A concerned group of L2 professionals write an open letter to express their concern that the terms “L2 writing” and “translingual writing” have become almost interchangeable in—writing studies publications and conferences and further argue that much will be lost if “translingual writing” replaces “L2 writing.” Each are distinct areas of research and—pedagogy: L2 writing is a more technical description applied to writing in a language acquired later in life, while translingual writing describes an orientation to language—difference. Without attention to the distinct contributions made by each field, L2 scholarship becomes marginalized in publications, conferences, and hiring practices. The letter—authors and endorsers encourage writing studies editors and organization leaders to recognize and understand the difference between the fields so as to ensure a strong and—enduring future for L2 scholarship.—

Earlier research on assessment suggests that even when Native English Speaker (NSE) and Non-Native English Speaker (NNES) writers make similar errors, faculty tend to assess the NNES writers more harshly. Studies indicate that evaluators may be particularly severe when grading NNES writers holistically. In an effort to provide more recent data on how faculty perceive student writers based on their nationalities, researchers at two medium-sized Midwestern universities surveyed and conducted interviews with faculty to determine if such discrepancies continue to exist between assessments of international and American writers, to identify what preconceptions faculty may have regarding international writers, and to explore how these notions may affect their assessment of such writers. Results indicate that while faculty continue to rate international writers lower when scoring analytically, they consistently evaluate those same writers higher when scoring holistically.