"Decolonial refusals" theory, forged through fieldwork in Puerto Rico, is used to question "conceptual disjunctures" in binary views of center-periphery relations. Grad students here are not merely "voices from the margins," as seen from the "imperial north." Their autoethnographies may be dispatches from…

The English writing system is often seen as having rules that govern the choice between alternative pronunciations of letters but as having many exceptions to the rules. One postulated rule, the V¯|CV rule, is that a vowel is pronounced as long rather than short when it is followed by a single consonant letter plus a vowel letter. We find, in an…

This dissertation considers critical, digital information literacy from a variety of perspectives including composition and rhetoric, applied linguistics, and human-computer interaction. My work seeks to ask what is being done within academia regarding critical, digital literacy when applied to student writing, sociolinguistics, and design. The…

The invention of composition as a required course in the United States, a booming textbook industry, and an increased focus on nationalism perpetuated the standardizing of English language practices and curriculums in secondary and postsecondary schools in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Composition textbooks circulated both standard…

Linguistic heterogeneity and fluidity--prominently captured in the notion of 'translanguaging'-- are starting to be seen as normative and natural. In turn, homogeneity and fixity, instantiated for example in standard languages, are becoming the 'odd-ones-out.' I challenge the dichotomy between linguistic fluidity (languaging) and fixity (named…

Drawing on surveys and interviews with college writing instructors and students at a public university in the United States, this mixed methods study revealed that in many cases instructors adopted translingual orientations, whereas students were committed to norms in their views of writing across differences. Students' orientations to language as…

In English as an additional language writing, error correction or error feedback is most commonly referred to as 'written corrective feedback (WCF)'. The emphasis on 'correctness' in 'WCF' suggests native-speakerist standards or norms, which are controversial in an increasingly globalized world. In this Forum article, I discuss the problems…

Even small, taken-for-granted words can have a strong influence on the pedagogical effect of a writing conference. In this study, we examined how experienced and trained writing center tutors' use of the discourse marker so helped them to connect ideas and to manage their conferences with students. We examined the extent to which tutors' use of…

Multidimensional (MD) analysis contributes to a comprehensive linguistic description of second language (L2) writing texts. However, cross-linguistic studies based on MD analysis are still insufficient and need to be increased. In particular, the unavailability of comparable corpora prevents current MD-based L2 writing research from making…

International studies of talk-intensive (or 'dialogic') pedagogies have demonstrated that children who experience academically challenging classroom discussion ('dialogue') make greater progress than their peers who have not had this experience. In England, gains in achievement have been greatest for pupils from less privileged socio-economic…

The title for this article reflects the complex linguistic situation of the Anglophone Caribbean, where multiple English-lexifier Creoles (such as Jamaican Creole [Weh Wi Deh] and Bahamian Creole [Veh Vi Is])--all of which developed in the colonial era out of the contact between English and myriad African languages spoken by contemporary Caribbean…

This article traces the history of college writing and suggests a different way ahead. To show why we need this approach, the article historicizes the start of postsecondary English as a paradoxical one, committed to egalitarian ideals while privileging narrow and exclusive English usage. To offer an alternative approach, the article synthesizes…

This study examines lexical density, lexical diversity and academic vocabulary use in the dissertation abstracts written by EFL (English as a foreign language), ESL (English as a second language) and English L1 (Native Speakers) postgraduate students to find out whether these lexical features differ across different English language backgrounds of…

This study discusses the impact of interactionist output-oriented approaches, specifically, the effects of collaborative text reconstruction on subjunctive recognition and production in the written modality by English-dominant Spanish second-language learners. It also examines whether students' text length and text complexity increase after…

This study investigates the use of DO, HAVE, MAKE, GIVE and TAKE in light verb constructions (LVCs) and their corresponding simplex verb forms in British L1 and Malaysian L2 students' writing. The students' essay sub-corpus of the International Corpus of English (ICE) of Great Britain (ICE-GB) and Malaysia (ICE-Malaysia) formed the data of this…