Available online at www.sciencedirect.

com

Journal of Second Language Writing 20 (2011) 211226

I write it in a way that people can read it: How teachers and
adolescent L2 writers describe content area writing
Amanda Kibler *
Curry School of Education, University of Virginia, 417 Emmet Street South, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4260, United States

Abstract
Adolescent writers in second language settings often spend the majority of their school days in content area courses, such as
math, science, and social studies, where they must negotiate challenging literacy tasks in their second languages with little
explicit writing instruction. While genre scholars have built an extensive body of knowledge about texts and textual practices
across disciplines, little is known about how linguistically diverse secondary students and their teachers understand schoolbased writing in different content areas. Taken from a larger ethnographic study of adolescent second language writers
negotiation of writing tasks across the curriculum, this article explores the ways in which four students and their teachers
describe their expectations for content area writing tasks assigned and completed in humanities and biology courses. Based upon
interviews, classroom observations, and student texts, this article suggests that adolescent L2 writers and their teachers in this
study vary in their descriptions of content area writing, that students may or may not see themselves in the writing roles that
teachers envision for them, and that there are both social and linguistic issues underlying students decisions to use certain types
of language on writing tasks. These findings suggest that adolescent L2 writers would benefit from content area writing
instruction that draws upon content area teachers existing expertise and encourages discussion among teachers and students
about writing.
# 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Adolescent L2 writers; Secondary education; Language minority students; Genre; Content area writing

Introduction
After school one afternoon, Fabiola and I sit in Ms. Morales biology classroom, which is empty now except for the
two of us. Students completed their science exhibition projects the week before, and their discarded presentation
posters fill the rooms spare corners. Fabiola is quite proud of her performance on the written lab report and spoken
portion of the project, and at one point in our conversation, we talk about how she thinks of her writing for this task.

2 Fabiola

Transcript 1
1 Amanda:

Como describes tu escritura?

(How do you describe your writing?)
La escribo como, ah como la gente lo puede leer y lo puede entender creo yo.
(Uh I write it in a way, in a way that people can read it and can understand it I think.)

* Tel.: +1 434 243 4964; fax: +1 434 924 7461.

E-mail address: akk2v@virginia.edu.
1060-3743/$ see front matter # 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jslw.2011.05.005

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A. Kibler / Journal of Second Language Writing 20 (2011) 211226

Fabiola puts great emphasis on the importance of making sense in the writing she produces for her content
area classes such as mathematics, science, and humanities, and an obvious question in relation to this concern is,
to whom does her writing make sense, and why? One way of measuring students communicative competence in
school-based genres of writing is evaluating the extent to which they are able to participate effectively in
curricular conversations [italics added], which are by their nature interactive, implying the presence of both
writers and readers (Applebee, 2000, p. 106). Because of this dialogic relationship, understanding both adolescent
students and their teachers perspectives on content area writing is a significant endeavor in second language
writing research.
When adolescent second language learners write in schools, they are not simply learning academic writing.
There are different expectations for writing in each content area, and recent work has suggested some of the stable
patterns, or genres, that may be found in school-based writing (e.g., Christie & Derewianka, 2008; Martin, 1997;
Schleppegrell, 2004). At the same time, writing is also affected by individual classroom contexts, which can be
influenced by institutional, cultural, and sociopolitical demands placed upon K-12 teachers (e.g., Lee, 2008a) as
well as the unique instructional niches shaped by teacher and students in a particular classroom (Harklau, 1999).
At the classroom level, Lee (2008b), for example, suggests that secondary L2 writers responses to teachers
written comments can be affected by a combination of several factors, including the instructional context;
students expectations, proficiencies, and motivations; and teachers pedagogical approaches, instructional
practices, and personalities. Contexts for L2 classroom writing also include teacherstudent dynamics during
literacy activities, which ideally follow responsive and collaborative instructional scripts (Gutierrez, 1992) and
contain an element of teacherstudent synchronicity that facilitates second language literacy development
(Blanton, 2002). In this way, school-based genres of writing both influence and are influenced by interaction in the
classroom (Sperling & Freedman, 2001; Zamel & Spack, 1998). Such a situated, context-sensitive perspective on
writing holds particular promise for understanding the experiences of L2 writers like Fabiola in secondary school
settings.
This article draws upon interview and writing sample data from four adolescent L2 writers and two of their teachers
in a U.S. high school to analyze the ways in which teachers and L2 writers describe their expectations for writing tasks
assigned and completed in tenth grade humanities and biology courses. While much is known about how researchers
and theorists conceptualize genres of school-based writing, students and teachers implicit or explicit understanding
of content area writing is not well understood and merits further attention because these notions powerfully shape
teaching and learning in the classroom.
Such a research focus contributes to this special issue by investigating the perspectives of adolescent L2 writers and
their teachers in relation to the classroom writing tasks in which they engage. In particular, the extent to which
adolescent L2 writers and their teachers perspectives converge or diverge is of considerable pedagogical interest for
teachers and researchers engaged in designing content-area literacy instructional approaches and curricula for
linguistically diverse settings. After a discussion of research and theory relevant to genre and audience in secondary
content area writing, an overview of the study including descriptions of the writing tasks in which students and
teachers engaged contextualize the interview findings. The article concludes with a discussion of these findings and
suggested implications for pedagogy.
Content area writing and genre
One prominent L2 writing concern, especially in tertiary settings but increasingly in elementary and secondary
contexts as well, is the analysis of academic written genres for theoretical and/or pedagogical purposes. Because
researchers from several different perspectives address genre, it is a term that suffers from variable and uncertain
usage (Swales, 1990, p. 1). As Belcher (2006) explains, however, genre scholars generally tend today to view genre
as more contextual than simply textual, dynamic than static, varied than monolithic, and interesting in its shaping of
and being shaped by people (p. 142).
Drawing upon Hyon (1996), Hyland (2004) differentiates between three primary orientations to genre, each with
its own focus, intellectual basis, and pedagogy.1 First, genre as social purpose, as articulated by Systemic
1

Johns (2008) also explores these same three approaches to genre as they apply to writing pedagogy.

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213

Functional Linguistics, focuses on discourse and structural features of texts, including the purposeful, interactive,
and sequential character of different genres and the ways that language is systematically linked to context (p. 25).
Recent work in this tradition (e.g., Christie & Derewianka, 2008; Christie & Martin, 1997; Schleppegrell, 2004) has
been applied to writing at elementary, secondary, and tertiary levels of schooling. Hylands second type of genre
approach is genre as professional competence, found in work related to English for Specific Purposes. Also
concerned with discourse structure and features, this approach draws upon Systemic Functional Linguistic theories
as well as communicative language teaching and pragmatics research, focusing particularly on the uses of writing for
academic and occupational training at the tertiary level (e.g., Bhatia, 1993; Cheng, 2008; Swales, 1990, 2000).
Finally, Hyland identifies a third conception of genre as situated action (p. 50), in which researchers working in
New Rhetoric traditions analyze the social purposes of texts and the contexts in which texts are written, using theories
found in the field of composition and rhetoric (e.g., Devitt, 2004; Dias, Freedman, Medway, & Pare, 1999; Freedman
& Medway, 1994).
As Johns (2002) observes, these varied orientations toward genre reveal the intellectual tensions that are inherent
in conceptualization and application of this term (p. 4). A primary difference among genre theories, as Johns and
others have noted, is the extent to which they are based in linguistic and textual structure or in socially oriented theories
related to the contexts in which texts are created. Other tensions include the role of genre studies in reifying or
reinforcing dominant ideologies embodied in academically valued genres (e.g., Benesch, 2001) and the extent to
which genres are stable and should (e.g. Cheng, 2008; Hyland, 2007) or should not (e.g., Dias, 2000; Freedman, 1993,
1994) be taught. In the latter debate, recent work from Tardy (2009) contends that because genre is inherent to written
communication, the question of whether or not genre should be taught is less relevant than the question of how
classrooms can contribute to genre learning.
For teachers, one of the challenges of writing instruction is taking students implicit knowledge of genres, which
develops at a very young age, and shaping these understandings into a more formalized working grasp of the rules
and conventions of the various models of discourse, and in a way that will support pupils later learning and
advanced thinking (Riley & Reedy, 2000, p. 25). Because genres can be barriers to communication for those
unfamiliar with them, the development of expertise in certain genres is a necessity for students, both academically
and later professionally. According to Tardy (2009), developing this genre knowledge is complex and involves
learning not only the structural elements of genres (formal knowledge) but also the ways in which genres are
carried out (process knowledge), the intended purposes and appropriate persuasive strategies for different genres
(rhetorical knowledge), and the content upon which the text will be based (subject-matter knowledge). For many
students, however, the content area writing they complete is rarely assigned or taught as being based in a particular
discipline or genre:
It is frustrating for both students and their literacy teachers that instructors across the disciplines call many
examinations and out-of-class papers essays, when, in fact, the appropriate structure, register, and
argumentation in these papers will vary across classes and disciplines (Johns, 2008, p. 240).
While Johns is not referring specifically to adolescent L2 writers in her comments, such concerns are certainly
present in many secondary classrooms in which second language writers are found.
In analyzing how students develop genre knowledge, Tardys (2006) review of sixty empirical studies suggests that
that L1 and L2 learners in classroom and non-classroom contexts share the following experiences in learning new
genres: Learners are influenced by their prior experiences and practice with genres, they have difficulty transferring
genre knowledge across settings and contexts, and they make use of implicit exposure to genre and more explicit
textual resources such as written models to learn new genres. Tardys analysis also suggests that second language
writers differ from those who write in their first languages in that mentoring relationships may be more complicated for
L2 writers and their teachers, composing processes differ due to the use of the L1 and contextual factors, and learners
participation in oral interactions about writing may be limited (if the L2 is the language of interaction) or expanded (if
interactions occur bilingually) depending on the instructional context. Additionally, L2 writers may want more explicit
instruction related to the genres in which they are writing. Due to a scarcity of research into writing at the secondary
level (Juzwik et al., 2006) and in relation to genre (Tardy, 2006, 2009), more research is needed to understand the
extent to which these general trends outlined above apply to adolescent L2 writers as they learn written genres in
formal secondary schooling contexts.

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A. Kibler / Journal of Second Language Writing 20 (2011) 211226

Content area writing and audience

The concept of audience offers an informative lens through which to view L2 writers efforts to learn school-based
writing genres.2 In both research and practice, audience can be a challenging aspect of writing. As Hyland (2005)
explains, the idea of audience itself is elusive. Should students be writing for their teachers, their peers, or examiners?
What do these readers already know and what do they need to know? Should they be addressed as equals or as expert
others? These awkward questions are rarely addressed by teachers or resolved by students (p. 364).
For second language writers, understanding audience may be further complicated if, as Ramanathan and Kaplan
(1996) suggest, the concepts of audience and voice are based upon culturally specific understandings and are often
taught implicitly. While some research suggests that second language writers are not given sufficient opportunities to
write for different audiences (Reynolds, 2005), other scholars contend that these writers are forced to negotiate a wide
range of classroom audiences at the tertiary (Roberts & Cimasko, 2008) and even the primary (Bourne, 2002) level.
From the perspective of composition theory, researchers differ in the extent to which they describe audience(s) as
concrete, addressed readers; as invoked, imagined readers; or as a combination of the two (Ede & Lunsford,
1984). Hyland and Tse (2004) and others (Bamford & Bondi, 2005; Intaraprawat & Steffensen, 1995) have also
analyzed audience from the perspective of metadiscourse, which has been defined as the aspects of text which direct
the reader [and] show him round the text (Bamford & Bondi, 2005, p. xvii). From a more practice-oriented
perspective, university ESL composition professionals have debated the extent to which students should write for
real audiences, as well as the most effective ways to structure writing curricula and assignments to encourage
students to write for a variety of audiences and prepare them for discipline-specific audiences in the future (Johns,
1993; Jones, 1994; Raimes & Zamel, 1997; Ramanathan & Kaplan, 1996, 1997).
Although prominent school-based writing genres such as the five-paragraph essay are often criticized for their lack of
authenticity (Olson, 2008; Proctor, 2002),3 school is still a real context for writing, complete with its own set of
multiple audiences. As Aviva Freedman explains, School writing is a real context not the imaginary situation specified
in some assignments (from you are an irate customer writing to the President of Air Canada to elaborated cases) but
the classroom itself, and all that it entails (1994, p. 201). In these settings, students and teachers often take on specific
reader/writer roles: Students are expected to display certain academic knowledge and perspectives, which may be those
of the teacher rather than the student (Hyland, 2004). These dynamics are also influenced by the fact that teachers
primary role is usually that of an evaluating reader (p. 61). In this way, the audience(s) for school-based writing are
multifaceted and influenced by power dynamics in the classroom, issues that impact students writing, teachers
evaluations of what has been written, and students and teachers understanding of what it means to write in school.
Adolescent L2 writers must therefore navigate teachers expectations for secondary writing and writers, especially as
they relate to particular content areas. Understanding the extent to which secondary teachers and L2 writers perspectives
align is therefore of great importance when considering how to design classroom experiences for secondary language
minority students.
The study
The data presented here are part of a larger ethnographic study of adolescent second language writers and their
experiences negotiating writing tasks across the curriculum at a United States high school. For this article, two writing
assignments that students completed in their tenth grade year one in humanities class and one in biology class were
examined in depth, through analysis of writing samples and student and teacher interviews, to better understand the
pedagogical settings in which adolescent L2 writers must produce academic texts. These humanities and biology
classes were mainstream courses, but over three-fourths of the students in each class spoke a non-English home
language (Spanish, or in isolated cases, Fijian or Tongan), and approximately half of the students in each class were
designated as English language learners by the school.
2

Audience is far from a clear or unitary concept, and in keeping with this complexity, I will use audience(s) throughout the article when referring to
the multiple audiences to whom writers may or may not address their texts. Audience will be used to address the concept at an abstract level.
3
Despite these critiques, the five-paragraph theme is still widely used in secondary schooling. Johnson et al. (2003) describe some of the reasons
for the persistence of this genre.

A. Kibler / Journal of Second Language Writing 20 (2011) 211226

215

Table 1
Student participants.
Student

Ages spent in
the US

Age at time of
study (10th grade)

Years of school completed

in another country

Years of school completed

in US by 10th grade

Ana
Diego
Fabiola
Zulema

10 to present
06, 12 to present
05, 15 to present
05, 11 to present

15
15
16
15

5 (Mexico)
None (Mexico)
10 (Mexico)
6 (Mexico)

4 (59th grade)
4 (kindergarten, 79th grade)
1 (9th grade)
4 (69th grade)

Specifically, this study addresses the following questions:

1. To what extent do the genre features and audience(s) teachers and students identify for secondary humanities
writing overlap with each other?
2. To what extent do the genre features and audience(s) teachers and students identify for secondary science writing
overlap with each other?
Method
Participants
The four students in this study Ana, Diego, Fabiola, and Zulema4 were selected based upon language
proficiency, course placement, and the availability of longitudinal writing samples.5 All of these students spoke
Spanish as a primary language, were classified as beginning or intermediate English language learners by their school,
and had attended schools in the United States for between 1 and 5 years. Because of their high schools anti-tracking
policy they primarily took mainstream courses as did students in Enright and Gillilands study (this issue) that were
designed for students already proficient in English. In their ninth grade year, all four had an English Language
Development class designed for English language learners, and all students but Ana were also enrolled in a bilingual
humanities class. In the tenth grade only two of the four students (Diego and Fabiola) were placed in an English
Language Development class, and students took all mainstream courses otherwise. None had received formal English
language instruction other than what was provided in their compulsory schooling experiences in the US. Table 1
provides additional demographic information about these students.
The two teachers participating in this study were Mr. Smith and Ms. Morales, who were the students humanities
and biology teachers, respectively. Mr. Smith was a history-trained teacher in his first year teaching humanities at the
school, and Ms. Morales had taught biology at the school for several years. The present analysis focuses upon data
collected from the four focal students as well as their humanities and biology teachers about single writing tasks
student completed in each of these two courses.
Humanities persuasive letter
The interdisciplinary humanities course combined English/language arts and social studies standards. As part of a
unit on industrialization, students were reading the novel Nectar in a Sieve, which addressed the arrival of
industrialization in mid 20th century India. Upon completing the novel, students were asked to write a formal
persuasive letter from one character in the book to another, in which they argued whether industrialization in their
village was an example of progress, a problem, or a promise from the characters point of view. After being provided
with a series of four prewriting activities, students were given class time to complete their essays, and focal students
completed the majority of their writing in class. Students were taught how to develop a thesis and how to suggest and
then rebut counter-arguments in their texts.
4

All participants names are pseudonyms.

One student who took part in the larger ethnographic study was not included in this analysis because he moved to another school and did not
complete both writing assignments.
5

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A. Kibler / Journal of Second Language Writing 20 (2011) 211226

Mr. Smith provided written feedback to the students twice: once on their partially completed handwritten drafts and
once on their typewritten first drafts via an online document-sharing program. Mr. Smith explained to me that he liked
the idea of having students self-edit their work and engage in peer revision but decided that there was not time to
include these activities, citing the need to move on with the social studies standards.
Science lab report
Students at the school completed an exhibition every year, undertaking a research and/or writing project and
presenting it to a panel of teachers and community judges. For their tenth grade exhibition, the focal students completed a
science experiment in their biology class, wrote a lab report, created a poster, and presented this poster to their judges.
Approximately two and a half months before their presentations, students selected one of eleven research questions to
investigate. Their written lab reports were divided into five sections: background information, hypothesis, materials and
methods, results, and conclusion.6 Students went through similar drafting processes for each section of their lab reports,
completing at least one prewriting task followed by two to three drafts of their writing. In creating drafts of the report,
students relied upon an outline that dictated the subtopics to be addressed and provided several guiding questions for each
subtopic. Students received electronic written feedback from their teacher for each of the five sections, and some students
also requested written feedback from other adults, although this was not required. Class time during this project was spent
conducting experiments, writing and drafting lab reports, and preparing for students oral presentations.
Procedure
Findings related to students and teachers perceptions of their content area writing derive from an analysis of
fieldnotes, interviews, and student writing samples. Informal observations occurred over a period of one-and-a-half
years, and detailed ethnographic fieldnotes (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw; Heath & Street, 2008) were collected over the
subsequent six months. These observations and fieldnotes indicated that teachers oral and written comments to
students about their texts referenced a range of implicit values and expectations about how students should write in
these settings. I found supporting data for these trends in one-hour semi-structured interviews conducted with the study
participants. Students and teachers were interviewed once for each of the two writing assignments, and copies of
students texts were used as discussion prompts. Interviews were conducted in participants language of choice: While
two of the students chose to use Spanish (Fabiola and Diego), the other participants selected English as the primary
language for their interviews.
As I analyzed the data, fieldnotes and interview transcripts were coded for instances in which students and/or
teachers identified various features of the written genres that they were producing or teaching or the audience(s) for
whom they were writing. Their responses fell into three primary categories: word-level features of content area
writing, discourse-level features of content area writing,7 and audience(s) for whom content area texts were written.8
Examples of each of the three categories are provided in Table 2.
Students and teachers occasionally referred to the three issues directly during classroom writing sessions, but they
all initiated conversations on these topics in interviews. Wherever possible, the results section includes specific
examples of students writing that illustrate issues raised by participants in the interviews.
Results
In the first section below, research question 1 (To what extent do the genre features and audience(s) teachers and
students identify for secondary humanities writing overlap with each other?) is addressed through analysis of
interviews and student writing. Research question 2 (To what extent do the genre features and audience(s) teachers
and students identify for secondary science writing overlap with each other?) is then addressed in a similar fashion.
6

This task involves all of Veels (1997) four domains of language use in school science: 1) the doing of science, 2) explaining events
scientifically, 3) organizing scientific information, and, likely to a lesser degree, 4) challenging science.
7
I define discourse-level features as those that may extend across clauses, sentences, and paragraphs. They may focus on linguistic,
organizational, or rhetorical issues.
8
The only response that did not fit into one of the three categories was a single comment from Diego, in which he described his biology lab report
in terms of scientific activities taken rather than the writing itself. His comments on this topic are included in the findings section.

A. Kibler / Journal of Second Language Writing 20 (2011) 211226

217

Table 2
Coding categories for interview data with selected examples.
Category

Examples from data

Word level features

Descriptive language
Good words
Big words
Fancy words

Discourse-level features

Clear writing
A concise way of writing in science
Ideas that pop
Short sentences
Rephrasing of source texts in which students use their own language
Give specific points and explain more

Audience(s) for writing

Letter addressees
Teachers
Other teachers who havent read class texts
People who would be confused by scientists use of difficult words
Judges of students exhibitions

Genre features and audience(s) for secondary humanities writing

For students in Mr. Smiths humanities class, their assignment was tailored to one of the imaginary situations that
Freedman (1994) describes, but all focal students were well aware that Mr. Smith was still the primary addressed
audience (and evaluator) in this context. What students and teachers understood as the writing expected by the teacher
audience, however, varied considerably.
Teacher perspectives. In classroom interactions and interviews, Mr. Smith repeatedly emphasized the importance
of descriptive language and clarity, although he admitted to not feeling comfortable helping students with these
aspects of writing. During one of our interview sessions, for example, he mentioned:
I dont want to tell them what to say, but I want them to learn how to write more effectively and clearly so it
makes sense, so they arent using very general words but are using more descriptive language, so thats a thing I
struggle [with]. Its not that its wrong, what Zulema or whoever wrote, but it just could be more precise and
detailed and descriptive, and [the problem is] how to tell them that or show them how to do that.
Without describing a specific audience for whom students should write, Mr. Smith identified description, precision,
and detail as discourse-level priorities for student writing that help determine the eventual effectiveness and clarity of
the written work.9 Clarity and being clear were terms Mr. Smith used often, in written comments to students,
spoken interactions in the classroom, and in conversations with me. When I asked him exactly how he would describe
being clear to a student, he focused on meaning rather than specific elements of language or particular vocabulary,
saying that being clear indicates that its understandable, I would think. Can you understand it, is it clear. In relation
to word-level issues, Mr. Smith identified descriptive language, as opposed to very general words, as important in
students writing of this text. Another trend in interviews with Mr. Smith is that he emphasized that students writing
needs to be logical and that ideas need to connect to each other. He did not, however, explicitly discuss issues of
historical interpretation and argumentation that have been identified in school-based history genres, either from
Systemic Functional Linguistic or New Rhetoric perspectives (e.g., Coffin, 1997; Mitchell & Andrews, 1994).
Student perspectives. For the most part, students focused on aspects of writing for the humanities task that differed
from those mentioned by Mr. Smith. For example, Fabiola, a second language writer with substantial literacy
background in her first language, described this writing assignment by directly referencing the notion of audience.
When asked to describe her writing for this task, she said:

Observations and documents collected in the classroom indicate that Mr. Smith addressed issues of description, precision, and detail through
written feedback and one-on-one conversations with students in class rather than through whole-class lessons.

A. Kibler / Journal of Second Language Writing 20 (2011) 211226

Transcript 2
1 Fabiola:
2 Amanda:
3 Fabiola:
4 Amanda:
5 Fabiola:
6
7

Aqu tengo que escribir todo bien.

(And here I have to write everything well.)
Mmhm.
Algo formal.
(Something formal.)
Que significa formal para ti?
(What does formal mean to you?)
Como algo mas respetuoso, eh como si no es lo mismo escribirle a una persona
(Like something more respectful, uh like its not the same to write to a person)
que le estas pidiendo un trabajo o que le estas tratando de explicar algo
(that youre asking for work or you are trying to explain something to)
que escribirle a una persona nada mas por diversion.
(than to write to a person just for fun.)

218

Such comments indicate Fabiolas awareness of the need for formality to differ based upon purpose and
audience(s). When I asked Fabiola what this formality might look like at the word level, she pointed to the word
dear in the salutation, explaining it as como respetuoso senor o eso signfica como dandole respeto a el/like dear
sir or that means like giving him respect. While her example is a relatively simple one, it nonetheless demonstrates
her conceptual understanding of how a basic element of formality in letter writing is expressed in English.
In contrast, Ana and Diego described writing for this assignment purely in terms of the specific words they must
use, which they alternately identified as good, difficult, or big words.10 For example, when I asked Ana to
describe the writing she did in her humanities class, she told me,
All the classes are different cause you have to write the same words but you have to like, in this class, you have to
use more like, good words? I dont know, difficult words.
When asked if she used any difficult or good words in her essay, she briefly re-read the final paragraph of the
last draft of her essay, shown below:
When your factory moved to our village everything became so expensive. I Had to sale my body to your workers
to get more money to support my family. For doing that my family started to think bad things about me, my
family breaks down. Even though i had sale my body to your workers, I had more money to buy food and others
thing that i need for my family .well it was not your fault that I didnt have money to buy food to my family. I sale
my body to your workers because everything started to became more expensive and I didnt have enough money
to buy food etc that we needed. I was doing that for a good reason, but for doing that my reputation in the village
is was bad.
She pointed to the word reputation in the final sentence and told me that this was the only good word she could
find in the essay. Likewise, when I asked Diego to describe his writing in humanities class, he explained that students
are supposed to use palabras grandes/big words but that he did not include any in his writing. Fabiola, Ana, and
Diego all expressed frustration that they did not use more formal/good/difficult/big words, and all three said they did
not understand or know how to use these types of words.
Zulemas perceptions of content area writing are less word-specific than those of Ana and Diego and are more
closely aligned to the discourse-level concerns of Mr. Smith. When asked about her writing for this assignment,
Zulema explained to me her frustrations about not having written it in the way she thinks is appropriate:
[Mr. Smith] knows what I was talking about and what is the book is about, but if other people, like say that Ms.
Gutierrez or Ms. Morales or some other teacher that had not read the book, read this, theyre gonna be like, what?
Like, you know, [I need] to make it clear and make like my idea to like pop, like, you know?
While Zulema never explained further what she meant by being clear and making her ideas pop, these concerns
are nonetheless similar to her teachers concerns with precision and clarity. Also, she identified an important aspect of
writing for her: creating a text that could be understood by a wider audience, like her other teachers, even though her
10

Sperling and Freedman (1987) describe how a high-achieving native English speaker also identifies special or big words as an important
aspect of writing in school.

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219

Table 3
Zulemas humanities revisions by type.
Type of comment

Given by teacher

Revised by student

Comments requesting brevity/clarity with no rephrasing

Comments requesting brevity/clarity with suggested rephrasing
Other comments requesting revision

3
2
25

0
2
25

Total

30

27

evaluator-audience, Mr. Smith, might understand her anyway. In such a way, Zulema appeared to identify a
community of readers her teachers that exist beyond the walls of her classroom.
Zulema also appeared to be reticent to adapt her writing to what she perceived to be her teachers expectations.
During an interview, Zulema and I read Mr. Smiths reaction to the following sentence, which is a counterargument
that addresses why factory jobs are not a simple solution to families financial difficulties in the novel11:
Even so you may say OK then do not work let your husband work and stay at home and take care of children and
your house but if you pay more but is not enough money because the prices are to high so how do you want us to stay
at home if is not enough more to survey so that is one of my point if we dont we are husband get tried more and more
and they will die faster cause of our conditions that they work (This sentence is crazy long, but also strong and
important. It conveys the point that women did not have a choice, that they had to go out and work because their
husbands could not make enough on their own. It also stresses the fact that Nathan was sick because he was
basically worked to death. How could you write this sentence to so that it is shorter and more clear?)
After reading his comment, Zulema then turned to her final draft and noticed that she did not make any changes to
this sentence, despite Mr. Smiths feedback on her first draft. I asked her why she did not make this change, and she
explained:
He was giving me ideas and tried to get me to explain more in a clearer way, but it didnt, like he was trying to help
me, but its just that I dont want to let go on how I write. Like he was trying to make me wrote like write something
short, like in a short part, but it couldnt make sense. And not to explain like, not to be and this and this and this and
that and that and that because I always use that, this and you know. And then I just keep on and keep on, and I
think he was like trying to make me stop doing that, but I just, I understood, but I dont know.
Zulemas comments reveal less a concern with how to make the revision than with why she would make it,
explaining that its just that I dont want to let go on how I write, which she described as a chaining style of writing
(and this and this and this and that and that and that) instead of Mr. Smiths short style. Zulema claimed that she
understood her teachers feedback but still hesitated to change her writing.
While it is possible that Zulemas sense of writerly identity was the primary issue at stake, her overall revision
patterns indicate that this is not necessarily the case. Of the 30 comments Mr. Smith wrote on Zulemas first draft (see
Table 3), three asked her to rewrite her sentences to make them shorter or more clear, and two more asked her to
rewrite similar sentences but provide a specific, suggested rephrasing.
Zulema revised her work in response to 27 of these 30 comments, including those that asked her to clarify and
suggested the exact language to do so. The three comments simply asking her to shorten or clarify her language were
the only three that remained unchanged in the final draft.12 Such a pattern indicates that Zulema may have had the
motivation but not the linguistic expertise to revise her writing in response to general comments that did not provide
specific linguistic guidance about how to improve her writing for brevity and/or clarity.13 This finding is consistent

11

Mr. Smiths comments are in parentheses.

In one of these three comments, which is shown above, Mr. Smith offers Zulema an indirect suggestion for improvement.
13
In relation to L1 writing, Newkirk (1995) and Sommers (1982), among others, critique the efficacy of such general feedback (like be clear or
be specific). For L2 writers, this type of feedback may be even more challenging because it relies on students intuitive knowledge of what
constitutes clear writing.
12

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with other research on L2 writers in relation to written commentary (Conrad & Goldstein, 1999; Ferris, 1997) and
teacher conferences (Goldstein & Conrad, 1990; Patthey-Chavez & Ferris, 1997).14
Summary. In analyzing these multiple teacher and student perspectives for students humanities essay, several
themes emerge. Although the teacher did not explicitly discuss the concept of audience(s), Fabiola had an
understanding of how to shape her writing for her fictional audience (the addressee of her letter), and Zulema
referenced both her teacher and other teachers at her school as actual or potential audiences, respectively. In relation to
other genre features of this writing assignment, while Ana, Diego, and Fabiola defined genre in relation to word-level
usage, Zulema and Mr. Smith explained genre in more general terms such as being clear. While there is some
overlap between these perspectives, they operate on fundamentally different levels, with some second language writers
identifying word-level features as those relevant to genre and with Zulema and the teacher identifying discourse-level
features in very abstract terms like clarity and logic. Despite the fact that Zulema articulated ideas similar to those of
her teacher, she was not able to produce writing that conformed to her teachers expectations.
Genre features and audience(s) for secondary science writing
The science lab report presented a writing situation that was more complex than that of the humanities writing task.
There were, in fact, multiple addressed audiences for students writing, including not only students biology teacher
but the upperclassmen, community members, and teachers who judged the students science exhibition. In comparing
teacher and student perspectives on this assignment, students expressed views of writing that were, in some ways, quite
similar to those of their teacher, Ms. Morales. In describing their own writing, however, students distanced themselves
from the idea that their writing was similar to that of scientists.
Teacher perspectives. Ms. Morales perspectives on writing in the science lab report focused on discourse-level
concerns. When asked to describe what writing should look like for a lab report, she introduced the idea of writing
like a scientist15 and explained that,
Theres a concise way of writing in science, which Im always torn about, because I want the kids to get to the
point but give enough detail and also to have sentences that arent just like, yes it was correct. [They should]
incorporate the question into the sentence! So how do you, how do you get to the point, give enough context, and
back up what youre saying, all at the same time.
Ms. Morales emphasized that these rhetorical moves should be made through a concise style of writing, implying
that sentences should be densely packed with information that provides context, information, and evidence
simultaneously. Her example, that of having students restate their questions in the same sentence they answer them,
suggests her expectations for what this concision might look like.16
Additionally, Ms. Morales explained that an important element of scientific writing for her in this assignment was
having students transform language from source texts into their own paraphrased writing:
When they were trying to access the information, [the challenge was] how they take that and not necessarily just
reiterate it back in the same words. So the idea was to give them some resources and things to look at and some
ideas that would hopefully connect to their experiment, and its always a challenge to get them to look at it, to
break it down, and to figure out, well what does this mean [and] how does it actually work, and then transferring
it into their own language.
From one perspective, this notion of having students use their own language may have been at odds with the idea
of having students write in a more concise manner. These dual goals, however, are not surprising given the fact that
although students were practicing a scientific genre, students transformation of source texts into their own words
14

I wish to thank an anonymous reviewer for this insight.

Veel (1997), writing from a Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective, explains that while scientific writing genres used in schools may differ
in purpose, form, and/or complexity from those found in professional or academic scientific writing, classroom science genres nonetheless can be
seen as knowledge path[s] that lead to more privileged forms of scientific writing.
16
In describing the register of scientific writing from a Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective, Schleppegrell (2002, 2004) explains the
grammatical processes through which these concise, or dense texts can be created. She explains that grammar helps to realize this density through
the use of (1) nominalization, in which verbs are transformed into nouns and noun phrases, and (2) embedded clauses that enable reasoning within a
clause rather than between clauses.
15

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221

helped the teacher gauge their comprehension of the content. In this sense, the pedagogical context discouraged
students from more overt forms of textual borrowing (Pennycook, 1996), and broader expectations for scientific
writing that demand concision were mediated by the reality that the teacher, as the evaluator-audience, must also
monitor students comprehension of academic content (Veel, 1997).
Student perspectives. Because Ms. Morales framed her description in terms of writing like a scientist, I asked
Fabiola, Ana, Diego, and Zulema what they thought this entailed. Both Fabiola and Ana identified aspects of Ms.
Morales discourse-level perceptions as relevant to their own understandings of scientific writing. Ana explained that
scientists give specific points and explain more, and Fabiola described scientific writing as,
Es como, es primero una guess y despues es algo, es un fact, yeah, como la guess. . .and un fact, como la
comprueba. (Its like, first its a guess and then its something, its a fact, yeah, like the guess. . .and a fact, like a
proof.)
Ana and Fabiola both talked about making a point and providing evidence, as Ms. Morales did, but they did not
mention the issue of conciseness their teacher emphasized. As for Zulema, she instead echoed Ms. Morales concern
with paraphrasing language: When asked what it takes to write like a scientist, she explained that you just have to
translate it, like in your own words. Finally, Diegos response to this same question focused on the narrative aspects of
scientific writing rather than the specific textual features Ms. Morales or other students described. He explained that,
Pos los cientficos casi no mas describen no mas de los experimentos que tan haciendo, como cada step o algo
as que les hicieron. (Well scientists describe they just describe just about the experiments that theyre doing,
like every step that they did or something like that.)
Despite the fact that all four focal students described specific elements of writing they think are appropriate for
scientists, none of the focal students claimed to write in this way. Fabiola and Ana described different audience-related
reasons for not doing so, highlighting the situated nature of their writing (Dias, 2000). Fabiola, for example, explained
that she had other audiences in mind instead of a scientific audience; when I asked her how she describes her writing,
she said,
La escribo como, ah como la gente lo puede leer y lo puede entender creo yo, y si lo como si un cientfico lo raya,
quizas lo puedes entender, pero va a ser mas difcil porque va a tener otras palabras diferentes, yeah. (I write it
in a way, in a way that people can read it and can understand it I think, and if it like if a scientist writes it, maybe
you can understand it, but its going to be more difficult because its going to have other different words, yeah.)
Fabiolas comment clearly states for whom she was writing: her audience was not an abstract scientific community
but la gente/the people who might find it difficult to understand scientists writing and the different words they
use. This understanding of the writing required for Fabiolas audience(s) could have been influenced by several factors,
including the fact that most of Fabiolas exhibition judges had little scientific background, as well as Ms. Morales
written feedback to students emphasizing the need for students to paraphrase what they have read.
Likewise, Ana distanced herself from scientific writing, but for a different reason. She explained that, If I put
um the same kinds of words as the book, the judges would be like, shes not writing it. She would be, like they would be
like asking questions. From Anas perspective, writing like a scientist would make her seem inauthentic to her
audience of judges, who she anticipated would doubt that she could produce writing in a style similar to that of her
science textbooks. For both Fabiola and Ana, anticipation of their audience(s) needs and demands shaped their
understanding of scientific writing.
Zulema also claimed to reject the notion of writing like a scientist and explained how she used normal words in
strategic places in her lab report. In our interview conversation, I asked,
Transcript 3
1 Amanda:
2 Zulema:
3 Amanda:
4 Zulema:
5 Amanda:
6 Zulema:
7

Do you write like a scientist?

No, I dont use fancy fancy words. I just use normal words.
((reading from Zulemas paper)) Like cytoplasm?
((laughs)) Well thats a name that like is, it depends, yeah.
What do you mean? Tell me more.
Cause like the names that they give them, if if you want to change them you cant. Like there
are words between them to get your ideas across [and for them you] use the normal words.

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In this conversation, Zulema linked scientific writing to fancy words and expressed a personal preference for
avoiding this kind of language. My sarcastic question (line 3) highlights the fact that Zulema was, just like all of the
other focal students, using a variety of technical terms in her lab report, which is one element of scientific registers of
writing (Schleppegrell, 2004). Zulemas perception of scientific writing, however, relates not so much to the technical
terms as the words between them (line 7) that she preferred to explain in normal (line 8) rather than scientific
terms. As may be the case with Ana and Fabiola, Zulemas preference to avoid what she considered scientific writing
may have been influenced by the teachers instructional emphasis on rephrasing or expectations of her audience(s).
Finally, Diego distanced himself from scientific writing for quite a different reason, explaining that he did not write
like a scientist because he did not yet act like one:

5
6 Amanda:
7 Diego:
8
9 Amanda:
10 Diego:
11

4 Diego

3 Amanda:

Piensas que escribes como un cientfico?

(Do you think you write like a scientist?)
Mmm no.
(no).
No? Por que?
(No? Why?)
Porque en realmente ocupo mucha ayuda en todo los proyectos porque,
(Because in fact I use a lot of help in all the projects because,)
as como pa pensar yo en, yo en solo hacendolo,
(like to think about me, about me doing it alone,)
Mmhm.
creo que no podra yo hacerlo solo y como ocupo mas cosas pa
(I think that I could not do it alone and because I use more things to)
aprender materias y todo eso.
(learn subjects and all that.)
Y por eso piensas que un cientfico trabaja solo?
(And so you think that a scientist works alone?)
Um uh pos en unas creo que s pero en unas creo que ocupa
(Well in some cases I think so but in some cases I think s/he uses)
companeros o algo as.
(partners or something like that.)
?

2 Diego:

Transcript 4
1 Amanda:

Diego expressed doubt that he could do this project by himself because he needed help to understand the content (lines
78), and as a result he did not see himself as someone who writes scientifically. While this passage is puzzling in many
regards, especially given the question Diego was answering, his response nonetheless suggests that part of adolescent
second language writers self-perceptions of legitimacy may be related to the extent to which they can complete writing
without the assistance of others. Diegos comment also supports the notion that the learning of scientific language is
inextricable from the discipline-specific activities in which students learn the content of science (Huang, 2004).
Summary. In analyzing Ms. Morales and focal students perspectives on scientific writing, there is a clear focus on
word- and discourse-level issues of rephrasing as well as larger audience concerns. What students do not address
specifically is Ms. Morales discourse-level concern with concise writing, which, given students relative
inexperience with scientific writing, is not surprising. However, it is not clear if students are even aware of whether
concise writing is a feature of scientific writing or even of their teachers expectations. More research would be
necessary to uncover exactly how teachers and students understand specific examples of scientific language, which is
often characterized by the embedding of clauses that Ms. Morales mentioned (Martin, 1993; Schleppegrell, 2004). Just
as importantly, students rejections of the role of scientific writer highlight the fact that second language writers,
like other types of student writers, do not necessarily identify with the academic communities teachers assume they
will be writing for, and that students may envision other audiences for their writing. Such a trend is significant in light
of research that suggests a connection, prominent especially at the tertiary level, between students socialization into
disciplines and their growth in expertise in creating genre-related texts (Dressen-Hammouda, 2008; Morton, 2009).
Discussion
As Bawarshi (2003) suggests, it is important to consider several factors that impact writing in the classroom,
including,

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what positions [writers] are asked to assume, how and why they represent their activities, themselves, and others
rhetorically, how they act as they are acted upon, what tensions exist between a writers intentions and a genres
social motives and how these tensions get played out as social and rhetorical practices (p. 12).
Students and teachers perceptions of content area writing in this study offer a complex portrait of the demands
various writing tasks and audience(s) make on second language writers in school-based settings. These findings
contribute to this special issues goal of exploring the complex writing practices and experiences of adolescent L2
writers by demonstrating the variety of linguistic, social, and personal factors influencing how students and teachers
understand the written genres expected in content area texts. Teachers are a powerful audience for students (Hyland,
2004), yet interviews and observations indicate that teachers own expectations of writing are expressed implicitly and
are shared with students through written feedback rather than lessons focused on writing. Students understandings of
genre vary and only partially overlap with those of their teachers, a trend which is not surprising given the lack of
pedagogical attention this topic received in focal students content area classes.
Adolescent L2 writers and their teachers varied in their interpretations of content area writing, emphasizing lexical
issues (e.g., big words), more general elements of writing (e.g., being descriptive and clear), grammatical
aspects of writing (e.g., being concise through embedding clauses), and/or syntactical and lexical techniques (e.g.,
using normal words between technical words or paraphrasing content into [students] own language).
Significantly, focal students reported that in many cases they did not use such forms of writing for a variety of reasons,
ranging from a lack of linguistic knowledge to personal preference to a sense that the language expected by teachers
may not meet the needs and demands of their audience(s). Patterns of performance, however, such as Zulemas
revisions to her humanities essay, suggest that teachers intuitive notions of content area writing, like being clear,
may be possible for adolescent second language writers to espouse but are difficult to achieve.
Interview responses suggest that the varied genre theories discussed by Hyon (1996), Hyland (2004), and Johns
(2008) are each relevant to secondary classrooms with adolescent L2 writers. Although students and teachers in this
study did not have extensive or explicit meta-language to describe elements of genre knowledge (Tardy, 2009) or the
genres being written in their classrooms, they referenced some word- and discourse-level elements discussed in genre
as social purpose (Systemic Functional Linguistic) and genre as professional competence (English for Specific
Purposes) perspectives. Moreover, New Rhetoric (genre as situated action) perspectives, which focus on the social
purposes and contexts involved in the writing of texts, help to explain the social and linguistic reasons why students
had such varied ideas about the audience(s) for whom they wrote and their identities as writers, including why they
might, for example, have rejected the notion of writing like scientists. In this sense, students addressed and
imagined readers (Ede & Lunsford, 1984), both fictional and hypothetical, were both powerful forces shaping
students writing. Multilingual adolescents, like their tertiary (Roberts & Cimasko, 2008) and primary counterparts
(Bourne, 2002), must navigate multiple audiences for their writing, whether the notion of audience is taught
explicitly or not.
From a pedagogical perspective, this study leaves unresolved the question of how classroom instruction can
contribute to genre learning. Students were gaining a measure of explicit genre knowledge (Riley & Reedy, 2000),
especially in relation to paraphrasing for their science reports, and may have also been drawing from implicit exposure
to written genres (Tardy, 2006). Students and teachers responses suggest that significant differences in their genre
knowledge remain, however, and it is unknown the extent to which explicit instruction in content area writing might
have helped these students write in the genres expected by their teachers. Although some L2 writers may expect such
guidance (Tardy, 2006), the adolescents interviewed for this study did not express such a desire as they spoke about
their writing.
These adolescent L2 writers share important commonalities with other secondary students writing in their primary
languages. It is likely that many middle and high school students regardless of language background do not share
common understandings about content area writing with their teachers, especially if writing instruction is not a
significant aspect of the content area curricula. However, as L2 writers, Ana, Diego, Fabiola, and Zulemas
experiences are unique. Native-language speakers likely have better intuitive textual knowledge, what Leki (2006)
describes as a backlog of experiences with English grammatical and rhetorical structure to fall back on (p. 59).
Additionally, several of the L2 writers in this study shared a frustration that they do not have backlog of vocabulary
knowledge, saying they did not understand or know how to use the more formal, good, difficult, or big
words they felt were expected in content area writing. Finally, some adolescent L2 writers, like Fabiola, have

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substantial literacy backgrounds in their first languages that may inform their ideas about writing. Even Ana, who
completed fewer years of formal schooling in Mexico than Fabiola, demonstrates the possibility for L2 writers to
transfer first-language knowledge to the second language: the only big word Ana identified in her humanities
writing reputation is a cognate of the Spanish word reputacion. Although Ana does not explicitly discuss using
cognates as a writing strategy, such opportunities for vocabulary development are clearly available to L2 writers
working in cognate languages.
Implications
These data suggest ways in which teachers and researchers can further explore the writing experiences and genre
learning of adolescent L2 writers across the curriculum. Implications for both groups are explored in turn below.
From a pedagogical perspective, Ms. Morales notion of being concise and Mr. Smiths idea of clarity are
indicators that implicit writing expectations exist for adolescent L2 writers in content area classrooms. Significantly,
these concerns extend beyond students own writing: The very texts through which students learn content are often
structured according to similar, though not identical generic principles. Through their own disciplinary training,
content area teachers are often skilled interpreters of these types of writing, even if they have not been taught to
articulate how these texts are constructed. Content area teachers often do not see language as their area of specialty, but
helping secondary teachers focus on how language works in their disciplinary texts might give math, science,
literature, and social studies teachers both a concrete way to talk about language and a sense of genuine expertise. As
Hyland (2007) points out,
A person who understand how texts are typically structured, understood, and used is in a better position to
intervene successfully in the writing of his or her students, to provide more informed feedback on writing, to
make decisions about the teaching methods and materials to use, and to approach current instructional
paradigms with a more critical eye (p. 151).
Helping adolescent second language writers unlock these patterns of language can be doubly productive,
facilitating students reading comprehension while also demonstrating the connections between the writing students
do and what it means to write like a scientist or a historian. While the effectiveness of genre-based writing
instruction has yet to be firmly established (Tardy, 2006), some level of attention to how texts are written in various
content areas seems to be a potentially fruitful area of pedagogy for adolescent second language writers, whose
knowledge of academic curricula should develop alongside their knowledge of how language is used in different
content areas.
From a research perspective, this study points to several areas of further research that would help the field to better
understand adolescent L2 writing pedagogy and L2 adolescent writers development in various content area contexts.
Such questions include the following: what are the most effective ways to plan, sequence, support, and assess the
learning of writing in different content areas (Hyland, 2007) for adolescent L2 writers? What are the range of social
contexts that may influence these teaching and learning processes, and how does this occur? What are students
perceptions of teachers efforts to teach discipline-specific writing in the content areas? And finally, how do these
pedagogies align with adolescent L2 writers and their teachers own motivations and goals? Such questions represent
some of the many concerns relevant to the teaching of adolescent L2 writers in content area settings at the secondary
level.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Guadalupe Valdes, Sarah Capitelli, anonymous reviewers, and the journal and special issue
editors for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
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Amanda Kibler is an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginias Curry School of Education. Her research focuses on second language
acquisition, bilingualism, adolescent second language writing, content area literacy, and teacher education. Her work has been published or is
forthcoming in the Journal of Second Language Writing, Linguistics and Education, the Journal of Education, Teachers College Record, and
Symposium Books. She is currently working on a study of multilingual students longitudinal writing development.