This study provides details on the motivational factors for using blogs as an essential tool to promote students’ writing skills in ESL classrooms. The study aims to discuss how using blogs may be integrated into classroom activities to promote students’ writing skills as well as polishing their skills. It would also illustrate the features offered in blogs as well as the motivational essence t...

Little attention has been paid to the problems about portfolio keeping in English as a foreign language (EFL) writing, while the existing literature mostly focuses on the effects of portfolios on writing skills of learners, rather than those of teachers or pre-service teachers. This study aims to investigate the problems encountered and contributions of portfolios to the language skills of EFL ...

Discourse markers improve both the quality and comprehension of a written text. This study aimed at investigating the effect of explicit and implicit instruction of formal meta-discourse markers on writ- ing skills. The quantitative data were collected from 90 upper-intermediate students at Shiraz Univer- sity Language Center. Two experimental groups went through an instruction, while the contr...

The writing skills of undergraduate Information Technology (IT) students concern many educators (Utley, 1998, cited in Tench, 2001). This paper examines the relationship between students' business writing results and their technical computing papers results. Some unexpected findings are presented highlighting the need for the inclusion of a writing paper in an IT degree.