SSLW2024

In this plenary talk, I begin by exploring key ecological theories of language and literacy development relevant to multilingual writers and their writing before then describing how I have found it useful to conceptualize and apply ecological framings in my own work. Taking up the notion that ecological perspectives help us better understand both connection and disjuncture in the experiences of multilingual writers, I reflect upon the ways that a longitudinal interactional histories approach (LIHA: Kibler, 2019) helped me understand the dynamic literacy journeys of five Mexican and immigrant-origin multilingual writers over an eight-year period as they navigated adolescence and early adulthood in the United States. I also explore other studies, including how colleagues and I adapted LIHA to use with pre- and in-service teachers, and what we learned about how the ecologies in which teachers live and work impact their views of multilingual students and their writing. Such research not only highlights the profound and intricate connections between writers and the ideological, institutional, and instructional contexts in which they learn: it also underscores how linguistic and racial discrimination is deeply embedded in the ecologies that multilingual writers must navigate. Recognizing such a disjuncture allows us as scholars and educators to ask critical questions of the contexts in which we teach, research, and share our knowledge, both in terms of the power structures that unjustly inhibit the potential of many multilingual writers and the ways that we can work to disrupt those structures and systems. I close by commenting upon how our work and our field might use ecological perspectives to embrace the teaching and learning of multilingual writers as a fundamentally critical and dialogic endeavor.

To help SLW professionals remain abreast of developments in the field, the presenters will review the L2 writing scholarship published in 2023, based on their analysis of patterns across four bibliographies they coauthored for the JSLW. Participants will receive access to a comprehensive, online bibliography organized by theme and context.

In this presentation, we will delve into the historical evolution of trans-concepts in writing studies and analyze the debates surrounding translingual and second language (L2) writing. We will also report a bibliometric analysis of current research trends in this area to gauge the responses to these discussions.

This presentation explores student experiences during a first-year writing language diversity unit by drawing on surveys of 270 students and writing samples from 105 students. The presenters will engage the audience in a discussion on the value of this work in an era where conversations around difference are breaking down.

As multimodal texts gain prevalence in the digital era, understanding the dynamics of writer-reader interaction through visuals has become an emerging task. This presentation discusses an innovative study that examines how EAP students used diverse visual metadiscourse resources (both interactive and interactional) to inform and engage their audiences via infographics.

This presentation introduces a theory and practice of composition building on prior research linking Peircean and Saussurean semiotics. Three categories of experience—Iconicity, Indexical Relations, and Symbolic Expression—describe a pedagogical progression from basic to advanced. The theory preserves distinctions between language and other modes while building on both.

Ecologies of multilingual writing is a productive lens to examine writing produced in world language instruction contexts in the United States. Multilingual writing is here understood as writing produced by learners seeking to expand their repertoire by learning a language other than English. In this sense, understanding world language instruction as ecology means to recognize that these contexts share similar challenges as they co-exist in an English-dominant environment while contending with specificities of their own linguistic and cultural ecosystems that impact the teaching of writing. For instance, learners enrolled in a world language are often more interested in developing speaking than writing skills, while world language teachers rarely have special training in teaching writing. This colloquium aims to tease apart what types of connections play a role in developing writing knowledge and skills in world languages to then analyze the relationality between language systems and cultures enacted by learners and teachers.

First, Bruna Sommer-Farias will examine how recognizing relationality of genre dimensions across languages can contribute to genre knowledge development of world language teachers and learners. The results include responses to genre awareness tasks for L2 Portuguese, Spanish and Japanese. Then, Francis Troyan will examine how an L2 French teacher sustained dialogic interactions following an SFL-informed genre-based approach using speaking-to-write/writing-to-speak activities. The results illustrate the relationality between speaking and writing and the connectedness to each person in the classroom (student-student and teacher-student) when negotiating meaning and positively motivating learners in a world language. In the sequence, Miriam Akoto will illustrate the connection between types of knowledge students make when working in collaborative writing tasks. Her work report on specific types of genre-related content L2 French learners use during group collaborative work and for what reasons they make those choices. Finally, Matt Coss will discuss the relationality between modality and writing knowledge (i.e., handwriting versus keyboarding) in the context of L2 (Chinese) writing assessments. The results emphasize the importance of understanding the relationality between modality and writing knowledge for an accurate measurement of writing knowledge and a focus on instruction that prioritizes real-world communicative goals. The colloquium concludes with Melinda Reichelt responding to the presentations and pinpointing the potential of elements mentioned by the speakers to better understand the context of writing in languages other than English.

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.

This colloquium is devoted to exploring the concept of ecology in second language writing. Our purpose is to examine the ecology concept from multiple perspectives and to suggest orientations for the field. Th scholars will engage in informal dialogic interaction on the topic, followed by two discussants.

The ecology concept focuses on where and how we live, who and what we live with, what (values) we live for and by, and how these are all interconnected. From this perspective, it is odd that dominant ideologies of science insist that to gain true knowledge we must 1) detach what we study from the rest of the world—it from its complex sustaining context; and 2) detach ourselves as researchers from our feeling, valuing, everyday selves, as if emotionless, disembodied, values-neutral human beings ever existed. Ecology in this sense opposes dominant ideologies of science.

In another sense, however, ecology welcomes all approaches to studying and understanding human action. Ecology's first principle is "everything is connected to everything else" (Commoner, 1971, p. 29); therefore the more perspectives the better, as long as these perspectives can be treated relationally. This approach calls for diversity, patient listening and discussion, synergizing, and interdisciplinarity.

Ecology has two immediate implications for multilingual writing. First, it is increasingly recognized that all forms of communication occur not in vacuums, but in complex multimodal/multisensory/sociomaterial/political/multilingual contexts/environments (Canagarajah, 2018). If so, then we must study writing as environmentally situated. This environmental turn has been well-represented in one of our "parent disciplines" (Silva & Leki, 2004)—composition studies—but less so in the other—applied linguistics. In the latter, writing has often been treated as a thing in itself, (e.g., a grammatical entity or cognitive product).

Second, if all writing is ecological, and our fragile human ecology is imminently threatened, then multilingual writing must engage with our ecological crisis. Other fields have begun to do so, e.g., TESOL (Goulah & Katunich, 2020) and composition studies (Roux, 2023); shouldn't we join them? Writing is a powerful tool for revolutionary change; let us use it, study it, and teach it to save our lives.

This colloquium explores the use of AI tools in L2 writing beyond classrooms through philosophical and empirical inquiries. The three presentations draw on cutting-edge literature and investigate our current discourses on, practices of, and policies regarding the use of generative AI in writing from perspectives that have been less considered.

This colloquium presents findings from a large research project focused on writing self-efficacy (WSE) conducted with first-year university students, most, not all, of whom were multilingual. We will discuss differences between L1 and L2 writers in WSE, factors that influence WSE, and implications for teaching L2 writers.

This study examines citations in post-methods sections (e.g., findings, discussion, implications) of empirical articles focusing on: the overlap with citations in literature reviews, the rhetorical functions of citations, and the structure of citations. Findings counter advice from research manuals and describe paradigm differences (qualitative and quantitative).

This talk examines the use of Concept-Based Language Instruction in a genre-based advanced writing context for 34 students (24 multilingual) to master academic citation practices for research writing. Data includes pre- and post-intervention interviews, student writing and revision, and their written and oral reflections.

Elder Vernon Masayesva and Professor Sheilah Nicholas will share their experience as ecological/educational activists and language/literacy educators in support of their ancestral Hopi lands and peoples as an inextricable part of our spiritual and ecological world.

This paper describes the process of introducing asynchronous online instruction into a transnational writing program. We share an analysis of contextual opportunities, challenges, and considerations and how we have attempted to address these areas in pilot courses. We conclude with implications and recommendations for online SLW instruction and course design.

Hall (2009) asked "how can WAC/WID programs more effectively encourage Multilingual Learning Across the Curriculum?” (p.37). This session describes the recreation of a WAC program at a highly multilingual community college to include multiple languages with the help of Spanish and ESL Professors (e.g., Siczek & Shapiro, 2014).

The colloquium addresses learner collaboration from multiple perspectives: the first talk provides an updated account of collaborative writing pedagogy. The second talk presents an empirical study on learner collaboration among heritage and L2 Spanish learners. The last talk presents new directions in this domain by introducing Collaborative Reading for Writing.

Ungrading has surged in recognition in the past several years. In this colloquium, several second language writing teachers discuss their beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge about ungrading approaches. They will further discuss advantages and disadvantages of ungrading for both students and teachers in the second language writing classroom.