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The current literature on second language pedagogy promotes a return to some form-focused instruction where collaborative tasks are encouraged.  This study reports on the impact of form-focused instruction and peer revision (text-editing collaborative task)on subjects’ final performance in second language writing in two rhetorical modes of narrationand exposition produced by 60 junior and senior students of English divided equally into the controlled and experimental groups. The results confirmed that form-focused instruction has a better impact on simple than complex grammatical elements. The study also confirmed the significant effect of the form-focused instruction on the inter-lingual errors, and it revealed some positive effects of collaborative task especially on more proficient learners. The findings also disclosed that different processes are involved in editing as well as reconstructing expository and narrative genres. The fact that writing narrative texts was more demanding than the exposition for the learners implies the complexity of this genre in terms of cognitive processing and linguistic presentation, hence a more involvement of writing teachers on this genre is recommended. 

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The ever-increasing application of computer and internet mandates a longer domain for computer-mediated-communication (CMC). Internet chat as a principal feature of CMC has attracted tremendous attention among the youths in recent years.  Thus, this study has focused on the written chats of 100 Iranian university students majoring in different disciplines. We analyzed 400 chat samples (composed of 4000 moves) in terms of opening and continuing speech functions based on Eggins and Slade’s (1997) model of casual conversation. We also examined humor and paralinguistic features based on taxonomies of Huffaker and Calvert (2005) and Nastri, Peña, and Hancock (2006). Among the various types of speech functions, nine opening speech functions, seven continuing speech functions and four humor and paralinguistic features were investigated. The analysis of the data shows that the salient opening speech function has been ‘statement: opinion’ which provides attitudinal and evaluative information. Additionally, the outstanding types of continuing speech functions are ‘prolong: extend’, ‘prolong: enhance’, and ‘append: elaborate’. Therefore, it is in order for the participants to offer additional or contrasting information to the previous move or qualify it by giving details of time, place, condition, etc. Moreover, in case of interruption by the other chatter, the participants mostly tend to clarify, exemplify or reiterate the previous move. Furthermore, the participants produced irony, as a humorous element, in a great volume which is indicative of their tendency toward being indirect during conversation. The subjects also used many paralinguistic features such as misspellings and repeated punctuations in order to express their emotions and attract their partners’ attention in the absence of verbal communication.