Second language writing is the study of writing performed by non-native speakers/writers of a language as a second or foreign language. The process of second language writing has been an area of research in applied linguistics and second language acquisition theory since the middle of the 20th century. The focus has been mainly on second-language writing in academic settings. In terms of instructional practices, the focus of second language writing instruction has traditionally been on achieving grammatical accuracy. However, this changed under the influence of compositional studies, which focused on conceptual and structural properties. Recently, particular attention has been paid to the integration of written texts with other media (multimodality) and to the mixing of languages in online media.
History Before the 1960s, the focus of English language teaching was on producing or preparing graduates of ESL schools who successfully can pass citizenship tests to be able to work. During industrialization, the most needed skills were reading and speaking skills. Although immigrants struggled with writing in their second language, it was not the necessary skill needed by industrialization at that time. Scholars at that time, mostly phoneticians, argued that spoken language should be placed over the written language and phonetics should serve as the basis for language learning. Based on Skinnerian Behaviorism (1957), the audio-lingual method came about in language teaching after World War II. The audio-lingual method was initially focused on teaching speaking skills. According to Leki (1992), writing was taught in ESL classes as a component of second language teaching. However, writing does not mean “to create, to express ideas, to synthesize information, to explore thoughts”. Even US higher education institutions had to send international students to high schools to be prepared until they met university academic writing demands because universities did not have any courses for preparing L2 students for preparing to meet the right language proficiency levels needed to function at US universities. In the U.S., writing received greater attention after a large number of students enrollment in the US universities in the 1960s. This meant that not only teaching reading and speaking skills were important as they were needed for working during the industrialization, but teaching a language required also writing as international students could function in American universities. During this period, postsecondary institutions could no longer ignore the difficulties L2 writers faced as the number of international students increased 4 times more in 1950 compared to 1940 and all freshman students had to take first year composition courses. Specialists had to design courses for L2 writers that were considered as remedial courses in some universities while other institutions credited these courses. To solve the challenges L2 writers encounter, both "composition teachers" and "ESL teachers" attended the meeting organized by Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) established in 1949 as a forum for specialists in the field of composition. Specialists and educators discussed the materials that needed to be used for teaching L2 writing instruction, and ESL specialists suggested using materials designed by Michigan English Language Institute (ELI). Michigan ELI was the first language teaching institution founded to teach English to Spanish language speakers, and the institute also provided courses for teaching ESL. Second language writing issues were considered both by composition and ESL teachers at the conference. After Michigan ELI and other institutions started preparing ESL teaching specialists, second language teachers argued that second language learners should be taught only by ESL specialists. Also, in 1966, Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), a new organization was established to serve L2 specialists' needs. As a result, composition studies acquired two components: “L1” and “L2 writing” that lead to the establishment of second language writing as a separate discipline that falls under TESOL.
Perspectives and theories Second language writing development has been investigated from many different perspectives. Manchón's edited book on L2 Writing Development: Multiple Perspectives provides an insight in which perspective second language writing development can be investigated. Her edited books includes studies on L2 writing development from dynamic systems theory, goal theory, genre-based systemic functional linguistics, and rhetorical genre theory. Second language writing development has been most extensively investigated by traditional cross-sectional methodologies such as pre-test post-test designs. However, in the early 2000s a novel angle has emerged called dynamical systems theory approach on second language development. Studies adopting the DST perspective explore interactions between different constructs such as lexicon, syntax, and accuracy by using moving correlations. The degree of variability in the constructs is usually explored by min-max graphs, data resampling and Monte Carlo Analysis. Among the researchers who have adopted this new angle are Verspoor, de Bot, and Lowie. These researchers used a time-series data to investigate development in second language writing.
Symposium on Second Language Writing The Symposium on Second Language Writing, which began in 1998 at Purdue University, is an international conference on second language writing. It was a biennial event through 2006, and annual after that. It has been hosted at Purdue University six times, but the 2007 symposium was held in Japan; the 2009 at Arizona State University, the 2010 in Murcia, Spain; the 2011 in Taipei, Taiwan; and the 2013 will be held at Shandong University, Jinan, China.
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