This article reports the findings of a corpus analysis of a grammatical structure taught in intermediate‐ or advanced‐level ESL/EFL texts: clauses that contain the modal would to signify hypothetical and counterfactual meaning. Contrary to the way these structures are represented in ESL/EFL textbooks—as would‐clauses adjacent to conditional clauses with if—these corpus data indicate that would‐clauses in counterfactual/hypothetical environments occur more often quite distant from or entirely without any corresponding if‐clauses. Often the hypothetical and counterfactual conditions are present but are marked in ways other than by prototypical if‐clauses. The study categorizes the conditional and hypothetical uses of would‐clauses in spoken and written corpora, and it offers pedagogical suggestions based on the findings.
The increasing diversity of US higher education has brought greater language diversity to institutions nationwide. While writing studies researchers have increasingly paid attention to the linguistic diversity of student writers, little attention has been paid to the growing numbers of writing teachers who speak English as a second language. This article reports on a study in which we surveyed seventy-eight nonnative English-speaking instructors and conducted follow-up interviews with eleven of them. Following a presentation of the survey data and profiles of selected interviewees, we recommend ways of working with instructors and students in order to decrease language prejudices and better facilitate the professional development of nonnative English-speaking teachers in writing programs.
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