Novice Multilingual Undergraduate Reader-Writers’ Sequential and Spiral Composing Processes of Second Language Synthesis Writing

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: Exploring the Academic Literacy Practices of Multilingual Readers and Writers in Higher Education Contexts (Table 7)

Abstract

Novice multilingual undergraduate students find second language (L2) synthesis writing challenging due to their linguistically, culturally, and rhetorically diverse backgrounds. Although synthesis writing is often assigned in higher education to evaluate students’ learning outcomes, a paucity of relevant research has guided our understanding of individual multilingual students’ synthesis composing process, especially under natural contexts such as ESL composition courses (cf. assessment contexts).

Given the significance of teaching and learning L2 synthesis writing, this study purposefully selected two cases (i.e., Bolin and Xiaohui) in a multiple case study to show different composing patterns due to the participants’ different engagement in reading and writing during their composing process. Bolin was a transfer student and Xiaohui was a freshmen student, and both were from China.

Throughout a semester, various data were collected from each participant: Multiple drafts of a synthesis argumentative essay, reading-to-write logs, three semi-structured interviews, and three stimulated recall protocols. The data were analyzed using category construction analysis guided by Stein’s (1990) cognitive model of reading-to-write process and Lenski and John’s (1997) reading-to-write patterns. Textual analysis was conducted for source integration types (Solé et al., 2013) and writing strategies (e.g., quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, and synthesizing).

The findings revealed that Bolin was an agentive reader-writer who adopted the sequential composing pattern as he read various sources only during the very beginning while developing an outline for the essay. He considered his prior knowledge and experience as an asset in composing the essay. This led him to become strategic in deciding which of his previous L1 and L2 reading and writing experience and other relevant experience on the essay topic to utilize in different phases of his composing process. On the other hand, Xiaohui was a reader-writer who pursued efficiency in completing the task with little effort and time, which revealed a spiral composing pattern. She delayed her engagement in reading until she wrote the first draft. She searched for and read sources only when she needed to integrate sources into her essay, which prohibited her from a richer composing process. Overall, Bolin and Xiaohui adopted different composing approaches that fit their writing contexts at the moment such as individual needs/goals, instructors’ feedback, and lectures, despite coming from the same first language rhetorical and cultural backgrounds.

Based on the findings, this study argues that instructors need to support multilingual students to construct critical habits of mind as a reader-writer such as doing writerly reading (Hirvela, 2016) by thinking like a writer while reading instead of assuming that they can readily engage in reading while synthesizing. Also, instructors need to support the students to become more mindful of creating intertextuality by thinking about why integrating sources differently could create differences in their writing. Furthermore, more qualitative multiple case studies focusing on a small number of multilingual students need to be conducted in order to delve more deeply into their diverse composing processes as each of them possessed different strengths and concerns affecting their approach to composing L2 synthesis writing.

Author

• Ju-A Hwang, University of Delaware