Journal of Second Language Writing最新文献

Academic writing is a dynamic process that in some senses reveals a writer’s scholarly identity. To illuminate how this identity-forming process occurs, in the present study, three Anglosphere-educated writing scholars in China were interviewed to uncover their English-Chinese bilingual scholarly identities focusing on their perspectives of academic writing in two languages. The findings reveal they were conscious of their bilingual scholarly identities as English and Chinese academic writers, and attributed their academic writing skill development to their education at universities overseas, despite holding different views about the rhetorical styles of English and Chinese academic writing. Although the three returnee scholars faced challenges with writing and publishing papers in Chinese journals, they consciously applied different approaches in practicing and promoting both an English writing style and evidence-based argumentation when writing and teaching academic writing to Chinese students. The present study unpacks the complex nature of the Chinese returnee scholars’ bilingual scholarly identity construction in academic writing while highlighting their contribution to the Anglo-centric globalization of academic writing and rhetorical development. Implications for graduate research training programs and research on academic writing identity are discussed.

Complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) have been proposed as measures of L2 performance and are fundamental variables of written analysis. Empirical studies have shown how written production is developed across proficiency levels and have highlighted the impact of language learning context (second versus foreign) on such development. Despite research that analyzes L2 written production in relation to L2 proficiency or L2 context, few studies examine both in combination. This study explores the role of proficiency and learning context in the written production of L2 Modern Greek learners. Three hundred twenty-four (N = 324) L2 Modern Greek learners of different proficiency levels (A2 to C1) studying in two different learning contexts (second: Greece versus foreign: Spain) carried out a written task (opinion essay). The results showed that two indices of the length of production (mean length of sentence and clause), one index of subordination (dependent clauses per clause), accuracy, and fluency were good indicators of proficiency level. Also, learning context affected the length of production, sentence complexity, and subordination. While differences were observed between the two settings, no superiority of one context over the other was found. Significant interaction effects between context and proficiency were detected in syntactic complexity (coordination) and fluency.

Since its inception, ChatGPT has been characterized by L2 writing teachers with various metaphors, such as a tool and a collaborator. Complemented with text-based metaphorical conceptualizations, this research brief contributes ten visual conceptualizations of ChatGPT in L2 writing pedagogy from L2 writing teachers who teach in US higher education. Four themes emerged from our analysis of these visual conceptualizations: ChatGPT as a (1) tool, (2) resource, (3) threat, and an (4) unknown entity. The visualizations help tease out the intricacies involved in the use of metaphorical representations of ChatGPT and provide a multidimensional picture of L2 writing teachers’ perceptions and attitudes towards the use of ChatGPT in L2 writing classrooms. This report concludes with an overview of the potential implications of applying visual metaphorical conceptualizations of ChatGPT to educational settings, such as raising L2 student writers’ awareness and fostering the development of their critical digital literacy.

This study investigated the effectiveness of peer and teacher feedback during telecollaboration, specifically, a semester-long email exchange. Participants included 38 students from three sections of a second-semester German course at a US university. They were paired with 40 students of English at a high school in Germany. Of the three second-semester German sections, one group was assigned to a peer feedback condition (N = 15), one to a teacher feedback condition (N = 10), and one to a telecollaboration-only condition (N = 13). Over the course of the semester, each learner sent one German and one English email per week to their email partner. The peer feedback group received corrective feedback on their German emails from their email partners whereas the teacher feedback group received corrections from their instructor. The telecollaboration-only group did not receive corrections. Results from the DIALANG writing test for German, administered at the beginning and the end of the semester, showed that the peer feedback group improved the most on measures of L2 writing, the teacher feedback group made some improvement, and the telecollaboration-only group did not improve. Additional data from tailor-made posttests mirrored these results. Pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed.

Despite the increasing popularity of machine translation in second language (L2) writing, the theoretical perspectives and complex factors shaping its use remain under synthesized. This article reviews research on machine translation use in L2 writing to identify major models and factors that shape teachers’ and students’ employment of machine translation. Theoretical perspectives underpinning machine translation research are first synthesized to categorize machine translation into three models: a linguistic processor, a mediational artifact, and a translanguaging process. What then reviewed are empirical studies, revealing a predominant focus on linguistic factors in terms of how machine translation shapes L2 writing. More recent research has also examined person-related factors and taken the effectiveness of machine translation as conditioning upon individual differences of teachers and students. Contextual factors in interpersonal, instructional, and institutional settings and ideological factors are also identified. A conceptual framework is then developed to illuminate the interrelatedness of the identified factors during the process of using machine translation. The study argues for a need to avoid taking machine translation as a politically neutral participant in L2 writing. Implications for enhancing the effectiveness of machine translation use in L2 writing and suggestions for further research are also provided.

Although different empirical studies have recently explored the L2 writing–SLA interfaces, how L2 writers modify and consolidate their linguistic knowledge with different levels of perceived complexity remains underexplored. Featuring the qualitative phase of a longitudinal, mixed-methods study with the aim of complementarity, the current study explored the perspectives of 20 low- to mid-intermediate L2 writers about how their consistent engagement in an iterative process of writing, feedback processing and rewriting contributed to L2 development. In-depth explanations and numerous script-specific exemplifications in semi-structured interviews showcased the language learning potential of acting on direct WCF on an extended number of grammatical features over time, resulting in deep WCF processing and substantial cognitive and affective engagement with feedback. Results suggested participants' reliance on the prolonged process to (re)formulate and confirm hypotheses and increasingly accumulate category-based WCF instances from previous and subsequent compositions to abstract most of the underlying rules embedded in direct WCF. The participants explained how different challenges against rule abstraction were resolved, and why some remained unresolved. The study proposes a model illustrating a synergistic interaction between writing, feedback processing and rewriting for L2 writers to gradually consolidate linguistic knowledge. Theoretical, methodological and pedagogical implications of the study are discussed.

Recent reviews of the L2 collaborative writing (CW) literature have highlighted a propensity for researchers to rely on learner and task-related variables to explore CW phenomena. However, this focus limits how scholars conceptualize CW by overlooking the wider educational context that accompanies CW activities and how writers orient to said spaces. Investigating how writers perceive the CW landscape is important as their perceptions are known to impact writing development. Engaging a systems orientation to writing spaces, this study examined how students in different writing conditions perceive the writing landscape. This work followed two intact university classes (one engaged in CW, and one not) over one semester, and collected data from five iterations of a system mapping task and interviews with students. The CW group perceived a more nuanced and complex perspective of the writing space, comparatively. Cluster analyses also revealed that both groups oriented similarly to two variable sets: task and environmental factors, and learner and environmental variables. This study demonstrates how CW positively impacts writers’ perceptions of the writing space and encourages instructors to help CW students realize and take advantage of the wider context that CW is embedded in. This work also expands the CW research framework.

Writing requires substantial cognitive processing; when writing, cognitive load emerges due to the limited working memory. Research has investigated cognitive load as an explanatory concept in L2 writing, although there are a few instruments for measuring. Accordingly, the present study aims to develop and validate the EFL Argumentative Writing Cognitive Load Scale. Initially, stimulated recall from 13 undergraduates’ cognitive load during a writing task was used to generate a pool of scale items. Subsequently, 685 undergraduate students participated, with 300 at the scale development stage and 385 at the validation stage. The final version of the scale contains 39 items assessing six dimensions: argumentation, organization, language expression, word spelling, introduction and conclusion writing and post-writing monitoring. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses showed that the scale’s psychometric properties are acceptable. The scale enables writing researchers and teachers to better understand L2 learners’ writing process and deploy targeted intervention strategies to optimize writing cognitive load.

Despite a significant rise in awareness of the critical role of assessment literacy, teacher feedback literacy as an important component of assessment literacy has received scant attention in the domain of second language (L2) writing. By drawing on questionnaire data gathered from 353 English as a foreign language teachers and follow-up interviews with 34 focal teachers, this study attempts to ascertain L2 writing teachers’ self-reported feedback literacy in relation to their knowledge, values, and abilities regarding feedback. Findings of the study reveal both deficiencies and gaps in the participants’ writing feedback literacy. While the respondents reported a fundamental understanding of writing teacher feedback literacy, they appeared less certain of their abilities to implement feedback practices in the writing classroom. Despite this uncertainly, they held values about feedback that largely align with the principles supported by existing literature. The current study serves to make a novel contribution to existing research by shedding light on the underexplored concept of L2 writing teacher feedback literacy, with clear implications for the delivery of feedback training in teacher education programs.