Learning-to-Write and Writing-to-Learn in an Additional Language (review)

As I begin to review Learning-to-Write and Writing-to-Learn in an Additional Language,’ I ask myself, will the book provide me with new insight into the theories and pedagogies of writing in multilingual contexts? Alister Cumming makes a good start in his preface, in which he highlights an important paradox – that second language (L2) writing is not only an ability to acquire, teach, and assess but also a means, context, and basis for learning both language and writing. In chapter 1, Rosa M. Manchón situates the learning-to-write and writing-to-learn perspectives that are explored in the book in the contexts of L2 writing and second language acquisition (SLA) scholarship. While reading this chapter, I struggled at times to keep up with the many acronyms.

Chapter 2, written by Ken Hyland, provides an excellent overview of key theories that relate to learning to write in adult contexts. Hyland notes a division of approaches that focus on the following: the writer and cognitive processes used to create texts; writing as a textual product – as object and as discourse; and writing as interaction between writers and readers. In chapter 3, Alan Hirvela discusses several US-based studies that have focused on writing to learn about content areas. Hirvela describes ‘two broad realms’ from which writing in the content areas, or writing for learning content (WLC), has evolved: (1) Writing to Learn and (2) what has historically been called Content-Based Instruction (CBLT) and, more recently, particularly in the European context, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). Chapter 4, by Manchón, reviews several research trends in L2 writing and SLA, with specific reference to L2 writing as a form of output.

Part Two begins with chapter 5, a strong chapter written by Ilona Leki, the first of six that present empirical data. In Leki’s study of newly arrived international students at a US university, she challenges the common assumption that graduate and undergraduate multilingual writers are novice writers; instead her participants proved to be experienced in a wide variety of writing tasks. Chapter 6, by Suresh Canagarajah, has an intriguing focus on ‘shuttling between languages.’ In his excellent chapter, Canagarajah compares three of his participant’s texts: English as L2 and Tamil as L1 written for local and foreign publication. Based on the similarity of the texts written for local publication, Canagarajah argues that textual similarity can have more to do with place and audience than different languages. Heidi Byrnes’s chapter 7 draws on Systemic Functional Linguistics to support her argument that learning-to-write and writing-to-learn are inseparable. Byrnes compares L2 and foreign language writing by analyzing the summary writing of a student taking an advanced German course at a US university, in which she emphasizes the importance of learners gaining insight into the meaning-making rather than rules of a foreign language.

Chapter 8 is a case study of students’ and teachers’ perceptions of the language learning potential of form-focused feedback on writing in New Zealand, written by Fiona Hyland. Hyland stresses the need for teachers to understand their students’ perspectives on the value of form-focused feedback and open up a dialogue about how such feedback can be used. Manchón and Julio Rica de Larios investigate 18 English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ perceptions of the language learning potential of L2 writing in chapter 9. The authors focus on the actions that English for academic purposes (EAP) students in Spain reported taking to make the most of the learning opportunities afforded by their engagement with writing. The final empirical chapter of Part Two is written by John Hedgcock and Natalie Lefkowitz. The authors provide an excellent analysis of writing-to-learn practices in a US university foreign language setting that serves both anglophone learners of Spanish as a foreign language and heritage language students. The authors conclude that traditional writing...