A three dimensional review : Considerations for teaching L2 writing within cross-cultural contexts
by Damian Rivers
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Abstract

This article aims to review three published journal articles which focus on L2 writing in terms of teacher, student and target reader perspectives. The first article, entitled “The Role of the Teaching Context in Hong Kong English Teacher’s Perceptions of L2 Writing Pedagogy” (1998), takes an in-depth look at L2 writing from the perspective of teacher beliefs, attitudes and knowledge within the Hong Kong public school system. The second article, entitled “Prospective Teachers and L2 Writing Anxiety” (2006), examines Turkish trainee teachers’ anxiety connected to L2 writing in an L1 English environment. The third article, “The Pragmatics of Letter-Writing” (2001), focuses on personal letter writing as a mode of cross-cultural communication between L2 writers and L1 readers. The main findings from each article will be drawn together to form a basis for further research within this field.

Introduction

The subject of L2 writing is vital within the field of teacher education because writing forms an integral part of basic human communication. Being a competent L2 speaker alone is insufficient to function within a number of social and academic roles.  Matsuda, (2001) identified the area of L2 writing as being neglected in the early years of SLA studies due to the dominance of the audiolingual approach during the mid-twentieth century. L2 writing research only gained prominence during the 1960’s when writing became a component of ESL programs within U.S university courses for foreign students. At this time many teachers had little or no experience in teaching L2 writing, but soon realized that it was an essential element needed to undertake a university course in which English was the medium of instruction. Ferris & Hedgcock, (1998) stated that for this reason L2 writing originally emerged as a “sub-discipline” of TESL with a strong pedagogical emphasis. Several pedagogical approaches have since been proposed by a number of researchers representing different conceptualizations of the nature of writing as a part of SLA theory.

Early L2 writing courses focused entirely on sentence level structure and emphasized errorless compositions. This controlled composition came from a behavioural, habit-formed theory of learning, the aim of which was to provide students with “no freedom to make mistakes” (Pincas, 1982, p91). It was believed that “any free, random, hit or miss activity” such as student led compositions or free-writing should be “eliminated wherever possible, so that errors arising from the native-to-target language transfer can be avoided” (Pincas, 1962, p.185). Any support for the notion of fluency over accuracy was significantly lacking during this period of research and a general consensus was reached that “composing writing beyond the sentence must be guided or controlled” (Slager, 1996, p.77). One of the earliest paradigm breakers was Kaplan, (1966). He put forth the idea that paragraph and sentence structures were both language and culture specific that suggested that context played an important role in developing and teaching L2 writing skills. Kaplan’s proposals also led to the realization that “writing is much more than orthographic symbolization of speech; it is, most importantly, a purposeful selection and organization of experience” (Arapoff, 1967, p.33). This essentially polarized theoretical approaches to L2 writing.

Regardless, researchers continued to debate the theoretical nature of L2 writing.  Zamel, (1976) argued that high-level L2 writers were in fact similar to L1 writers and could benefit from instruction emphasizing the process of writing rather than the structural confines of writing. Various intervention strategies subsequently emerged including, formative feedback, multiple draft composition, and peer analyses. These methods of promoting writing as a process-based event were especially popular during the early 1980’s (e.g., Raimes, 1983). The 1990’s saw the rapid development of ESP and EAP courses which signified yet another shift in theoretical opinion. If instructors could provide language specific tuition bound by context, then students would need to be aware of the multitude of writing contexts that were available to them and how each one differed. The 1990’s was very much a boom period for L2 writing research. Leki & Silva, (1992) described the “explosion of interest in research on composition in a second language” (p.3). This was also marked by the creation of ‘The Journal of Second Language Writing’ in 1992, indicating “the maturing scholarly communication in the field” (Tannacito, 1995, p.5). Kroll, (1990) symbolized the new found interest best when he wrote, “for those engaged in teaching second language [writers], what is needed is both a firm grounding in the theoretical issues of first and second language writing and an understanding of a broad range of pedagogical issues that shape classroom writing instruction” (p.2). Unfortunately, theoretical knowledge remains a minor factor in the design of many modern L2 writing programs. Other considerations such as budget and time restrictions, student and teacher motivation, social context, teacher awareness and pedagogical emphasis all play major roles in the approach to L2 writing.

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