TESL Canada Journal
https://teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl
<p><em>TESL Canada Journal</em>, established in 1984, is a refereed journal for practicing teachers, teacher educators, graduate students, and researchers. <em>TESL Canada Journal</em> invites the submission of unpublished manuscripts about the learning and teaching of official languages; second language teacher education; and the maintenance and development of minority, heritage, or Aboriginal languages.</p> <p>This publication is funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under its program to encourage the dissemination of information on the teaching and learning of English and French as second languages in Canada. </p> <p>This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.</p>TESL Canada en-USTESL Canada Journal0826-435XCoda: Institutionalizing L2 Writing
https://teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/article/view/1699
<p>In this short coda to the special issue, Paul Kei Matsuda connects some of his previous work on the disciplinarity of second language writing to issues raised in this issue about the place of L2 writing in Canada and beyond.</p>Paul Kei Matsuda
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2023-12-312023-12-3140115115510.18806/tesl.v40i1/1389Studies of Second-Language Writing in Canada
https://teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/article/view/1657
<p>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 scholars investigating cognitive and learning processes and rhetorical characteristics of writing in English as a mother tongue. In the 1990s several Canadian scholars established systematic programs of research focused on L2 composing processes, writing for academic purposes, assessment, and innovative educational programs— spawning, in turn, in the 2000s a third generation of L2 writing researchers who have now established themselves across Canada and around the world. </p>Alister Cumming
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2023-12-312023-12-314011910.18806/tesl.v40i1/1382"Grandparents for the Next Generation"
https://teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/article/view/1637
<p>Paul Kei Matsuda (1999) has written about the divide between U.S. composition and applied linguistics, which he attributes to an institutionalization of the division of labour between Applied Linguistics and composition in the early 1960’s. As such, when language concerns resurfaced in composition in the early-2000s, this division of labour led to a “lack of a community of knowledgeable peers who [could] ensure intellectual accountability” among compositionists (Matsuda 2013). Did this same divide occur in a Canadian context, or has the field of second language writing developed differently in Canada? The goal of this paper is to construct a history of L2 writing scholarship, reading for any collaboration with writing studies as both fields “grew up” together in Canada. <span data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":160,"335559740":259}"> </span></p> <p><span data-contrast="auto">To this end, the paper extends the work of Alister Cumming who narrates the evolution of L2 writing scholarship in Canada. Using data from Cumming’s “Studies of Second-Language Writing in Canada: Three Generations,” this paper reports findings from archival research that traces the publication history of key knowledge-workers (identified by Cumming) from the 80s to the 2000s. These findings tell a story about how L2 writing developed as a field in Canada and the ways it was influenced by fields like education and applied linguistics. Ultimately, these findings contribute to the broader narrative of how L2 writing has professionalized in Canadian higher education. By investigating the historic formation of L2 writing in Canada, scholars, writing instructors, and writing program administrators can draw on historic relations to create writing pedagogy that best meets the needs of an increasingly linguistically diverse writing classroom. </span></p>Christin Wright-TaylorJoel Heng Hartse
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2023-12-312023-12-31401114010.18806/tesl.v40i1/1383Multisemiotics, Race, and Academic Literacies
https://teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/article/view/1649
<p>This study examines the trajectories of two multilingual, racialized academic writing faculty, presenting how we brought our Southern onto-epistemologies (e.g., Santos, 2016) to curriculum, teaching, and assessment. Although plurilingualism has become a significant dimension of Canadian higher education (Marshall, 2020), monolingual norms that emphasize native-like competence continue to be a mainstream discourse in many academic writing courses. Building on the recent raciolinguistic critique (Rosa & Flores, 2017) of the lack of discussion of racism in academic literacies discourse, we acknowledge that academic literacies continues to force plurilingual, international students into a white subject position. Acknowledging the tension between the monolingual ideal and multilingual realities, we explore how two plurilingual, non-white faculty challenge an academic writing tradition that is constructed by the white listening subject. By co-creating duoethnographic narratives that provide insight into our complex biographical journeys as cycles of becoming (Thibault, 2020), our story shows how teaching academic writing is not simply teaching a skillset but involves constant negotiation between students’ and teachers’ lived experiences. Through this process, we conceive of teaching academic literacies as both an ideological construct and a multisemiotic process that involves multiple histories and meaning-making resources across diverse time and place scales.</p>Pedro dos SantosBong-gi Sohn
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2023-12-312023-12-31401416010.18806/tesl.v40i1/1384The Cognitive Processes of ESL Writers Responding to an Integrated Argumentative Writing Task
https://teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/article/view/1633
<p>Integrated writing tasks, whether used for teaching or assessment, are designed to engage and gauge the actions, skills, and strategies that students need to become efficient writers able to identify, extract and synthesize information from multiple source material in their writing appropriately. Consequently, it is critical to verify that such tasks do engage the cognitive processes and strategies that theory and research indicate are essential elements of successful source use in writing. This study used a mixed methods approach to describe the cognitive processes that ESL learners engage in when responding to an integrated writing task and examine how these cognitive processes vary depending on the students’ English language proficiency (ELP). </p> <p>Each of 51 undergraduate ESL students at two levels of ELP (high and low) completed an integrated writing task that involved listening to a lecture, reading a passage about a related topic, and writing an argumentative essay using ideas from both sources and then responded to a questionnaire about their cognitive processes. Additionally, another eight participants were video recorded while completing the writing task and provided stimulated recalls about their writing processes immediately after completing the task. The findings reveal the various cognitive and metacognitive processes and strategies that the participants engaged and the language and discourse aspects they attended to. Additionally, participants with higher ELP tended to interact with the sources and task and to engage in planning and organizing, generating and retrieving, and revising and editing more frequently than did participants with lower ELP. The findings and their implications for the teaching and assessment of source-based writing are discussed. </p>Ibtissem Knouzi
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2023-12-312023-12-31401618010.18806/tesl.v40i1/1385Let’s Talk About Writing Support for Plurilingual Graduate Students
https://teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/article/view/1647
<p>Academic writing is an inseparable aspect of graduate school (Holmes et al., 2018) as students’ academic writing is the primary basis for assessment (Turner, 2011). The high-stakes nature of academic writing is magnified for plurilingual students, whose attendance at English medium universities is growing exponentially (Fenton-Smith & Humphreys, 2017). However, there is a scarcity of research that addresses how faculty support writing as an essential practice for plurilingual graduate students, particularly in English-medium universities where English is implicated in structures of power and privilege. Employing a critical analytic collaborative autoethnography (Anderson, 2006; Kempny, 2022) this research uses polyvocal conversations among seven researcher/practitioners to consider the question of how faculty members perceive and respond to the academic writing needs of plurilingual graduate students. Informed by intersectionality (Crenshaw, 2017; Hankivsky, 2014), these conversations illuminate the ways both educator identities and epistemological turns in education theory impact approaches to writing support for plurilingual graduate writers. Importantly, these discussions are implicated in the socio-political contexts of Canadian and Australian universities where systems of inequality act to marginalise plurilingual writers. These contextualised conversations then aim to problematise and revise existent, dominant deficit discourses and pedagogies of writing support for plurilingual students. Findings illuminate the capacity of educators, who are cognisant of their power and place, to generate alternative practices to support plurilingual graduate writers in service of more asset-orientated and inclusive spaces that take advantage of students’ plurilingual repertoires in English-dominant universities.</p>Antoinette GagneMegan McIntoshSreemali HerathMary-Ann FowlerJade KimVictorina BaxanElena Danilina
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2023-12-312023-12-314018110610.18806/tesl.v40i1/1386Teaching Elementary ESL Writing in Canada
https://teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/article/view/1631
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Writing is an important skill for children’s academic success (e.g., Fitts et al., 2016), underlining the need for effective ESL writing instruction in the elementary classroom (Brisk, 2012; Mohr, 2017; O’Hallaron, 2014). However, there is a paucity of research on elementary ESL writing instruction in Canada. Specifically, we have little understanding about the pedagogical practices in this context. To fill this gap, this paper reports on findings of a study that investigated: (a) factors that influence teacher preparedness, and (b) challenges teachers encounter in teaching ESL writing. Eight elementary teachers, each with at least three years of teaching experience, participated in the study. Data were collected from interviews and online surveys. Findings suggest that teacher preparedness was affected by four factors: (a) background knowledge of teaching ESL writing, (b) professional learning opportunities, (c) self-learning and experience as a teacher, and (d) collaboration, mentorship, and support for teachers. The challenges teachers encountered were grouped into five categories: (a) making sense of the writing curriculum, (b) finding relevant resources, (c) lack of time, (d) difficulty providing feedback, and (e) parental involvement at home. Drawing on these findings, the paper discusses implications and recommendations for ESL writing instruction in the elementary classroom.</p>Subrata BhowmikMarcia Kim
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2023-12-312023-12-3140110713510.18806/tesl.v40i1/1387Second Language Writing in Canada
https://teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/article/view/1695
Joel Heng HartseJames CorcoranIsmaeil Fazel
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2023-12-312023-12-31401ixii10.18806/tesl.v40i1/1381From EAP to ESP
https://teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/article/view/1625
<p>English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) are language training pathways for students to meet target language proficiency requirements towards further tertiary studies (Keefe & Shi, 2017; Walková & Bradford, 2022). Yet, these can be highly debatable terms, controversial over their appropriate usage (Flowerdew, 2016; Li, 2020; Maleki, 2008; Mpofu & Maphalala, 2021; Wette, 2018). A main reason for this discord is a lack of firm definitions between these two constructs, which leads to vague and blurred boundaries. This article will describe the process where a small western Canadian university modified an existing EAP course consisting of broad reading and writing topics into an ESP one with a narrow culturally and medically themed focus towards internationally educated nurses (IENs). These modifications assisted in the identification of the similarities and differences of both EAP and ESP for the institution. The new ESP course, piloted over two terms was found to have strengthened student outcomes in their non-native target language, commonly known as L2 (Saville-Toike, 2012) while their disciplinary knowledge contributions also enriched the curriculum. Rooted within the debate between determining appropriate language pathways, recommendations to determine the suitability of an EAP versus an ESP course within a “negotiated syllabus” utilizing learner input are offered (Breen & Littlejohn, 2000; Prior, 2020).</p> <p> </p>May YeungEaman Mah
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2023-12-312023-12-3140113715010.18806/tesl.v40i1/1388