The Key to Second Language Writing Performance： The Relationship Between Lexical Competence and Writing

Vocabulary knowledge is an important component of the writing skill and it has many dimensions, such as size, depth, and productive, in interaction with writing skill. To evaluate this relation and determine which dimension is the most effective for second language writing quality, the present study was conducted. Turkish EFL （English as a Foreign Language） learners＇ lexical competence and writing abilities were examined through their vocabulary profiles and academic essays. The results of each vocabulary measure indicated that the participants had a limited vocabulary size, containing words mostly from 2,000 to 3,000 frequency bands and thus, the productive vocabulary knowledge of the participants mostly consisted of lk ＋ 2k words and the use of academic words in their essays was very low. The results of the study revealed that the lexical competence covering the main components of vocabulary knowledge was a good predictor of the students＇ quality of writing performance.

A Critical Review of Yang & Gao(2013)

This article reviews and reflects on Yang & Gao's research on beliefs and practices of Chinese university teachers in EFL writing instruction.After a summary of the major arguments, the author offers a detailed and balanced critique on Yang&Gao's research. In the end, the author comes to a conclusion based on her critique and proposes several implications it has on L2 writing instruction.

Appraisal of the Production-Oriented Approach： An Introduction

The production-oriented approach （POA） has been developed over a decade. It is driven by the need to improve English classroom instruction for university students in China （Wen, 2016）. It is also motivated by the aspiration to enhance the quality of foreign language education in other similar pedagogical contexts outside China. A volume of research has been done by Wen Qiufang and her research team, to formulate the theory of POA and to test its effectiveness in classroom pedagogy （e.g. Wen, 2016, 2015; Yang, 2015; Zhang, 2015）. At the moment, the POA is still at an early stage of theory building and almost all empirical research is done in the Chinese context. In order to improve the quality of this theory and to make it intelligible to the international academic community, a one-day symposium was held in Beijing Foreign Studies University on May 15, 2017. The symposium was entitled ＇The first international forum on innovative foreign language education in China： Appraisal of the POA＇. In the forum, leading experts in applied linguistics were invited to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the POA and the directions for its future development. The symposium was the first attempt for the POA research team to discuss its latest work with international scholars. This Viewpoint section collects the responses of four experts who participated in the symposium, listed in alphabetical order. The collection of articles covers three topics related to the POA： its pedagogical application, its use for teacher training, and its research. Alister Cumming is Professor Emeritus and the former Head of the Centre for Educational Research on Languages and Literacies, University of Toronto, Canada. His article focuses primarily on POA research as an exemplary case of design-based research. Rod Ellis is Research Professor in the School of Education at Curtin University, Australia. He discusses POA in terms of pedagogy, teacher training and research, with both critiques and constructive suggestions. Paul Kei Matsuda is Professor of English and Director of Second Language Writing at Arizona State University, the writed states. He responds to POA from the perspective of an expert researcher and teacher of L2 writing. Charlene Polio is Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Linguistics ＆ Germanic, Slavic, Asian ＆ African Languages atMichigan State University, the writed states. She conceptualises POA as a useful method to address some issues in pre-service teacher development. Overall, the articles in this section are insightful and reader-friendly. They are not only useful for the development of POA in particular, but may also be valuable to a broad range of researchers as they touch upon pertaining issues, as well as emerging topics, in the field of applied linguistics. We therefore find it necessary to make them accessible to a wide readership.