II Method
1 Participants
Participants in this study were 20 non-native intermediate-level students in an English language institute in the southern USA during the fall semester of 2006. They were recruited from two sections of an intermediate-level composition course, and had been taking other intermediate-level English courses for the previous three months. They represented a variety of first language backgrounds, including Korean, Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish, and Japanese. They ranged in age from 18 to 29, with the majority in their early twenties.
Participants were placed in the intermediate-level composition course by the institute at the beginning of the semester based on a combination of their scores on TOEFL (Test of English Foreign Language), ELPE (English Language Proficiency Exam administered by the University), two in-house assessments consisting of an interview with the director of the institute, and a composition test (K. Clark, personal communication, November 2006).
2