This presentation describes the vocabulary production activities suggested via a discussion board in first year Spanish at the National University of Ireland, Galway during the academic year 2017.18, focusing on the emails sent as corrective and formative feedback after the student contribution to the discussion board. 

We will also present the results and feedback from students about these activities. 

Since Truscott’s claims that error correction “has harmful effects” (1996), its role has been an issue of considerable controversy among theorists and researchers alike. Acknowledging the language learning potential of Error Correction (EC) along with most recent empirical research (see Bitchener & Storch, 2016 for a review), the current study is mainly directed at questioning its effectiveness. Even though EC has been proved to effectively contribute to the development of accuracy in written output, it is not so clear that it is equally effective with complexity and fluency. The present study sets out to quantitatively examine the processes underlying the learners’ initial output and whether comprehensive EC has any effect on 44 high-intermediate EFL learners’ grammatical development measures. The study consisted of three stages. First, after completing the initial writing task (pretest) on day 1, participants were sorted into three treatment groups (direct EC, indirect EC, and no feedback/control). Then, having processed the feedback (via written languaging), they were required to revise their initial writing (thus producing the posttest) to measure differences in CAF (day 15). To look for evidence of improvement in accuracy, the data was analyzed for global error reduction between pretest and posttest scores. Then, taking into account the time that students were given to produce their essays, differences in fluency were measured by comparing the total number of words written (pretest vs. revision/posttest). Finally, the L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer was employed to measure pretest-posttest differences in six indices (MLS, MLT, MLC, C/S, VP/T, C/T). The results obtained confirm the null hypothesis of the study, the lack of significant improvement in other measures of L2 ability aside from accuracy. From these findings, we might conclude that rather than abandoning EC, L2 instructors should be aware that different traits of L2 development need of different corrective feedback treatment(s).

This paper critically investigates the implementation of the social media application Instagram in a course of Spanish at The University of Western Australia.

Following on recent research on the implementation of blogs and social media in higher education, and the implementation of Instagram for writing tasks in a previous teaching cohort, Instagram is implemented in unit Spanish Studies 2, the intensive course of the Summer School offered at The University of Western Australia. The application serves multiple purposes: it adds a further dimention to those of the classroom and the unit’s Blackboard page, it allows for mobile learning, and it provides a more rounded learning experience. Furthermore, it becomes a training platform for students’ reading and writing skills.

The course - Spanish Studies 2 - is an A2 level of the Common European Framework, and is delivered in intensive mode across four weeks, or modules. The course is delivered using both the online modality (flipped classroom) and the in-class modality (small group teaching). Positive Psychology activities derived from the FL2 Flourish in a Second Language programme, by Flinders and Sydney University, were also a part of this course.

Instagram stimulates both reading and writing skills in the following manner: students read a number of posts per module. These are shared on the page of course. Students are also encouraged to comment on as many posts as possible, on which they receive feedback. They are assessed on four of these comments: one per module. The philosophy behind this implementation is that students improve their reading and writing skills as the course unfolds. Hence the assessment is both summative and formative. Ultimately, it provides students with extra stimuli in current informal Spanish and aims at inspiring students to read and write more in Spanish.

In recent years, much research has been conducted on second language (L2) learner-learner interaction during collaborative writing tasks in face-to-face (FTF) contexts (e.g. McDonough, Crawford, & Vleeschauwer, 2016; Fernández Dobao, 2014). However, relatively little is known about the dynamics of peer interaction in computer supported collaborative writing (CSCW) (Cho, 2017; Rouhshad & Storch, 2016).
The present study explores interaction in CSCW by combining data from eye-tracking methodology, screen recordings and stimulated recall interviews. Four advanced EFL learner dyads completed two collaborative writing tasks, with a duration of 30 minutes. Both tasks required participants to jointly produce a text with recommendations for studying abroad. Task 2 additionally required the use of provided sources (figures and tables) for the composition of texts. Participants completed the tasks sitting in separate rooms, using Google Docs for writing, and written skype chat for communicating with each other. After the final task, participants were shown a video replay of their performance including their eye gazes, and were asked to comment on their thoughts during the task in a stimulated recall (SR) interview.
Chats and written texts were analysed for patterns of contribution. SR interviews were analysed using Atlas.ti, focusing on participants' task representation and role perception. The recording of the learner's eye-gaze behaviour provided insights into participants’ allocation of attention to the text, their partner’s input and the provided sources. Results indicate that dyads seemed to primarily adopt a cooperative mode of interaction (Storch, 2002), with very limited direct interaction.
Findings will be discussed in light of models of dyadic interaction (Storch, 2002; Meier, Spada, & Rummel, 2007) focusing on the applicability of existing models for collaborative writing in CSCW contexts and implications for the design of computer-mediated collaborative writing tasks. Furthermore, methodological affordances and challenges of using eye-tracking methodology in CSCW research will be addressed.

This presentation starts by describing a new Grammar Checker designed at the UNED (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia), Spain, to help students of English enrolled in distance and blended learning programs detect and correct errors in their writing.
A tool like this has, no doubt, many advantages for students and teachers alike. Students take responsibility for their own learning, learn autonomously and self-correct their own mistakes. From a psycholinguistic point of view this learning experience is more valuable than having their mistakes spotted and/or corrected by the teacher, and is also less stressful as students can work at their own pace. The use of this tool allows teachers to devote more time to other aspects of teaching writing.
This software makes use of a large corpus of written language as a normative corpus for error correction. The program highlights mistakes in students’ compositions and provides personalised feedback explaining the nature of each error and how to correct it. Such feedback was prepared from a corpus of approximately 257,000 words and phrases containing errors either found in the writing of Spanish speaking A2 and B1 level learners, or errors, which, while not actually found, were typical of learners at this level of competence. For a sample of 68 student compositions comprising a total of 12,063 words, the software delivered error-specific feedback on approximately 46 per cent of the errors in the students’ work. Adding feedback on a further 103,000 words and phrases to the diagnostic corpora subsequently increased the error-specific feedback rate to 59 per cent. The feasibility of further increasing this percentage is outlined, and the pedagogical significance of the findings discussed.
This presentation will describe the research procedures followed in the development of Grammar Checker and will analyse the implications of this tool for distance and blended learning.

Training on self-regulation learning strategies (SRLS) have been proposed to eliminate learning defficiencies as being able to be a pro-active learner who is ware of his/her own abilities and the resources avilable to set achievable goals is of high importance for this generation who have access to different sources of information. Self-regulation stratgies were found to be effective in different fields among of which is education and learning. Directing oneself towards a learning goal is likely to be effective in situation where the teacher cannot help a student to reach his/her full potential. This paper reports the effect of implementing self-regualtion strategies via modelling on  students' writing skills. As a quasi-experimental study that make use of a pre and post- writing task to evaluate students' written performance in a control and an experimental group throughout an academic semester (4 months). Forethought, performance and evaluation SRLS are modelled in the experimental group at different stages of the semester and for different tasks. Students' pre-and post-writting test, their assessed tasks, mid-term and final exam of both groups are to be compared to evaluate the extent of effect of SRLS in the experemental group performance. Modelling SRLS in the experimental group is assumed to improve students' written work as opposed to those registered in the control group and have not been trained on SRLS. Students' marks, quality of written work is likely to indicate whether SRLS can actually improve writing performance. 

Esto es una prueba

The study aimed to explore the influence of English language proficiency, gender and writing beliefs on the L1 (Arabic) and FL (English) writing processes and text quality of 77 undergraduate Omani writers. Keystroke logging was used as the main instrument to record and analyse the participants’ writing processes. This was complemented by the participants’ responses to an immediate recall questionnaire. The Writing Beliefs Survey was used to identify writers’ writing beliefs.
The results showed that writers produced better text quality, wrote more fluently, revised and paused less, and required less time to complete the writing task when writing in L1 in comparison to FL. A key feature of this difference was that writers in Arabic were able to produce language in larger bursts than in English. Writers with better English language proficiency were also able to produce larger bursts when writing in English. Generally, English language proficiency played an important role in FL writers’ writing process and product. High FL language proficiency was associated with better text quality, and more importantly, influenced writing processes. Low FL language proficiency reduced the extent to which initial planning focused on text organization and the audience and disrupted writers’ ability to carry out more global revisions. Interestingly, the results indicated that FL language proficiency was associated with L1 writing as well.
The study also found that females had better English language skills and were more motivated towards writing than males in both languages. This enabled them to produce better text quality and to cope with the writing process demands more successfully than males. The study also suggested that Omani writers’ writing beliefs were consistent with those found in previous research. There was evidence that FL writers’ beliefs about audience and writing as a recursive process were related to both writing process and text quality.

As Scandinavian universities continue to make extensive use of English as a medium of instruction alongside or instead of the domestic languages (Wächter and Maiworm 2014), there is a growing need to support students’ second language (L2) writing skills in English at these institutions. The University of Copenhagen is a case in point with a sizeable proportion of master’s programmes and courses taught in English by lecturers with no experience in language instruction. A recent five-year language strategy has sought to align language support with students’ disciplinary needs (Larsen & Holmen, 2017), resulting in ten pilot projects that have explored different ways of integrating English writing instruction and/or feedback into academic courses in different programmes across the University. In an effort to support the potential long-term integration of these initiatives, this study explored the language learning potential of feedback activities developed in connection with a two-year pilot project at the Department of Sociology. Students were offered electronic feedback by a language consultant on a draft version of a portfolio paper to be included in the final course examination. The electronic feedback was preceded by a lecture at the beginning of the semester on academic writing tailored to writing in sociology. A subsequent feedback workshop, which gave students the opportunity to ask clarifying questions about the electronic feedback, sought to give the students a basis for implementing the feedback in the final exam submission. To explore the language learning potential of these feedback activities, we triangulate analyses of student drafts and final exam submissions with data from a questionnaire and student interviews. The findings are discussed in relation to different models of integrating content and language with a focus on how to promote a stronger focus on L2 writing instruction and feedback in academic courses across the university.