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Retaining students until they complete their qualifications is one of the main aims of many higher education institutions. Retention of students is also looked at from different perspectives in the literature. This small, exploratory, narrative enquiry research looks into the experiences of twenty-one domestic students during their first year and a half of a three-year bachelor's degree at a New Zealand university. The same researcher conducted all the interviews, which were recorded, transcribed and imported to Nvivo for thematic analysis. The researcher attempted to draw comparisons between the students who withdrew from the university within the first year and a half and those who did not in order to gain a deeper understanding of the institutional factors which may be involved in retention of students. Four main themes were found in the interview data, relating to expectations for student effort, guidance provided by instructors, feedback provided on assignments and consistency, which seemed to be significant to the university experience for many students.

A chasm exists between pre-COVID online learning literature, focusing on teachers and students who have chosen online teaching and learning, and post-COVID literature, in which teaching and learning are forced online. This research focuses on students' experiences of the move to online learning, the strategies they employed and their overall perceptions of differences between face-to-face and online learning. A single semi-structured interview was conducted with 16 students at the end of the semester in which learning was migrated online. When the learning was moved online, the students were all 3 weeks into their second year of a bachelor's degree in the humanities and social sciences. The interview data was collected soon after the students completed these courses and analysed using thematic analysis. Generally, the findings of this study support other post-COVID studies, finding that students who were required to study online had more negative experiences than positive ones. Students who are enrolled in full-time face-to-face qualifications also appear to have different needs from those who choose to study online. Students felt that they would have benefited from more structure during emergency remote teaching, such as synchronous learning experiences scheduled at a fixed time.

This project aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of an academic success center at a Japanese public university, in terms of the reciprocal learning that took place during academic writing and reading tutorials and the academic achievement of tutees. Using a multi-method design, the researchers analyzed feedback data from tutors and tutees, and Grade Point Averages (GPA) of tutees and non-users. Questionnaire feedback from both peer tutors and tutees was analysed to understand what learning took place during sessions. The results from one semester of data collection and examples of learning shared by tutors and tutees on the feedback forms are explained. Additionally, a one-way ANOVA was conducted to compare GPA at the beginning and end of the semester, along with changes in GPA of tutees and non-users. This paper aims to contribute to better understanding the role for academic success centers, especially in relation to the growing context of English-medium instruction.

There has been a lack of research systematically identifying the kinds of international students who struggle to succeed academically in the New Zealand tertiary context. This research was conducted to determine whether students who enter through different pathways have equal likelihood of academic success after admission. Statistical information from a three-year period was collected at one university and analysed to identify student groups at risk of being academically unsuccessful. The results suggest that international students with previous tertiary educational experience were significantly more successful after admission. It was also found that students who had not completed secondary school were significantly more successful after completing an in-house foundation studies programme, compared to off-site programmes. Conversely, students who arrived in the country earlier and completed secondary school there were significantly more likely to struggle compared to those who completed secondary school overseas.

Although an increasing amount of research has focussed on the relationship between student language proficiency and English‐medium instruction (EMI) programme outcomes, there has been little focus on the broader assessment of progress and learning within EMI programmes, especially in Asia. The purpose of this study was to determine the kinds of programme assessments used throughout all stages of full‐degree EMI programmes in Japan. Our inquiry examined the benchmarks currently in place to measure content knowledge, language proficiency and academic skills competence in undergraduate EMI programmes. Data were collected from 13 universities in Japan with well‐established EMI degree programmes. In this paper, our findings are explored primarily in a qualitative and holistic manner, weaving the results of our survey together with the extant literature on the topic and our lived experiences as teachers in EMI programmes in Japan. Embedded in this conversation are evidence‐based suggestions for improved practice in EMI programmes in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature from education, educational psychology and second language acquisition has consistently found that self-efficacy is a key factor leading to increased language learning success. Students with more self-efficacy are claimed to have higher motivation and to expend more effort in the learning process. On the other hand, those with less self-efficacy give up more readily when they encounter difficulty. Teacher feedback on L2 writing has been claimed to decrease student L2 writing self-efficacy, whereas some have suggested that peer feedback has a more positive impact on learners' self-efficacy. The present study compares changes in self-efficacy over a period of one academic year between two groups of Japanese university students. One group received teacher feedback on every preliminary draft for the one-year period while the other group gave and received peer feedback on every preliminary draft over the same period. It was found that the teacher feedback group increased in writing self-efficacy significantly more than the peer feedback group.

There might always be errors during the learning process which need correction; accordingly, providing corrective feedback is critical. However, the various types of feedback applied during classes affect the learning and teaching process. Teaching and learning could be applied within EFL classes by providing learners with recasts. Recasts have been provided frequently in both first language acquisition and second language acquisition. Extensive studies have indicated that recasts are the most frequent feedback type in speaking, yet this study investigates their efficacy on writing. Forty high school EFL learners participated in this study for 20 sessions within a period of 3 months. The participants were divided into two experimental groups and were provided with two types of feedback. While participants of one group received recasts as a type of indirect feedback, participants of other group received direct corrective feedback. Results obtained by a pretest and a posttest indicated that both groups made significant progress in their writing performance, yet there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups on the posttest. The recast group achieved higher scores, performing better than the direct correction group.

This study considers language proficiency test scores achieved by ESL students who subsequently entered a New Zealand university at the undergraduate level. Scores from IELTS and the university's in-house English Proficiency Test are analysed to determine the predictive ability of overall scores on these two tests and scores for each of the four language skills on academic success. The results indicated that language proficiency had a significant effect on undergraduate academic achievement. Furthermore, analyses of the predictive ability of scores for listening, speaking, and reading were remarkably similar between the tests, with non-significant results of similar magnitude for each skill. On the other hand, IELTS writing scores demonstrated a non-significant negative effect on academic achievement, while EPT writing scores were strongly significantly predictive of academic achievement. The results suggest that universities may benefit from measuring ESL students' academic writing proficiency in more authentic university-level writing tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This exploratory study investigated the effect of assessing both process and product compared to assessing written products alone. Two groups of students received teacher feedback over a one-year period. One group was assessed on their revisions in addition to the quality of final drafts, while a second group was assessed on the quality of final drafts alone. The uptake of feedback, in the form of revision attempts, and the success of those attempts were compared between the two groups using a Mann-Whitney U-test. In addition, improvement in writing performance was measured and compared between the two groups using one-way analysis of variance. It was found that the group assessed on process had significantly higher uptake of feedback than the group assessed on product alone. However, the increased uptake consisted of unsuccessful revision attempts, while the number of successful revisions was almost identical between the groups. It was also found that the group assessed on final product alone improved significantly more than the group assessed on process in terms of essay content. It is concluded that the assessment of feedback may not be necessary in some contexts, and suggestions are given for increasing the quality of learning achieved by teacher feedback.

This study aimed to determine differences in the uptake of peer and teacher feedback after writing students received longitudinal feedback from only one of these sources. It also investigates the types of feedback given by peers and a teacher in order to explain those any differences. Data was collected from 64 Japanese university students in four classes. It was found that peer feedback was more often non-specific, whereas teacher feedback was more often specific and more often uptaken. Moreover, while more frequent teacher feedback led to misunderstandings or unsuccessful revisions, more frequent peer feedback led to successful revisions. Furthermore, while the teacher gave more feedback using coded marks and general comments, peer feedback was made up of more uncoded marks and direct comments. It may increase the uptake of peer feedback if peer reviewers are trained to give specific feedback and general, rather than direct, comments.

Although raters can be trained to evaluate the lexical qualities of student essays, the question remains as to what extent raters follow the "lexis" scale descriptors in the rating scale when evaluating or rate according to their own criteria. The current study examines the extent to which 27 trained university EFL raters take various lexical qualities into account while using an analytic rating scale to assess timed essays. In this experiment, the lexical content of 27 essays was manipulated before rating. This was done in order to determine if raters were sensitive to range, accuracy or sophistication when rating writing for lexis. Using a between-subjects ANOVA design, it was found that raters were sensitive to accuracy, but not range or sophistication, when rating essays for lexis. The implications for rater training and using rating scales are discussed. (Contains 4 tables.)

Whether foreign language writing is rated using analytic rating scales or holistically, the organization of ideas is invariably one of the aspects assessed. However, it is unclear what raters are sensitive to when rating writing for organization. Which do they value more highly, the physical aspects of organization, such as paragraphing and the existence of organization markers, or deeper textual aspects, such as the coherent flow of ideas? This study investigates whether raters of timed essays value paragraphing, cohesive devices or coherence more when assigning a score for organization. The current study used multiple regression to ascertain what raters of the writing section of an in-house proficiency test were sensitive to when rating writing for organization using an analytic rating scale. The number of paragraphs, number of cohesive devices and coherence within 116 timed essays were evaluated and it was found that raters seem to value the physical aspects of organization more than the deeper textual aspects. Specifically, the number of paragraphs and the number of cohesive devices predicted differences in scores assigned for organization. In addition, the scores assigned for content were significantly predictive of scores for organization.

An examination of the scores given using analytic rating scales can provide insight into how well the scales are measuring what they are supposed to be measuring. Many analytic rating scales include separate scales for lexis and grammar, yet the distinction between lexis and grammar has not been widely researched or defined. It is therefore unclear whether separate lexis and grammar scales are appropriate. For this reason, the lexis scores for 140 timed essays on a Japanese university English proficiency test were analyzed to determine what portion of variance is accounted for by different lexical qualities. In this test, which was administered to incoming university students at the beginning of the academic year, it was found that lexical accuracy is predictive of lexis scores. The lexis scores, however, are predicted by the scores on the grammar scale much more than range, frequency, or even accuracy of lexis in the essays. The difficulties in separating lexis from grammar when rating writing are discussed. Finally, limitations of the study and suggestions for further research are given. (Contains 2 footnotes and 4 tables.)

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the writing centre in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context in Japan, self-correct errors in writing, and the ESL Writing Online Workshop website.