Research into lexical issues has been one of the most rapidly growing areas of second language acquisition studies in recent years, and understandably so: the importance of vocabulary can hardly be denied. Words are the key to every instance of communication, both spoken and written. This volume concentrates on vocabulary in written language, mostly in academic settings. The writers of the chapters come from different countries and universities, and, naturally, represent their own academic backgrounds, though they all share a common interest in investigating the characteristics of L2 lexis as it manifests itself in the written production of students at various stages of their language learning careers. The target language (L2) in the studies reported in the volume is English, except in one study on the lexical competence of multilingual learners of French. The subjects’ native languages include Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, and Swedish, thus representing several different language families. Each chapter constitutes an independent unit, but together the studies reported in them give the reader a varied and extensive picture of lexical issues in L2 writing. The authors approach their topics from different perspectives and use diverse research methods, adding to the multifaceted nature of the volume. The book will be of interest to researchers, educators and students of second language acquisition and applied linguistics.

On Second Language Writing brings together internationally recognized scholars in a collection of original articles that, collectively, delineate and explore central issues with regard to theory, research, instruction, assessment, politics, articulation with other disciplines, and standards. In recent years, there has been a dramatic growth of interest in second-language writing and writing instruction in many parts of the world. Although an increasing number of researchers and teachers in both second-language studies and composition studies have come to identify themselves as specialists in second-language writing, research and teaching practices have been dispersed into several different disciplinary and institutional contexts because of the interdisciplinary nature of the field. This volume is the first to bring together prominent second-language writing specialists to systematically address basic issues in the field and to consider the state of the art at the end of the century (and the millennium).

This book explores how lexical competence develops in a foreign language, and also argues for the importance of lexical accuracy as a measure of the quality of foreign language writing and as an indicator of receptive vocabulary knowledge.

The new edition of this comprehensive text fills an important role in teacher professional preparation by focusing on how to teach the grammar and vocabulary that are essential for all L2 writing teachers and student-writers. Before L2 writers can begin to successfully produce academic prose, they need to understand the foundations of the language and develop the language tools that will help them build reasonable quality text. Targeting specific problem areas of students’ writing, this text offers a wealth of techniques for teaching writing, grammar, and vocabulary to second-language learners. Updated with current research and recent corpus analysis findings, the second edition features a wealth of new materials, including new teaching activities; student exercises and assignments; and substantially revised appendices with supplementary word and phrase lists and sentence components. Designed for preservice ESL/ELT/TESOL courses as well as Academic Writing and Applied Linguistics courses, this book includes new, contextualized examples in a more accessible and easy-to-digest format.

Bridges the gap between the fields of second language acquisition (SLA) and second and foreign language (L2) writing. This title intends to advance our understanding of written language learning by collecting theoretical meta-reflections and empirical studies that shed light on two crucial dimensions of the theory and research in the field

This book describes the current psycholinguistic research being conducted internationally on better understanding second language (L2) writing. It is based on an experimental research tradition arising from recent progress made in methodology, technology and theory in both native and second language writing. It is unique in that it is specifically geared to better understanding L2 writing and how it relates to L1 writing research in the psycholinguistic tradition.

Covering the period between 1984 and 2003, this authoritative sequel picks up where the earlier volumes (Braddock et al., 1963, and Hillocks, 1986), now classics in the field, left off. It features a broader focus that goes beyond the classroom teaching of writing to include teacher research, second-language writing, rhetoric, home and community literacy, workplace literacy, and histories of writing. Each chapter is written by an expert in the area reviewed and covers both conventional written composition and multimodal forms of composition, including drawing, digital forms, and other relevant media. Research on Composition is an invaluable road map of composition research for the next decade, and required reading for anyone teaching or writing about composition today.