Journal of Second Language Writing最新文献

The construction of a discoursal scholarly identity is central to research writing (Hyland, 2013). However, the definition of such an identity is still elusive in current scholarship, and the discussion regarding its construction sporadic. We reviewed relevant research published in English-medium academic journals within the recent two decades (2003–2022) in an attempt to demystify the concept of discoursal scholarly identity and its construction in research writing practices. This literature review identified three main streams of research that focus respectively on (1) the manifestation of a discoursal scholarly identity in academic written discourse, (2) the reconstruction of such an identity by readers, and (3) the construction of such an identity in and through social practices. Key conceptions and features of discoursal scholarly identity as discursively constructed, dialogically negotiated, and dynamic also emerged from such synthesis of literature. We end by identifying and discussing areas for future research on the construction of a discoursal scholarly identity in research writing practices, and the means to inform novice writers, especially L2 writers, of the proper manifestation and negotiation of such an identity in research writing.

Teachers are often advised to use model texts, sentence starters, and paragraph frames to support student writers, but little empirical research reports on how K-12 students take up language from such models. We use a systemic functional linguistics fine-grained approach to analyze 19 middle school students’ writing in social studies as they engaged in inquiry with sources across two years, reporting on how they drew on models to write arguments with evidence from sources. Students represent different reading levels and seventeen speak languages other than English. We report that students drew on the models but added ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings of their own. We then analyze the interpersonal meanings that project students’ own voices, characterizing these voices as expansive or contractive and relating them to the argument tasks. We also discuss language choices that realize less formal registers. The study contributes to debates about models by demonstrating how the constraints and choices presented enabled students to meet disciplinary demands while bringing their own voices to their writing. We discuss implications for the use of models and for how students’ voices are valued and highlight methodological contributions to the analysis of voice.

This study explores how input-driven activity through extensive reading leads to syntactic growth in young students’ written production. Twenty-six young students learning English as a foreign language participated in extensive reading as an additional activity after school for a month (ER group), and their syntactic development was inspected by analyzing 14 syntactic complexity and six syntactic sophistication indices in the students’ book reports written preceding and following the reading activity. This group’s performance in writing was compared with that of another group of students who did not participate in the reading activity (Comparison group). Results of analyses for syntactic complexity showed that the ER group significantly improved in the length of sentence, the number of clauses, the number of coordination, and the number of verb phrases. This group also improved in syntactic sophistication by using less frequent verbs and less frequent verb-construction combinations in writing after the reading activity. In contrast, the comparison group showed improvements only in the length of sentence. We discuss these findings and pedagogical implications in light of usage-based approaches to language learning.

Writing is a critical skill in many academic and professional contexts, and multilingual writers often struggle to learn and master it. Understanding the processes and products involved in writing in these contexts is crucial to design better interventions and resources to help writers succeed in their writing endeavors. Yet, writing studies exploring the writing processes in authentic communicative situations are still scarce, partly due to the complexity of natural writing processes. In the article, we present a pedagogically and methodologically innovative task to explore multilingual writers’ processes and products when writing authentic texts. The task combines a range of unintrusive instruments that allow us to observe the writing processes (keystroke logging and screen recorder), collect writers’ perceptions and goals (writing logs, survey, and discussion) and assess their text's evolution, an extended research article abstract. The analysis integrates all data sources into Episodes to understand how and why writing processes and texts evolve. In the article, we describe the task in detail and discuss the main pedagogical and methodological benefits, as well as the challenges and future lines for writing research and teaching.