This article provides three major contributions to the literature: we provide granular information on the development of student argumentative writing across secondary school; we replicate the MacArthur et al. model of Natural Language Processing (NLP) writing features that predict quality with a younger group of students; and we are able to examine the differences for students across language status. In our study, we sought to find the average levels of text length, cohesion, connectives, syntactic complexity, and word-level complexity in this sample across Grades 7-12 by sex, by English learner status, and for essays scoring above and below the median holistic score. Mean levels of variables by grade suggest a developmental progression with respect to text length, with the text length increasing with grade level, but the other variables in the model were fairly stable. Sex did not seem to affect the model in meaningful ways beyond the increased fluency of women writers. We saw text length and word level differences between initially designated and redesignated bilingual students compared to their English-only peers. Finally, we see that the model works better with our higher scoring essays and is less effective explaining the lower scoring essays.

This research examines the role of idiomatic expressions (IEs) in international business (IB) communication and non-native speakers’ (NNEs’) English proficiency. It investigates how IE affect IB communication’s effectiveness and whether IEs should be taught to NNE. We collected feedback from academics who confirmed the importance of IE and relevant business idioms from professional websites. We also assessed IE usage benefits for different cohorts working in IB settings. The results indicate that IE can enhance communication efficiency, cross-cultural social skills, monetary rewards, and satisfaction in IB. The findings support the need for teaching IE to NNE and justify inclusion in curricula.

Abstract This essay examines the ways in which Alfredo Corchado, author of Midnight in Mexico and Homelands, creates and reifies rhetorical leadership by championing the hybrid identity he possesses as a bilingual, bicultural Mexican American journalist working across literal and metaphorical borders, including the challenges he has faced and the vulnerabilities experienced in the pursuit of being a journalist. A significant figure in contemporary media as one of the most prominent Mexican American journalists in the United States, Corchado still publishes articles on the United States/Mexico border, immigration, and on Mexico. The essay considers Corchado and the way he discusses resilience, both expressively and as a rhetorical guide for audiences. The essay uses the two books to highlight Corchado's arguments for the power of journalism and the significance of rhetorical accessibility and the expansion of his writing to Mexican American audiences who might appreciate his standpoint in a richer fashion.

English as a Second Language (ESL) students’ silent expression in writing is often perceived as “indirect” or “inarticulate” in the views of Western rhetoric and academia. However, the meaning of silence and its rhetorical practice can differ from culture to culture, and this difference forms a cultural ethos that is unique and significant to the writer. In response to Anne Gere’s aesthetic, ethical, and political dimensions of silence, I explore cultural ethos as another dimension to recognize ESL students’ silent rhetoric and to expand the theoretical and pedagogical landscape of rhetoric and composition.

This paper investigated the impact of direct unfocused written corrective feedback (WCF) on EFL students’ writing improvement, self-efficacy, and anxiety. To this aim, 52 Iranian male learners were selected as participants by using the Oxford Placement Test and randomly placed in an experimental and a control group. The participants completed a pre-test that included a writing task, the writing self-efficacy questionnaire (WSEQ), and the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI) to assess their writing skill, writing self-efficacy, and writing anxiety, respectively. Having attended 15 sessions of writing instruction in which only the experimental group received WCF, the participants again completed a writing task, the WSEQ, and the SLWAI in the posttest procedure. The results showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in all three constructs, indicating that WCF has a positive impact on EFL students’ writing performance, self-efficacy, and anxiety. Implications of the study are presented.

This article discusses the limitations of language proficiency tests in predicting academic performance among business students at the University of Sharjah. It focuses on EFL students who had been instructed in Arabic before joining the university. Using a regression analysis model, the article demonstrates that students’ weakness in writing proficiency cannot be predicted by standardized tests such as the TOEFL and the IELTS. The proposed method uses several alternative variables that can more resourcefully investigate such weakness. The study ended with germane recommendations to EFL teachers and syllabus designers for the enhancement of writing proficiency among this category of students.

Teaching Writing in English as a Foreign Language: Teachers’ Cognition Formation and ReformationH. Zhao and L. J. Zhang. Springer Nature, Switzerland (2022).XXII + 178 pp., € 106.99, ISBN: 978-3-030-99991-9

Peer feedback has long been an essential part of a process approach to writing in university EFL classrooms. This study examines how the affordances of peer feedback are shaped by students’ language choice. We interviewed 27 Chinese university students in an English writing course about their experiences giving and receiving oral peer feedback on an initial and revised draft of an essay. Semi-structured interviews were analyzed thematically and triangulated with stimulated recall, transcripts of peer review discussions, and content analyses of learners’ incorporation of feedback across essay drafts to better understand perceptions and actions following from language choice during oral peer review of their L2 writing. Findings show that students incorporated 56 percent of oral peer feedback instances when revising, and almost all of these occurred in students’ first language, Chinese. Participants described the L1 affordances of clarity, efficiency, and pragmatics as important considerations when giving oral feedback on peer writing. Through triangulation of oral peer feedback discussions, change across essay drafts, and student interviews, language choice is shown to be a supportive practice for L2 writers in oral peer feedback. In contrast to previous research that suggests that the L1 is used primarily for solving problems and less frequently for discussion of content, our findings show that students chose to use their L1 for peer review because of the perceived support offered for improving their writing – namely, clarity, efficiency, and pragmatics.

This study has explored the syntactic complexity features of English learners at the B1 Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) (CoE, 2001) level from both Pakistan and Finland. The learners in question were taught English as a Foreign Language (EFL) using different pedagogical methods. This study took into account various factors including the learners' proficiency level, age, and grade, as well as variations in their native language. To assess the impact of the learners' native language and pedagogical methods on syntactic complexity features, twelfth grade EFL students from Upper-Secondary schools in both nations were given identical instructions and time limits to complete an English academic essay on the same topic. The study utilized L2 syntactic complexity analyzer (L2SCA) to extract fourteen syntactic complexity features, and Mann-Whitney U Tests were used to analyze the differences in the syntactic complexity features between the two groups. The study has revealed significant differences between Finnish and Pakistani EFL learners due to variations in their native language and the effects of pedagogical methods on syntactic complexity features. The implications of this study extend to language testing and assessment, the CEFR framework, and pedagogy in both Finland and Pakistan.

Research into the contribution of multimodality to language learning is gaining momentum. While most studies pave the way for new understandings of language teaching and learning, there is an increasing demand for comprehensive assessment practices, particularly within higher education contexts. A few studies have emphasized the importance of reflecting on and establishing criteria for the assessment of multimodal literacy. This is necessary to understand students’ contributions in detail and to provide them with effective support in developing their multimodal skills. This study discusses the assessment of multimodal writing in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) contexts. It presents the design of an analytical tool for assessing multimodal texts and provided an example of its application. This tool covers assessment categories such as language use, content expression, interpersonal meaning, multimodality, and creativity and originality. As an example, we focus on the multimodal writing of a video game narrative, a genre that requires the integration of multiple modes of communication to convey meaning more effectively. Finally, this study offers pedagogical insights into the assessment of multimodal literacy in ESP.

Due to the economic sluggishness seen in Japan over the past few decades and the shrinking inward investment market, the Japanese government has introduced educational reforms in order to foster “global human resources” able to compete with overseas talent. One key area of emphasis has been communication education with a special focus on English. In this article, after reviewing the government’s reform plans, the author will analyze (1) how Japanese universities have incorporated these policies into their organizations, with an emphasis on the country’s internationally top-rated universities, and (2) how individual instructors have modified them for their own classes, with reference to a specific case of a successful partnership with an overseas university. Based on the analyses, future opportunities for communication studies will be highlighted in “Discussion” section, including stronger and more flexible ties with overseas universities, in particular among the Asia-Pacific Region, and how a country of non-native speakers of English could show initiative in developing collaborations with overseas universities.

As project-based learning (PjBL) has become very popular in education over the past few years, this study conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis to synthesize the effectiveness of PjBL in EFL/ESL writing by examining 11 articles based on databases of Scopus and Google Scholar from 2013 to 2023. The result reveals that PjBL had a significant positive effect size in EFL/ESL writing. Moreover, the effect sizes of some moderating variables were analyzed, including educational levels, sample size, research design, intervention duration, and group size. It was found that the most important moderating variable that affects the effectiveness of PjBL in EFL/ESL writing is intervention duration. The significant overall effect of PjBL on ESL/EFL writing implies the need for educators to consider using PjBL in language teaching and learning. Meanwhile future researchers might consider applying other moderating variables such as research design, instructional strategies, and student characteristics, to identify the best practices for implementing PjBL in ESL/EFL writing.

Writing processes constitute a complex interplay of planning, formulation and revision. Ideas take shape through the activation of previous knowledge and, when permitted, also its synthesis with information from sources that help to complement it and resolve doubts and shortcomings arising during writing. The possibility to use external help can be especially useful to those writing in a foreign language, and questions about the nature of the sources consulted can contribute new insights into language processing in the multilingual mind, as well as expand our notion of fluency. While leaving the target text is often considered a distraction, a ‘breakdown’ in fluency, it is, in fact, a part of language processing and text creation.       This article proposes a novel way to use keylogging data from Inputlog (Leijten and Van Waes 2013) to visualise the crosslinguistic nature of solving language and content problems in L3+ writing: creating process graphs to display the temporal dynamics of different types of sources used. The example data comes from a university-level course on Spanish linguistics, where Spanish was a third or subsequent language for the participants. Evidently, the vast majority of their external activity was language-related and brief, and, interestingly, a great part of it recurs to a lingua franca, English. Some social context and reasoning is offered to explain such an observation.

Yonas Mesfun Asfaha is an associate professor at Asmara College of Education in Eritrea, and recently he accepted the role of acting dean of the College of Education. He is a well-known literacy scholar specializing in African literacies as well as multilingual language policy as it relates to education. Lydiah Kiramba is an associate professor at the University of Nebraska and is originally from Kenya. Her areas of expertise include multilingual and ESL education, language and literacy teaching and assessment, and bi/multiliteracy development. Lydiah Kiramba talked with Yonas Asfaha via Zoom during the spring/summer months of 2023 about epistemologies and ontologies that have significantly influenced his work.

The recent speculative turn in literacy, English education, and other ELA-related fields has brought renewed energy for redesigning English teaching and learning through genre awareness. However, extant work on speculative genres of reading, writing, and literary study assumes that ELA teachers are prepared or, more fundamentally, aware of these genres and their unique features. Addressing this gap, this article presents a single intrinsic case of Carlos, a queer man of Color and bilingual elementary teacher, as he cultivated genre awareness through an interactive approach to genre pedagogy through restorying. Based on a rhetorical genre studies approach, Carlos’s case demonstrates how English teachers might expand their genre repertoire to include speculative genres and integrate them into their classrooms. This article concludes by advocating for the integration of speculative literacies into English teacher education, doing so to disrupt normative realities tied to white supremacy and homophobia within the field.

The present study used the Mixed Rasch Model (MRM) to identify multiple profiles in L2 students’ writing with regard to several linguistic features, including content, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics. To this end, a pool of 500 essays written by English as a foreign language (EFL) students were rated by four experienced EFL teachers using the Empirically-derived Descriptor-based Diagnostic (EDD) checklist. The ratings were subjected to MRM analysis. Two distinct profiles of L2 writers emerged from the sample analyzed including: (a) Sentence-Oriented and (b) Paragraph-Oriented L2 Writers. Sentence-Oriented L2 Writers tend to focus more on linguistic features, such as grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics, at the sentence level and try to utilize these subskills to generate a written text. However, Paragraph-Oriented Writers are inclined to move beyond the boundaries of a sentence and attend to the structure of a whole paragraph using higher-order features such as content and organization subskills. The two profiles were further examined to capture their unique features. Finally, the theoretical and pedagogical implications of the identification of L2 writing profiles and suggestions for further research are discussed.

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Utilizing three tutoring episodes as qualitative data, this article attempts to define and articulate multilingual labor in the context of the Southern US writing center while working with multilingual writers. Incorporating Betweener​ Autoethnography as a methodological lens and Descriptive/Self-affirmative framework, the author, a South Asian Rhetoric and Composition doctoral student from India and a multilingual speaker/writer, urges WC directors and peer tutors in the US how to consider fostering multilingual tutees’ writing development by intentionally critical creating moments where the languages of writers are received as assets, which often go unnoticed.

Within universities, writing centers are often seen as service providers that allow students to receive support and feedback on their writing.  The usefulness of writing centers has been evaluated by things such as total number of visits and return visits, students’ trust and comfort in asking tutors questions, and tutors’ overall knowledge of writing concepts. But few researchers have shone light on students’ own perceptions of the usefulness of a writing center, especially perceptions between native English (NES), non-native English (NNES), and Generation 1.5 students. We did just that by sending a usefulness survey to 800 universities across the U.S. We analyzed the data from 463 student responses to these surveys using non-parametric statistics and found that NNES and Generation 1.5 students reported more difficulty making an appointment than NES writers. They also reported being slightly less likely to ask their tutor questions, trust their tutors, and return to the writing center, which is perhaps the most important outcome of usefulness. This information can help writing center administrators better anticipate multilingual writers’ needs and take steps to improve informational materials and the writing center experience for these writers which may increase their overall attendance.

This study analyzes the experiences of undergraduate peer-tutors in a heritage language writing center (HLWC) located at a large public university in the United States. As former heritage language (HL) students themselves, tutors have to navigate the complexities of being bilingual advocates for their tutees while promoting the linguistic ideals of the academic community, where literacy expectations can be more rigid. In order to delve into their experiences at the center, this qualitative investigation examines the end-of- term reflections of 19 Spanish HL tutors working at a Spanish HLWC, addressing the following questions: (1) How do tutors perceive their role as language advocates and arbiters? (2) How can these beliefs be supported or addressed by the HL program? Ideal tutors occupy a middle ground between being a peer-student and an expert-student, whose role is to scaffold the mentee’s process. However, we find that HL tutors struggle with competing linguistic expectations between the heritage and the academic community. Finally, we discuss three areas of tension that are important to address in HL tutor training and program design: ambivalent notions about students’ proficiency and preparedness, their role in the instructional team, and their relationship to expertise.

A large body of literature on writing center pedagogy suggests that serving multilingual student writers requires approaches different from those developed for native English-speaking students, a difference that may pose unique challenges to tutors. To identify and address these challenges, we elicited tutors’ perspectives on their work with multilingual writers as well as examined how these perspectives change as tutors gain experience and in response to revisions in a training curriculum. Specifically, we analyzed survey responses provided by two consecutive tutor cohorts at three points in their first semester working at the writing center. The overriding theme to emerge from participants’ responses was that working with multilingual writers often meant working at the sentence level to help them expand their linguistic and rhetorical choices, but this tutoring was sometimes challenging. The first tutor cohort even described sentence-level tutoring as transgressive, as they struggled to distinguish it from fixing or editing writers’ prose. In contrast, the second cohort, who went through a revised curriculum, treated sentence-level tutoring as acceptable practice, theorized it in richer ways, and expressed themselves as better prepared to support multilingual writers. In addition to describing revisions to the curriculum, this study also provides pedagogical implications for tutor educators.

This review focuses on the main points, methodology, and contribution to writing center studies in Higher Education Internationalization and English Language Instruction: Intersectionality of Race and Language in English Language Instruction by Xiangying Huo. Contributions to the field include a critical perspective of a non-native speaker's experience as an English-language instructor across three research sites and an example of autoethnography as an effective methodology. The primary finding is that non-native students are less likely to initially perceive non-native English language instructors as legitimate.

This article reflects on the creation of bilingual spaces, focusing on writing centers as facilitators of academic dialogue regarding academic writing and culture. The writing centers of Pontifical Javeriana University and Florida International University jointly explore how these centers can serve as bridges to promote effective communication and cultural exchange in educational environments where different languages coexist. The analysis addresses the significance of these spaces in fostering linguistic diversity and the impact on academic development. Este artículo reflexiona sobre la creación de espacios bilingües, centrándose en los Centros de Escritura como facilitadores del diálogo académico en torno a la escritura académica y la cultura. Los Centros de Escritura de la Pontificia Universidad Javeriana y de la Universidad Internacional de Florida exploran conjuntamente cómo estos centros pueden servir de puentes para promover la comunicación efectiva y el intercambio cultural en entornos educativos donde coexisten diferentes lenguas. El análisis aborda la importancia de estos espacios en el fomento de la diversidad lingüística y su impacto en el desarrollo académico.

This article focuses on the lived experiences of multilingual writing teachers and presents what we, the authors, call “A Rhetoric of Accent Fear,” which introduces accent fear as a form of linguistic racism. Through this framework, we reflect on our stories of accent fear as multilingual writing teachers; we practice forming relational connections across our experiences; and we use this relational connection to offer strategies for other multilingual rhetoric and writing scholars and teachers to navigate these sites of tension and in turn, challenge students’ accent fears.

Advanced technology has brought about great changes to language teaching and learning, such as significant shifts and requirements in the field of writing, which is considered as a complex ability to acquire, especially for second language (L2) learners (Hyland, 2021). Writing in this digital era has been shaped by various new technologies, resulting in more attention paid to technology use in L2 writing instruction and research. A new collection of papers titled Technology in second language writing: Advances in composing, translation, writing pedagogy and data-driven learning has been timely published to illustrate how the L2 writing field embraces the integration of technology in teaching and researching students with various cultural backgrounds. This fascinating book was edited by Jingjing Qin and Paul Stapleton who gathered scholars with different pedagogical experiences to provide a comprehensive detour from original research orientations to pedagogical applications.

Research on corrective feedback (CF) has developed from its original focus on identifying which type of CF is most effective for developing L2 language learners’ grammatical accuracy to focusing on how learners use CF. Underpinning this is the assumption that learners know what to do with CF when they receive it. The concept of “feedback literacy” challenges this assumption. Carless and Boud (2018), define feedback literacy as “the understandings, capacities and dispositions needed to make sense of information and use it to enhance work or learning strategies” (p. 1316). Our intention in this paper is to reflect on the manner in which theoretical and empirical work on feedback literacy can contribute to advancing L2 written corrective feedback (WCF) research agendas. Central in our proposal is the partially under-researched aspect of experience in terms of the L2 writers’ educational background experience, particularly experience with L1 and L2 writing. We further argue that how learners were taught L1 writing and how the L1 educational culture/ society values writing can impact on how learners approach L2 writing tasks and accompanying feedback. Implications of this inclusive view of the learner for future research and pedagogy is discussed.

Writing centers are a common service to support students in their writing at most colleges and universities in the United States and, within recent years, have become increasingly popular abroad given the global trend to internationalize educational institutions. But what are writing centers like in countries outside the United States? In this article, I review literature on writing centers in Japan to better understand how one EFL context adopts—and adapts —the U.S. writing center model. The findings of this literature review explore obstacles and opportunities that may occur in tutor-tutee interactions and writing center administration. This knowledge is key for personnel in EFL contexts seeking to create and implement writing centers based on those in the American context. Keywords : writing center, Japan, English as a foreign language (EFL) When someone walks into the writing center at a college or university in the United States, they are likely to find a common scene: Two students—one a tutor, the other a tutee—sit together at a table, or perhaps in a cubicle. The two read the tutee’s paper together as the tutor asks questions about structure, thesis, or word choice. It resembles more a conversation between classmates than a lecture from professor to student. But what about writing centers in other countries? Is this a common scene too? Within recent years, writing centers have become more prevalent at colleges and universities in countries where English is not commonly spoken, known as English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts. Often supported by governmental grants, stakeholders in EFL contexts have sought to internationalize their educational institutions by creating programs conducted entirely in English, promoting increased matriculation of international students, and encouraging students and faculty to publish their works in English (LaClare & Franz, 2013; Okuda, 2019b). To support these goals, colleges and universities have turned to the writing center from their American counterparts as a model. One such country where colleges and universities are adopting the U.S. writing center model is Japan. Although the first reported writing center in Japan was founded on an American military base in Tokyo in the 1930s (McMillan, 1986, as cited in McKinley, 2011), it was not until 2004 that a Japanese college or university established a writing center to support students’ English writing (Johnston, Cornwell, & Yoshida, 2010). Since 2004, supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT), numerous Japanese educational institutions have independently created their own writing centers. These writing centers organized across institutions for the first time at the Japan Writing Center Symposium in 2008 and then formed the Writing Centers Association of Japan in 2011 (Fujioka, 2011). According to the Writing Centers Association of Japan (2022), as of December 2022, there were a total of eighteen writing centers as members. Thus, the history of writing centers in Japan is relatively short, and research on them is limited (Fujioka, 2011; Nakatake, 2013). While there has begun more effort to research writing centers in Japan, there is still work to be done. The purpose of this literature review is to explore current research on writing centers at Japanese colleges and universities to better understand how one EFL context adopts—and adapts —the U.S. writing center model. The most recent literature review on this topic that I found is from approximately a decade ago (see Nakatake, 2013); therefore, this literature review seeks to expand previous research by including more recent scholarship into the discussion. By revealing both obstacles and opportunities in adopting the U.S. writing center model in Japan, the findings of this literature review have implications for writing center personnel who may seek to establish writing centers in other EFL contexts.

This study examines associations between writing behaviors manifested by keystroke analytics and the formulation of argument elements in L2 undergraduate writers' writing processes. Ninety-nine persuasive essays written by L2 undergraduate writers were human annotated for Toulmin argument elements. The corresponding keystroke logs were segmented and analyzed to characterize the dynamics of writing processes for different categories of the elements. A multinomial mixed-effects logistic regression model was built to predict argument categories using the keystroke analytics. The study reported that L2 undergraduate writers' text production for final claims and primary claims featured P-bursts (execution processes delimited by pauses exceeding 2 seconds) of longer spans but lower production fluency compared to that for data. In addition, fewer revisions were observed when L2 writers were constructing final claims than when they were formulating data. These findings shed light on the varying cognitive loads and activities L2 undergraduate writers may experience when building different argument elements in written argumentation.

This article discusses early literacy instruction in China, including the impact of biliteracy education on Chinese society. This presentation is based on interviews with over two dozen scholars of Chinese literacy instruction, as well as primary early grades language arts classroom teachers from four different regions across China. The purpose of this examination of literacy education in China is to open our views of literacy instruction beyond US borders, especially in those countries with different language/literacy systems. Because of the rapid increase of emergent bilingual students in our schools, we need to gain a better understanding of literacy and biliteracy education in the countries where those students grew up. On the one hand, this insight can help us realize the literacy practices that emergent bilingual students may bring to their learning in our classrooms and the importance of biliteracy as a requisite for our education. On the other hand, this understanding will urge us, both researchers and educators, to reexamine our beliefs and scholarship in reading or literacy education, and open our vision to the plurality of languages, multiple literacies, and diverse methods of literacy instruction beyond our land.

This paper aims to interrogate a writer-researcher’s journey through practice-led inquiry (Gray, 1996) within a broader discourse that acknowledges academic writing as contested. Indeed, the quest of a migrant writer for recognition of their writing in another land requires a deep understanding of the many layers that make up the provenance of their writing practice: A second language, and both their cultural identity and literary background, provide layers of knowledge and experience that fuse to form a 'style' and ultimately a writing ‘niche’. The readership of their writing carries its own provenance and therefore the additional bias of ‘the home ground’. As it reads in the title, palimpsest, in its figurative sense, is a notion that implies levels of meaning in a literary work. Although not the first writer to use the concept figuratively, it was Thomas De Quincey who wrote an essay entitled “The Palimpsests” (1845), which would inaugurate “the substantive concept of the palimpsest” (Dillon, 2005, p. 243). Similarly, Barthes (1989, p. 99) referred to a text as a layered discourse, an onion, a superimposed construction of skins (of layers, of levels, of systems) whose volume contains, finally, no heart, no core, no secret, no irreducible principle, nothing but the very infinity of its envelopes—which envelop nothing other than the totality of its surfaces. As a writer surfaces, discriminates, and understands the different layers that fashion their writing, and wields their particular use of English as a second language, their practice becomes more authentic. That authenticity becomes a dual threshold element of an exegesis argument, representing faithfulness to the practitioner, and translating or bridging the gap between first language readers and second language voices.

Notetaking is a crucial aspect of learning in academic contexts, but as a relatively casual form of academic writing, it seldom receives pedagogic or research attention in the literature. Therefore, as more students study academic content through English as a second language (L2), research on student notetaking as a form of academic writing deserves attention. What students write in their notes and how they do so can play important roles in comprehension and learning. To address this gap, the present study examines 102 sets of notes and corresponding listening comprehension test scores to determine the relationships between four factors of quantity and quality in students’ hand-written notes; namely, notations, words, information units, and efficiency ratio. Results indicate that total notations and total words written in notes do not impact overall test scores, while information units and higher efficiency ratios positively correlate to test scores. The paper closes with pedagogic advice for teachers and students operating in L2 academic contexts with a focus on how best to conceptualise and write notes.