This article examines how students use and perceive digital writing tools, including chat platforms and generative AI, within academic writing environments. It describes a qualitative study of 15 undergraduate students in guided focus group discussions. In a grounded theory analysis of focus group transcripts, the researchers explored undergraduates’ sense of copresence—their perception of support through both human interaction with both peers and instructors and AI technologies during their writing processes. Findings reveal that students’ trust in both peer feedback and AI assistance plays a crucial role in their writing, shaping their decisions about which tools to use and how they integrate human and AI feedback in the development and revisions of their writing. The study sheds light on students’ nuanced understanding of the affordances and limitations of multimodal chat platforms and generative AI technologies. We conclude by highlighting the need for pedagogical practices that support students’ choice of tools when collaborating in digital spaces. We suggest future research directions that will enable us to better understand how copresence and trust influence students’ writing in these contexts.

Providing effective written feedback to ESL students poses a challenging yet crucial task for language teachers. While numerous studies have delved into critical feedback, few have explored students' perceptions of praise in written feedback. To gauge students’ view of praise, we analyzed responses to two types: person praise (e.g., "You are a good writer") and performance praise (e.g., "You used the past tense correctly"). Language proficiency levels (high and low) and cultural backgrounds (Asian and Romance) were also considered. ESL students ( n = 100) were given feedback on an essay they wrote and surveyed about praise comments. In addition, three focus groups were conducted. Quantitative data indicated a preference for both praise types, while focus groups revealed a preference for performance over person praise. Lower proficiency students valued and considered praise to be more change-invoking than high-proficiency peers. Additionally, students from Romance cultures favored praise more than Asian cultures. Interaction effects highlighted nuances, such as high-proficiency Asian students perceiving praise as less kind, valuable, positive, and clear than their Romance counterparts. These findings offer insights for teachers and administrators to develop an informed praise philosophy and recognize which praise type best meets their students’ needs.

Using both a Bakhtinian and a collaborative writing framework, in this qualitative study, we sought to understand writing practices in one elementary school. Through observations in three classrooms and interviews with students, the study found that students had opportunities to engage in a variety of collaborative writing activities, including supportive contributions and co-constructing a text. When engaging in supportive contributions, students inspired, assisted, or shared their work with peers. In collaborations of a single text, students who had experiences writing with one another negotiated ideas and texts successfully. In pairs where students experienced conflict, there tended to be fewer collaborative moments, and students sought help from the teacher. The study demonstrates that students’ relationships with one another play a significant role in collaborative writing practices and highlights the important role of friendships in successful interactions.

This qualitative case study explores the experience of three first-year English language arts educators within a small community of practice designed to provide personal and professional support for beginning teachers. The participants engaged in a 6-week session where weekly meetings focused on participant experiences and English language arts pedagogy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this reflective article, a case study, we draw upon scholarship on a critical friendship (Schuck & Russell, 2005; Silva, 2003) that grew in 2020 as we worked to assist one another in creating NWP writing programs for teachers and youth. At the heart of our professional collaboration was our desire to maintain and cultivate community engagement (Deans, Roswell, & Wurr, 2010; Preece, 2017), while advancing racial literacies in digital spaces (Price-Dennis & Sealey-Ruiz, 2021) and as we worked with a framework for instructional equity (Muhammad, 2020). Weekly meetings led us to using Padlet for 189 hours of professional development, 9 programs with 511 youth, and 7 courses with 320 students. Padlet became a location for curation, especially as we worked to promote diverse, inclusive children’s and young adult texts as models for classroom teacher and student writers.

This qualitative study explores how writing is conceptualised by teachers within the context of the primary National Curriculum and statutory writing assessment in England. The 10 participating teachers were drawn from nine primary schools and were interviewed about writing and writing assessment in year 6. Ivanic’s discourses of writing were used as the basis of a thematic analysis framework, which focussed on teachers’ perspectives and opinions. Findings showed that reference to the creative and skills discourses were most dominant within the teachers’ viewpoints; however, they also showed alignment to other discourses. Many of the teachers’ views were at odds with the National Curriculum and statutory writing assessment and this is discussed in relation to the tensions and conflict this created in pedagogy, attitudes, and assessment.

This paper reconsiders the common use of mind maps as only a brainstorming tool that occurs before writing. The paper contemplates how mind mapping can be a useful pedagogical strategy throughout the writing process, not just at the beginning. The metacognitive benefits of mind mapping can support writers at all stages of their writing. Mind mapping can make their thinking overt and allow writers to make new connections throughout their revisions. The paper draws on an intrinsic case study (Stake, 2005) of sixteen first-year writing students who used mind maps at the beginning of their research papers and again as they grappled with feedback to re-design their drafts for submission. Students reported that, while the initial mind map had limited benefits on their writing, the second mind map acted as a vehicle for them to make connections between their draft, their feedback, and their next steps as writers. This second map offered a liminal space in which students could dwell with their feedback, make their thinking visible, and strategize how they could implement that feedback to make their writing stronger. The paper offers a new look at how teachers can use mind mapping to enhance students’ writing processes.

In view of the limited research attention so far given to the developing cognition of novice L2 writing teachers, this qualitative study examines the extent to which L2 writing teacher cognition can be enhanced by the experience of tutoring. By adopting the theory of experiential learning, the study considered the role that the experience of tutoring could play in the development of novice L2 writing teachers’ conceptualizations of learners’ needs and their view of themselves as developing L2 writing teachers. The results of this study point to the participants as having all made realizations that served as catalysts for continued growth after the original tutoring experiences. These findings indicate that the practice of tutoring changed their perceptions of teaching L2 writing by seeing clearly the benefits of dialogic interaction with L2 writers and also learning the value of holistically viewing the writer.

In response to increasing interest in Vygotskian sociocultural theory in second-language learning (Lantolf and Thorne, 2006; Swain, Kinnear, and Steinman, 2015) and the call for understanding language-learning processes in relation to contexts surrounding individuals (e.g., Polio and Williams, 2009; Ferris and Hedgcock, 2014), this study adopts a sociocultural approach – more specifically, an activity theory (Leont’ev, 1981) framework – to explore an undergraduate student’s approach to L2 writing in a preparatory writing course. Using a single case study design (Duff, 2014), I investigated how a student from China learned to write academic papers that met the academic norms in an English as a second language (ESL) writing class in an American university. Specifically, I analyzed how his writing activity aligned with his instructor’s proposed approach to a writing task. Through the analysis of course materials, the participant’s written work, observations, email communications, and interviews, I tracked how his agency (Bhowmik, 2016; Casanave, 2012; Lee, 2008; Saenkhum, 2016) as a writer developed over his first semester in the ESL program. Findings indicate that while the participant did not follow the operations assigned by the instructor, he acted strategically to accomplish selected parts of his writing assignments. His mediated actions were driven by his goals and motives that were understood from within his social and cultural environments, and interacted with each other in a dynamic and constructive manner. Overall, the study underscores the need for flexible approaches to writing instruction and the usefulness of employing activity theory as a framework in studying L2 writing processes.

While social work educators have explored strategies to improve literacy development among their students, many educators continue to strive for a better integration of effective reading and writing skills. This article presents the findings of a survey that used qualitative research methods to assess the outcomes of a doctorate in social work program that employed a specialist in composition. Doctorate in social work students reported on the skill of ‘close reading’ as it related to their own writing, practice, university teaching, and field supervision. Data analysis reveals that these students had not previously learned the close reading skills necessary for strong writing skills. This article extends support for a full integration of close reading as a way to improve writing, clinical mental health practice, and critical thinking skills.

The writing that older adults, retirees, and the elderly – what might be referred to as the aging stage of life (Conrad, 1992) – remains under-examined in writing studies. This research project explores the literate practices of five retirees who write on a regular basis in order to understand how they organize themselves and their lives for writing across lifeworlds. A theoretical framework from a lifespan perspective (Bazerman et al., 2017) serves as the departure point for a grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006; Saldana, 2009) analysis of artifacts that emerged from a series of retrospective interview protocols. These protocols were based on previous work in sponsors of literacy (Brandt, 2001) and chronotopic lamination (Prior and Shipka, 2003). Analysis of these interviews and documents reveals a core category of stabilizing that retirees engage in. Writers stabilize their work in a given moment to continue making sense of a chain of literate acts, which enables them to carry forward complex literate lives. These findings suggest that retirees write their way into new contexts shaped by their pre-retirement histories. The manner in which these subjects went about this work suggests that context is an important and complicated concept when examined through a lifespan perspective.

This qualitative study examines academic support practices and students’ experiences and perspectives in a graduate nursing education program that has, for many years, emphasized research and writing by requiring aspiring nurse practitioners to pursue publication in peer-reviewed clinical research journals. In collaboration with faculty, practitioner researchers from the university’s postsecondary learning center developed and facilitated group workshops and provided students with individual consultations on research processes and manuscript development. The researchers wrote field notes and researcher memos, administered workshop evaluations, and interviewed seven participants to better understand students’ writer identities and whether writing for the discipline of nursing with the support of peers, faculty, and learning instructors led to any changes in both their individual and collective sense of disciplinary identity. More broadly, this study interrogated the role of a postsecondary learning center employing an academic literacies pedagogical approach (Lea and Street, 1998; Lillis and Scott, 2007) in working with faculty to support students’ writing for a specific discipline. Findings suggest that graduate nursing students felt anxiety and uncertainty about claiming disciplinary expertise and competence as writers. This affective experience made it difficult for students to align their understandings of nursing as a discipline, rooted in their field experiences as professionals, with a more academic conceptualization that they believed to be represented by the research and writing practices required for the assignment. By engaging with the learning center as a third space (Gutiérrez, 2008), the students explored these challenges and experimented with writing practices, directions for their research, and the conceptualization of their profession as they modified their understanding of what was possible for scholarly writing and research in nursing as a discipline and what they could contribute individually as emerging scholars. This study has implications for teaching academic writing practices in nursing contexts, as well as other academic disciplines and for forming generative collaborations between postsecondary learning centers and subject experts.

The term resistance has been an evolving concept in literacy and composition studies. While much has been studied in terms of student resistance in high schools, first-year composition classrooms, and in university writing centers, little is known about how resistance occurs in afterschool tutoring programs between volunteer writing tutors and their tutees. Using an ethnographic case study approach, this paper examines how three adult volunteer writing tutors made sense of resistance in working with their adolescent tutees in an urban tutoring program. The findings showed that tutor attitudes, values, and reactions shaped their experience of resistance in a variety of ways including a) misreading tutee signals of engagement; b) masking expectations of cultural and linguistic compliance within a discourse of resistance; and c) embracing resistance as a bridge to tutor growth. The author uses these findings to inform current conceptions of student resistance and compliance and to provide implication for volunteer tutor training.

Two and a half million adolescent girls have experienced some form of sexual violence in India; significantly, they make up a quarter of all rape cases, despite being a small percentage of the population (Raj and McDougal, 2014). Parents and girls’ fears about safety contributes to their high dropout rates within Indian education, but thus far there has been little research on this topic. Focusing on underprivileged adolescent girls at an afterschool site in Mumbai, India, this qualitative study investigates how within this landscape of sexual violence, writing serves as a medium to name, resist, and transform it. Specifically, we scrutinize the articulation of resistance which attempts to contest social norms, cultural conventions, and other forms of everyday hegemony. We examine data extracts from essays written by three adolescent girls participating in the afterschool program as part of a pilot study that took place in December 2016. The analysis of these extracts illuminates how the girls, through their writing, articulate their vulnerabilities about their own and others’ personal safety. Furthermore, it reveals how it is connected to their ability to access education. Moreover, it highlights the ways in which the girls resist parental and other socio-cultural pressures. Finally, the analysis sheds light on the complex and powerful ways in which the girls assert their independence, demand autonomy over their lives, and exercise agency. Ultimately, this investigation offers a path forward for Indian educators to reimagine girls’ education in light of girls’ safety issues, using writing as a space to articulate a literacy of resistance and hope.

In this paper, we investigated a model of academic development based upon a recurring residential academic writing retreat combining individual writing times, workshops, work-in-progress groups and one-on-one consultations with shared meals and informal gatherings in a natural environment. Using a case study research approach, we analysed data accumulated from seven annual residential writing retreats for education scholars. Participants included 39 academics, administrative staff, senior doctoral students and community partners from multiple institutions. We found evidence that the retreats enhanced participants’ knowledge of writing and publishing processes, advanced their academic careers, built scholarly capacity at their institutions and strengthened writing pedagogy. The data indicated that the presence of writing and writers at the residential academic writing retreats generated presents (i.e., gifts) for the participants. The presence of writing time, writing goals and writing activities in the company of other writers were key to the retreat pedagogy. Participants appreciated gifts of time and physical space and described giving and receiving peer feedback and emotional support as forms of gift exchange within the community. The resulting writing strategies, competencies and identities provided the gift of sustainability. The analysis confirmed that this ongoing, immersive, cross-institutional, cross-rank, institutionally funded model of academic development was effective and responsive to the needs of individual scholars.

Writing about environmental and sustainability issues has grown in popularity, especially in lower-division writing courses. Yet, for teachers and writing program administrators, what are the benefits and drawbacks in asking students to interact with place-based discourses? How does implementing an ecocomposition curriculum and sustainability topics in first-year composition affect students’ writing outcomes? This article discusses a two-year, case study at a comprehensive research university of an experimental course-design model involving 1,421 students and 63 teachers. Students engaged with the university’s sustainability theme in Composition I, as well as other courses. This article includes a description of Composition I’s framework and its assessment practices, and raters measure the writing outcomes for the class’s major essay, a literature review. Overall, teachers utilizing ecocomposition practices presented students with a cohesive, relevant curriculum and assisted them in developing and organizing the literature review; writing and thinking about diverse spaces related to their experiences, majors, and futures; and forging and documenting campus and local ties, including through community-based learning. The study’s results have implications for teaching ecocomposition and sustainability themes in first-year composition.

In response to current trends in Composition as well as the challenges of langauging and pedagogy in the global reality, this qualitative classroom-based action research study was designed to gain a better understanding of strategies, practices, and competences exhibited by students of various linguistic and cultural backgrounds when composing, reading, and responding to the narratives of their peers in a multi- lingual composition class. In a focused presentation of a single student case study, the manuscript conceptualizes ‘effective’ writing in global contexts, outlines successful strategies to gain the ‘buy-in’ from culturally and linguistically diverse audiences when composing transnationally and translingually. The study concludes by suggesting ways and strategies to transform ‘traditional’ peer response assignments to engage global rhetorics and transnational frameworks for the sake of all students and their success communicating across languages, rhetorics, borders, and modes.

At the comprehensive research university described in this study, some students taking a required, first-semester, composition course in the fall make great progress in their ability to draft and revise the curriculum’s major essays. Yet, they still fail the class. Many of these students are on their way to becoming practiced writers but require additional assistance to move beyond a definition of revision consisting solely of editing and proofreading strategies. To support such students, I created a voluntary, spring-semester, Composition I course foregrounding both lower- and higher-order revision practices in which students could continue to work on previous assignment drafts from fall. In a three-year, mixed methods, case study involving an experimental course-design model, students enrolling in a Composition I class focused on revision strategies demonstrated both positive revision-related drafting and course outcomes, according to findings. This article includes a description of the course’s framework and its assessment practices. The results of this study have implications for teaching revision in first-year composition.

This paper highlights the importance, when researching writing across the lifespan, of addressing a range of aspects of social context which change over time, particularly focusing on tools, values, relationships and identities. It illustrates this argument by drawing on a range of empirical studies exploring different aspects of writing in university settings, working with adults at a range of levels from Masters through doctoral study to academics' working lives, and reflects on the implications of this research for lifespan writing studies more generally. The projects drawn on include a study of multimodal feedback on postgraduate student writing and students' responses to this; a detailed study of academics' writing practices in the context of structural changes in Higher Education; and an interview study with PhD students participating in writing retreats, reflecting on their writing experiences. Drawing on findings from this work, we argue that shifts in material, social and institutional dimensions of context have a significant impact on what individuals write and on the writing practices that they develop. We particularly highlight the role of changing tools for writing and values around writing, and the importance of transformations in identity and relationships. We argue that the tradition of literacy studies research, drawn on by all the projects described in this paper, provides the theoretical and methodological resources to approach such aspects of academic writing development across the lifespan, by adopting a holistic perspective on writing which locates writing as situated practice and thereby provides insight into these social and contextual influences.

This exploratory case study investigated an experienced second language writing instructor's written feedback practice in an ESL freshman composition class. The purpose of the research was to explore and examine contextual factors and their impact on instructor written feedback practices in order to provide situated descriptions of relationships between written feedback practices and contextual factors. Data were collected from one experienced ESL writing instructor and one ESL writer in a variety of forms: surveys, interviews, a stimulated-recall task, classroom and instructor-student conference observations, instructional materials, and student written product. The study found that the instructor's decision-making in selecting specific feedback forms was guided by a number of written feedback practice principals in conjunction with other contextual factors such as the instructorperceived level of students' writing proficiency, the availability of writing conference, the nature of writing issues, students' writing performance in the previous writing assignments, lesson history, and knowledge about effective feedback practice. The study suggests L2 writing instructors' written feedback decisions are the product of different combinations of multiple-contextual factors and the nature of the written feedback practice principles is a task-specific manifestation of teacher cognition specifically configured for written feedback practice.

This paper aims to investigate how novice EFL writers develop their genre awareness and rhetorical flexibility in a genre-based writing course that incorporates two distinct types of genres (essay and journal writing) for practice simultaneously. Three sets of qualitative and quantitative data were collected: surveys, reflection papers from 40 students, and semi-structured interviews with eight students. Descriptive statistical analysis provides an overview on students' perceptions on the two types of genres and the distinct pedagogies. Qualitative data gathered from the in-depth interviews were used to understand how learners intermingle between two distinct writing pedagogies and what the perceived impact is on students' subsequent functional writing practice. In order to explore how students developed their genre awareness (cognitive) and rhetorical flexibility (metacognitive), we draw on Grabe and Kaplan's (1996) notion of ethnography of writing: (1) the purpose of a certain genre; (2) the criteria for writing; (3) audience; and (4) their goals/expectations. The findings show that most learners attached different benefits to these two genre-based instructions, enabling them to recontextualize their writing performance when necessary. Pedagogically, this study provides alternative pedagogies to the most commonly seen dilemma for L2 writing instruction. Theoretically, this research demonstrates how contested pedagogies can be complementary to enhance our understanding of to what extent cross-genre awareness can be raised and transformed through distinct genre-based practices.

This qualitative study investigates peer feedback among adolescent English and Spanish learners writing together in an extracurricular bilingual literacy program. Data sources include audio recordings, writing revision history on Google documents and interviews. This study reveals the complexity of peer interaction, feedback processes, and the potential for mutual growth. Oriented by Speech Act Theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969) and informed by the concept of languaging (Mercer, 2004; Swain, 2006), this study conceptualizes peer feedback as acts that students take to mediate the thinking, writing, and communication processes while working together on a language autobiography. Findings show that students strategically used dynamic feedback acts mediating the writing and revising process, such as 'Ask questions', 'Give information', 'Make corrections'. We also found the use of translanguaging in the feedback acts expanded opportunities for learning as linguistically diverse peers were engaged in metalinguistic discussions, text co-construction, and language experiments. This study contributes to a new understanding of peer feedback which leverages the cultural and linguistic resources students bring to school.

This case study uses an action research approach to the implementation of a systematic bilingual writing assessment that K-5 teachers administered over a two-year period in an inner-city public school with a two-way bilingual English-Spanish program. The study reflects the importance of developing an awareness of academic discourse over time, as teachers participated in a writing assessment project that included the administration of writing prompts and corresponding analysis of student writing through use of grade level rubrics, three times each year. The instrument was developed by the first author, a participant-observer who in the role of writing coordinator also led professional development workshops, and provided mentorship to teacher participants. The second researcher is an outside expert on bilingual writing who participated in the retrospective interview stage of the study. This paper will focus on insights from semi-structured interviews with teachers that reveal their current views on aspects of the writing assessment project. The questions prompted teachers to review the rubrics and associated assessment materials to garner insights about their participation in the assessment project. Thematic analysis of the interviews indicates that teachers enhanced their awareness of discourse structure and the writing process, as they incorporated the rubrics for several pedagogical purposes: more targeted whole group instruction, strategic and flexible grouping of students, and more deliberate selection of topics to support writers during individual conferences. Furthermore, teachers appreciated the ability to systematically track writing growth across the academic year, an option that had formerly been used solely for documentation of reading development in this setting. The influence of standards in providing goals for instructional outcomes is also discussed. Changes in the form of assessment are unlikely to enhance equity unless we change the ways in which assessments are used: from sorting mechanisms to diagnostic supports; from external monitors of performance to locally generated tools for inquiring deeply into teaching and learning, (Darling- Hammond, 1994: 7)

There has been little scholarly work looking at the use of creative writing pedagogy within non-creative writing courses. However, ‘Outside the box: Incorporating high stakes creative writing assignments into non-major literature courses, a case study’ demonstrates promising findings when incorporating high stakes creative writing assignments into the curriculum for core English literature courses. This article gives an overview of the Progressive history of ‘creative’ writing in the academy and then outlines contemporary sources that reference the burgeoning field of Creative Writing Studies and how creative writing pedagogy may be used more broadly in classrooms in a variety of disciplines. Then the case study details the assignments and experience of teaching a high stakes creative assignment in a non-major literature course at an undergraduate liberal arts institution. Using 25 representative student responses from among 50 total students over multiple semesters, the article concludes by asserting the findings that the inclusion of a high stakes creative assignment – in this case an original short story that is workshopped by peers and then revised – results in students who note increased confidence and creativity, and who state making connections between the relevance of writing instruction and workshopping to their lives outside of the classroom. While further, more formalized study would be beneficial on this topic, this study provides a useful perspective not just to teachers within the English department but also has ramifications for interdisciplinary scholarship.

Safaliba is an understudied indigenous language. Approximately 7–9,000 Ghanaians speak it in a country with a population of about 26.3 million. It is one of an estimated 73 indigenous Ghanaian languages, none of which have a majority of first language speakers. Safaliba speakers are for the most part subsistence farmers, while a minority are teachers, shopkeepers, tradespeople, and craftspeople who often farm too. The purpose of this essay is to share an encapsulated history of literacy of this proud and strong people, as well as document a Safaliba activist’s resistance to hegemonic discourses in Ghanaian language policy. It is a captivating story because of its intergenerational activism, quiet resistance to government materials, and Safaliba materials development from talk to text. The paper frames Safaliba activism as an indigenous people’s late modern resistance to global pressures that are causing languages to disappear at an unprecedented rate. Data are from a larger linguistic ethnography.

From the perspective of sociocultural theories, individual writing conferences between a teacher and a student offer an optimal dialogical framework for negotiating and adjusting oral corrective feedback (CF) to L2 students’ developmental levels with the aim of enhancing students’ ability to self-correct. While some empirical findings support the use of negotiated CF, little research has examined the extent to which teachers negotiate CF with their students or the way they change their CF strategies in naturalistic writing conferences, especially in the Chinese EFL context. The current case study used and adapted regulatory scales for CF developed by Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994) and by Erlam, Ellis, and Batstone (2013), to analyse teacher talk addressing linguistic errors in two writing conferences at a Chinese university. The two teachers were found to use very different approaches to providing CF. One teacher often began with implicit CF and gradually tailored her subsequent CF after eliciting the student’s responses. Contrastingly, the other teacher often diagnosed errors and supplied correction without inviting input from the student. The findings suggested that teachers’ beliefs about feedback, their goals of having writing conferences, availability of time resources, and the curriculum focus could impact their choice to negotiate CF with students.

A series of focus groups was conducted to obtain and compare attitudes held by undergraduate university students and educators about the nature of academic writing. Analysis of comments found misalignment of assumptions about the linguistic demands on students. Such misalignments were evident not only between groups but also within each population. A follow-up study involved two students recording impressions in journals about their own awareness of language use and demands, to trace any metalinguistic gains from participating in the focus groups. Data from this qualitative study are discussed in terms of the benefits of metalinguistic awareness and the need to uncover assumptions about what academic writing is in order to yield more informed teaching and deeper learning.

This introductory review article for this special issue sets out a range of issues in play as far as English for Academic Purposes (EAP) writing is concerned, but with a special emphasis on English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) (as opposed to English for General Academic Purposes (EGAP)). Following the introduction, the article begins by outlining the different types of EAP and presenting the pros and cons of ESAP and EGAP for writing. It then goes on to review work in a range of areas of relevance to ESAP writing. These areas are register and discourse analysis; genre analysis; corpus analysis; ethnography; contrastive rhetoric; classroom methodology; critical approaches; and assessment. The article concludes by arguing that whichever model of writing is chosen (EGAP or ESAP), or if a hybrid model is the choice, if at all possible, students need to be exposed to the understandings, language and communicative activities of their target disciplines, with students themselves also contributing to this enterprise.

Information management of discourse – the ability of a writer to use linguistic forms to organize and present information in a written text – is a key component of second language (L2) ability models in the language assessment literature (e.g., Canale & Swain, 1980; Weigle, 2002), but Purpura’s (2004) language ability model developed specifically for assessment purposes is the only one that considers it to be part of the ability to use grammar accurately and meaningfully when producing a text in an L2. The current study investigated whether L2 academic writing teachers consider information management of discourse as an assessment criterion when assessing grammar in L2 academic texts. Fourteen students in an academic English as a second language writing course at an English-medium university in Canada and their teacher participated in this case study. Students’ essay exam scripts were collected, and the Theme-Rheme progression (TRP) patterns and links (Daneš, 1974) as well as the distribution of new and given information (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004) in these essays were analyzed. Pearson correlation coefficients between the teacher-assigned grammar grade and the results from the TRP and information distribution analyses were calculated. The findings indicate that information management of discourse indeed forms part of the assessment criteria for grammar in academic writing for the teacher in this study. The implications of this finding for L2 writing pedagogy are discussed.

This study examined the impact of using a multiliteracies pedagogy and the social networking site (SNS), Ning, to help 6th grade English language learners (ELLs) develop their writer identities, with the purpose of increasing the students’ confidence, sense of self, and language and literacy skills. To this end, we were interested in whether and how the development of a writer identity and an increase in social presence on the Ning would translate into face-to-face connections in the physical classroom and an induction into the academic learning community – a space in which the students may have previously felt intimidated. In doing this, we employed a qualitative case study analysis to investigate the experiences of two ELLs at an elementary school in Toronto, Canada. Our study found that incorporating multimodal tools and an SNS allowed the students to more freely express themselves; to share their work and their personalities with peers, which made the writing assignments more meaningful and engaging; and provided a platform for students to negotiate their values and beliefs. Ultimately, the increased interactions with peers online and the development of this new English-language literate identity translated into the development of students’ individual voices, a sense of ownership of English, and an increased social presence in the classroom.

Studies of peer review in ESL classes typically focus on student attitudes and experiences. In contrast, teachers’ perceptions of and experiences with peer review have not been the focus of much scholarly attention. This case study explored one experienced teacher’s perspectives on peer review sessions in ESL classes. The study was conducted in the English language institute at a large urban university in the southeastern United States between Fall 2009 and Summer 2010. Shelley, the focal ESL instructor, was selected purposefully for her extensive use of peer review sessions in academic reading and writing classes. Classroom observations and interviews were subsequently analyzed using direct interpretation method (Creswell, 2007). The findings of the study shed light on the process of peer review sessions and their advantages and disadvantages from an experienced teacher’s point of view. Triangulation of the data, thick description of the context and procedures, a detailed discussion of the results, and the researchers’ reflexivity contribute to the reliability and validity of the findings. With its focus on the teacher’s perspective and experiences, the findings of this study may inform educators about the process of peer review and its pros and cons in ESL classes.

Doctoral students who seek to become part of what Geertz called “intellectual villages” (Geertz 1983: 157) must acculturate themselves into the ways of being, knowing, and especially writing in an academic discourse community. In this autobiographical case study, I use the academic writing I produced as a doctoral student to explore the process of developing an academic identity. I analyzed my writing for the absence or presence of the following rhetorical strategies: referencing conventions, use or avoidance of the scholarly I, and use of questions in the text. This critical examination of my writing illustrates the ways in which I experimented with my emerging academic identity as I struggled to begin participating meaningfully in the ongoing conversation within the discourse community I sought to join.

In this article, I extend the academic conversation about writing and identity by investigating the experiences of one adult student negotiating the transition between professional and academic communities and identities. Drawing on a framework articulated by Ivanic (1998), I examine the interaction between the writer’s autobiographical self, the socially available possibilities for self-hood, and the discoursal self the student constructs in a single instance of academic writing. I argue that the primary writerly identity this student constructs in his text is a workplace or professional identity and show how this identity is not entirely coherent but reflects the process of identity transition the student was facing on the job at the time. I use this case study to draw attention to the negotiations some adult students pursuing postsecondary study make, especially those with well-established workplace identities, as they face the challenge of composing new identities in academic settings. I further suggest that the challenge of identity negotiation is one faced by all writers, not just adults, and that this is a challenge we must account for in our teaching and research.

Writing teachers are at the forefront in helping newcomers become members of the academic discourse community as writers of essays, reports, and dissertations. Newcomers may be native English-speaking, nontraditional students with limited writing skills or multilingual learners whose primary language is not English. The gap between their limited rhetorical practices and the norms of their professional disciplines concerns educational institutions seeking to facilitate the development of these students’ literacy skills. To lessen that gap and provide information on an underresearched population, this article reports on an exploratory case study of students at a Mexican university enrolled in a Chicano literature course taught in English. The data-based study adopts a situated literacy theoretical approach to learn about participants’ efforts to become successful multilingual writers. It is part of a larger ethnographic study of the rhetorical literacy practices of Mexican multilingual writers concerning the sociocultural context of writing instruction in the contemporary Mexican educational system. An understanding of students’ literacy practices in the local context can help researchers and teachers to better understand problems and issues regarding academic writing from participants’ perspectives.

As the number of pupils who are multilingual and multicultural continues to increase in the United States, finding ways to best support these learners’ writing has become a priority. This project explores the creation and use of third spaces that support writing in three diverse urban classroom contexts. Ethnographic case studies reveal the ways in which teachers created third spaces for multicultural and multilingual students’ voices to be heard (Bakhtin, 1986; Dyson, 2003). Findings suggest that co-constructing third spaces can contribute to a writing pedagogy that includes multilingual and multicultural student discourse(s) while expanding the social and practical purposes for writing. These findings have implications for teacher educators, researchers, and classroom teachers with regard to the power of co-constructed spaces where students’ lives and languages are used as the foundation for merging school and local networks.

This article focuses on student teachers of English in the Bachelor of Arts in Teaching English as a Second Language (BA TESL) program of the public state university of Oaxaca, Mexico. In Oaxaca, and Mexico at large, proficient English users are mainly from the upper socioeconomic classes. In general, the schools value Spanish and English to the exclusion of the prevailing Indigenous languages. Moreover, to be a legitimate English teacher, one is expected to look or act “American” or “gringo” and/or to have a “native-like” English accent. The Oaxacan student teachers are mainly from the lower or middle socioeconomic classes. They do not have “American” characteristics and lack a “native-like” English accent. Within this context is the present discussion situated. It demonstrates that the student teachers in two BA TESL classes utilize bilingual identity texts and dialogical ethnography as autobiographies and collages in order to co-create identities with which to assert their legitimacy as English teachers and multilingual speakers. The student teachers also validate their students’ multilingual identities, resist the “native speaker” versus “non-native speaker” dichotomy, confront the hegemony of Spanish over Indigenous languages, and attribute an international importance to their formation as English teachers. The bilingual identity texts and dialogic ethnography allow multilingual identity and intelligence to enter the TESL classroom and curriculum.

This article reports findings from an ethnographic action research study of Deaf and hearing parents and young children participating in a family American Sign Language (ASL) literacy program in Ontario, Canada. The study documents the context for parents’ and children’s learning of ASL in an environment where resources for supporting early ASL literacy have been scarce. Through semi-structured interviews and observations of six individual families or parent-child dyads, the study documents participants’ encounters with professionals who regulate Deaf children and their families’ access to ASL. At the same time, the setting of the ASL Parent-Child Mother Goose Program is presented as a Deaf cultural space and thereby a counter-discourse to medical discourses regarding Deaf identity and bilingualism. This space features the Deaf mother participants’ ASL literacy and numeracy practices and improvisations of ASL rhymes and stories to enhance their suitability for young children. The practices of the ASL Parent-Child Mother Goose Program leader also serve to define and support emergent ASL literacy. In addition, a Deaf cultural space inside a broader context of public services to young Deaf children provides a means for the hearing mother participants to facilitate critical inquiry of issues surrounding bilingualism, ASL, and a Deaf identity.

In this article, we describe an approach to teaching first-year composition that is built on a qualitative design for undergraduate research and writing. As writing instructors at a state teaching college, we see the need to move our students beyond the boundaries of expressivism, personal narrative, and argument and into the murkier, messier, and more critical territory of considering subjectivities, interpreting cultural texts and contexts, and, ultimately, coming to see the dynamic and dialogic nature of rhetorical situations and knowledge production. We have discovered that asking undergraduates to do field work as a way to enter the academic conversation allows them to shift from high school writing to college-level writing. Inviting them to delve into a primary research project of their own design grants them permission to construct their ownership, authority, and intellectual engagement of ideas. Case studies of the experiences of five student research writers illustrate the process through which, as ethnographers, students become actors in their own learning process.

This study employs ethnographic case study method to explore secondary English language learners’ experiences with content-area writing in a U.S. public school setting. Documentary evidence, interviews, and students’ written work comprise the data set. Data are interpreted through a sociocognitive theoretical lens to take into account contextual and individual cognitive factors that come into play in English language learners’ development of content-specific writing. Findings suggest that a combination of institutional factors (e.g. school program design, state regulations, and state assessment systems) in concert with teacher beliefs and expectations of English language learners impact the content-area writing instruction which English language learners receive. This study points to the need for continued investigation of state policies, school processes, and teacher beliefs and practices that may enhance the quality and breadth of writing English language learners experience as they move through secondary school.

Over the past few decades, researchers interested in composition and second-language (L2) writing have increasingly begun to examine issues related to intentional and unintentional plagiarism, factors influencing plagiarism such as culture and language proficiency, and L2 writers’ textual borrowing practices. However, less attention has been paid to the instructional issues surrounding plagiarism. This article aims to add to the research on pedagogy specific to writing from sources by reporting on a survey conducted with 113 writing instructors working at universities, colleges, and intensive English language institutes in the Western United States. These instructors evaluated existing resources for teaching how to avoid plagiarism and shared ideas about the types of instructional materials they use or would like to use. Additionally, the article examines a case of one writing instructor utilizing resources related to textual borrowing when teaching a unit on summarizing as part of an academic writing course for L2 writers, and explores the decisions made in the process of implementing various resources in the class. Based on the results of the survey and the case study, recommendations are made for writing instructors and materials developers, along with suggestions for future research.

Previous research has shown that late immersion education in Hong Kong is not achieving the dual curriculum goals of content and second language learning which a late immersion curriculum can expect. This article presents a case study of writing in four late English immersion classes in Hong Kong, two in Biology and two in History, examining whether and how some of the teaching and learning processes with respect to writing support content and language learning. The study analyzed 285 samples of student writing using a writing analysis framework that reflects features of both content and language learning. The writing analysis, along with contextual data from teacher and student interviews and a teacher questionnaire, indicate that students demonstrate little content and language learning in their writing. The data suggest that the writing pedagogy adopted may partly explain the unsatisfactory learning outcomes. A major reason for adoption of the pedagogy seems to lie in the teachers’ and students’ views of the role of copying and memorization in writing and in learning, views which are characteristic of the Chinese educational context. Implications for writing teacher education within an immersion curriculum where the immersion language is from a different educational culture are discussed. Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3