL contexts are more likely to lack resources and to face challenges such as large class sizes and high workloads (e.g., Al‐Jarrah & Al‐Ahmad, ; You, ). The results also suggest that issues such as student interest and testing policies may be tied to linguistic context, with, again, EFL teachers perceiving more challenges than ESL teachers.…”

“…Although Matsuda () has argued that writing in second versus foreign language contexts may not be essentially different, research has pointed to some distinctions in instructional priorities (e.g., Leki, ; Sengupta & Falvey, ), the nature and impact of testing requirements and other institutional policies (e.g., Cheng, Rogers, & Hu, ; Cumming, ), and access to technology and other resources (e.g., Leki, ; You, ). Challenges such as large class sizes and high workload have been found to be of particular concern to writing teachers in EFL contexts (Al‐Jarrah & Al‐Ahmad, ; Leki, ), although scholars have identified this as a challenge in some ESL contexts as well (e.g., Cumming, ). There are relatively few studies examining the variation in writing instruction across institutional contexts; those that do often find that institutional contexts tend to influence curricular goals, which in turn shape teachers’ pedagogical approaches (e.g., Cumming, ; Leki, Cumming, & Silva, ).…”

Transforming writing education: WAC faculty experiences and challenges in Saudi universities

“…The technicality of the content, the domination of the oral culture and a lack of teacher feedback can greatly affect how students perceive learning to write in a content area. In addition to the aforementioned, challenges such as a lack of teacher feedback and the domination of oral culture over writing in the educational context, the absence of a culture of writing in higher education amongst Arab universities, is of particular concern to EFL writing teachers (Al-Jarrah & Al-Ahmad, 2013;Alsehibany, 2021;Leki, 2001;Shukri, 2014). English writing in the Saudi context is focused on issues of mechanics, such as vocabulary and grammar rules.…”

The Influence of Indirect Corrective Feedback on the Linguistic Accuracy of Adjectival Clauses in an EFL Context

“…Truscott (1996) and his advocates (Polio et al, 1998;Fazio, 2001;Chandler, 2003;Truscott and Hsu, 2008) did not only cast doubt on the effectiveness of feedback provision, but they also dared to claim that it could be harmful. Researchers who have been trying to conciliate between the two sides involved in the debate would argue that the positive effects of the feedback could be distorted in part (or on whole) by "inconsistencies in research design" (Ferris, 2004;Guénette, 2007) and by the confusion in using the technical jargon when conducting research in this area (Al-Jarrah & Al-Ahmad, 2013). Probably for all these, Guénette, (2007) stressed that the appropriate feedback should be "given at the right time and in the proper context" (p. 11).…”

“…One main reason why we chose to experiment with such types of feedback was that they are the most common error feedback techniques used in this learning environment. To illustrate, the practical constraints that teachers face (for example, large classes, heavy 15 workloads, and tight teaching schedules) make these feedback techniques most common in this learning environment (Al-Jarrah & Al-Ahmad, 2013). Another less driving force for our choice was that very few studies, to the best of our knowledge, have compared the effects of such feedback types on promoting acquisition of specific grammatical structures such as the adjectival clauses.…”