SSLW2024

The concept of ecology invites reflection on current transformations in the world of multilingual writing, and especially academic writing, and how those transformations might (or not) be represented in research and pedagogy. Ecology foregrounds two aspects of writing that are particularly relevant in light of recent changes: relationships and environment. Firstly, as students and researchers increasingly engage with writing that aims to communicate knowledge beyond academia through blogs, op-eds, press releases, and so forth, different languages and modes are used for meaning-making, and new relationships are formed between academic and hybrid/popularized genres. A second, hard to ignore environmental transformation, is the increasing digitalization of writing, including the advent of Generative AI (GAI) and Large Language Models (LLM), posing both opportunities and threats to learning. The challenge we now face is how to tackle these ecological transformations, in teaching and research. A key question is: How can multilingual writers become agile, agentive writers that can master knowledge recontextualization across different genres and languages, and through a critical use of technology? In this talk, I will explore this question through two cases, and more specifically two pedagogical tasks that aim to address the challenges set out above. The first task connects to the concept of transfer, and proposes reformulation as a prospect for transformation in multilingual writing pedagogy. Data shows how writers can be scaffolded towards rhetorical flexibility and a meta-awareness of the relationships between genres targeting different readers, including contextually-motivated linguistic variations. The second task builds on the idea of self-regulation and metacognition, leading multilingual doctoral writers to practice and reflect upon on the implications of using GAI for scientific writing—critical AI literacy. My talk will conclude by showing how these two cases illuminate important future directions in multilingual writing research and pedagogy.