Essay writing is regarded as a necessity at schools in the western world, but students in Taiwan are seldom required to write extensively. Any student in Taiwan   wishing to study abroad needs to write the Test of Written English (TWE). This writing   test is particularly challenging partly because the essay questions in this test call for   argumentative writing which is a common form at a college or university in North   America. In addition, the Taiwan EFL students seem to have difficulty writing an "expected" essay within the time constraint of 30 minutes, because of cross-cultural   factors in terms of understanding what an essay should look like.  

A  brief survey of TWE writing prompts reveals, from the researcher'sperspective, a surprisingly small number of patterns in argumentative writing. The   purpose of this project is to present some common features of TWE, thereby providing   the EFL learners in Taiwan with the opportunity of "learning the ropes" and "getting   the hang of" essay writing.  

This is a web-based instructional project. There are two instructional options: one is topical structure analysis (TSA); the other is the text structure of argumentative   essay. The instructional materials (a reference set) of TOEFL's TWE essays are   analyzed based on three progressions (parallel progression, sequential progression,   and extended parallel progress) in Liisa Lautamatti's (1978) Topical Structure   Analysis (TSA), and Beverly Derewianka's (1990) text organization in Argumentation   Essay format. This project is designed around one particular type of argumentative   essay, and is decidedly instructional in orientation, employing a computer-based   instruction, aiming at essay writing, with the focus on enhancing EFL students'   argumentative essay writing in TOEFL's TWE. This interactive instructional unit is   intended and designed to prepare students in Taiwan for TWE.  

The web site has been tried by 119 students and the results of a questionnaire about their experiences of the site are also included. It was found that 106 of students   improved their English composition ability.