Undergraduates in a Second Language Challenges and Complexities of Academic Literacy Development

Once I started reading, I couldn't stop.... I cannot emphasize too strongly how important (and rare) it is for a professional book to be so very readable, so compelling.... The combination of the solid scholarship, the theoretical framework, and vivid depiction of the students' lives make this book one that will be read by many and that will be influential. Stephanie Vandrick, University of San Francisco Few studies like this exist that document the writing that students do and the attitudes toward writing that they have over their entire undergraduate experience.... The case studies are rich and revealing, and give curriculum designers and writing teachers, both L1 and L2, much to think about. Above all, [this book] makes us question long- and dearly held assumptions about writing at the undergraduate level. Christine Pearson Casanave, Temple University, Japan This is the first book-length study of bilingual, international, and immigrant college students that attempts to fully embed their academic writing experiences within the broader frame of their personal histories, the human context of their development, and the disciplinary contexts of their majors. It addresses the questions: How useful are L2 writing courses for the students who are required to take them? What do the students carry with them from these courses to their other disciplinary courses across the curriculum? What happens to these students after they leave ESL, English, or writing classes? Drawing on data from a 5- year longitudinal study of four university students for whom English was not their strongest/primary language, it captures their literacy experiences throughout their undergraduate careers. The intensive case studies answer some questions and raise others about these students' academic development as it entwined with their social experiences and identity formation and with the ideological context of studying at a U.S. university in the 1990s. This study is revealing for teachers of writing to native English speakers and for those who teach ESL, bilingual, international, immigrant, L2, or non-native English speaking (NNES) students. This long list of qualifiers hints at the complexities inherent in the latter group of students' status in English-dominant countries like the U.S. and the difficulty of finding appropriate, adequate, and non-limiting ways to refer to them as a group beyond their status in political terms or the stage of their English language proficiency. in fact the findings of this study highlight its suggestion that grouping itself is a problem. This is a must-read volume for present and future writing teachers, compositionists, writing researchers, and second language studies professionalsLeki, Ilona is the author of 'Undergraduates in a Second Language Challenges and Complexities of Academic Literacy Development', published 2007 under ISBN 9780805856378 and ISBN 0805856374.