Although the field of heritage language education has thrived in recent years and has focused primarily on the development of biliteracies in Spanish heritage language (SHL) students (e.g., Belpoliti & Bermejo, 2020; Samaniego & Warner, 2016), there is a scarcity of research on SHL students’ writing practices. Moreover, instructional practices and technological developments have transformed the landscape of SHL writing, underscoring the need to understand SHL students’ practices and perceptions of writing. The present study explores this gap in the literature by reporting on an online survey taken by 96 SHL students in the United States. SHL students reported a desire to improve their writing and regarded linguistic issues (e.g., accuracy, accent marks, and writing conventions) as their primary challenges. They considered technology helpful while writing in Spanish, but their use of social tools was not widespread. Although student responses often aligned with educators’ perspectives from previous research (Padial et al., 2024), students reported using English to plan their writing more frequently than instructors reported teaching the use of English as strategy. Students overestimated the importance that their instructors gave to grammar and orthography/accentuation.

Medical students who are learning English as a foreign language (EFL) need to master the ability to write professional reports. Several studies have focused on professional writing in the context of English as a second language (ESL) with advanced learners, but lower-intermediate EFL learners have yet to be examined. This study aimed to implement an exemplar-based genre instruction programme to examine its effectiveness in terms of improving Saudi EFL learners’ ability to write patient reports. The study consisted of two phases: analysis of the moves/steps of patient reports and exemplar-based genre instruction. First, the moves/steps in 30 authentic patient reports were analysed to build the framework which was then compared to another framework based on the work of Bench et al. (2014). Second, an exemplar-based genre instruction programme was implemented over six weeks with 36 EFL Saudi medical learners, and the outcomes were evaluated. The findings revealed that increased genre awareness improved the quality of learners’ writing, particularly their grammar and vocabulary. Teachers of English for specific purposes (ESP) may need to focus on increasing learners’ awareness of the medical-report genre’s lexico-grammatical features in addition to its moves.

This article addresses the challenge of writing instruction in a standards-based environment where students are accountable for mastering different genres and text types. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS), now adopted by the majority of states in the USA, provide exemplars of successful papers in the different disciplines, but offer no guidelines for teaching, particularly to inexperienced writers or English language learners. Since a text in any genre can be developed in a limitless variety of ways, students need a methodology for analyzing effective texts, and for developing their own. This article proposes that focusing on grammatical choice offers an entry point into understanding the craft of Explanations and Arguments. To illustrate, four samples of high school writing are analyzed from the published CCSS exemplars: two Explanations and two Arguments, all with very different purposes and development. The analysis demonstrates the central role that grammar plays in constructing these differences. Specifically, the analysis focuses on information management across noun groups for the Explanations, and on verb choice and modality for the Arguments. Drawing on functional grammar insights, this article proposes a pathway for students from the analysis of model texts to the effective construction of their own.

With growing interest in the relationship between translation and language learning, a number of studies have begun to examine the pedagogical value of translation and explore the best ways to utilize it in L2 classrooms. Some may doubt the need to include translation in L2 classrooms when language pedagogy is a far more wellestablished discipline. An answer to this concern requires empirical research on the role of translation in the L2 classroom. To this end, this study compares how L2 learners react to particular translation tasks and writing tasks. The findings suggest that translation tasks can yield better results than direct L2 writing tasks in encouraging and facilitating students to improve their lexis and grammar. The results also suggest that both translation and writing tasks have greater potential to prompt lexical than grammatical improvement. These findings offer new insights into alternative writing instruction and contribute to an increasing body of research on the pedagogical value of translation in L2 classrooms.

Writing in a second language, especially using new technologies, is fraught with difficulties for most students. There are two main challenges, firstly, how can students move from their understanding of the mechanical aspects of texts (good sentence structure and appropriate lexis) to deal with issues of how to construct texts that go beyond the basics, for instance drawing upon multiple modes of expression, and secondly, how can students use their knowledge about new technologies to help them create texts? This paper examines the collaborative processes English for Science students go through when constructing a scientific text for a popular audience, here, a digital video scientific documentary. Undergraduate students had to work in groups to write the text for a digital story based on an experiment they had undertaken. As part of the process these students had to prepare a script which was then recorded, either speaking directly to the camera, or as a voice over onto the video to complement their video images. Based on examples from the students’ generated data: Facebook, WhatsApp posts and scripts, we see that the end product was rich and informative. It is maintained that a collaborative approach using new technologies to writing such popular scientific texts engages the students with their work and that, when given the opportunity, they learn from each other as much as from their teacher.

This article outlines a student-centered, ‘hands-on’ approach to the teaching of writing at university level through first discovering and then creating the features of written texts in three dimensions: microtextual (lexico-grammar), macrotextual (rhetoric), and extratextual (context). The ‘3-D’ approach has been designed for novice writers, offering a practical, step-by-step procedure to prepare them to write in specific disciplines and for specific purposes. Though usable with other audiences, the sample material included here is especially appropriate for second-language writers and will be of particular interest to students of science. While the approach is consistent with Systemic-Functional and ESP orientations to text, as contrasted with most ESP pedagogy – especially that geared to students in sciences – the 3-D approach gives particular attention to affect, writer–reader interaction, and shared context. The approach, which starts from analysis of texts and then moves to writing of texts, is first described and then illustrated using several short popular science texts about insects and birds. These texts exemplify lexico-grammatical and rhetorical features of scientific texts while also illustrating other purposes which a writer may seek to fulfill as well as the underlying assumptions and author biases that might exist even in texts which appear to be purely descriptive or ‘objective’. The texts and analyses provided are intended for classroom use to train students in the approach, supplemented by a step by step guide for students to follow. Through the activities provided for the sample texts, students develop awareness of the properties of texts and how these can be discovered through analysis and then written into their own texts.

Information management of discourse – the ability of a writer to use linguistic forms to organize and present information in a written text – is a key component of second language (L2) ability models in the language assessment literature (e.g., Canale & Swain, 1980; Weigle, 2002), but Purpura’s (2004) language ability model developed specifically for assessment purposes is the only one that considers it to be part of the ability to use grammar accurately and meaningfully when producing a text in an L2. The current study investigated whether L2 academic writing teachers consider information management of discourse as an assessment criterion when assessing grammar in L2 academic texts. Fourteen students in an academic English as a second language writing course at an English-medium university in Canada and their teacher participated in this case study. Students’ essay exam scripts were collected, and the Theme-Rheme progression (TRP) patterns and links (Daneš, 1974) as well as the distribution of new and given information (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004) in these essays were analyzed. Pearson correlation coefficients between the teacher-assigned grammar grade and the results from the TRP and information distribution analyses were calculated. The findings indicate that information management of discourse indeed forms part of the assessment criteria for grammar in academic writing for the teacher in this study. The implications of this finding for L2 writing pedagogy are discussed.

Providing English language learners with effective feedback on their writing is an issue facing many writing teachers. This article focuses on English language learners’ perceptions of both direct and indirect form-focused written feedback and how these perceptions might change over time. Forty-two advanced level students in an intensive English program at a large U.S. university participated in two surveys, one at the beginning of the term and one at the end. They were asked to rate and comment on the usefulness of five types of feedback (three indirect and two direct) for the purposes of both text revision and the learning of grammar and writing. Students perceived the feedback types that provide codes, comments, and/or explanations as being more useful overall in text revision than other forms of feedback. Findings indicate that students’ perceptions regarding the usefulness of feedback types changed throughout the course. Three areas of feedback that students focused on as their perceptions change are identified, as are reasons why students did or did not value each of the feedback types.

Advances in technology, such as the word-processor, have long supported the pedagogy of composition. However, in the Internet environment a variety of electronic tools and multimedia can further enhance best practices in teaching writing: the integration of reading and writing, recursive drafting, targeted grammar and vocabulary study, peer review, and publication.