Culture in second language (L2) writing has been researched extensively, though mostly under the purview of contrastive rhetoric and focused on text and contrastive genre analysis (Connor, 1996, 2004, 2008; Kaplan, 2005). Research has also focused on problematizing culture in reference to L2 writing (Atkinson, 1999, 2003; Kubota, 1999). These foci indicate reader-instructor rather than student perspectives: how L2 writers themselves perceive cultural impacts on writing. This study undertakes to fill this gap, investigating L2 student perceptions of such impacts. Study participants (n = 36), students in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) writing course at a Canadian university, took part in semistructured interviews and reflective writing. Data analysis identified six broad categories of cultural factors affecting student writing: (1) organizational structure as a fixed method; (2) supporting and writing arguments; (3) creating a stronger voice in writing; (4) adjusting to a new academic culture; (5) understanding clarity in academic writing in English; and (6) developing content: quality versus quantity. Findings underscore student perceptions of a monolithic, essentialist view of culture in academic writing. This is an important consideration when designing a student-centred L2 writing pedagogy that addresses student needs. Based on the findings, the article further explores implications for L2 writing instruction.

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.

The recent focus on threshold concepts in writing studies indicates the field’s growing commitment to engaging writing-based threshold concepts in the daily work of teaching and learning to facilitate writing transfer. However, although there is growing evidence of robust scholarly work in this area, research on the pedagogical importance of these concepts to the writing development and tutoring of L2 students is still in its nascent stages. To address this gap, this paper first presents findings from a research study that aims to understand how writing centre tutors addressed the needs of L2 students in tutoring sessions and the extent to which threshold-oriented language appeared in the content of the conference summaries. After discussing the findings, the paper proposes a threshold concept-based framework for tutoring L2 writers involving two established concepts: ‘writers’ histories, processes, and identities vary’ and ‘writing is informed by prior experiences.’ In addition, a new model of the conference summary as a reflective tool to promote writing transfer is presented along with a discussion of emergent writing centre-oriented concepts that reimagine the role of the tutor as an ‘expert-outsider’ and the L2 student as ‘informed novice.’

Research conceptualization is challenging for doctoral and master’s writers, particularly multilingual students engaging in thesis writing or writing for publication. In doctoral and master’s student writing, research conceptualization appears in three genres: problem statements, research proposals and introduction sections or chapters. Swale’s (1990; Feak and Swales, 2011) CARS model is most often used to analyze conceptualization in these genres. While very useful as an analytical tool, the CARS model does not translate well to pedagogy. I argue that Merriam’s (2009) problem/purpose statement and questions (PPS&Q) format provides a flexible and accessible technique to make the process of research conceptualization visible and to help students focus their research throughout the writing process. Navigating problem formulation and gap spotting requires highly complex literacies and Merriam’s method allows students to begin simply and build complexity. While genre visibility provides a way for doctoral and master’s students to access high-level literacies demands, it can also be formulaic and constraining and needs to be taught with critical awareness.

Timed single-draft essays as summative assessment tasks have been argued to be inadequate for both teaching and assessing writing in the context of process writing. This is because single draft essays assess product rather than process. To address this concern, the authors developed, implemented, and evaluated two FL (foreign language) English writing courses that integrate various formative assessment activities for teaching writing. The course-embedded evaluation methodology included three techniques: pre-testing, collecting teacher-student conference reports, and administering a student opinion survey at the end of the semester. Pre-testing and collecting conference reports were both used as techniques for simultaneous teaching and inquiry into this teaching. The student opinion survey evaluated the course design grounded in the new teaching methodology. The findings of the study indicate that consistent use of formative assessment in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing class increases student confidence and motivation to develop their writing skills. Results demonstrate that academic (C1 level) and college (B2 level) writing courses that integrate formative assessment into teaching process writing can be a valuable addition to an array of FL (English) language courses offered by the departments of foreign languages at European universities.

Having rich and complex vocabulary is a crucial component that contributes to the quality of writing for academic purposes. However, use of academic vocabulary can be challenging for adolescent L2 writers who are developing their academic language proficiency. Thus, understanding lexical needs of adolescent L2 students in composing academic essays is pivotal in supporting this population in their endeavor to become proficient academic writers. This study investigates the lexical features of adolescent L2 students’ text-based analytical essays and analyzes the extent to which lexical density, lexical diversity, and lexical sophistication predict the quality of their writing. Computational tools Coh-Metrix and VocabProfiler were used to obtain quantitative measures of lexical density, diversity, and sophistication. The results of the study indicate that the essays (n = 70), on average, have (1) low lexical density, (2) more repetition of words indicating less diversity compared to grade-level estimates, and (3) a higher percentage of basic words and lower percentage of academic words. 44 % of the AWL words in the essays come from the source text and prompt. The results of multiple hierarchical regression indicate that the use of academic vocabulary is a predictor of writing quality. The study has important pedagogical implications for classroom practice at secondary school.

Located in Austin, TX, Latinitas describes itself as one of the only bilingual tech organizations in the U.S. and prides itself for creating the first digital magazine made for and by Latina youth. In 2002, Latinitas was developed as a project by a group of undergraduate students in a Latinos in Media course at the University of Texas at Austin.  Founders of Latinitas saw a need for more representation and stories by Latinas. Prior to the organization receiving its non-profit status, the organization ran as a student-led group. Since 2003, the organization has grown and adapted to the needs of the community and has provided an assortment of writing, leadership, tech, STEM, and college preparation workshops for Latina youth in middle school and high school. Through these workshops and the online magazine, “Latinas discover their voice and develop media skills while building a solid foundation for their future” (Donelly 2017). In addition to serving 3,000 girls annually through a variety of workshops, their online magazine continues to be a key tool for sharing multimedia content that represent the evolving digital landscape and what it means to be a Latina[1]. The work by the magazine’s editors and writers support and circulate the organizational identity[2] of Latinitas. In this article, we focus on how Latinitas, as a Latinx[3] organization, challenges the deficit perspective of Latina youth while trying to keep up with a changing digital landscape.

The present study evaluated the effects of a combined form of written corrective feedback (WCF) on English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ writing accuracy. The combined WCF consisted of unfocused error-code WCF and focused metalinguistic explanation. Different forms of WCF were administered to two groups of Japanese EFL students in two consecutive years, and the effects of the feedback were compared based on the number of grammatical errors that the students made before and after receiving feedback. The original version (single combined WCF) provided metalinguistic explanation only once for each of eight target grammatical forms, whereas the intensive version (repeated combined WCF) provided metalinguistic explanation repeatedly. The results showed that combined WCF facilitated the students’ accurate use of the target forms overall, and repeated combined WCF was more effective than single combined WCF, but its efficacy weakened over time. Repeated combined WCF had a positive effect on students’ accurate use of verb tense and the avoidance of informal usage; single combined WCF had a significant effect only on verb tense. Repeated combined WCF also served to reduce the total number of errors, including errors for which no metalinguistic explanation was given, implying that coded WCF had its own contribution to the students’ writing accuracy.

This reflection offers an example of how one Writing Center director decided to approach antiracism through practices of mindfulness. Rather than a “how-to guide,” it encourages practitioners to think about what would work best for their contexts and offers a couple flexible activities one could adapt for their center at any given time. On June 19, 2020, Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts observed Juneteenth for the very first time in its 100-year history. There was music, guest speakers, and about 300 virtual attendees who not only listened but also participated in challenging break-out discussions. Although I had only been hired as the Director of the Writing Center for less than a year at the time, I could tell it was an important historic moment for the Babson community, and it further cemented my commitment to ensuring that our Writing Center be an explicitly antiracist space on campus. Essentially, like many of us have felt over the course of 2020, it was another one of those “What can I do?” moments, and it felt incredibly urgent. With so much feeling out of my control and so much energy going towards immediate concerns over funding and safety, I turned to practices of mindfulness to ground the clouds of thought that were continually generating questions of what and how . I turned to breathing and writing, eventually making lists of the steps I could take: review the literature, talk to colleagues, survey my staff’s interest in pursuing this work with me, and reflect on my own position and motivations. For each task on the list, I broke it down into smaller steps I could take, realizing that, while the exigence was there, it didn’t have to happen in a day. That’s when it hit me: perhaps mindfulness could be the key. When hearing the word mindfulness, one might imagine a practice of “clearing your mind”; however, rather than pushing thoughts away, the goal of mindfulness is to be fully present—to be fully aware of one’s thoughts, feelings, and sensations of the body. This can be difficult, especially when experiencing difficult emotions, but our bodies are built with internal rhythms to help us relax and reduce spikes in cortisol (the stress hormone). Certainly, tools like guided meditation and movement can help when we cannot focus, but mindfulness offers something much simpler and accessible: slowing down and allowing space for your mind and body to connect, which could involve taking three intentional breaths or pausing for a few minutes to notice the sound outside your window. Mindfulness involves an intention and a goal to self-regulate—to honor one’s embodied thoughts and feelings before acting. Theories and practices of mindfulness complement many of the tenets of writing center work in important ways regarding student emotion (see Johnson, 2018; Kervin & Barrett, 2018), mentoring current tutors (see Concannon et al., 2020; Mack & Hupp, 2017), and training new tutors (see Emmelhainz, 2020; Featherstone, Barrett, & Chandler, 2019; Godbee, Ozias, & Tang, 2015). Although the scholarship cited here paints a picture of something relatively new, we understand that contemplative practices have been a part of human existence for millennia. In times of trouble, it is not uncommon for a person to deeply reflect on a situation whether through breathing, meditation, prayer, writing, or other modes of thought. Similarly, a review of the literature may suggest that attention paid to writing centers and antiracism is relatively new (see especially the International Writing Centers Association’s antiracism annotated bibliography prepared by Godbee, Olson, & the SIG Collective, 2014) though we’ve long known in this field that the same systems that have allowed writing centers to flourish are some of the very same systems that perpetuate oppression. As a POC, I have had to think about my own complacency in such systems and consider how I can do better. Can we have a “cathartic repudiation of white supremacy” at Babson (Coenen et al., 2019)? How do I embrace the “willingness to be disturbed” (Diab et. al, 2013)? What informs an explicitly antiracist center? Given this topic explicitly centers around bodies, and thoughts and emotions associated with bodies, a potential entrance into this conversation could start from within our own bodies. In their article “Reflections on/of Embodiment: Bringing Our Whole Selves to Class,” Trixie Smith et al. (2017) explain that embodiment scholarship “works to continually remind readers, writers, researchers, and pedagogues that bodies matter to the paradigms, perspectives, relations, and decisions one has in a given situation” (p. 46). Like with teaching—and perhaps even more given the interpersonal proximity and less hierarchical relationship—tutoring professionals cannot separate the mind from the body in this work. Since bodies feel and then act on those emotions, it is important to reiterate Micciche’s (2007) argument that bodies do emotions; emotions do not just happen. Moreover, Micciche (2002) reminds us that writing projects are “a training ground for emotional dispositions that coincide with gender, race, class, and other locations in the social structure” (p. 438). In essence, writing tutors are always engaging in an emotional space when collaborating with students, which has only furthered my thinking that perhaps mindfulness could be a way to honor our emotions and work together through both the joys and difficulties. As Christie I. Wenger (2020) writes in her chapter on mindfulness from The Things We Carry: Strategies for Recognizing and Negotiating Emotional Labor in Writing Program Administration , “Mindfulness helps develop resilience because it emphasizes agency; we practice mindfulness to cultivate resilience as a rhetorical choice and action in collective and communal networks” (p. 262). While I’m certainly not the first to do so, I do find an emphasis on embodiment and mindfulness to be a radical move for our writing center, which I view as a fruitful place for social justice work for reasons articulated by Laura Greenfield (2019) given the ways we are able to question ideas of power, negotiate identities and experiences, and have meaningful engagements wherein we recognize, particularly when working with multilingual students, that “we all stand in some kind of relationship to each other—indeed that our experiences are mutually constituted—but that our experiences differ because we are positioned differently within the systems of power in which we all operate (globally and locally)” (p. 123). That being said, I do think this is easier said than done and that we need more spaces that allow for students and administrators to start from within. In Integrating Mindfulness into Anti-Oppression Pedagogy: Social Justice in Higher Education , Beth Berila (2016) discusses the necessity for embodying knowledge. She writes, “One can be an expert on the sociopolitical factors that cause something to happen and still not know how it manifests deep in one’s body or why it produces certain responses in others” (p. 45). In order to undo systemic issues, we need both knowledge and presence; we need both body and mind. We can read articles from scholars like Romeo Garcia (2017) and Asao B. Inoue (2016); we can try to understand the “new racism” that scholars like Laura Greenfield and Karen Rowan (2011) have put forth for us; but how do we embody the work especially as non-BIPOCs? Could, as Berila suggests, we make room to excavate ourselves in order to begin to recognize the power dynamics that we benefit from or that sustain our oppression? I started developing a way to do just that—to help our students look inward, perhaps uncomfortably, at the self in relation to our larger goals and communities. This ongoing project draws from practices of mindfulness to engage tutors and students in more-holistic approaches to antiracism in the writing center. It’s based on the idea that shifting a culture takes time, and I share its goals here now—in the middle of it all—not to showcase the findings of such a project but to perhaps inspire those who, like I had been, just aren’t sure where to start (particularly of the mind that we already try to design writing centers to be some of the most welcoming, most inclusive spaces). What are some small, concrete steps we could take based on the contexts of our own centers given the constraints of a global pandemic? As we weren’t building an antiracist center from the ground up, my first step was to get a sense of how my writing consultants viewed race in the Writing Center. When creating the fall schedule, in addition to the typical questions I ask about preferences for hours and if they’d be interested in visiting first-year writing classrooms, I asked consultants to freewrite on a few questions relevant to Fall 2020. Here are the instructions and questions I gave: Please freewrite on the following questions for 2-3 minutes each. With freewriting, I want you to just jot down what comes to your mind—no need to worry about spelling, grammar, or getting it “perfect”; rather, I just want to get a sense of where your head is at before we start working together this fall. Please set a timer so that you don’t spend too much time on this! That being said, if you feel particularly compelled to keep writing, that is fine with me. The answers to the social question elicited some very thoughtful responses as one might imagine when thinking of their own thoughtful consultants, and, as suspected, there seemed to be a spectrum of students who were clearly interested in talking more and some who weren’t sure what to say. With Berila’s idea of embodying knowledge for social justice in mind, I planned to have consultants look inward by examining their own thoughts on race before moving our way to examining the larger forces at work within our institutional context. I had my first decision to make: do I fold this work into our regularly scheduled staff meetings, or should this be a separate series of workshops? As no one was studying abroad or otherwise taking time away from the Writing Center, I had already decided that having more small-group staff meetings for our much larger staff would be helpful in keeping a sense of community and giving everyone the space to speak, and I took my own advice to start small. When creating our small groups that would meet every other week to talk about tutoring, I asked for preferences on foci, which included antiracism, marketing, and online tutoring strategies. We had a core group of students who wanted to talk about antiracism and the Writing Center, and I figured we could co-construct ways to talk about race on a larger level with the whole staff eventually. Inspired by the article “Talking Justice: The Role of Antiracism in the Writing Center” (Coenen et al., 2019), I recreated a version of an activity from the antiracist workshop the authors described. I asked my consultants to freewrite on when they first became aware of race as a concept. After the time was up, I then asked that everyone turn their writing into a six-word story (or thereabouts) that we would share anonymously. In the workshop described by Coenen et. al (2019), participants wrote their six-word stories anonymously on sticky notes, which were stuck along the walls of the room; participants then walked around the room and responded to the stories, again anonymously with sticky notes, before having a larger conversation. Given our online environment, I used Pinup , a free online sticky note generator that allowed participants to be anonymous . Each participant typed their story onto their own individual sticky note. Then I let them comment on each other’s posts by simply typing below the original story. With permission, here are some of the stories we shared: Again, imagining your own consultants, you might have a sense of how compassionate they were with one another’s words and how much thought these short, gentle excavations could reveal when we started thinking about them more deeply. While my intention was to simply talk about what we noticed overall, some students took ownership over their stories—“Okay, that one was mine”—and generously answered questions. As my main goal for this project is to start by meeting consultants where they are in terms of their discomfort with looking inward and gently excavating to better understand the larger systems of oppression that most likely benefit the majority of our staff and students, my expected goal is for all individuals involved with the Writing Center to take one small step forward in being mindful of their current contexts. To meet this goal, we’ll continue integrating writing and discussion activities to investigate the role that race plays in writing and interpersonal communication. Although we do need staff meeting time to talk about tutoring, I have to prioritize these types of discussions to slowly shift the culture of students currently working there. The end goal is to gently excavate our embodied experiences surrounding social justice issues in order to challenge our own practices while potentially also implementing more structural shifts in our center. I see this happening on three levels to start—in our ongoing professional development (staff meetings) for current tutors, in our sessions with students, and in our training for new tutors—though I could see this being of interest to those beyond the center’s immediate reach. In addition to the steps outlined above for current consultants, for students coming in to work on writing assignments, another goal will be to see if a mindful turn inward to thinking of self (i.e. excavating on the fly) will complement their writing processes especially as we see an increase in assignments grounded in social justice. Based on what we learn from our consultants and students, we should eventually be in position to implement changes into the tutor-training practicum—a full semester, advanced course—thus developing an antiracist curriculum that comes from the ongoing experiences of those living and working within the context of our institution as opposed to assuming a one-size-fits-all approach. As a team, we will keep reading, writing, discussing, and excavating in order to develop the kind of center that continually looks in and mindfully builds out.

Informed by Bakhtin's theorization of voice as well as cross-disciplinary studies of scaling, the authors explore how a group of young filmmakers rendered one focal immigrant student's familial history by centering speakers addressing the topic of immigration from multiple levels, thereby connecting multiple social and spatiotemporal contexts in their multimodal storytelling to illustrate the costs of dehumanizing policies. In this case study, drawing from classroom observations, student work, and interviews with both students and teachers, the authors also highlight the importance of teacher agency in creating opportunities for refugee-background students to interactively engage in the language arts classroom. Drawing from interviews, observations, and analysis of student writing, the authors construct a detailed case study of how one student writer negotiated her stance toward the discourse of literary analysis based on her own writerly identity as a creative writer, illuminating the importance of critically attending to the ideological implications of teaching discipline-specific writing.

Student agency is an important construct for all students, especially those marginalized because of their linguistic, ethnic, racial, religious, or migratory identities. Refugee-background students may experience marginalization according to many and sometimes all of these factors; agency is thus critical to understanding their negotiation of schooling in general and literacy tasks in particular. While many studies have explored various dimensions of agency, we know little about how agency can be enacted and developed by minoritized students within instructional contexts. This qualitative case study addresses this gap by asking: How do two adolescent refugee-background students display evidence of agency when engaging in literacy tasks? What teacher practices contribute to facilitating or inhibiting student agency? Data sources include classroom observations, student work samples, and interviews with students and teachers. Data analysis was conducted using a combined inductive/deductive approach. Findings reveal three agentive practices through which students engaged in literacy tasks: agentive resistance leading to disaffection, agentive resistance of imposed identities, and interactive negotiated engagement. While the first practice led to disengagement, the latter two led to opportunities for students to agentively reshape dehumanizing narratives of multilingual refugee-background students. Teacher agency in curriculum planning and implementation was essential in guiding students to either engage in or resist literacy tasks. Since the forced displacement that refugee-background and some immigrant students experience is contrary to the concept of self-determination, we argue that engaging them in an agentive manner has the potential to help students reclaim that sense of agency within classrooms and challenge deficit perceptions.

While the literature on the effect of comprehensive corrective feedback (CF) on \noverall accuracy is abundant, the body of work employing such a scope to explore error \ntreatability is not, especially when it comes to blended (cf. Ferris, 2010) design studies. \nConsequently, this investigation extends the analyses from the data set of Bonilla et al. \n(2018) to report on individual linguistic features. Specifically, to address crucial amenabilityrelated questions in need of perusal, the present blended design study explores the effect \nof two types of comprehensive CF (with direct correction and metalinguistic codes) on the \ntreatability of separate grammatical and non-grammatical structures. To this end, a group of \nEFL learners (N = 139) were required to do editing that involved error-correction, deferred \n(on a draft), and focused on language as well as to produce two independent essays (in an \nimmediate and a delayed posttest). Main results from logistic regression (to test the effect \nin revised essays) and mixed-effect models (to test the effect on independent essays) \nrender seven variables that can explain correctability differences: out of those, three have \nalso explained overall accuracy gains (cf. Bonilla et al., 2018), one has not been identified \nthus far, and three consolidate themselves as relevant factors under other conditions as \nwell. Theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed.

In this article, we share our experiences with the ongoing language and literacy practices and pedagogies of a bilingual, community-based writing center located in South Philadelphia's Italian Market. This writing center -one in a network of sites across Philadelphia and southern New Jersey -targeted bilingual, Latinx children from ages seven to eighteen. For the past four years, we have partnered with the center to create a translanguaging space. Here, we reflect on the experience of offering translanguaging writing workshops.

Language learning is context-dependent and requires learners to employ different sets of language skills to fulfill various tasks. Yet standardized English as a foreign language assessments tend to conceptualize English proficiency as a unidimensional construct. In order to distinguish English proficiency as separate context-driven constructs, I adopted a register-based approach to investigate academic English proficiency (i.e., specific set of language skills that support academic literacy) and general English proficiency (i.e., wide range of language skills undifferentiated by context that are measured by traditional assessments) as separate predictors of overall essay quality. In the study, students completed a general English proficiency assessment and an academic language proficiency assessment, and essays were coded for academic writing features at the lexical, syntactic, and discourse levels. Beyond the contribution of academic writing features and general English proficiency, academic English proficiency emerged as a significant contributor to essay quality. Findings suggest that academic English proficiency scores more precisely identified a subset of academic language skills that is relevant to essay writing. The article concludes by discussing implications for strategic writing instruction that articulates the key expectations of academic writing used in and beyond school contexts.

Drawing upon cognitive writing process theory and research, this study investigates the influence of language of writing, foreign language (FL) proficiency and gender on the revision processes of 77 undergraduate students studying at an English-medium college in Oman. Their first language (L1) was Arabic and their FL was English. The participants produced two argumentative authentic texts, one in L1 and one in FL. Their proficiency in English was assessed using the Oxford Placement Test (OPT). Participants’ revisions were recorded and analysed, according to the measures amount, location and type, via keystroke logging. The results showed that the vast majority of revisions in both languages were immediate, i.e. at the point of inscription, and focused on language rather than content. In addition, there was consistent evidence that participants made more revisions in the FL than they did in L1. For ‘total amount of revision’ and ‘immediate revisions’, there was a consistent interaction between gender and FL proficiency. The pattern of the interaction indicated two conflicting tendencies: (a) female participants appeared in general to be more motivated to make revisions in both languages than males, and (b) the less proficient they were in FL the more revisions they made. By contrast, the number of revisions made by the male participants did not depend on their FL proficiency. For ‘distant’, i.e. already written text, and ‘end’, i.e. after producing the first draft, revisions the amount of revision depended solely on the language of writing and gender. Furthermore, the results revealed that when writing in the FL, students with greater FL proficiency attended to content revision more than language revision. Findings are discussed in light of process-oriented writing research and implications for writing research and teaching are suggested.

This action research study began with classroom observations of a learning cycle informed English as a Foreign Language writing class (referred to as the first learning context) for the purposes of creating a general how-to guide for implementing a learning cycle within a writing course. The guide was then implemented in a writing skills class in a different educational context (referred to as the second learning context). A learning cycle was introduced to help learners become more accustomed to peer-editing, giving peer feedback, performing self-assessments and being more critical of their own work. It was found that the learning cycle functioned very differently in the second learning context and not entirely as intended, despite modifications that were made to account for differences between the two learning contexts. Teacher reflections revealed that differences between the reasons for using a learning cycle, assumptions about the similarities between learning contexts (the two courses and their content), decisions regarding changes to the second contexts’ learning materials, differences in student population and other unforeseen differences affected how the learning cycle operated. Critical interactions with sample performance writing texts, the provision or collaborative development of assessment criteria and feedback prompts for peer-editing, materials which support reflection on each task and at the end of the course, and additional class time spent on reflective discussion are all identified as key components of a learning cycle when used in an EFL writing class. The reflections also revealed that learning cycles can have utility when applied to contexts vastly different to those from where they were developed. Recommendations and suggested supporting resources for teachers interested in implementing learning cycles within their own contexts are provided.

This paper shows the development of an innovative teaching project conducted with students of two different degrees: Hispanic studies and modern languages and translation, at the University of Alcalá. This interdisciplinary experience sought to connect students taking their initial steps into poetry writing with translators approaching poetic translation for the first time. With this in mind, the creation of a bilingual collection of poems was proposed. Firstly, students in Hispanic studies would create some poems that could be translated, or rather recreated by the translation students. The main objectives of this interdisciplinary project were to promote creative writing, encourage group work, and increase students’ motivation – as well as to reinforce both the use of English as a foreign language and the practice of literary translation by crafting and subsequently translating original texts created by the students themselves. Moreover, the project is also beneficial for the enrichment and refinement of the education process in general and of poetry translation teaching practices in particular.

rian Street reminds us that literacy practices-the "broader cultural conception of particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing in cultural contexts" ("What's 'New'" 79) -are always social acts and have to be defined in relation to the historical, economic, and political contexts in which they take place. As such, literacy is "always rooted in a particular world-view" and always "contested in relation to power" . Our introduction to this understanding of literacy practices as graduate students in the early 1990s gave us confidence that our literacy experiences as a Latina and as an international student from Austria would be addressed and valued. However, more than 15 years later, we are not sure how our own literacy experiences are reflected in our academic environments, and whether our literacy practices, like the practices of so many of our students and faculty colleagues, are social acts that have continued to be "contested in relation to power. "

Writing classrooms focused on summative assessment are likely to lack formative feedback components that contribute to more motivated, confident, and autonomous writers, notes Icy Lee (2017), author of Classroom Writing Assessment and Feedback in L2 School Contexts. Ranging from $66.02 (Kindle) to $69.49– $102.24 (hardcopy), this 157-page work presents a strong case for school second-language (L2) writing education to shift away from traditional, score-based assessment. Though Lee targets L2 writing teachers and teacher trainers, she also appeals to researchers of L2 writing. Ten chapters provide thorough theoretical and research-based justification for a student-centered, learning-oriented feedback and assessment system and also provide practical suggestions for implementation. These chapters begin with the purpose, theory, and practice of L2 writing assessment and then explores various types of assessment and feedback, as well as the use of portfolios for assessment. The text concludes with chapters on technology in L2 writing assessment and classroom assessment literacy for L2 writing teachers. As a whole, the research-based guidance that Lee offers encourages writing teachers and educators to implement assessment, so it can “bring improvement to student learning and is supported by self-, peer-, and teacher-feedback” (p. 5).

Illegal Alphabets and Adult Biliteracy: Latino Migrants Crossing the Linguistic Border, Toms Mario Kalmar has composed a parable about literacy. A simple story used to demonstrate a lesson with "serious political implications" (xv), Kalmar's parable tells the tale of a group of "illegal" migrants in Southern Illinois in the eighties, working together to create an "illegal" alphabet to get by in their labor camp. After a series of violent events between the migrant and anglo populations in town, the migrants leverage their history of biliteracy-primarily among indigenous languages and Spanishto write English como de veras se oye, the way it really sounds. To do this, they break linguistic laws, creating bilingual glossaries that are governed by hybrid English/ Spanish sounds. The question of legality gives the parable its deep resonance: In order for their labor to have value, migrants must cross borders and challenge the laws that police national/linguistic geographies. In the book's terms of literacy learning, "the law itself poses a major part of the problem to be solved" (77). In other words, Illegal Alphabets and Adult Biliteracy is a story about migrants working at the borders of literacy in order to survive. That this story is true, and stems from three years of ethnographic fieldwork, makes it a book with lasting relevance for any literacy teacher or researcher working with communities whose creative, strategic, and serious writing work is marginalized or deemed somehow illegal.

This article analyzes two of the inevitable messes of translingual scholarship and teaching in composition studies: the criticism that arose from cross-disciplinary conflict with second language writing and the semantic ambiguities that result from the–ism in translingualism. The article reviews a variation in uptakes of translingualism, while arguing that specific strands—translingualism as a disposition and praxis—are the most fruitful in pushing English studies toward a more collective pursuit of language awareness and justice.

Writing center tutors strive to facilitate participation from student writers, particularly student writers who are not native speakers of the conference language. This study investigated one way that tutors might better understand student writers’ intent to contribute a substantial turn at talk and thus better understand when they might make way for student writers’ active participation. This study examined four minimal responses (MRs)— mmhm , uhhuh , yeah , and ok —at the beginning of student writers’ turns at talk. It differentiated between MRs that were free standing, constituting the entire turn and suggesting passive recipiency, and MRs that were not free standing, suggesting speakership incipiency. Importantly, the study differentiated between the MRs of native English speakers (NESs) and non-native English speakers (NNES). NNESs used free-standing mmhm far more than NESs, suggesting that the NNESs may have extended the use of mmhm to a greater array of discourse contexts. NNESs used free-standing yeah far more frequently than they did non-free-standing yeah , suggesting that yeah would not have been a reliable signal for tutors that NNESs would extend their turns at talk. This study also found that both NESs and NNESs used ok to signal not only consideration of but also agreement with tutors’ evaluations or acceptance of tutors’ advice about lower-order concerns. Understanding how MRs vary from passive recipiency to speakership incipiency might help tutors better understand student writers’ intent to contribute a substantial turn and thus indicate when tutors might wait for student writers’ participation.

This article examines the pedagogy of Dutch writing centres, comparing and contrasting it with the original interpretation of nondirective coaching and the way that has developed since the 1970s. Based on recent literature and contacts with American colleagues, we have drawn the tentative conclusion that generally, Dutch writing coaching is more strictly nondirective than it currently seems to have become in US settings. We then evaluate this practice in the context of the internationalization of research universities that has taken flight over the past 20 years, leading to many programs now being taught through English, which is the native language neither of the vast majority of our students (whether they are Dutch or international students), nor of their teachers. This has given rise to a shift in the needs and questions being expressed in our writing centres and an effect on our thinking about writing centre pedagogy.

The prefix trans-surfaces frequently in the recent scholarship from the related fields of composition studies, applied linguistics, and writing center theory. With its emphasis on moving across/beyond, trans-evokes spatiality, liminality, collaboration, negotiation, flux, and destabilization. These concepts have become familiar in the scholarship on US writing centers that supports a transition from monolingual to multilingual paradigm and translingual approaches. Multiple meanings of traversing embedded in trans-acquire a new significance in the experience of founding and functioning in a transatlantic writing center in which all forms of communication occur in more than one language and cut across different cultures. This article draws attention to this less explored territory. I consider the transcultural disposition of a transatlantic writing center to facilitate translingual approaches that expose and transform power dynamics in ways that emphasize collaboration and negotiation. To this end, I analyze bilingual literacy practices in a Moscow writing center in its foundational stage.

This article describes how an unexpected observation by researchers studying writing support for nonnative speakers of English at German and Australian universities became the central insight of the work and resulted in the development of new literacy support measures. Only when the German researchers encountered Australian models of student literacy support did they realize that the German model of a writing center relied heavily on a US heritage while Australian models of student literacy support could be traced back to language and literacy support models from the United Kingdom. The central difference lay in the role that language was considered to have: while language skills were subsumed under writing in one model, writing skills were subsumed under the umbrella of academic language in another. Applying cultural anthropological approaches to the recognition of these two different perspectives allowed the German writing center

This case study of students enrolled in a composition course at a large public university examines multilingual students’ application of multimodal composition practices to writing assignments that emphasize delivery and circulation. Assignments in which students remediate or translate a text in one genre or medium into another are widely used to foster transfer of writing knowledge from classrooms to public discourse. Remixing may be especially useful for multilingual writers by allowing them to draw on translingual meaning-making strategies. However, such assignments must be framed in ways that make explicit the rhetorical implications of how remediated or translated texts are taken up and circulated within larger ecologies and suggest how uptake can be measured and assessed to be useful. This article draws on Rhetorical Genre Studies and Translingualism to address this issue in Multimodal Composition by outlining a pedagogical approach that emphasizes delivery and measuring uptake.

This essay describes writing and conversations that took place in my First Year Writing class at St. John’s University in Queens, New York. I analyze student responses to my invitation to consider more deeply—and wield more consciously—the language resources they bring into classrooms. I seek to understand the potential for their often deeply racialized assessment of their own language resources, and those of others, to enable them to build common cause across language communities and racial communities. In particular, I look at the role of Black language as a recurring trope in multilingual students’ writing about their experiences navigating the designation of “ESL” in school. I argue that the volatility of this trope—Black language serves in their work as a call-to-arms, stumbling block, source of strength, or taboo—poses a challenge to contemporary scholarship on language diversity. Ultimately, I center students’ invocations of Black language in the emerging discussion of translingual writing in composition studies, arguing that these students do the work Keith Gilyard has called for in connecting global and local US language struggles. This essay draws from a longer chapter in my book, Mapping Racial Literacies: College Students Write About Race and Segregation , in which I argue that student writing can contribute to and reshape contemporary understandings of how US and global citizens are thinking about race.

Most tutors are trained in a core writing centers belief: Student writers who talk about their writing are student writers who will achieve better learning outcomes. Our comparative study—one of few in writing center research—examined the points in conferences in which student writers talked the most. We examined the very long turns (VLTs) of eight native English speaking (NES) student writers and eight non-native English speaking (NNES) student writers across 16 writing center conferences. We found that NESs contributed more VLTs than NNESs and that more NES conferences contained VLTs. We also found that stating goals for the conference occurred in half of the NES conferences, specifically, in the opening stage, while no NNES conferences had stated opening goals. In the three NNES conferences that contained VLTs, two contained a statement of a sentence-level goal, a description of potential content for the paper, and a period of time spent reading aloud from the paper. Of the VLTs preceded by questions, pumping questions (questions that prod student responses) occurred most frequently. We discuss the role that student-writer motivation and familiarity with the typical conference script played in the results and some implications of this comparative study for tutor training.

Deidra Faye Jackson and Alice Johnston Myatt Reflection: ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors edited by Shanti Bruce and Ben Rafoth, 2004

Contributing to the literature on translingual pedagogies outside the US or Canada, this article discusses the design of a hybrid instructional format for advanced multilingual doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers offered by a bilingual writing center at a mid-sized university in Germany. Meant to prepare for future careers in academia and professional demands in different national, cultural, and linguistic environments, this format gives participants the opportunity to explore academic genres that tend to receive less attention in graduate education than journal articles, book chapters, or others needed to complete degree requirements. By the end of the course, participants will have a submission-ready portfolio including an academic CV, a job letter, a (sample) letter of recommendation, and teaching and diversity statements. To achieve these specific outcomes and to develop the advanced professional academic writing competencies needed in multicultural and multilingual contexts, participants will have to draw on their diverse linguistic backgrounds and prior experiences in these kinds of settings. Informed also by other recent theoretical and empirical work on translingualism and translingual pedagogies in global contexts, this format adopts the use of translation proposed by Horner (2017) to move beyond the monolingual and, to a lesser extent, the multilingual paradigms. While it has yet to be tested empirically, the design represents an alternative to more traditional (and usually monolingual) modes of instruction. This article concludes by discussing limitations and implications of the approach to translingual pedagogies taken here.

Out of 31,060 students currently enrolled at the University of Glasgow, about 25% are classed as international, reflecting a nationwide trend. In response to this situation, researchers and practitioners have stressed the need to improve the way universities accommodate multicultural student bodies. At the University of Glasgow, such efforts manifest in an expansion and diversification of the department facilitating student learning development: The Learning Enhancement and Academic Development Service (LEADS). LEADS is home to two Effective Learning Advisers (ELAs) who work with international students from all subject disciplines. Their work entails the creation and delivery of academic writing classes, the development of electronic resources and one-to-one tutorials. Due to the diversity of the international student cohort in terms of educational, cultural and subject backgrounds, a significant proportion of the international ELAs’ day-to-day job is to explain generic academic writing conventions pertinent to the UK Higher Education context to those coming from other educational cultures. Their role then is that of multicultural and cross-disciplinary communicators. This article outlines and reflects on the professional practice of the international ELAs and seeks to stimulate discussion around appropriate and effective practices of teaching academic writing to students from a multiplicity of backgrounds and disciplines.

It can be a challenge for a university teacher to arrange the teaching of written tasks so that weak foreign language students with differing disciplinary backgrounds can develop their written communication skills. The difficulty is to avoid the focus from becoming just language proficiency. In one course at a technical university in Sweden, three written summaries are scaffolded to address such a challenge. The purpose of this teaching practice paper is to show how employing a specific strategy of repetition facilitates the writing skill development in low-level English language multidisciplinary students. The repeated features are the genre of the task, the writing process used and the occurrences of teacher response. They are organised along a specific learning path so as to encourage the students to build on the knowledge gained in each iteration, between tasks and potentially beyond the course. The paper describes the journey the students take writing the three summaries, working on fulfilling criteria concerned with aspects such as content organisation, coherence and cohesion, and limited grammar errors. A brief analysis of excerpts from one case student’s first and third summaries is included. It is suggested that while the scaffolding can remain the same, the material could be replaced to suit other skills and language level needs.

Background: College and university science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students in Japan, who hope for careers in science and technology fields, lack the motivation to learn English as a second language (L2), impairing their current capacities to learn the L2 and their future abilities to communicate globally once employed. Literature review: Although these students' motivation to learn English seems strongly linked to the external pressure to do well on a standardized English test, gain employment, and progress up the career ladder, this extrinsic motivation may not be as beneficial for their L2 learning as positive images of themselves using English in future situations. Three types of future career-related self images-an Ideal L2 Self, a Probable L2 Self, and an Ought-to L2 Self-are hypothesized to promote L2 achievement. Research methodology: Data from questionnaires examining psycholinguistic variables for 1013 Japanese STEM students of English were subjected to ANOVA and multiple regression analysis with three L2 Self variables as predictor variables and scores from the TOEIC standardized English exam as the outcome variable. Results/discussion: ANOVA results showed that students had a strong image of themselves as needing English for future career goals, as measured by the Ought-to L2 Self, but had lower levels of Ideal L2 Self, the variable measuring a future image as a fluent user of English. In the regression analysis, the Ought-to L2 Self predicted lower TOEIC exam scores; conversely, the Ideal L2 Self predicted greater TOEIC scores. These paradoxical results indicate that Japanese STEM students struggle motivationally to improve English skills needed for future STEM job-related communication, despite feeling pressured to do so. Conclusions: To encourage the formation of students' images of Ideal L2 selves or stronger Probable L2 selves, STEM teachers and language teachers of Japanese STEM students could introduce motivational interventions. For example, positive role models of English language learners could visit classes and demonstrate how they have applied their English as a foreign language (EFL) learning experiences to future careers.

Corpus linguistic methods can provide detailed and statistically robust information about how children's written language develops as they progress through their education. Such data can inform both models of written language development and curricular policies and practices. To this end, the current paper focuses on subordination as a key site of syntactic complexity. Using a corpus of 240 texts written by children aged 6 to 16 in England as part of their regular school work, it quantifies how the most common type of subordinate clause (the adverbial clause) varies across year groups and genres in terms of frequency, internal complexity and semantic function. A complex developmental picture emerges with length and frequency of finite vs. non-finite clauses changing in distinct ways across primary vs. secondary education. These patterns are found to be closely related to discipline- and genre-specific developments in the main functions for which adverbial clauses are used.

Using a dissertation research project at a transnational site, this pedagogical process piece explores the experience from both the student and mentor perspectives. We discuss challenges gaining access to the research site and navigating frequently-acknowledged-but-rarely-described affective, relational dynamics that disrupt qualitative research in everyday technical and professional communication. To assist students’ and their mentors’ engagement with these dynamics, we suggest heuristics derived from critical reflection on our own tactical responses to these research and pedagogical challenges.

Research has shown that collaboratively produced texts are better in quality compared with individually written texts. However, no study has considered the role of collaboration in authorial voice, which is an essential element in current writing curricula. This study analyzes the effects of collaborative task performance in the quality of L2 learners’ argumentative texts and in their authorial voice strength. A total of 306 upper-intermediate L2 learners were selected and divided into independent ( N = 130) and paired ( N = 176) groups. Each learner/pair was asked to write one argumentative text. The quality of writings was determined by a quantitative analysis that included three measures of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). Participants’ authorial voice strength was assessed by two raters using an analytic voice rubric. Comparison of means revealed that pairs outperformed independent writers in all CAF measures. However, the results for the role of collaboration in authorial voice were mixed: While pairs were more successful than independent writers in manifesting their ideational voice, independent writers outperformed pairs with regard to affective and presence voice dimensions and holistic voice scores. The article concludes that, despite its positive implications for L2 writing, collaborative writing may pose challenges for learners’ authorial stance taking.

Business remains a popular major for international students in the United States. Little is known, however, about how these students fare in business communication (BCOM) classes. This qualitative study evaluates the challenges and needs of English as an additional language (EAL) students in BCOM courses at a private university in the United States. We surveyed and interviewed 15 BCOM instructors and 30 students previously enrolled in BCOM. Results reveal faculty are aware of some, but not all, of the linguistic, cultural, emotional, time, and accommodation challenges EAL students face. We discuss suggestions for accommodating EAL students’ unique needs in BCOM courses.

The University Writing Center (UWC) at The University of Texas at El Paso, located on the U.S-Mexico border, employs mostly tutors who are bilingual, Spanish-English; however, there are a significant number of international tutors with different linguistic backgrounds. Using a qualitative method approach, this article discusses findings from focus groups and interviews with international multilingual student tutors who worked at the UWC. Through our analysis of the data, we found that international tutors face a unique set of challenges, but also bring a wealth of knowledge to working at the writing center. This article focuses on three major themes discussed by participants: varying degrees of confidence, feelings of being othered, and issues related to linguistic diversity that arise during tutoring sessions. Tutors’ experiences in leveraging linguistic and cultural differences prompted the need for the UWC to implement changes to its tutor training and policies to support international tutors. As institutions in the United States become more diverse, writing centers need to challenge who best practices in the discipline were created for and who they serve, all while critically examining how we can leverage the experiences of international tutors to reshape writing center pedagogy. Keywords : international writing tutors; multilingualism; linguistic diversity; Hispanic-Serving Institution; writing center pedagogy; tutor training The University Writing Center (UWC) at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) is located in El Paso, Texas on the U.S.-Mexico border. El Paso, combined with its sister city of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, make it one of the largest bi-national areas in the world. Residents of Juarez frequently commute over the international bridges daily for work; many of these commuters include students at UTEP. UTEP is a Hispanic-Serving Institution where 80% of the student population identifies as Hispanic or Latinx (UTEP, 2019). Furthermore, 20% of these students are students from Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, and an additional 5% of students are international students from around the world (UTEP, 2019). Due to the diverse and complex linguistic and cultural lived experiences of students at UTEP, the UWC is informed by theories on multilingualism, antiracism, and equity. It is often cited that writing centers are not just places that enact marginalization, but centers for those who are often marginalized in academia. The UWC has drawn from these theories to develop its programmatic identity, including its goals, tutor training and pedagogies, and professional development, in order to adopt socially just practices. This work, and the theories motivating the work at the UWC, serve as a direct response to our institution and to the students it supports. In a typical semester, the UWC assists over 8,000 students with their writing. The UWC offers face-to-face and synchronous online tutoring, employing about 30 writing tutors, undergraduate and graduate. The undergraduate writing tutors are all hired directly by the UWC, and the graduate students are those who have been awarded a master’s or doctoral teaching assistantship through the English Department or the Creative Writing Department. This year alone, over 40% of the 30+ tutors working at the Writing Center are international students and bi/multilingual with languages ranging from Spanish to Nepalese. Needless to say, this creates a linguistically and culturally diverse work environment as international writing tutors assist students with their writing at the center. This diversity of languages is at the core of our approach to training and pedagogy for writing center tutors. An intricate dynamic develops between writing center tutors and students who often have different home languages, many of whom are English language learners often working towards enacting Academic English as their writing assignments require. While the majority of writing center pedagogy focuses on how to tutor English as a Second Language students and many tutoring books include chapters on working with ESL students or multilingual writers (Bruce & Rafoth, 2009; Gillespie and Lerner, 2009; Ryan & Zimmerelli, 2015; Bruce & Rafoth, 2016; Lape, 2020), very little has been written on the experiences of international tutors from the tutor side. This project started in 2017 when the UWC Director and Assistant Directors were approached by several international students who had been writing tutors, one who is currently the Assistant Director of the UWC and co-author of this piece, asking how training would account for the linguistic differences between the new students joining us from Nepal and the majority of the Spanish speaking students who visited the writing center. Through multiple conversations with international student tutors about their experiences working at the UWC, we were confronted with addressing the following questions: What are the experiences of international tutors working at the UWC? How do non-native English speakers navigate assisting students who are native English speakers, or, in the case of our institution, many non-native English speakers with a different home language? The UWC’s week-long training at the beginning of each academic year includes an entire day focused on tutoring multilingual students, with a larger emphasis on Spanish speakers and writers. However, this was a destabilizing question and set us on the path to try and learn about the experiences of international tutors working at the writing center. In an effort to learn how international writing center tutors navigate concerns about language usage, the UWC needed to reconceptualize training to better account for linguistically and culturally diverse interactions during tutoring sessions. Our article’s contributions to both this special issue and the writing center community opens with an overview of the theories which inform our work at the UWC. First, we came to realize that applying writing center theory and best practices in the UWC was problematic, as some of these best practices did not resonate within the context of UTEP and the UWC–a clear indication of the highly contextualized linguistic ecologies of writing centers on college campuses. Most importantly, these best practices were developed from the ground up and informed by the experiences of students and tutors. Next, we provided a brief description of our study and data collection process. We then structured our data findings into three themes: varying degrees of confidence, feelings of being othered, and issues related to linguistic diversity that arise during tutoring sessions. Lastly, after discussing the most insightful aspects of our findings and how they informed changes to tutoring training at UWC training, we offer readers insight for how writing centers can reconceptualize and reframe the linguistic and cultural knowledges of international tutors as rich resources to learn from, and move away from the deficit rhetoric that has traditionally circulated about non-native English tutors.

Increased attention to genre in writing studies has brought a proliferation of new terms and concepts for capturing the complexity of writers’ knowledge about genres, including genre knowledge, genre awareness, recontextualization, conditional knowledge, and metacognition. Definitions of these concepts have at times conflicted, and their interrelationships are often unclear. Furthermore, scholarship has tended to overlook the role of multiple languages in writers’ genre knowledge. In this article, we first trace the use of related terminology and demonstrate the need for theoretical clarity. We then propose a theoretical framework that articulates key layers of genre knowledge and their interrelations, presuming a multilingual writer. Finally, we share examples of how this proposed framework may be used in teaching and researching genre knowledge. Ultimately, we aim to contribute to ongoing theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical explorations and applications of knowing and learning genres.

Background: Engineers increasingly work and advance their careers in international business settings. As technical managers, they need management and technical skills when working with different stakeholders with whom they may not share a common first language. Studies have revealed that informal oral communication skills are of prime importance for global engineers who face challenges in building shared meaning and formulating clear messages in meetings with non-native speakers of English. This article proposes that studying the use of multimodal resources (spoken language, gaze, gestures, and objects) in meetings can unpack how work tasks are accomplished in business through different communicative strategies. Literature review: This paper focuses on engineers' and technical managers' needs and challenges in professional and intercultural communication where English is used as a business lingua franca (BELF) in multimodal meetings. While multimodal conversation and discourse analytic studies highlight the dynamic nature of meeting interaction, previous technical and professional communication and BELF research on multimodality is limited. Research questions: 1. How do technical managers use multimodal resources to articulate their ideas in BELF meetings with their peers? 2. How does the use of multimodal resources contribute to the construction of shared meaning in explanatory, consensus-seeking, and solution-finding communication? Methodology: This study reports on two case studies and multimodal discourse analysis of video-recorded meetings among technical managers and their peers in four companies. The use of multimodal resources is analyzed in explanatory, consensus-seeking, and solution-finding communication. Results and conclusions: In BELF meetings, assemblages of spoken language, gestures, tools, whiteboard, and documents contribute to constructing shared meaning. This study has implications for global professional and engineering communication. Future research should further examine multimodality in BELF meetings.

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Using a multidisciplinary approach to social justice teaching, this article explores the often invisible impact of double consciousness on adult English language learners in the United States and provides examples of classroom practice that invite students to reflect on its effects. The experience of double consciousness is examined as it relates to English language learner identities. A Critical Language Awareness (CLA) framework and identity-conscious teaching practices are explored to encourage student participation and reflection. This approach, demonstrated through examples used in writing classes, encourages the exploration of identity in the face of oppression by interrogating social constructions and fiction and nonfiction stories containing connected themes. Three classroom lessons and consequent writing are analyzed with a critical discourse lens to examine student responses and reflections on language and identity. Student writing demonstrates that encouraging English language classes to interrogate the language of institutionalized inequity and identity formation can illuminate potential influences of double consciousness, which can empower students to think critically about their identities and choose whether to take steps to mediate the ways in which they could be affected by double consciousness.

In 1902, the congressional sub-committee on territories visited New Mexico to assess its fitness for statehood. Their subsequent report recommended against statehood, in part because too much Spanish was spoken throughout the territory. This historical moment provided a rhetorical exigency for the students at the University of New Mexico to use their student newspaper as a site for negotiating citizenship in a border space. By incorporating Spanish into their English-language newspaper, these students challenged monolingual notions of literacy and advocated for a multilingual understanding of American citizenship.