Interview

As I was searching for something else on the web, I found an interview that I had earlier this year with ESL Globe.

The title is: "What Strategies or Instructional Approaches are Particularly Effective for Second Language Writers?"

Because it happened at the busiest time of the year, I had almost forgotten that I had done this.

L2 articles in the Journal of Basic Writing

The latest issue of the Journal of Basic Writing (27.1) includes two articles that focus substantially on second language writing:

"Assessment of Generation 1.5 Learners for Placement into College Writing Courses" by Kristen di Gennaro.

"Feedback on Feedback: Exploring Student Responses to Teachers' Written Commentary" by Maria Ornella Treglia.

CFP: Special Issue on Corpus-Based Writing Research (Journalf of Writing Research)

Stephanie A. Schlitz
Assistant Professor, English and Linguistics
117B Bakeless Hall
Bloomsburg, PA 17815
sschlitz@bloomu.edu
570.389.4974

Journal of Writing Research
(JoWR, http://jowr.org/)

Special Issue: Exploring a Corpus-Informed Approach to Writing Research

Call for Proposals:

Since the development of the Brown Corpus in the 1960s, leveraging language corpora and corpus-based methods to analyze and to describe spoken and written language has become an established tradition within the broad field of linguistics.

Writing researchers as well have begun extending corpus methods to L1 and L2 writing research. Research teams in the U.K. and the U.S., for example, have begun designing large reference corpora of student writing. The developers of the British Academic Written English Corpus suggest that the corpus "has the potential to chart growth patterns such as whether students’ arguments became more complex as their education advanced, whether students learned to integrate material from different sources in formulating conclusions, and whether students’ vocabulary became more specialized and precise" (Nesi et al. 446). And the forthcoming Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers aims to provide a corpus of 1.6 million words written by students and to offer researchers the opportunity to quantitatively and qualitatively examine student writing in areas as diverse as writing development, genre variation, and disciplinary differences ("MICUSP").

The trend toward a corpus-informed approach to writing research also continues on a smaller scale. Given the ease with which individual teachers and researchers can create and mine corpora using text analysis software such as TextSTAT or WordSmith Tools, the development of small corpora by writing teachers who adopt the role of compiler-analyst is providing another avenue for corpus-informed writing research.

Yet, because corpus methods are relatively new to the field of writing research, there have been very few comprehensive discussions of the work in this area. The aim of this special JoWR issue, therefore, is to bring together teachers and researchers from a myriad of perspectives in an effort to explore the emerging field of corpus-informed writing research.

We invite papers covering a range of related topics, including discussions of the development of large, small, and parallel writing corpora; papers exploring the kinds of questions examined via
corpus research (e.g. diction and style, citation practices, usage, stylistic variation and its relationship to author gender, etc.); papers examining corpus methods (e.g. frequency lists, concordancing, examination of sociolinguistic variables, etc.) in the context of writing research; explanations of current and ongoing research; as well as discussions of the critiques surrounding a corpus-informed approach to writing research and the corpus-inclined researcher’s response to them. Authors are asked to write papers for a broad audience including readers with little or no corpus study familiarity.

Deadline for proposals (500-750 words in abstract form) is October 15, 2008. Proposers will receive initial notification by November 15, 2008. Final papers will be due by February 15, 2009.

Prior to acceptance, all final papers will undergo peer review as defined by JoWR’s peer review policy.

Proposals should be sent to: TBA

References

"MICUSP." University of Michigan English Language Institute. 12 Nov. 2007. http://www.micusp.org/.

Nesi, Hilary, Gerard Sharpling, Lisa Ganobcsik-Williams. "Student papers across the curriculum: Designing and developing a corpus of British student writing." Computers and Composition 21 (2004): 439–450.

Job Ad: Associate or Full Professor of Rhetoric and Composition

Writing Programs Director/Advanced Associate or Full Professor of Rhetoric and Composition

The Department of English at Arizona State University (http://www.asu.edu/clas/english) seeks an experienced writing programs administrator and accomplished scholar-teacher with an established record of outstanding scholarship and professional contributions to any area of Rhetoric and Composition. ASU is a Research I institution with outstanding research facilities and infrastructure support, and is located within the rapidly growing and dynamic metropolitan Phoenix area. Our English department is a large and diverse unit of faculty committed to excellence in teaching, to new and exciting research, and to ongoing community engagement.

Required: Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition, or related discipline; experience as a lead writing programs administrator; college-level teaching experience appropriate to rank; evidence of ability to teach and develop graduate and undergraduate courses in Rhetoric and Composition; and a compelling record of ongoing, high-quality scholarship in any area of Rhetoric and Composition.

Desired: Outstanding record of scholarship and publications on topics related to writing program administration.

Applicants must send: Cover letter, curriculum vita, names of three references with contact information to Chair of Writing Programs Director/Rhetoric and Composition Search Committee, Department of English, Arizona State University, P.O. Box 870302, Tempe, AZ 85287-0302.

Application Deadline (no faxes or e-mails): Postmarked by September 26, 2008; if not filled, then every Monday thereafter until the search is closed. All applications acknowledged. ASU is an affirmative action/equal employment opportunity employer and is dedicated to recruiting a diverse faculty community. A background check is required for employment.

Call for Nominations: The 2008 Advancement of People of Color Leadership Award

In response to a recommendation of the Task Force to Advance and Support Members of Color, the NCTE Executive Committee established the Advancement of People of Color Leadership Award. The NCTE Advancement of People of Color Leadership Award (APCL) is a special award given to an NCTE member of color who has made a significant contribution to NCTE and the development of our professional community. The award was established in 2007 and will be first presented in 2008.

The NCTE Executive Committee has asked that nominations be solicited. Council members may self-nominate or nominate any Council colleague.

Please send your nominations, with a brief commentary (maximum one page) on the qualities and services of the nominee to:

Diane Waff, Chair
Advancement of People of Color Leadership Award Subcommittee
NCTE
1111 W. Kenyon Road
Urbana, IL 61801-1096

Deadline for your nomination is September 15, 2008.

Reprint

A friend of mine--a rising star in rhetoric and composition--told me recently that he has received a request for permission to reprint his article, which is quite an honor. He was wondering if there were any issues he should be aware of.

Here is my response (with a few minor changes):

Congratulations on having your article reprinted.

The answer depends on who owns the copyrights. If you signed a copyright release when you had your article published with the journal, then this is a courtesy request. You can say no and I’m sure the editor would honor that, but I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to have your article reprinted. The original publisher has the final say in whether to grant permission (and charge a fee).

If you kept your copyrights (or more precisely, part of the copyrights) concerning the right to reprint (which is unusual in humanities journals), then it would be your decision alone (though I would also have the editor contact the publisher just to be safe).

Normally, reprint authors in our fields don’t get any royalty, but it wouldn't hurt to ask to have a copy of the book sent to you. If you wish to make any minor changes to the article (typos, copy editor’s edits you didn’t like), you can also ask about it at this point. I wouldn’t make any major revisions at this point, though.

Blog entries elsewhere

I've been asked to write about my experience with diversity and being a nonnative English speaking professional for other institutional blogs. Here are the "blog" sites:

NNEST of the Month Blog
http://nnest.asu.edu/blog/2008/01/paul-kei-matsuda.html


CCCC Blog
http://cccc-blog.blogspot.com/2008/07/individual-issue-of-language-diversity.html

The CCCC blog is supposed to be interactive--I hope many people will post comments and questions there.

2008 Symposium

The 2008 Symposium on Second Language Writing was a great success. As always, it was good to see many familiar faces as well as new ones. This year, we focused on foreign language writing--English as a foreign language as well as foreign languages other than English.

This year's Symposium would not have been possible without the contributions of the two Associate Chairs. Melinda Reichelt was the driving force behind this year's program--she was instrumental in assembling the list of speakers who represent a wide variety of languages and contexts. Tony Cimasko worked hard in taking care of local details; everything went smoothly thanks to him.

The Graduate Student Conference, organized by Jihyun Im and Beril Tezeller Arik, was also stimulating. The discussion at the end, where participants reported on issues they found interesting, gave me a lot of ideas for next year's Symposium.

We also benefited much from the support provided by the Symposium Assistants from Purdue University, Arizona State University, and the University of New Hampshire. They are: Haiying Cao, Shihyu Chang, Lixia Cheng, Yin Ling Cheung, Cristyn Elder, Fatima Esseili, Brian Guthrie, John Hitz, Mike Hubert, Jaisree Jayaraman, Beth Kramer, Elena Lawrick, Xianqiang Li, cristine McMartin-Miller, Wongjan Poolpoem, Laurel Reinking, Tanita Saenkhum, and Steven Simpson.

The next Symposium will be held on November 5-7, 2009, at Arizona State University. The theme will be the future of second language writing.

Recent Publications

I've been too busy to even keep track of my own work. Here are a few publications that recently came out.

Knoblauch, A. A., & Matsuda, P. K. (2008). First-year composition in the 20th century U.S. higher education: An historical overview. In P. Friedrich (Ed.), Teaching academic writing (pp. 3-25). New York: Continuum.

As the title suggests, this chapter provides an overview of the development of first-year composition--starting with the creation of the first-year composition course in the late 19th century. It also considers the rise of rhetoric and composition as a discipline in the mid 20th century and explores some of the major pedagogical approaches in the 20th century. Abby, by the way, is going to start as Assistant Professor at Kansas State University.

Matsuda, P. K. (2008). Myth: International and U.S. resident ESL writers cannot be taught in the same class. In J. M. Reid (Ed.), Writing myths: Applying second language research to classroom teaching (pp. 159-176). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

This piece examines one of the extreme positions I've seen people take--that ESL writing courses (intensive or first-year) are for international students only and that resident students' needs are too different from international students for them to be placed in the same course. Well, it may be, but given the demographics, all writing teachers--mainstream, basic, or ESL--need to be prepared to work with students who come from various language backgrounds.

Matsuda, P. K. (2008). Voice in second language writing: Implications for Japanese learners of English. JACET Summer Seminar Proceedings, No.7: Issues in L2 Writing Instruction (pp. 9-14). Tokyo: The Japan Association of College English Teachers.

This is an outcome of a JACET summer seminar in Kusatsu, Gunma, Japan. (If you are in Japan in August, I highly recommend it.) Based on my earlier study of voice (Matsuda, 2001), I considered the implications of voice for English learners in Japan. While my view on voice encompasses both individual and social voice, I couldn't help but notice that many Japanese students want to develop their own individual voice. That is, they don't want to stand out but they don't want to be the same as everyone else. Individual identiy, after all, is something we create by combining socially available discursive and non-discursive repertoire.

Matsuda, P. K., & Atkinson, D. (2008). A conversation on contrastive rhetoric: Dwight Atkinson and Paul Kei Matsuda talk about issues, conceptualizations, and the future of contrastive rhetoric. In U. Connor, E. Nagelhout, & W. Rozycki (Eds.), Contrastive rhetoric: Reaching to intercultural rhetoric (pp. 277-298). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Dwight and I often have conversations on various topics in the field (and we often don't agree with one another), and we decided it would be a good idea (and fun) to share some of those conversations with other people in the field. So we tape-recorded one of our conversations when I visited his family cottage on Deer Isle, Main. Steve Simpson transcribed the conversation for us. (He reflects on that experience in Simpson and Matsuda (2008) that I mention below.) We edited it very little, but it sounds remarkably coherent and even handed--it was interesting for us to see what kinds of conversations we often have. (We were aware of the presence of the tape recorder, of course, but after a few beers, it just didn't seem to matter.)

Matsuda, P. K., & Tardy, C. M. (2008). Continuing the conversation about voice in academic writing. English for Specific Purposes, 27(1), 100-105. (doi:10.1016/j.esp.2007.04.002)

This is a response to the response that Paul Stapleton and Rena Helms-Park wrote to our article on voice (Matsuda & Tardy, 2007). It may sound pretty strong, but we felt compelled to respond to all the points that Stapleton and Helms-Park raised in their piece. (I've met them both, and they are great people.) Chris and I have a follow-up article on voice (though not in response to this dialogue) that's being considered for publication as we speak.

Simpson, S., & Matsuda, P. K. (2008). Mentoring as a long-term relationship: Situated learning in a doctoral program. In C. P. Casanave & X. Li (Eds.), Learning the literacy practices of graduate school: Insiders' reflections on academic enculturation (pp. 90-104). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Steve and I wrote this piece during the summer of 2006. I thought of this as a culminating experience for our mentoring relationship at UNH and an important step toward our relationship as colleagues. It was useful for me to reflect on my approach to mentoring and to hear Steve's perspective as well. I was also happy that we were able to receive responses from some of my other mentees, including Michelle Cox, Joleen Hanson, Matt Schneider, and Christina Ortmeier-Hooper. Matt Schneider, who came from San Francisco State to work with me during the summer, observed the whole process of writing this piece. I was lucky to have had the chance to work with these and many other great grad students at UNH, who remain my important colleagues and friends.

A list of major publications is available at: http://matsuda.jslw.org/publications.html.