This book demonstrates how researchers and practitioners in writing and rhetoric studies can engage in story work across differences in culture, language, locations, and experience. Based on an ethnographic study in Nepal spanning a decade, Katie Silvester speaks with and to the stories of Bhutanese women in diaspora learning English later in life…

Background/Context: Many students in the United States need access to effective writing instruction, with some requiring intensive intervention. Results from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) in writing over the past 25 years revealed that most students in the U.S. have yet to attain a proficient level of written expression…

As researchers come to recognize the origins of dysgraphia, we can better suggest optimal approaches to remediation. In defining dysgraphia, we review the writing process, research on the development of writing, and various factors related to either spelling difficulties, visual-motor difficulties, or both, that might interfere in the process of…

Much of the research that has examined the writing knowledge of school-age students has relied on interviews to ascertain this information, which is problematic because interviews may underestimate breadth and depth of writing knowledge, require lengthy interactions with participants, and do not permit a direct evaluation of a prescribed array of…

My dissertation, titled "Walking the walk: How Writing, Rhetoric, and Composition doctoral programs prepare their graduate students for intersectional Writing Studies research," responds to recent, repeated calls for a large-scale review of the doctoral programs in Writing, Rhetoric, and Composition Studies (de Mueller and Ruiz, 2017;…

Students' engagement in writing mediates their academic literacy development as they become initiated and socialized into disciplinary communities. With a focus on the mediating role of writing, the present study investigates the ways in which two L2 students forge an early understanding of academic discourse when they carry out writing tasks…

This book provides a comprehensive overview of research in applied linguistics involving the intersection of digital multimodal composing (DMC) and second language (L2) writing. It presents a theoretically and methodologically diverse introduction to key theories and scholarship supporting DMC's use, along with practical pedagogical tips and tools…

Science has greatly enhanced what we know about reading and writing. Drawing on this knowledge, researchers have proffered recommendations for how to teach these two literacy skills. Although such recommendations are aimed at closing the gap between research and practice, they often fail to take into account the reciprocal relation that exists…

This research aims to investigate the textual organization of research article discussion sections in second language writing in order to reveal how expert writers in the discipline prefer to construct their discussion. Move analysis was conducted on a corpus of 103 research article discussion sections collected from five established journals. The…

For over 30 years I have been committed to theorizing, interrogating, and practicing life writing as an academic, pedagogical, and curricular discipline. In my life writing I often write what one reviewer called "clichés of the heart." I wonder what is wrong with clichés. Why are so many people so ready to criticize others for clichés?…

Over the past 40 years, second language educators and assessors have come to the realization that investigating the process of writing can shed light on language teaching, learning and assessment practices (Odendahl & Deane, 2018). What L2 writers do and think while writing can provide links between the task, the related construct and the…

Canada's social and educational policies have always involved immigrant settlement and English/French bilingualism. Research on writing in second languages emerged in the 1980s from graduate programs of education and applied linguistics at major universities in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and Vancouver, particularly done by scholars investigating…

This article argues for greater attention to the embodied experiences and material practices of single mothers in the academy. Using critical imagination (Royster and Kirsch) to analyze how texts in the field have represented single motherhood, I identify three patterns of how mothers complete work, or what I term survivalist strategies to resist…

In this essay, we map out four major approaches to the study of writing experiences: (a) worlds apart, (b) literacy in the wild, (c) ecologies and networks, and (d) transfer. We examine how the primary metaphors used in each approach have contributed to our field's understanding of writing. In focusing on specific dimensions of writing, each…

This dissertation is a qualitative study of fifteen WPA instructors of the composition practicum. Driven by the primary research question, how do WPAs enact mentorship within composition practicum?, the study sought to better identify how WPAs enact and perceive mentorship within the composition practicum through an activity-theory framework in…