Studies on writing development have grown in diversity and depth in recent decades, but remain fragmented along lines of theory, method, and age ranges or populations studied. Meaningful, competent writing performances that meet the demands of the moment rely on many kinds of well-practiced and deeply understood capacities working together; however, these capacities’ realization and developmental trajectories can vary from one individual to another. Without an integrated framework to understand lifespan development of writing abilities in its variation, high-stakes decisions about curriculum, instruction, and assessment are often made in unsystematic ways that may fail to support the development they are intended to facilitate; further, research may not consider the range of issues at stake in studying writing in any particular moment.To address this need and synthesize what is known about the various dimensions of writing development at different ages, the coauthors of this essay have engaged in sustained discussion, drawing on a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives. Drawing on research from different disciplinary perspectives, they propose eight principles upon which an account of writing development consistent with research findings could be founded. These principles are proposed as a basis for further lines of inquiry into how writing develops across the lifespan.

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.—

In an increasingly globalized world, writing courses, situated as they are in local institutional and rhetorical contexts, need to prepare writers for global writing situations. Taking introductory technical communication in the United States as a case study, this article describes how and to what extent global perspectives are incorporated into writing. Based on an analysis of eight textbooks and a closer analysis of four of them, we illustrate the representation of technical communication and communicators as well as multiculturalism and multilingualism in these textbooks and point out the limitations vis-à-vis the cultural and linguistic complexity of global technical communication in today’s world. We conclude by considering implications for U.S. college composition as it continues to contribute to the international discourse of writing studies.

Studies of blind manuscript review have illustrated that readers often form impressions of or speculate about unknown authors' identities in the manuscript review task. In this article, the authors extend that work by examining the discursive and nondiscursive features that play a role in readers' active construction of author voice. Through a survey completed by 70 editorial board members of six journals in applied linguistics and rhetoric and composition, the authors identify quantitative and qualitative trends in reviewers' practices regarding voice construction. Findings indicate that many readers do build impressions of an author's identity when reviewing anonymous manuscripts and that the rhetorical nature of the review task may lead readers to attend more to some discursive features than to others.

The author suggests that English-only classrooms are not only the implicit goal of much language policy in the United States, but also assumed to be already the case, an ironic situation in light of composition’s historical role as “containing” language differences in U.S. higher education. He suggests that the myth of linguistic homogeneity has serious implications not only for international second-language writers in U.S. classrooms but also for resident second-language writers and for native speakers of unprivileged varieties of English, and that rather than simply abandon the placement practices that have worked to contain—but also to support—multilingual writers, composition teachers need to reimagine the composition classroom as the multilingual space that it is, where the presence of language differences is the default.

Although the number of nonnative speakers of English in U.S. institutions of higher education has been increasing continuously during the last four decades, the development of composition studies does not seem to reflect this trend.

Although the writing needs of English as a Second Language (ESL) students in U.S. higher education have been increasing as the number of ESL students continues to rise, institutional practices that are responsive to the unique needs of ESL writers are yet to be developed. The relative lack of attention to ESL issues in writing programs may be related to how the field of ESL writing has been defined in relation to its related disciplines: Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) and composition studies. This study attempts to construct a view of the field that meets the needs of ESL writers. For this purpose, I present three models of ESL writing in relation to TESL and composition studies and discuss their implications.