Second language writing: Research insights for the classroom Ed. by Barbara Kroll (review)

232 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 68, NUMBER 1 (1992) local educational, administrative, and legal systems. The result ofsuch uses is that such varieties have developed nativized discourse and style types and functionally determined sublanguages (registers), and are used as a linguistic vehicle for creative writing in various genres. We find such uses of English on almost every continent, for example in Nigeria, Kenya, the Republic of South Africa, and Ghana in Africa; Bangladesh , India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka in South Asia; and the Philippines, Singapore, and Malaysia in Southeast Asia.' This is the theme of the book, and K supports it throughout, with special reference to the language he knows most about, Indian English. He is strongly opposed to those who find local grammatical and pragmatic differences in the institutionalized nonnative varieties of English to be 'errors' and 'deficiencies', to be eliminated by teachers of ESL. Particularly forceful is his refutation in detail of the points made in a 1968 article by Clifford Prator (in Ch. 6, 'Native and non-native norms'). Also interesting are his references to and extracts from creative writers in India and Africa who use the institutionalized nonnative vernaculars in literary work. In sum, this book is an emphatic, if often repetitive, summary of the views of a strong advocate of the recognition of the institutionalized nonnative varieties of English in Asia and Africa as standard languages in their own right, of equal status with the varieties of England, Scotland, Ireland, North America, and Australia . The alchemy of English is to have transformed itself from the language of a small country on the fringe of Europe into the newest and most widely spread of world languages. [W. N. Francis, Brown University.] Second language writing: Research insights for the classroom. Ed. by Barbara Kroll. (The Cambridge Applied Linguistics Series.) Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1990. Cloth $37.50. This collection—the tenth book in the Cambridge Applied Linguistics Series—explores what the contributors consider to be the major issues in teaching and studying second language writing. It is divided into two sections. The first, entitled 'Philosophical underpinnings of second language writing instruction', addresses 'many of the paramount concerns of the second language writing teacher or researcher' (7), such as how the teaching of ESL writing has evolved since the 1940s, what can be learned from research in rhetoric and composition, what is involved in the writing process, what should be considered in large-scale assessment of ESL writing, and what the connections are between reading and writing. The second section, 'Considerations for writing instruction', describes several empirical studies that focus on some aspect of writing or the writing classroom. Each chapter reports on research findings related to the 'philosophical' issues presented in the first section. Included are studies of how and to what effect the first language is used in second-language writing, how text analysis assists in revision , what effect preparation time has on the quality of writing, what roles various types of teacher response play in improving students' writing, how topics affect student performance, and how writers incorporate reading into their writing. The purpose of the collection is to address the concerns of both ESL teachers and researchers ; according to Kroll, 'this volume should prove especially useful in providing a coherent view of current thinking in the field, and can serve as a guide for teachers and researchers seeking to formulate a comprehensive philosophy of teaching' (4). From my perspective , the book successfully fulfills the first goal but fails to achieve the second, largely because current thinking in ESL research is primarily descriptive and empirical, and rarely philosophical . The contributors competently summarize the research to date on ESL writing, which, as is frequently noted throughout the volume, is modeled on selected first-language research in the field of rhetoric and composition. Tony Silva's review of trends in ESL composition instruction (Ch. 1), Alexandra Rowe Krapel's overview of writing-process research (Ch. 3), Ilona Lecki's summary of issues in teacher response (Ch. 4), and Joan Carson Eisterhold's review of reading-writing research and the possibilities for transfer of firstlanguage literacy to second-language reading and writing (Ch. 6), in combination, provide a good overview of...