He has been a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Second Language Writing and a dozen other scholarly and professional journals,[2] including Language Learning, which he edited in the 1990s and for which he was its executive director until 2015.

He was also a member of the project, Encouraging The Culture Of Evaluation Among Professionals (ECEP).

He adopted Goal Theory from educational psychology to study second language writing development.

His main claim was that goals can emerge in three different ways: dilemma, intention, or outcome.

He also claimed that goals play an important role in the development of second language writing.