This paper offers a narrative framework for understanding how multilingual graduate students make sense of the continuous and frequently contradictory talk they engage in as they write. It illustrates how attention to the telling, form, and content of the stories such students relate about their ongoing interactions around academic writing can…

This paper discusses the meaning and range of replication in L2 research from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. In the first half of the paper, it will be argued that key quantitative studies need to be replicated to have their robustness and generalizability tested and that this is a requirement of scientific inquiry. Such research…

Writing is often seen as having a minor role in second language learning. This article explores recent research that suggests that writing can have a facilitative role in language development. In particular, it focuses on three features of writing: (1) its slower pace, and (2) the enduring record that it leaves, both of which can encourage…

Although the role of individual differences in second language (L2) speech has been extensively studied, the impact of individual differences on the process of second language writing and the written product has been a neglected area of research. In this paper, I review the most important individual difference factors that might explain variations…

The controversies surrounding written error correction can be traced to Truscott (1996) in his polemic against written error correction. He claimed that empirical studies showed that error correction was ineffective and that this was to be expected "given the nature of the correction process and "the nature of language learning" (p. 328, emphasis…

The ESP School of genre study has been noted as increasingly bridging the linguistic and the rhetorical traditions in genre studies. However, some genre theorists have characterized the ESP genre approaches as treating rhetorical contexts as mainly, if not merely, the background for explicating texts. This paper explores this issue through…

In this essay, the author explores four fundamental, but contested topics in Genre-based Writing Instruction (GBWI) about which decisions must be made as curricula are developed. Drawing from the three major genre traditions (Hyon, 1996), the author examines the contested topics ("naming", "awareness/acquisition", "pedagogical focus", "and…

In light of the increasing student diversity in U.S. university composition classrooms, there is a strong need for collaboration between L1 and L2 writing specialists. Differences in the lexicons of our two fields, however, as well as the philosophical differences embedded in our word choices, can hinder productive L1-L2 communication. The purpose…

This case study involved a detailed examination of learning transfer from an English-for-general-academic-purposes writing course to tasks that involve writing in other academic courses. Data were gathered over one academic year from 11 students enrolled in the writing course. These students participated in a series of interviews and provided…

This article presents the findings of a study that investigated (1) the extent to which written corrective feedback (CF) can help advanced L2 learners, who already demonstrate a high level of accuracy in two functional uses of the English article system (the use of "a" for first mention and "the" for subsequent or anaphoric mentions), further…

Within a social view of literacy, this paper reports a two-year ethnographic case study of an adolescent multilingual writer, with respect to her transitions across in-school (i.e., Creative Writing class) and out-of-school writing contexts. This study was aimed to address two specific gaps in the fields of second language (L2) writing and…

The formulaic styles of dissertation writing inherited from the sciences continue to influence dissertation writers in social sciences, and in particular TESOL and applied linguistics. Some scholars both within and outside the U.S. recommend that we expand the options for dissertation writers beyond these narrow conventions ([Eisner, 1997];…

This paper presents a critical analysis of two recent studies on error correction, Ellis, Sheen, Murakami, and Takashima (2008) and Bitchener (2008) and argues that neither study constitutes evidence for error correction based on discussion of the comparability of participants, design issues, and analysis flaws in both studies. The paper further…

The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed analysis of how lexical differences related to cohesion and connectionist models can distinguish first language (L1) writers of English from second language (L2) writers of English. Key to this analysis is the use of the computational tool Coh-Metrix, which measures cohesion and text difficulty at…

This study investigated the impact of aspects of the lexical proficiency of EFL students on their summary writing in English (L2) by controlling for the impact of a range of linguistic abilities in English and Japanese (L1). Sixty-eight Japanese undergraduate students wrote two summaries of English texts in English. Their English lexical…