Critical language awareness in L2 writing: Starting por la autorreflexión, 自我反省

Abstract

Adopting a critical collaborative autoethnographic narrative lens, we, two transnational multilingual scholars, examine our own journeys as L2 writers from learning English to learning how to teach and publish as academics that disseminate most of our scholarship in English. We critically reflect upon our respective educational journeys and professional experiences in and with academic English writing in relation to our own critical language awareness (CLA). Our perspective is that in order for us to critically look backward, outward, and forward in L2 writing, we must start inward, desde la autorreflexión, 自我反省 (zì wǒ fǎn xǐng). By engaging in this introspective exercise, and later engaging in CLA practices ourselves, we seek to initiate a movement in which we actively blur the fronteras 边界 (biān jiè) in our linguistic and scholarly practice and advocate for our languaging processes to be normalized in our publishing. In doing so, we can legitimize our translingual pedagogies. We conclude with some discussion points and implications for the fields of composition, literacy studies, and second language writing.