Modes of Engagement in ForeignLanguage Writing: An ActivityTheoretical Perspective

Mari Haneda

Abstract: This article makes the case for using activity theory toexplore the learning and teaching of writing in a foreign language.I illustrate my argument by bringing this theory to bear on a re-examination ofthe different modes of engagement in writing by university-level studentsof Japanese as a foreign language that I identified in an earlier study. Thefirst half of the article develops a perspective on writing as a social activity/practice, building on an interdisciplinary body of work and focusingparticularly on activity theory. The different modes in which students engagedin writing in my earlier study are then interpreted from this perspective.I examine these modes both synchronically and diachronically in order toexplore the students’ underlying values and attitudes with respect to learningthe target language, suggesting that an activity-theoretical perspective can be auseful heuristic for the systematic detection of problems in writing that foreignlanguage learners may encounter, so that instruction can be tailored totheir needs.

Keywords: foreign language writing, activity theory, modes ofengagement, literacy as social practice

Resume : Dans l’article, on demontre qu’on peut explorer l’appren-tissage et l’enseignement de la redaction dans une langue etrangere au moyende la theorie de l’activite. Pour expliquer mon point de vue, je procede a unreexamen des differents modes d’engagement dans la redaction par desetudiants de niveau universitaire qui apprennent le japonais comme langueetrangere, un contexte dont je me suis deja servi lors d’une etude precedente.Dans la premiere moitie de l’article, je parle de la redaction en tant qu’activite/pratique sociale, en me basant sur un corpus de travail interdisciplinaire et enme concentrant particulierement sur la theorie de l’activite. Les differentsmodes d’engagement des etudiants dans la redaction, qui ont ete evalues aucours de mon etude precedente, sont ensuite interpretes de ce point de vue.J’effectue une analyse synchronique et diachronique de ces modesd’engagement, afin d’explorer les valeurs et l’attitude sous-jacentes desetudiants en ce qui a trait a l’apprentissage de la langue cible. Enfin, je suggereque le point de vue de la theorie de l’activite peut etre une heuristiquepratique pour la detection systematique des problemes de redaction

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que peuvent eprouver les apprenants d’une langue seconde, pour que laformation soit adaptee a leurs besoins.

Mots cles : redaction en langue etrangere, theorie de l’activite, modesd’engagement, litteratie en tant que pratique sociale

Introduction

In today’s foreign language (FL) classrooms, particularly in metropol-itan cities across North America, students are increasingly diverse interms of their ethnic origin, their family home language, and theirgoals with respect to becoming biliterate. Given this diversity, it isimportant to consider carefully what it means to teach and learn anFL in multilingual and multicultural environments. My concern hereis with students’ uptake of writing assignments in a university-levelFL classroom, more specifically with the ways in which students withdiverse ethnolinguisic backgrounds and experiences with the targetlanguage engage in writing tasks and how these relate to theirunderlying conceptions of what it means to be a writer in an FL.

My intention in this article is to make the case for the advantages ofusing activity theory to explore the learning and teaching of writing inan FL. I illustrate my argument by bringing this theory to bear on there-examination of the differential modes of engagement in writing byethnolinguistically diverse university students of Japanese as a foreignlanguage (JFL) identified in my earlier work (Haneda, 2004, 2005).The research question addressed here is, What light can an activitytheoretical perspective throw on students’ differential modes of engagement inwriting in an FL? The first half of the article develops a perspective onwriting as a social activity/practice, building on an interdisciplinarybody of work, particularly activity theory. The modes of engagementfound in my earlier study are then interpreted from this perspective.I examine these modes both synchronically and diachronically inorder to explore the students’ underlying values and attitudes withrespect to learning the target language. Finally, I discuss someimplications of adopting this perspective for theory and practice.

Perspectives on university-level FL writing

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, some scholars began to suggest thathistorically, within the FL profession, there has been little sustainedattention to the development of students’ FL writing abilities and

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equally little research on FL writing (Heilenman, 1991; Terry, 1989;Valdes, Haro, & Echevarriarza, 1992). This neglect was attributedprimarily to a programmatic emphasis within FL departments ondeveloping spoken language ability and reading skills; writing wasdownplayed, since FL students were considered to have little need towrite in the target language outside their FL courses. In recent years,however, efforts have been made to stimulate further research in thisrelatively under-explored area of FL writing through the compilationof a bibliography of research and the publication of state-of-the-artreviews of this research (e.g., Reichelt, 1999, 2001).

Reichelt’s (1999) review of three decades of research on FL writingprovides important insights into the changing conceptualization ofwriting that has taken place in the FL profession. In the early days,writing was either considered only in terms of the production of shortpieces or was assigned no place at all in FL pedagogy. More recentrecommendations, on the other hand, have called for increasedattention to writing and for a shift from the earlier view of writingas sentence-level, error-free production of written language to a morecommunicatively oriented view. The notion of ‘writing for communi-cation’ tends to be variously interpreted, however, depending on theknowledge base on which the different scholars draw. Some addressthe curriculum for writing in FL courses in terms of the goalsdescribed in the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines (1986, 1999). Omaggio(1986), for example, recommends the use of process-oriented compos-ing tasks only at the advanced and superior levels of proficiency. Scott(1996), on the other hand, suggests that both writing as an academicexercise (i.e., language exercises without any real communicativepurpose) and writing for communication (e.g., note taking, letterwriting) are necessary. Nevertheless, these suggestions seem to bebased on two implicit assumptions. First, FL writing consists oflanguage practice without a communicative purpose or of writing tocommunicate, but only for a generic audience. Second, communicativewriting tasks become an achievable goal for FL student writers onlywhen they reach advanced proficiency in the target language.By contrast, other scholars who draw on L1 writing theory andcomposition studies, advocate adopting the process approach toFL writing and also insist that writing should always have acommunicative purpose (e.g., Greenia, 1992; Morocco & Soven,1990). In this body of literature, the underlying conceptualization ofwriting appears to be that of writing for communication in order toexpress one’s ideas, either for a particular community of readers inan appropriate genre or for oneself.

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However, Heilenman (1991) cautions against a wholesale adoptionof the process writing approach in the absence of a critical examinationof current classroom practices. She argues that FL writing instructionhas made only cosmetic changes over the years and that most teachersseem to be concerned primarily with grammatical correctness, evenwhen they make students write drafts or engage in dialogue journals.Nevertheless, she proposes the inclusion of FL writing as an effectivemeans of developing integrated language skills, since writing has thepotential to allow FL students to reflect upon their language learningand to work out problems with lexicon, grammar, and organization inthe context of their own meaning making (p. 283). This is akin to theview of L2 writing proposed by some other researchers, such asCumming (1990) and Swain and Lapkin (1995): writing enhancescognitive and metalinguisitic awareness by encouraging L2 learnersto think in, and reflect on, the target language, which is conducive totheir overall L2 learning.

Yet more recently, other scholars have argued for a reform of FLcurriculum that would place the development of literacy at its heart.Drawing on current thinking in literacy studies, genre theory, andeducational linguistics, these scholars suggest that a focus on literacycan serve as an effective organizing principle for academic languageteaching and for fostering integrated learning in an FL (e.g., Byrnes,1998; Byrnes & Sprang, 2003; Kern, 2000, 2003; Swaffer, 2003). Fromthis perspective, writing is no longer addressed as a separate skill but,rather, is treated as a part of the FL literacy tool kit. Kern (2003), forexample, suggests that, as proposed by the New London Group (1996),a literacy-based FL curriculum needs to incorporate four curricularcomponents: situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing,and transformed practice. That is, FL students need to expresstheir personal experiences, thoughts, and feelings about a particulartopic (situated practice) while at the same time developing metalan-guage through teacher scaffolding (overt instruction on aspectsof language use). They also need to engage in transforming practice(e.g., transforming content gained through reading into anoral report or a written draft)1 and in critical framing (e.g., analyzingand discussing relevant texts in terms of the relationship betweenlanguage use, social contexts, and purposes). These four components,it is argued, need to be incorporated, to varying degrees, inprojects undertaken throughout the study of an FL. Thus, from thisperspective, writing is considered an important aspect of a literacy-based FL curriculum, in which literacy is conceptualized as a socialpractice.

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Literacy as social practice

This section unpacks the notion of literacy as social practice: what itmeans to think of literacy in these terms. My starting point is the workdone by Scribner and Cole (1981) in Liberia, where they constructed aframework centred on the notion of practice in order to adequatelyexamine the multilingual practices of the Vai people they studied.Scribner and Cole define practice as ‘a recurrent, goal-directedsequence of activities using a particular technology and particularsystems of knowledge’ (p. 236) and, from this perspective, show thatthe Vai engaged in practices involving reading and writing in threedifferent languages, each serving specific purposes. For example,literacy practices using the Vai script were used, among otherpurposes, for commercial dealings and to exchange letters; by contrast,the use of Arabic was tied to religious practices, which were based onmemorization of the Qur’an. Finally, for those who attended school,literacy practices in English were central to academic learning.

While in Scribner and Cole’s early work (1981) ‘practice’ explicitlyincludes notions of skill, technology, and knowledge, together withpatterned activity, in ethnographic studies of literacy in the recentlyconceptualized field of New Literacies Studies (NLS) (e.g., Gee, 1996;Street, 1993), ‘practice’ is interpreted as more ideologically loaded.Street, a proponent of NLS, defines literacy as an ideological practicerather than simply as the use of neutral technical skills. As he argues,literacy is always embedded in ‘socially constructed epistemologicalprinciples,’ in that ‘the ways in which people address reading andwriting are themselves rooted in conceptions of knowledge, identity,and being’ (2003, pp. 77–78). From this perspective, he also furtherdistinguishes between literacy practices and literacy events. A literacyevent is a concrete instantiation of a literacy practice; quoting Heath(1983, p. 93), a literacy event is ‘any occasion in which a piece ofwriting is integral to the nature of literacy participants’ interactionsand their interpretive processes.’ People bring their socially learnedmodels of literacy to bear in a literacy event in order to meaningfullyengage in it. On the other hand, literacy practices involve ‘the broadercultural conception of particular ways of thinking about and doingreading and writing in cultural contexts’ (Street, 2003, p. 79).

However, despite their focus on connecting micro-analyses oflanguage and literacy events with macro-analyses of the powerdifferentials inherent in different literacy practices, proponents of NLShave not provided a method of systematically distinguishing betweendifferent literacy practices. Here, activity theory is more helpful in

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allowing such discriminations to be made and in placing ‘practice’ in alarger framework. Activity theory, which grew out of the work ofVygotsky and Leont’ev, subsequently expanded by Engestrom, locatesindividual actions in larger cultural activity systems. The originalmodel of mediated action, as proposed by Vygotsky (1978), representsan action carried out by a single human being with the aid ofmediating artefact(s). Leont’ev (1981) developed this model by makinga distinction between three levels, in which action is a particularinstantiation of an activity that is itself realized through situationallyappropriate operations. Also useful is Leont’ev’s explanation that,while an activity is a contextualizing framework driven by a ‘motive,’an action instantiates the motive in the form of goal-directedbehaviour, which, in turn, is realized by operations, defined as‘automatized or habituated actions that respond to the immediatesocial-material conditions at hand’ (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006, p. 216).Engestrom (1987) further contextualizes action by situating it withinan ongoing community, or activity system (see Figure 1). In thisexpanded model, activity is conceptualized in terms of a set ofinterconnected triangles. The top triangle depicts a specific action. Thesubject refers to ‘the individual or sub-group whose agency is chosenas the point of view in the analysis,’ and the object – the ‘raw material’or ‘problem space’ – is that ‘to which the activity is directed and whichis molded and transformed into outcomes with the help of physicaland symbolic, external and internal mediating instruments, includingboth tools and signs’ (Engestrom, 2006). This action triangle is then

FIGURE1Representation ofan activity system (adapted from Engestro« m,1987)

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related to the activity system, of which it is a particular realization,through the inclusion of three further triangles that represent theinfluence on the action of three critical aspects of the system: the‘community,’ composed of people who are concerned with the samegeneral object; the ‘rules,’ norms and conventions that constrainactions and interactions within the activity system; and the ‘division oflabour,’ the distribution of community members’ responsibilities androles in carrying out object-oriented actions. Within a collectiveactivity system, the actions of individuals on particular occasionsoccur at the nexus of three factors: the tools and artefacts available;the community; and its understood rules and division of labour(Lantolf & Thorne, 2006, p. 222).

‘Practice’ and ‘activity’ are often treated as synonymous, since, asCole (1996) points out, they both derive from the same formulation byMarx in the first of his Theses on Feuerbach (1845/1967), which attemptsto overcome the dualisms of, on the one hand, individual andcommunity, and, on the other, material and ideal. However, the twoterms tend to be associated with different fields of research. The term‘practice’ has been adopted in several of the social sciences to refer tothe meanings and normative patterns of interaction that makepossible the shared endeavours of a community; the emphasishere has been largely on the use of symbols and ideational artefacts(e.g., Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986; Taylor, 1987). ‘Activity,’ on the otherhand, while addressing essentially the same domain, has given greateremphasis to goal-directed, material action by members of a commu-nity (e.g., Engestrom, Miettinen, & Punamaki, 1999; Nardi, 1996).Thus, while both ‘practice’ and ‘activity’ denote the use of artefactsto mediate individuals’ achievement of goals according to communityscripts and normative procedures, the use of these terms has tended tobe associated with different disciplinary emphases within the commonfield of interest. However, if we follow Cole’s (1996) argumentconcerning the dual nature of all artefacts, it becomes apparent thatthe two terms refer to essentially the same basic configuration ofparticipants, which Wertsch, Tulviste, and Hangstrom (1998, p. 342)have called ‘individual(s)-operating-with-mediational-means.’ Thus,when considering literacy, it seems appropriate to treat literacyevents as corresponding to particular actions and literacy practicesas corresponding to community-shared activities in which texts ofvarious kinds play an essential mediating role as semiotic artefacts.Furthermore, shaping both practices and activities are community‘scripts’ and norms of differentiated participation, which are enactedin concrete literacy events/actions.

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FL writing as a situated activity/practice

This section, drawing particularly on the work of Engestrom (1987,1999, 2001), sketches out a way in which to understand FL writing as asocial activity/practice. Here, it may be helpful to discuss briefly howa sociocultural perspective, in particular activity theory, affords anenriched vantage point from which to consider L2 learning. Accordingto Lantolf and Pavlenko (2001, p. 144), in addition to a concern withwhat the individual is doing (the focus of traditional approaches to thestudy of mind), sociocultural theory incorporates three additionaldimensions: ‘how the person is acting’ (i.e., in consort with artefacts orother individuals); ‘where the person is acting’ (e.g., the classroom, thehome); and ‘why the person is acting’ (i.e., the motives and goalsunderlying the activity). To put it differently, instead of acting alone, ina cultural vacuum, individuals within this theoretical perspective areseen as agents who engage in goal-oriented actions with cultural tools,both symbolic and material, as members of a particular socioculturalcommunity. Further, since individuals’ actions are energized by theirown underlying motives, even when they are seemingly engaged inthe same action, they may, in fact, in carrying out a given task, beengaged in different activities/practices (e.g., Gillette, 1994; Wertsch,Minick, & Arns, 1984). For example, in her investigation of universitystudents studying French, Gillete (1994) argues that the kind oflearning strategies her participants employed in learning French wereinfluenced by their histories, in which were rooted their ‘motives’ forstudying the FL and their goals on specific occasions. She noted thattwo students, both taking their French classes to fulfil the university’slanguage requirement, considered the learning of French as twocompletely different activities: while one student saw it as deeplyrelevant to her desire to become a writer, the other did not see anyreal-life relevance in language study.

While sociocultural approaches, which build on a variety of sociallyoriented theories, including Vygotskian theory, Bakhtin’s dialogism,and situated learning theories, have been effectively incorporated intoL2 writing research (e.g., Casanave, 2002; Hirvela & Belcher, 2001;Leki, 2001, 2007; Parks & Macguire, 1999; Spack, 1997), much lessuse has been made of activity theory. On the other hand, activitytheory has been used quite extensively by a number of scholars in L1writing research to make sense of the complex interactions amongwriter agency, diverse activity systems, and their associated genres(e.g., Bazerman & Russell, 2002; Prior, 1998, 2006; Russell, 1995, 1997).From an activity theoretical perspective, it has been suggested that

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particular writing events should be understood in light of theworkings of particular activity systems (Russell, 1995) and thus as amode of social action (Prior, 2006). When the focus is on written text asthe means of communication between writers and readers in whichboth are active participants, however, Engestrom’s (1987) triangle hassome limitations. The model of activity it represents treats action asunidirectional – a subject acting on an object to produce an outcome.For this reason, when the focus is on communication, the absence ofrepresentation of the reciprocal relationship between the participantsin communication is a serious problem.

In order to overcome this limitation, Wells (2002, in press) hasproposed a modified representation of an activity system, which aimsto capture the joint and reciprocal nature of communicative action.I have adapted Wells’s model for the case where communication isconducted by means of a textual artefact, as represented in Figure 2.

In this model, a writer takes up the position of a subject who has aparticular set of linguistic resources (artefacts) at her or his disposal.The writer, addressing a particular topic, produces a written text in aspecific genre (e.g., rhetorical strategies, overall structure of argumen-tation, and appropriate register) that is appropriate for readers whoare involved in the same cultural community. Here, although the roles

FIGURE 2Amodelof writing in the context of activity (modified fromWells, 2002)

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performed by writer and reader constitute a division of labour, therelationship between them is one of reciprocity. With this modification,activity theory can serve as a useful conceptual tool for understandinginstances of writing in different activity systems.

Modes of engagement in writing in a foreign language

I use the term ‘modes of engagement’ to describe ways in whichpeople approach and carry out literacy practices, either in readingor in writing. What give rise to writers’ characteristic modes ofengagement are their underlying values and attitudes with respect tothe learning of the target language. These are strongly affected by theirmotivation for learning the language, which, in turn, is rooted in theirlife trajectories and expectations for the future. Thus, modes ofengagement are instantiated on a particular occasion of writing(a literacy event) in the chosen goals for writing and the use ofparticular composing strategies, and they are fundamentally shapednot only by the degree of the individual writer’s proficiency in thetarget language but also by his or her underlying conceptions of whatit means to write in an FL. The second half of this article re-examinesthe differential modes of engagement in JFL writing (Haneda, 2004,2005) from the perspective of activity theory, in order to show theadvantages of using this perspective to explore the learning andteaching of writing in an FL. With this aim in view, I will describe onlythose aspects of the original study that are relevant to the questionaddressed here: What light can an activity theoretical perspectivethrow on students’ differential modes of engagement in writing inan FL?

My study was carried out in a fourth-year JFL reading and writingcourse that I taught in a Canadian university over the course of oneacademic year in 1997/1998. The nine participating students were ofdiverse ethnolinguistic backgrounds: four were Taiwanese studentswho immigrated to Canada as young adolescents; two were Canadiananglophones; two were of Japanese descent; and one was a visitingstudent from Korea (see Table 1 for the profile of participantcharacteristics). Their proficiency in Japanese varied from intermedi-ate to superior, according to the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines forJapanese, and their goals for learning Japanese also varied(e.g., developing literacy competence sufficient to pursue graduatedegrees in Japan or North America in their chosen fields, meetinglanguage requirements for their degree, maintaining their heritagelanguage).

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TABLE

1Profile

ofpa

rticipan

tcha

racteristics

Stude

nt�

Ethnic

backgrou

ndL1

Dom

inan

tspoken

lang

uage

s

Dom

inan

twritte

nlang

uage

s

Japa

nese

proficienc

y(Jap

anes

eSpe

akingTest)

Majorsin

university

Rea

ding

andwritin

ginJapa

nese

outsideJFLclas

s

June

Japa

nese

Japa

nese

Japa

nese

Eng

lish

Japa

nese

Eng

lish

Sup

erior

EastA

sian

Studies

Exten

sive

read

inginmultiplege

nres

Jim

Japa

nese

Can

adian

Japa

nese

Eng

lish

Eng

lish

Advan

ced

Eng

lish,Classics

Rea

ding

Japa

nese

comics;

writin

glette

rsto

relatives

inJapa

n

Edw

ard

Ang

loph

one

Can

adian

Eng

lish

Eng

lish

Eng

lish

Advan

ced

Busines

sRea

ding

newspap

ersan

dbu

sine

ssbo

oks

Keith

Korea

nKorea

nKorea

nKorea

nAdvan

ced

Tran

slation

Cha

troo

m;exten

sive

read

inginmultiplege

nres

Ewan

Ang

loph

one

Can

adian

Eng

lish

Eng

lish

Eng

lish

Inter-high

Japa

nese

Studies

Rea

ding

Japa

nese

source

materialsforclasses

Clive

Chine

seCan

adian

Chine

seChine

seChine

seInter-mid

Eco

nomics,

EastA

sian

Studies

Rea

ding

busine

ssbo

oks(occasiona

l)

Cindy

Chine

seCan

adian

Chine

seEng

lish

Chine

seEng

lish

Chine

seInter-mid

Japa

nese

Studies

Rea

ding

Japa

nese

source

materialsforclasses

Chris

Chine

seCan

adian

Chine

seChine

seChine

seInter-low

Actua

rialScien

ce,

EastA

sian

Studies

Rare

Craig

Chine

seCan

adian

Chine

seChine

seChine

seInter-low

Eco

nomics,East

Asian

Studies

Rare

� The

firstlette

rofeachstud

ent’s

pseu

donymrepres

entshisor

herL1.The

four

Chine

sestud

entsem

igratedfrom

Taiwan

toCan

adaarou

ndtheag

eof14.A

lthou

ghtheirL1

was

Taiwan

ese,theird

ominan

tlan

guag

ewas

Man

darin,throug

hwhich

they

wereed

ucated

.

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The original study revolved around a pedagogical intervention,which took the form of the introduction of writing conferences;it examined the dynamics and quality of teacher–student verbalinteraction in writing conferences in Japanese and the social construc-tion of writer identity by multilingual students. While evidence formodes of engagement can be sought in writing-conference talk, thestudents’ written productions, and the students’ self-reports insubsequent interviews, here I draw primarily on the transcripts ofthree sets of retrospective interviews with each of the nineparticipants. I chose to focus on the interview data because I wasparticularly interested in examining how the students expressed theirown perspectives on writing in Japanese with a high degree ofself-awareness. The interviews, which were conducted in English,addressed the students’ composing/revising processes and strategiesand took place after each of the three writing conferences; eachinterview ranged in length from 30 minutes to one hour. Other datasources from the original study were consulted in a supplementarymanner: the students’ argumentative expository essays in Japanese onthe topics of the status of women, the value of lectures, and the systemof lifelong employment (800–1,000 characters); field notes document-ing my thoughts about each class and frequent informal conversationswith the students (52 entries in total); and the transcripts of the threewriting conferences carried out in Japanese with each student (rangingfrom 20 minutes to one hour). The interview transcripts were analyzedusing open coding to develop conceptual categories and core themesand then axial coding to build up and elaborate analytically interestingthemes by relating and grouping identified codes (Strauss & Corbin,1990). My research assistant and I first coded all the interviewtranscripts independently; where there was disagreement in ourjudgements, we recoded until we reached consensus.

Foregrounded in this study are the students’ differential modes ofengagement in the same writing tasks (explained in detail in a latersection). The modes that I identified included writing as a languagepractice; writing a coherent argument; writing in a genre appropriatefor a particular community of target language speakers; and writing insophisticated Japanese in order to maintain one’s identity as already astrong writer in another language. While the first three modes appearto overlap, to some extent, with approaches to FL writing discussedabove, the fourth mode, which was the way in which one heritagelanguage learner2 approached JFL writing, has not been addressed,and so I address this issue more fully toward the end of the article.It is my contention that a coherent and adequate explanation of all the

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observed modes calls for the use of the sociocultural perspective onwriting sketched out above. I begin by considering the students’composing strategies.

Composing strategies

I present here a brief sketch of the composing strategies the studentsused, so that, in later sections, I can refer to them in discussing theirmodes of engagement with the writing tasks. I use the term‘composing strategies’ to refer to the online processing that takesplace while composing in Japanese, as reported by the students intheir interviews.

The analysis of the students’ self-reports in the retrospectiveinterviews revealed a range of strategies that appear to be directlyrelated to their Japanese language proficiency. In general, the moreproficient they were, the less they depended on their L1 (or on Englishas L2, in the case of multilingual students) when composing inJapanese (see Table 2). Most of the students followed a similarsequence while composing the three texts: (1) generate ideas in L1 orL2; (2) write ideas and/or an outline in L1 or L2; then (3) try tocompose in Japanese as much as possible. I grouped studentsaccording to the extent to which they reported looping back to theirL1 or L2 while composing in Japanese. Here the Chinese studentsshowed interesting patterns in terms of their preferred language forplanning. Two students, who reported that they had seldom read orwritten in Chinese since their arrival in Canada, used English insteadof their L1 as a resource for formulating ideas. By contrast, the othertwo students, who had maintained active literate lives in Chinese,drew on Chinese or Chinese and English, respectively, as theirpreferred language(s).

Further, intermediate Japanese-proficient students, who tended toreport more difficulty in expressing their ideas in Japanese than thosewith advanced proficiency, appear to have used such common copingstrategies as simplifying sentence structure and abandoning segmentsthat were too difficult to write in Japanese (see Uzawa & Cumming,1987). These students also reported reverting to other languageresources and performing mental translations while composing inJapanese. On the other hand, the advanced and superior Japanese-proficient students considered the task of composing in Japanesea manageable one, with the notable exception of Jim, who used atranslation strategy despite his advanced Japanese proficiency(as elaborated below). All students appear to have assigned particular

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TABLE

2Com

posing

strategies

inJapa

nese

Rep

ortedse

quen

cesofstep

sinco

mpo

sing

Japa

nese

essays

Com

pens

atory

strategies

Stude

ntSelf-ratin

gof

writin

gco

mpe

tenc

ein

dominan

tlan

guag

eofliteracy

Japa

nese

proficiency

(Jap

anes

eSpe

akingTest)

Step1

Step2

Step3

1Gen

erateidea

sin

Japa

nese

Makeno

tesin

Japa

nese

Com

pose

entirelyin

Japa

nese

N/A

June

Goo

dSup

erior

2Gen

erateidea

sin

Japa

nese

Develop

idea

sin

L1an

dwritedo

wn

pointsinJapa

nese

Tryto

compo

sein

Japa

nese,w

ithsporad

icloop

back

toL1

Relyon

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functions strategically to the different language resources they couldbring to bear on the task.

Modes of engagement with writing tasks

With the exception of Jim, the students’ composing processes/strategies appeared to be fairly directly related to their Japaneselanguage proficiency. Nevertheless, my analysis revealed that, interms of their modes of engagement, students who displayed similarcomposing processes/strategies nevertheless engaged in the tasksdifferently. This section describes the students’ writing practices interms of the first three modes of engagement noted earlier; however,these are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The first mode represents engagement in JFL writing as a languageexercise and as a means of developing overall FL skills. Five students –Ewan, Clive, Cindy, Chris, and Craig, all intermediate Japanese-proficient – expressed their views about JFL writing in a manner thatcan be interpreted as manifesting this perspective. All except Cindy,who had taken an intensive Japanese summer course in Japan, hadencountered Japanese primarily in the context of JFL classes, and theyall considered writing in Japanese to be a means of improvingtheir lexico-grammatical accuracy in the language. This perspective isexemplified by the following comment from Ewan:

I am a lot more concerned with grammar [in writing in Japanese] . . . correct

grammar and getting correct vocabulary . . . as opposed to writing in

English where I’m a lot more concerned about expressing ideas succinctly

and the grammar doesn’t enter my mind. (Interview, 03/02/98)

Correspondingly, in the conference talk, lexico-grammatical issuestended to be the main focus of attention for these five students.Typically, sequences in the conference talk started with my askingthe students to clarify their intended meanings in certain passagesand then, on that basis, moved to some form of error correction.As described above, these students used similar composingstrategies, although they differed in terms of the language resourceson which they drew in formulating their ideas and in the reportedfrequency of using their L1 or L2. They also reported the use ofcompensatory strategies characterized by Uzawa and Cumming(1987) as ‘lower-the-standard’ strategies (reduction of information,simplified syntax, and substituted lexis). Of these, the most commonlyused was simplification of sentence structure, as exemplified

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by Ewan’s comment: ‘I have to split up ideas into smaller sentencesthat I know I can make clear, very clear, rather than more complexsentences’ (Interview, 02/04/98). In this respect, as reported by Uzawaand Cumming, JFL writing resembled a mental dialectic between twotendencies: lower-the-standard strategies and keep-up-the-standardstrategies (extensive rehearsal and revision, together with seekingassistance). Thus, the gap between cognition and linguistic compe-tency emerged as a major theme in these students’ conferences andinterviews. Notwithstanding these frustrating experiences, all statedthat they regarded writing in Japanese as an opportunity to consol-idate their JFL knowledge by reviewing previously learned grammarand lexis and learning new expressions (Swain & Lapkin, 1995).

The importance of distinguishing between composing strategies/processes and modes of engagement becomes salient in the case ofEwan, a specialist in Japanese Studies who planned to pursue adoctorate in the same field. Unlike Craig and Clive, whose focus wason language skills, Ewan read extensively in Japanese outside the JFLclass in preparation for his thesis research and, for this reason, gaveserious consideration to the rhetoric underlying the Japanese prose heread. At the time of the research project, he was torn between hisdesire to develop a deeper understanding of Japanese ‘ways withwords’ (Heath, 1983) and his inclination to dismiss them as ‘illogical.’He commented that he had difficulty understanding why he had to doso much work as a reader, ‘reading between the lines,’ when he dealtwith Japanese texts, since he felt it was the writer’s responsibility toconstruct a coherent and explicit argument – as he himself was obligedto do in writing academic essays in English. He considered Japanesetexts ‘sloppy’ and ‘too loosely organized,’ so he concluded that it wasnot worth his effort to understand and emulate Japanese rhetoric.Agonizing over this matter for months, he opted to focus only onlanguage form in his Japanese composition. The point I wish to makehere is that, while students may share similar composing processes,their reasons for engaging in a particular mode of writing may differconsiderably.

In the second mode, writing is approached with the goal of writinga coherent argument. Edward, an advanced Japanese-proficientstudent, appeared to adopt this approach, although he also embodiedthe first mode because of his simultaneous focus on improving hislexico-grammar. Edward, an anglophone Canadian, learned Japanesewhen he lived in Japan for one year as a high school exchange student,developing sufficient conversational fluency to interact with peoplearound him. On his return to Canada, he received help with reading in

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Japanese from a private tutor, and he was able to read Japanesenewspapers with ease. Outside the JFL class, he continued to readnewspapers daily, as well as business books, since he wanted tobecome a business executive. He invested time and energy in readingbecause of its perceived utility for his future job: obtaining informationabout the Japanese market. However, he did not consider writingability in Japanese to be nearly as important as reading ability. As aresult, he regarded writing in Japanese as an occasion to practise thetarget language, and, initially, he focused primarily on lexico-gram-mar. In the writing conferences, however, he discovered, to hissurprise, that his Japanese compositions displayed the same writingproblem that he experienced in English – difficulty in constructinga coherent argument. With this recognition, he became determinedto write a ‘clear essay’:

I have all these ideas I want to get on paper, so instead of taking one idea

and focusing and elaborating on it – and I have this trouble in English – I’ll

just try to throw all the ideas together, and I’ll just figure someone who

reads this will understand, all these ideas together, and then my concluding

statement will be a conclusion, based on analyzing all of this data,

but I haven’t analyzed it all on paper, I’ve put it down, I’ve analyzed it in

my head, and I put a conclusion, but no one knows how the hell I got this,

this conclusion, because I analyzed it in my head, so I’ve gotta focus more

on, you know, doing the analysis on paper, and making it clear what

I’m saying. (Interview, 03/02/98)

While Edward was keen to improve his clarity of expression, he paidlittle attention to the subtlety of the Japanese language and to the wayin which arguments are linguistically realized in Japanese. In fact, heequated writing a Japanese essay to writing a high school Englishessay (thesis statement–supporting evidence–conclusion). WhileEdward wanted to write a clearly expressed and coherent essay toan audience, he appeared to be addressing not a Japanese reader but,rather, a generic reader of English. Further, he stated that he was notinterested in learning about the rhetorical devices used in Japanesewriting because he saw little utility in learning them in terms ofachieving his future career goals.

In the third mode, writing in Japanese is approached as acommunicative activity: writing to communicate ideas in a rhetoricallyappropriate manner for an educated Japanese audience. In this mode,the focus on lexico-grammatical accuracy is supplemented by aconcern for the appropriate choice of register, expression, and overall

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rhetorical structure. Three students – Cindy, Keith, and June –appeared to hold this view of JFL writing. Despite their sharedperspective, their individual profiles with respect to the learning ofJapanese differed dramatically from one another. Cindy, an interme-diate Japanese-proficient student, was interested in improving herJapanese lexico-grammar. Nonetheless, she also showed a keenawareness of Japanese rhetorical conventions and indicated a desireto master them. Being a specialist in Japanese Studies, she readJapanese source materials extensively in order to write research papersfor other courses. In the process of reading, she became attuned toways in which arguments are made in Japanese. She felt that sheneeded to master appropriate hedging strategies to mitigate the forceof her assertions so that the reader would accept her opinions moreeasily:

I use a lot of expressions like ki ga suru (I feel that), kamoshirenai (it may be

that). I used to use a lot of straightforward words [as I did when I wrote in

English] . . . I’m giving more space to the readers instead of trying to force

them to accept my ideas. (Interview, 02/10/98)

June, the most fluent speaker of Japanese in the class, also readextensively in Japanese outside school, mostly in non-academicgenres, such as news media and novels. Although she moved toNorth America from Japan in the intermediate grades because of herfather’s job, Japanese remained the language with which she felt mostcomfortable. Her friendship circle consisted of Japanese sojournerstudents like herself, and the language of communication among themwas Japanese. June’s main concern and focus in the conference talkand in her writing was the sophisticated use of the language andrhetorical effectiveness at a level equivalent to that of Japaneseuniversity students.

Keith, a Korean international student, had a completely differenttrajectory from the other two. Prior to coming to Canada, he hadstudied Japanese independently in Korea by seeking opportunities tointeract with Japanese people there and by reading extensively. Heeventually passed the first-level certificate in the Japanese-LanguageProficiency Test, indicating that his overall Japanese proficiency wasadvanced enough to study at a Japanese university. As Keith’s careergoal was to become a trilingual interpreter (Korean, Japanese,English), he wanted to master the subtleties of the Japanese language.Thus, his overall focus was on the use of appropriate vocabulary andhedging expressions as well as on overall rhetorical effectiveness.

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He also noted that reading and writing in Japanese – by reading novelsand newspapers and participating in Japanese chat rooms – was partof his daily life.

Despite their very dissimilar learning trajectories, common to thesethree were their extensive reading in a variety of genres in Japaneseoutside the JFL class, their awareness of the audience for whom theywere writing (generic educated Japanese), and their desire to masterthe subtleties of Japanese in order to be rhetorically effective.However, Cindy showed evidence of the first as well as the thirdmode of engagement, perhaps because of her limited Japaneseproficiency.

The case of a heritage language learner

Jim engaged in writing in a rather different manner from the otherstudents. He had already established himself as a competent writer ofacademic essays in English, with much stylistic sophistication; thiswas his second language but his dominant language of literacy. Whenit came to writing in Japanese, however, his problem was that he had areduced range of registers in Japanese because he used Japanese onlyin the home domain, and then only in speech; as a result, he had notencountered the sorts of registers used in the public domain, either inoral or in written language. Another factor that separated him fromothers was his ‘motive’ to learn Japanese, which was to maintain hislinguistic and cultural heritage.

Jim did not have much difficulty in writing in narrative genres, buthe had enormous difficulty in expressing his ideas in the genreof expository argumentation. Nevertheless, unlike the first group ofstudents described above, he did not seem to regard JFL writing as alanguage exercise. Coherence was not an issue; unlike Edward,Jim had no problem with this aspect of writing. On the other hand,unlike the third group of students, he lacked a sense of audiencewhen writing in Japanese, as he did not have the foundation onwhich they had developed such a sense by reading extensively inJapanese. Instead, he appeared to want to meet his own criteria forgood writing rather than those considered appropriate for goodwriting in Japanese. The question is why he approached JFL writingin this manner.

To give some brief background about Jim, he is a second-generationJapanese Canadian, whose only experience in Japan was a two-and-a-half-month visit when he was a high school student. Jimused Japanese with his family except when he needed to discuss

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complicated issues, for which he used English. Outside home, he hadstudied Japanese for six years at a heritage language school during hiselementary years and had taken a few JFL classes in high school.Although there were always many Japanese books and magazines inthe family home, Jim rarely read them, because he was overwhelmedby their frequent use of Chinese characters that he could notcomprehend. At the point when he entered university, his Japaneseliteracy ability was assessed as approximately Grade 5 equivalent.According to Jim, his ‘stumbling block’ was his limited vocabulary,because he had learned Japanese ‘from playing games and comicbooks and watching TV, films and listening to Japanese songs’(Interview, 04/02/98).

Notably, Jim was the only member of the class who consistentlyused a translation strategy, despite his advanced proficiency in spokenJapanese. In discussing the first expository argumentative task, he toldme in desperation that he could not do it because he did not ‘havewords to think in Japanese.’ In order to bridge the gap between hiscognition and his Japanese competency, he resorted to a translationstrategy:

. . . if I’m coming up with a proper composition, I’ve got to write it in

English first, which is something I can’t break out of, but yeah, I write it in

English first . . . it’s like, for me, um, that way [generating ideas and writing

in English and then translating into Japanese] I can pretty much break

down the words I want and put the vocabulary in, and I can’t do that with

Japanese, because my vocabulary in Japanese is somewhat limited, actually

it’s really limited, um. (Interview, 03/04/98)

It should be noted that it was particularly in the context ofargumentative writing that Jim relied on a translation strategy; inthe previous semester, when compositions required narrative anddescriptive genres, he was able to write in Japanese without muchdifficulty. Thus, his difficulty with JFL writing was not a generalproblem but, rather, was related to the expository and argumentativewritten genres and their associated features (i.e., the formal register).In both interviews and conferences, Jim repeatedly expressed hisfrustration at not being able to write sophisticated prose in Japanese,since he took pride in his refined writing style in English. It appearedthat Jim’s identity as an accomplished writer in English was ahandicap when he was called upon to produce argumentative writingin Japanese. Consequently, in order to keep up his own standards, heused translation as a compensatory strategy.

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Activity theoretical perspective on the observed modesof engagement

This section, using Wells’s (2002) diagrammatic representation ofdiscourse in activity theory, represents schematically the differentmodes of engagement described above. The first mode of engagement,that of writing as a language exercise, can be represented as occupyingonly the far upper-left corner (Figure 3). The writer composes awritten text on a particular topic, using the linguistic resourcesavailable to her or him, such as her or his lexico-grammaticalknowledge in Japanese and literacy competence in L1 (or L2, in thecase of multilingual students). If writing is perceived as a languageexercise (writing for self and the teacher), little attention is paid toan envisaged reader or to the cultural activity system in whichthe writing is embedded.

The second mode of engagement, that of writing a coherentargument, can be interpreted as being an expanded version of the firstmode, in that the writer shows concern for the reader (Figure 4).However, the reader assumed in this model does not appear to be aJapanese reader with relevant linguistic and cultural tools; rather, heor she is a generic reader of academic writing in English. In addition,

FIGURE 3Writingas language exercise

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because JFL writing is not perceived as a social practice embedded in aJapanese cultural community, there is little concern to choose aculturally appropriate genre for the writing. In the studyreported here, Edward adopted this mode, in combination with thefirst mode; on this basis, it can be tentatively surmised that the secondmode is close to the first. As shown in Edward’s case, a student mayfocus on a more general problem of composition when writing anFL composition in order to improve his or her overall writingcompetence.

In contrast to the first and second modes of engagement, the third(see Figure 5) fully utilizes all the points presented in Figure 2 – butgoes beyond them. In this mode, JFL writing is approached as acommunicative activity: writing to communicate ideas in a specificgenre for an educated Japanese audience by attending to appropriatechoice of register, expression, and overall rhetorical structure. In thismode, JFL writing is not only about practicing the target language andwriting a coherent text but also about producing a written artefactwith linguistic realizations that are culturally appropriate and accept-able for an educated Japanese reader. Here, the mode of engagement ismore dialogic (Bakhtin, 1986), in that the reader is expected to take upa responding stance, even though this might not give rise to a writtenresponse.

FIGURE 4Writinga coherent argument forageneric reader

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To a considerable degree, these three modes of engagement overlapwith the perspectives on FL writing that were reviewed earlier. Thefirst mode, with its orientation to writing as a meaningful languageexercise, appears to be generally similar to the perspective put forwardby scholars who regard FL writing as an effective tool for theintegrated development of FL skills. The second mode shows that,although this idea is not much discussed in the literature, FL studentsmay on some occasions also use a writing task as an opportunity toimprove their general writing competence. The third mode is similarto the perspective proposed by scholars who advocate a literacy-basedFL curriculum, in which literacy is conceptualized as social practice.Recall that within this perspective reading and writing are consideredin their social context of use as ‘complementary dimensions ofwritten communication, rather than as distinct linguistic and cognitiveskills’ (Kern, 2003, p. 3); thus, reading and writing are regardedas mutually reinforcing. This view fits well with the third modeof engagement, because the students who adopted this approach reada wide range of Japanese materials on a daily basis. In fact, it wasthrough their extensive reading that they became attuned to thesubtle ways in which the genre of argument is realized linguistically inJapanese.

FIGURE 5Writing for fellowmembersofanactivity system

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However, what has not been discussed extensively in the general FLliterature is the mode of engagement adopted by Jim – a heritagelanguage learner who had advanced spoken proficiency in familiarregisters but limited literacy competence. Jim appeared to be able toengage in the third mode without much difficulty when writing in anarrative genre; he was able to write with his existing linguisticresources with a particular audience and community in mind (i.e., hisrelatives in Japan). It was when a genre of argument was involved thathis lack of linguistic resources in Japanese emerged as a salientproblem. He did not have any mental model of written texts in thatparticular genre, nor of the associated language register. Jim’s casepoints to the unique problems that a heritage language learner mayencounter in writing in Japanese.

Implications of different modes of engagement

This section considers how an account of the differential modes ofengagement in JFL writing identified in my study and interpreted interms of activity theory can contribute to theory and practice inFL teaching and learning. In terms of theoretical implications, aconceptualization of writing as a social activity/practice, hereexplored in terms of modes of engagement in FL writing, wouldallow one to inquire into the nature of the literacy practices in whichstudents are engaged and the reasons for the ways in which theyinvest or do not invest in FL writing (Lantolf & Pavlenko, 2001).Within the field of research on L2 writing, a substantial body of workhas already started to examine ESL writing practices from asociocultural perspective – broadly defined (e.g., Belcher, 1994;Casanave, 2002; Hirvela & Belcher, 2001; Leki, 2001, 2007). However,such work is at an embryonic stage in FL research. It is only in recentyears that, in the context of FL curriculum reform, the view of writingas a social activity/practice has been introduced into the FL profes-sion, particularly in connection with the development of advanced FLproficiency (e.g., Byrnes, 1998; Byrnes & Sprang, 2003; Kern, 2000,2003; Swaffer, 2003). These scholars contend that literacy, viewed associal practices embedded in particular communities, involves a broadrange of written as well as oral language practices.

While I am in general agreement with these FL scholars, thereappears to be a noticeable lack of concern with the needs of heritagelanguage learners such as Jim in the discussion of FL curriculumreform, suggesting a potential gap in the FL literature. It is perhapsnot surprising, therefore, that Jim’s mode of engagement cannot be

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explained by the viewpoints on writing put forward by FL profes-sionals. Here, I find activity theory useful in articulating Jim’s plight.Interpreting Jim’s case in activity theoretical terms allows us to see amajor ‘contradiction’ (Engestrom, 1999, 2001) between the writer andthe reader. That is to say, Jim’s (the writer’s) community consistedof his family and a small number of Japanese-speaking adults andpeers, and his language practices took place primarily in speech.However, while the restriction of his repertoire of oral language to aparticular register was not a serious handicap in conversing with hisfamily at home, this restriction had much more serious consequenceswhen he came to write or read in Japanese. Thus, when Jim is setalongside the educated Japanese readers with whom he wished tocommunicate, a major contradiction can be detected: Jim neitherbelonged to the same community of practice as those readers norshared the same range of linguistic tools with them, that is to say, thesociocultural conventions and rules of writing with which membersof the community would be familiar as well as the expected divisionof labour between the reader and writer (e.g., leaving some roomfor the reader to fill in the gaps versus constructing a tightly wovenargument that is easy for the reader to follow, as in English academicwriting).

However, as Engestrom (2001) suggests, a contradiction can be usedas a springboard for growth. In Jim’s case, a pedagogical resolutionof the contradiction might include introducing him to a variety ofmore formal registers in oral and written language and helping himto unpack the cultural rhetoric that is linguistically realized inJapanese. In order to accomplish this, Jim would be encouragedto engage in extensive reading of purposefully selected materials andwould have opportunities to discuss with his teacher his emergingunderstanding of different genres and registers. He would also need toreceive explicit instruction with respect to the Chinese characters usedin the formal register. As seen in this particular case, the strength ofactivity theory as a conceptual tool, particularly the version promotedby Engestrom, is that the schematic representation of an activitysystem allows for a systematic identification of contradictions withinthat system.

Engestrom (2001) also argues for using research to transformpractice by experimenting with ways to resolve any identifiedcontradiction(s) together with participants. Seen in this light, it canbe said that activity theory has the potential to be a useful conceptualtool for second and foreign language teaching in a variety of contexts,not limited to FL writing. Some educational researchers have already

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begun to use activity theory to identify contradictions (problems) in ateacher education program and have documented ways in which theyhave overcome them as system-wide problems rather than attributingthe problems to individual teachers or students (e.g., Roth et al., 2005;Roth & Tobin, 2005).

Another pedagogical implication of this study is that studentswith diverse L1s may need tailored instruction so that they develop afine-tuned understanding of the differences between their owncommunities’ rhetorical norms and the particular ‘ways with words’or rhetorical styles that are valued in the target language community.This is exemplified by the fact that, by examining the students’ modesof engagement as opposed to focusing only on their composingprocesses and strategies, I was able to come to understand that the twostudents, Cindy and Ewan, who both planned to pursue graduatedegrees in Japanese Studies, similarly struggled with what theyperceived to be the Japanese rhetorical style but ultimately tookup very different learning paths. While Cindy deliberately attended tothe differences, Ewan was unable to reconcile the contradictionbetween the Japanese and English academic discourse communitiesin his specialization with respect to their respective rhetoricalconventions and norms for ‘good’ academic writing. Clearly, thiswas in part the result of a failure on my part as teacher to help Ewandevelop a more subtle understanding of argumentation in Japanese.While some scholars argue that Japanese and English academic proseare not necessarily very different (Kubota, 1997), I would argue that itis important that FL practitioners familiarize themselves with, andcommunicate explicitly, how different languages realize the samegenres in different ways in terms of rhetorical conventions and thedivision of labour (the distribution of responsibilities) between readerand writer.

Finally, I wish to reiterate the importance of viewing literacy as asocial activity/practice in re-conceptualizing FL pedagogy. If studentsare to develop a high level of FL proficiency, mastery of a wide varietyof genres in oral and written communication and the developmentof cultural competence are critically important. To achieve this, Iwould suggest that a focus on literacy, rather than on writing per se, isnecessary in an FL curriculum, because writing and reading aremutually reinforcing (Belcher & Hirvela, 2001). Without appropriateschemas of particular genres and their linguistic realization, it is notpossible to write in a culturally appropriate manner. In this respect,while the conceptualization of writing as an effective means for theintegrated development of FL skills is useful, it needs to be seen as

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only one part of a more comprehensive vision of FL learning andteaching, in which literacy is placed at the heart. For this reason, itis important to consider FL writing as an important aspect ofa literacy-based FL curriculum, in which literacy, conceptualized asa social activity/practice embedded in particular communities, entailsinvolvement with a broad range of written as well as oral languagepractices.

Mari Haneda is an assistant professor of Foreign/Second Language Education

and of Language, Education, and Society at the College of Education and

Human Ecology, Ohio State University. Her research interests include the

literacy practices of school-age English language learners and of L2 adult

students; the relationships among language, ethnicity, gender, and culture in

the development of identity among L2 students; and classroom discursive

practices.

Contact: haneda.1@osu.edu

Notes

1 The way in which the New London Group (NLG, 1996) characterizes

‘transformed practice’ is more ideologically laden than the example

given by Kern (2003). Examples given by the NLG include

individuals juxtaposing different discourses and integrating the two

(e.g., Jesse Jackson, in mixing the discourse of politics with the discourse of

African American religion, transforms the former).

2 Following Valdes (2001, p. 38), I use the term ‘heritage language learner’ to

refer to a learner who ‘is raised in a home where a non-English language is

spoken’ and who ‘speaks or at least understands the language and who is

to some degree bilingual in that language and in English.’

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