This study describes the reading and test‐taking strategies that test takers used in the Reading section of the LanguEdge courseware (ETS, 2002a). These materials were developed to familiarize prospective respondents with the new TOEFL®. The investigation focused on strategies used to respond to more traditional single selection multiple‐choice formats (i.e., Basic Comprehension and Inferencing questions) and the new selected‐response (multiple selection, drag and drop) Reading to Learn items. The latter were designed to simulate the academic task of forming a comprehensive and coherent representation of an entire text, rather than focusing on discrete points in the text. Verbal report data were collected from 32 students, representing four language groups (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Other) doing the Reading section tasks from the LanguEdge courseware materials. Students were randomly assigned to two of the six reading subtests, each consisting of a 600–700 word text with 12–13 items. Subjects' verbal report accompanying items representing each of the ten item types was evaluated to determine strategy use. The findings provide insights into the response behaviors prompted by the reading tasks on the new TOEFL.

This study describes the reading and test-taking strategies that test takers used on the `Reading' section of the LanguEdge Courseware (2002) materials developed to familiarize prospective respondents with the new TOEFL. The investigation focused on strategies used to respond to more traditional `single selection' multiple-choice formats (i.e., Basic Comprehension and Inferencing questions) and the new selected-response (multiple selection, drag-and-drop) Reading to Learn items. The latter were designed to simulate the academic skill of forming a comprehensive and coherent representation of an entire text, rather than focusing on discrete points in the text. Verbal report data were collected from 32 students, representing four language groups (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and `Other') doing the Reading section tasks from the LanguEdge Courseware materials. Students were randomly assigned to two of the six reading subtests, each consisting of a 600—700 word text with 12—13 items, and subjects' verbal reports accompanying items representing each of the ten item types were evaluated to determine strategy use. The findings provide insights into the response behaviors prompted by the reading tasks on the new TOEFL.

Recently there has been a growing interest in and recognition of the value of specialized corpora, such as learner corpora [Granger, S. (1998). The computer learner corpus: a versatile new source of data for SLA research. In S. Granger, Learner English on computer (pp. 3-18). New York: Longman], in facilitating discourse analysis. Despite this trend, most corpus-based analyses have centered on the lexico-grammatical patterning of texts with less regard for functional and rhetorical, textlinguistic aspects [Flowerdew, L. (1998). Corpus linguistic techniques applied to textlinguistics. System, 26,[541][542][543][544][545][546][547][548][549][550][551][552]. The goals of this study were:(1) to demonstrate the efficacy of a multi-level analysis of a genre-specific learner corpus that included both a handtagged moves-analysis coupled with a computerized analysis of lexico-grammatical features of texts; and (2) to show how a pragmatic concept such as politeness can be operationalized to allow for computer generated counts of linguistic features related to that concept. In this study of politeness strategies used by Americans, Finns, and Belgians in a learner corpus of letters of application, we found that Americans as a group tended to be much more patterned, even formulaic, in their politeness strategies. The Belgians, on the other hand, showed more individuality in their letters with the Finns exhibiting both traits to lesser degrees. In this paper we argue for a textlinguistic approach that considers the special features of genre-specific corpora. 1.IntroductionTraditional genre analysis proposes "moves", or functional components, as basic elements of a genre (Swales, 1990); indeed, it is argued that such moves can be taught to a novice writer of a particular genre ([Bhatia, 1993] and [Dudley-Evans, 1995]). Genres, furthermore, have cultural expectations -including disciplinary as well as national or ethnic -and crossing cultural boundaries 1 1 For the purposes of this analysis, we used a rather traditional view of culture that defines cultures as geographically and/or nationally distinct entities. We are aware of the changing definitions of culture in TESOL (Atkinson, 1999b) which recognize that cultures are not homogeneous and all-encompassing. However, as our purpose in this paper was to showcase a textlinguistic approach to discourse analysis and our sample of letters from each culture came from a narrow and specific cross-section of each culture, we feel that our use of a traditional view of culture can be justified.requires re-learning at least part of the genre in light of its construction in the new culture. Negotiating cultural differences in genres would then be an expected part of writing for writers from one culture seeking to communicate with members of another culture.

The research on electronic feedback in second language writing is scarce, despite the increasingly frequent use of computers in ESL writing classrooms. The current study's purpose is to determine (1) what types of electronic written feedback ESL learners receive on writing that has been submitted and returned electronically, and (2) the relationship between teacher feedback and uptake. Twelve ESL students and three teachers participated in this longitudinal study. Multiple drafts of two essays from two semesters of college-level first-year composition were analyzed. The findings show that most of the teachers' electronic feedback consisted of marginal comments that were, for the most part, directive, explicit, principled, systematic, and needs-based -much like handwritten feedback. Importantly, electronic feedback was successful at eliciting appropriate revisions of grammatical structures or surfacelevel features, but also content and organization. This suggests that electronic feedback can be effective and therefore should not be avoided.

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This article presents a seven-step corpus-based approach to discourse analysis that starts with a detailed analysis of each individual text in a corpus that can then be generalized across all texts of a corpus, providing a description of typical patterns of discourse organization that hold for the entire corpus. This approach is applied specifically to a methodology that is used to analyze texts in terms of the functional/communicative structures that typically make up texts in a genre: move analysis. The resulting corpus-based approach for conducting a move analysis significantly enhances the value of this often used (and misused) methodology, while at the same time providing badly needed guidelines for a methodology that lacks them. A corpus of 'birthmother letters' is used to illustrate the approach.Biber et al. (2007) explore how discourse structure and organization can be investigated using corpus analysis; they offer a structured, seven-step corpusbased approach to discourse analysis that results in generalizable descriptions of discourse structure. This article draws on the themes in this book, but focuses in particular on analyses that use theories on communicative or functional purposes of text as the starting point for understanding why texts in a corpus are structured the way they are, before moving to a closer examination and description of the linguistic characteristics and overall organizational tendencies reflective of the corpus. Biber et al. (2007) refer to this as a 'top-down approach' to the analysis of discourse structure. (In a bottom-up approach, the lexical and/ or form-focused corpus analysis comes first, and the discourse unit types emerge from the corpus patterns. See Biber et al., 2007, for discussion.) The primary goal of this article is to provide a description of the process for carrying out a corpus-based discourse study using the approach introduced by Biber et al. (2007), showing how it can be applied to move analyses.

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Reading in a second language (L2) is not a monolingual event; L2 readers have access to their first language (L1) as they read, and many use it as a strategy to help comprehend an L2 text. Owing to difficulties in observing the comprehension process, little research has been conducted to determine what role the L1 plays in the reading strategies of L2 readers. Using think-aloud protocols and retrospective interviews with 20 native speakers of Chinese and Japanese at three levels of language proficiency studying in the United States, this study explores further the question of when L2 readers use their L1 cognitive resources and how this cognitive use of the L1 helps them comprehend an L2 text. We conclude by suggesting that the results support a sociocultural view of the L2 reading process.