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Effective authorial voice in academic writing helps researchers establish the value of their scholarly contributions. However, constructing an authorial voice is challenging for many novice L2 writers. Through tracking multiple drafts of master's theses written by two Chinese EFL (English as a foreign language) graduate students, this case study investigated changes in their authorial voices and the roles of advisor feedback in this process. We drew on three types of data: analysis of multiple thesis drafts for linguistic and content features of voice; advisor feedback on multiple drafts; and a questionnaire for the student writers' understanding of authorial voice. The results indicate that the linguistic features of voice in their theses have remained largely unchanged, portraying them as unconfident student writers, but the content features have shown significant improvement, conveying authorial voices of novice researchers in the later drafts. Most of the student revisions followed their advisors' feedback. The student participants' questionnaire responses indicate their relative lack of awareness of the importance of language in voice construction. The results suggest that the authorial voice construction of the novice student writers is dynamic, developmental, and interactive with their advisors' feedback over the thesis writing process. Pedagogically, other than feedback on content features of voice, classroom practitioners could also consider providing explicit instruction of and feedback on linguistic features to help students construct authoritative authorial voice in the academic context.

Enhancing students' learning autonomy has been emphasized in the current round of English curriculum reforms by the Ministry of Education (MOE) in China. The initial aim of the new guidelines was developed to enhance students' English proficiency to better fulfil their basic education (Nine-year compulsory education). However, up until now, very little is known about the quality of students' basic education and their learner autonomy development. This paper uses the English language subject as a case to examine the relationship between the different locations of students' attendance of their basic education and their learner autonomy development at university level. The result shows that secondary schools' locations play a more important role in students' learner autonomy development at university. A "Have A Go" model is proposed to improve students' transition between high schools and universities in the English language learning process.

• The current essay scoring scheme would yield considerable score variability. • The current essay scoring scheme would not yield acceptable reliability. • The raters hold more negative than positive comments on the current scoring scheme. The purpose of this study was to examine the quality assurance issues of a national English writing assessment in Chinese higher education. Specifically, using generalizability theory and rater interviews, this study examined how the current scoring policy of the TEM-4 (Test for English Majors – Band 4, a high-stakes national standardized EFL assessment in China) writing could impact its score variability and reliability. Eighteen argumentative essays written by nine English major undergraduate students were selected as the writing samples. Ten TEM-4 raters were first invited to use the authentic TEM-4 writing scoring rubric to score these essays holistically and analytically (with time intervals in between). They were then interviewed for their views on how the current scoring policy of the TEM-4 writing assessment could affect its overall quality. The quantitative generalizability theory results of this study suggested that the current scoring policy would not yield acceptable reliability coefficients. The qualitative results supported the generalizability theory findings. Policy implications for quality improvement of the TEM-4 writing assessment in China are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]