This longitudinal case study, supplemented by cross-sectional comparisons among five groups of writers with differing backgrounds, investigates how Natsu, a Japanese multilingual writer, developed her L1, L2 (English), and L3 (Chinese) writing competence over two and a half years. To create a comprehensive picture of this multilingual writer, the…

In this paper we report a case study of two first-year students at a university in Hong Kong doing the same writing assignment that required the use of sources. We explore the students' understanding of plagiarism, their strategies for composing, the similarity between their texts and source texts, and the lecturer's assessment of their work. The…

Metadiscourse is self-reflective linguistic expressions referring to the evolving text, to the writer, and to the imagined readers of that text. It is based on a view of writing as a social engagement and, in academic contexts, reveals the ways writers project themselves into their discourse to signal their attitudes and commitments. In this…

Examines the writing and translation processes of second-language learners both in their native and second languages. Results indicate that most students used a "what-next" approach in their writing tasks in both languages and a "sentence-by-sentence" approach in the translation task. Attention patterns in both writing tasks…

Writing groups, used in many English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) composition classrooms, pose problems for some students from collectivistic cultures such as Japan and China. Suggested reasons are the individual benefit goal, the need for feedback rather than group harmony, and strained group dynamics. (Contains 41 references.) (Author/LB)

This article reports on how Quebec Francophone high school students, enrolled in a program which featured an environment rich in information and communication technologies (ICTs), appropriated the writing process over a four-year period (Grades 7-10) in the context of their ESL language arts courses. Data for the study were obtained using…

A study investigated the relationship between university students' individual writing process skill and product quality in Japanese and either English or Chinese. Results show no clear relationship between process and product but show similarity in writing process across languages and correlation between general Japanese language skill and written…