ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors limit their review to studies that occur in classrooms or are conducted with currently instructed learners and studies that include 'the manipulation of the mechanisms of learning and/or the conditions under which they occur'. The authors begin with a discussion of the role of writing in second language acquisition (SLA) followed by an overview of the debate regarding written corrective feedback. Although research on corrective feedback has been discussed extensively in many publications, it remains a major concern. The authors then discuss how different writing tasks or prompts may affect production and learning, and how language develops in specific instructional contexts. They highlight four studies that examined written language in a variety of instructional contexts including secondary English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes in a Dutch high school, an intensive British English for Academic Purposes (EAP) program, a Japanese EFL class, and a fourth-grade science class in the US.
