English for Specific Purposes 38 (2015) 44–56

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English for Specific Purposes

journal homepage: http: / /ees.e lsevier .com/esp/default .asp

Adolescent English language learners’ stances towarddisciplinary writing

Kristen Campbell Wilcox a,*, Jill V. Jeffery b

aUniversity at Albany, USAbCity University of New York (CUNY) – Brooklyn, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Available online

Keywords:Discourse analysisEnglish language learnersAgencySecondary educationWriting development

* Corresponding author. Department of EducatioAlbany, NY 12222, USA. Tel.: þ1 (518) 442 9085; fa

E-mail address: Kwilcox1@albany.edu (K.C. Wilc

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2014.11.0060889-4906/� 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

a b s t r a c t

Since adolescent English language learners (ELLs) are facing increasing demands to engagein advanced disciplinary writing and this type of writing is oftentimes one of the mostchallenging academic tasks they encounter, this study investigated their experiences withwriting in English language arts, social studies, science, and mathematics classrooms.Rooted in a social-constructivist conception of writing, which foregrounds the relationshipbetween individual agency, engagement, and disciplinary discourse, this study asked: 1)What are adolescent ELLs’ stances toward content-area writing and how do they differ bygrade level? 2) To what factors do adolescent ELLs attribute their stances toward writing?3) How do adolescent ELLs’ stances vary across content areas and by type of writing? Amicro-level discourse analysis approach was used to analyze interviews with 26 ELLs indifferent school contexts with varying emphases on writing in the core disciplines. Theanalyses revealed generally positive stances toward source-based writing tasks, evenwhenstudents viewed these as challenging, yet negative stances toward writing in which lit-erary texts provided the source material. This study is timely in light of the increasedemphasis on the development of advanced disciplinary writing competencies amongadolescent ELLs. Implications for pedagogy are discussed.

� 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction

Despite an increasing awareness of the relationships between writing competence and academic success (Graham &Hebert, 2011), many adolescents in U.S. schools continue to perform poorly in academic writing. This is particularly trueamong multilingual students for whom English is not their native language, referred to here as English language learners(ELLs). The 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) writing exam (a nation-wide assessment last admin-istered in 2007), revealed an ongoing trend of ELLs’ low levels of performance on writing tasks as compared to their nativeEnglish speaking peers: only 1% of 12th grade ELLs scored at or above proficient in contrast to 24% of the general population(National Center for Education Statistics, 2011). These results represent performance trends that have persisted for decadesand contribute to deficit perceptions of ELLs with regard to their academic abilities (Harklau, 2011).

nal Theory and Practice, School of Education, University at Albany, ED 115A, 1400 Washington Ave,x: þ1 (518) 848 8114.ox).

K.C. Wilcox, J.V. Jeffery / English for Specific Purposes 38 (2015) 44–56 45

The relatively poor standardized assessment results are not surprising considering the context for writing instruction thathas pervaded U.S. secondary schools for many years. While students in U.S. secondary schools have not been reported toengage in much writing beyond a paragraph in classes other than English language arts (ELA) (Applebee & Langer, 2009;Jeffery, 2009; Wilcox, 2014; Wilcox & Jeffery, in press), this is likely to change as a result of the adoption of the CommonCore State Standards (CCSS). Although the CCSS are not national curriculum standards, in the states where they have beenadopted they call for a focus on preparing all students for postsecondary academic and professional writing expectations incore content classrooms. Social studies is one such core class that typically covers a range of academic subjects, includinggeography, government, and economics; science is another core class and includes earth science, biology, and chemistry;finally, mathematics is considered a core that encompasses algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus. Unfortunately, theCCSS initiative offered little specificity regarding how increased expectations for disciplinary writing should be approachedfor students with different language backgrounds. The CCSS emphasis onwriting in disciplines other than ELA in conjunctionwith ELLs’ relatively lowperformance onwritingmeasures raises questions as towhat supports for ELLsmight be necessary toengage successfully in the kinds of advanced disciplinary writing tasks the CCSS require. These tasks emphasize developingstudents’ abilities to convey complex ideas clearly and accurately; produce writing appropriate to different purposes andaudiences; and draw evidence from sources to support analyses (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices &Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010).

To inform efforts toward increasing all students’ academic writing competencies, this study examined a diverse sample ofadolescent ELLs’ perspectives toward writing in ELA, social studies, science, and mathematics. In an earlier study (Jeffery &Wilcox, 2014), we focused on the perspectives of native English-speaking students using an analytic framework that wehave extended here. The investigation of students’ perspectives, or what we refer to as stances, was a central goal sincestudents’ perspectives toward academic tasks have been indicated as a factor related to performance (Carpenter, Falout,Fukuda, Trovela, & Murphey, 2009; Hyland, 2007; Kanno & Varghese, 2010; McCarthey & García, 2005; Murphey, Falout,Elwood, & Hood, 2009; Wilcox, 2011). We defined stance as “a display of a socially recognized point of view or attitude”(Ochs, 1993, p. 288), which includes students’ expressions of how they feel about writing (affective stances) and what theyknow about writing (epistemic stances).1 Prior research has shown that students’ stances toward writing are highly variableand dependent upon the context inwhich writing occurs (McCarthy, 1998; Smagorinsky & Daigle, 2012). Another construct ofimport to this study is agency. We view students’ stances as indicators of agencyddefined as “the capacity to act” (Ahearn,2001, p. 112). In this view, agency is also seen as dynamic and related to context. This understanding of stance and agency asrelated, dynamic constructs, and a concern for the relationships of stance, agency and the development of academic writingcompetence informed the study’s focus on adolescent ELLs’ stances toward academic writing in the core content areas of ELA,social studies, science, and mathematics.

2. Related literature

Of the different language skills (i.e. speaking, listening, reading, andwriting), writing is often themost challenging for ELLsand the writing of some academic genres the most difficult of all (Cumming, 2013; Snow & Uccelli, 2009). Several researchershave explored the challenges that adolescent ELLs face when attempting to meet the requirements of academic writing tasks.Kibler (2011), for example, has noted a disjuncture between ELLs and their content area teachers’ understandings of academicwriting expectations. She suggested that students’ and teachers’ conceptions could be better aligned through discussiondesigned at developing students’ meta-awareness of how purposes for writing vary across academic contexts. Kibler’sfindings suggest direct discussion of disciplinary discourse norms may help ELLs to develop more agentive stances towardwriting. She hypothesized that through such discussions students might better position themselves as members of disci-plinary discourse communities.

In another study, Enright (2011) analyzed field notes and artifacts (e.g., students’ written work, classroom handouts)collected from a variety of content-area classrooms to investigate whether and how ELLs learned to engage successfully inwriting tasks. Grounding her analysis in language socialization theory, she found that students’ responses to academicwritingtasks were uniquely individual and informed by how they positioned themselves in relation to the power structuresembedded in content-area classroom activities. One implication of Enright’s study is that second language (L2) writing re-searchers need to take into account the multiple and changing positions ELLs take in academic contexts where they may bemarginalized or perceive themselves to be. Furthermore, Enright’s study, along with another study of adolescent ELLs’ ex-periences with social studies writing (Franquiz & Salinas, 2011), point to the importance of what Cummins (2001, 2006)referred to as identity investment (i.e. personal connection to content and task). Cummins discovered through microanal-ysis of field notes and written artifacts that identity investment was foundational to ELLs’ language use, both oral and written.

While relationships between aspects of student agency such as identity investment and ELLs’ academic performance hasbeen established by these researchers, few studies have investigated adolescent ELLs’ stances towardwriting required in theircontent-area classrooms other than ELA. The use of micro-level discourse analytic techniques to reveal ELLs’ perspectivesregarding disciplinary writing has been particularly rare. Strauss and Xiang (2006), a notable exception, studied extracts from

1 While some research on stance refers to the writers’ voice in their writing; we use stance to mean the positioning the writer takes toward writing andthis is in alignment with the discourse analytic approach described in the Methods.

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writing conferences in college classrooms and student-produced written texts to identify linguistic markers of agentivestances as students engaged in collaborative discussions about their writing. The study revealed students’ affective stancesvis-à-vis a variety of writing tasks and toward themselves as writers, and identified ELLs’ emergent agency as related to whatthe authors refer to as “semiotic apprenticeship” (i.e. gradual and progressive development of expertise through participationin activities in which knowledge is recursively built with the assistance of more expert members of a community) (p. 389).How students in the study demonstrated agency varied depending on a number of factors, including the quality and quantityof teachers’ responses and the level of detail provided regarding the genres expected.

Although there has been very little study of adolescent ELLs’ agency with regard to academic work, a growing body ofliterature on postsecondary level ELLs’ agency has demonstrated the social and cultural capital available to ELLs and how thatcapital circulates in academic settings. For example, Kanno and Harklau (2012) showed how college students’ narratives canreveal what discourses they view as compelling and what language resources they draw upon in constructing agentivestances toward their academic work. These studies of ELL collegewriters have begun to lay the groundwork for constructing amodel of ELLs’ learning trajectories in different academic settings (Kanno & Harklau, 2012; Kanno & Varghese, 2010; Oropeza,Varghese, & Kanno, 2010).

Being mindful of the confluence of increasing numbers of ELLs in U.S. secondary schools (Genesee, Lindholm-Leary,Saunders, & Christian, 2006; Planty et al., 2008), higher standards for academic writing at the secondary level as evi-denced in the CCSS, and the relationships scholars have established between student agency and academic performance, wefocused our investigation on the following questions.

1) What are adolescent ELLs’ stances toward content-area writing and how do they differ by grade level?2) To what factors do adolescent ELLs attribute their stances toward writing?3) How do adolescent ELLs’ stances vary across content areas and by type of writing?

In the next section we explain how this study relates to the larger study in which it was embedded and then describe theways data were collected and analyzed.

3. Method

The present research was situated in a larger study, the National Study of Writing Instruction (NSWI) (see Applebee &Langer, 2011) that investigated adolescents’ writing experiences in a variety of secondary school settings across the UnitedStates. One of the goals of the larger study was to identify whether and how ELLs’ experiences with writing might differ fromnative English speaking students’.

3.1. Larger study

3.1.1. SampleThough the majority of U.S. states had adopted the Common Core State Standards (National Governors Association Center

for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010) at the time the NSWI data was collected, statewide literacyassessments varied in terms of how each evaluated writing competence (Jeffery, 2009). Since the writing that students arerequired to do in their classrooms is related in part to the high-stakes assessments required and are unique in each state(Abedi, 2004; Villalva, 2006), students in the larger study were chosen from a sample of schools in five U.S. statesdCalifornia,Kentucky, Michigan, New York and Texasdeach of which represented different writing requirements for large-scale literacyassessments. Most notable with regard to these state differences was the requirement in New York for extended writing of atleast a paragraph on all content-area exams state. In all other states writing of at least one paragraph was required only onEnglish Language Arts exams, with the exception of Kentucky where a portfolio2 was required. Furthermore, the schools inthe five states were identified as having histories of exemplary writing instruction (based upon professional associationmembers’ recommendations and students’ writing and/or literacy performance on state tests) and as such the findings fromthe studyweremeant to highlight better-case scenarios. Due to the variability of numbers of ELLs in target grade levels at eachof the schools, some schools and states were more strongly represented in the final sample of ELLs included in the study.States with the highest numbers of ELLs (California, New York, and Texas) provided the largest number of ELL participants.

In the larger study, native English speaking students and ELLs in grades 6, 8, 10 and 12, were identified for participation byschool personnel. ELLs (who were of intermediate proficiency based on English tests used within their schools) and nativeEnglish speaking students were solicited for participation in the study using IRB-approved assent and consent. In total thelarger study included 43 ELLs and 95 native English speaking students. The native English speaking students were investi-gated in another study (see Jeffery & Wilcox, 2014): This study focused on ELLs only and 26 of these were chosen forinvestigation, as explained below.

2 At the time of this study the state assessment in Kentucky required a writing portfolio in grades seven and 12 with one piece required to come from aclass other than ELA.

Table 1Roberto stance matrix excerpt.

Interview prompt Stance subject Context Stance object[genre]

Stance/position Attribution

Q5. Favorite and leastfavorite assignments

[1] in history when we chose 4 cities to travel to,what the weather was like, why dopeople go there, kind of food, andcompare currency[travel essay]

was my favorite (þ)

because[We] got to look stuff up

on the internet (þ)

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3.1.2. Data collectionNational Writing Project staff in each of the states were trained in human subjects research and also trained in the use of

the semi-structured interview protocols with the lead author and the principal investigators. The student interviews werethen conducted at the students’ schools toward the end of the school year. The semi-structured protocol focused on students’self-perceptions as writers; the kinds of writing theywere doing for different content-area classes; favorite- and least favoriteassignments; steps taken in completing writing assignments for each content area; and their perceptions of what is valued inwriting in each content area (see Appendix). Student interviews were conducted during free periods. All interviews wereaudio-recorded and lasted approximately 45min. Each of the interviewswas then transcribed. Participants’writtenworkwasalso collected by a school on-site coordinator during the spring term (late January–June).

3.2. The present study

3.2.1. SampleOf the 43 ELLs interviewed in the larger study, 17, including the single student from Michigan, were excluded from the

present study due to the lack of data addressing the questions of interest (e.g., the student may have chosen to not answerquestions or to provide a response too brief to allow for the kind of discourse analysis we employed). The final sample ofstudents in this study included seven students from California, three from Kentucky, five from New York, and eleven fromTexas.

3.2.2. Data analysisSince we sought to reveal the relationships among contexts for writing and ELLs’ stances toward writing, we used amicro-

level discourse analysis procedure similar to Du Bois’ (2007) that includes indexing a subject, a context, an object, a stance orposition, and an attribution of a stance. For example, in response to the question “what is your favorite kind of writing?” one6th grade student from Texas, Roberto,3 answered “in history, when we chose four cities to travel to, what the weather waslike, why do people go there, why do I want to go there, what kind of food, and compare currency, it was my favorite becausewe got to look stuff up on the Internet.” We mapped Roberto’s response in a matrix (Table 1) that facilitated identifying hisstances by (1) context (content class: history class), (2) object (genre: travel essay), (3) stance (positive affective: favorite), and(4) attribution (because got to look stuff up on the internet).

After we analyzed each interview, as in Roberto’s example, we then constructed a consolidated matrix that included allparticipants’ responses organized in the same way. Next, we checked for patterns across this matrix in alignment with ourresearch questions. Throughout the studywe keptmemos inwhich we discussed ongoing interpretations of patterns (Miles &Huberman, 1994). Once patterns were identified, we used “unique case selection” procedures to focus on one case: Thisprocedure is recommended in qualitative studies that require recursive analytic processes in order to reveal important aspectsof the inquiry (LeCompte & Preissle, 2003, p. 75). Lila was selected as our unique case based on how her interview responsesindicated an agentive stance toward writing influenced by a school context that supported writing in the content areas.

In sum, to ensure the credibility of our findings, we relied upon both investigator triangulation (through comparison of twoinvestigators’ stance matrices and the use of ongoing shared interpretive memos) and source triangulation (by examining thepatterns among different student interviews that utilized the same data collection and analysis procedures) (Patton, 2001).

4. Findings

4.1. Overview of stance patterns

We begin our discussion of findings with regard to our first research question (What are adolescent ELLs’ stances towardcontent-area writing and how do they differ by grade level?) by describing the stance patterns and how affective (those

3 All participant names are pseudonyms.

Table 2Affective and epistemic stances by student, grade level, and school context.

Student Grade State Positive affective Negative affective Positive epistemic Negative epistemic

Angel 8 California X XEmily 8 California X X XSunny 10 California X X XDavid 12 California X X XJanet 10 California X X XJuanita 6 California X X XLila 8 California X X X XGabriella 10 Kentucky X XChristiano 12 Kentucky X XKalee 12 Kentucky X X XShane 10 New York X XLouann 6 New York X X X XTony 6 New York X XYasmine 8 New York X X XChin 10 New York X X X XKatarina 10 Texas X XRoberto 6 Texas X XCamilla 6 Texas X X XD’Andrea 8 Texas X XZeta 8 Texas X XNala 12 Texas X X XNeo 10 Texas X XAndre 8 Texas XPaco 6 Texas X X XLuca 6 Texas X XDahlia 8 Texas X X XTotal 25 18 12 13

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related to feeling) and epistemic stances (those related to knowing) relate to each other among the 26 adolescent 6th, 8th,10th, and 12th grade ELLs in our study.

The majority (N ¼ 17) of students in this study expressed both positive and negative affective stances and six studentsvoiced both positive and negative epistemic stances. Overall, their answers to questions regarding how they saw themselvesas writers and of their experiences with writing reflect a pattern of generally favorable orientations. Twenty-five of themindicated positive affective stances toward themselves as writers and/or of writing in general (e.g., Dahlia: “I like to write”),while 18 indicated negative affective stances (e.g., Kalee: “I’mnot a big fan”). The analysis also revealed that 12 ELLs indicateda positive epistemic stance (e.g., Emily: I actually think that I’m a good writer when it comes to essays”) and 13 studentsindicated negative epistemic stances (e.g., Katrina: “I think it [my writing] is not really good”) (Table 2).

Since we were also interested in whether and how the experiences of ELLs across the spectrum of secondary grades andin different school settings differed, we analyzed the stance patterns by grade level. While the sample is quite small whenbroken down by grade level, we found the following patterns: Students in the higher grades of 10th, and 12th (the 2nd and4th years of high school) showed evidence of more negative responses to writing overall than students in the lower grades.The 12th grade students in particular (all four of them) indicated negative affective responses and three of four indicatednegative epistemic and no positive epistemic responses to writing (e.g. Chin: I think I’m not that good, grammar andspelling). The pattern for ELLs in lower grades consisted of fewer incidences of negative affective and negative epistemicstances toward writing than their 10th and 12th grade peers and a greater proportion of positive epistemic stances towardwriting than the older students. Even though we noted a general pattern of more negative stances overall among thestudents at the higher grades, there were anomalies also. For example, a higher percentage of the 8th grade students (75%)expressed negative affective stances than the 10th grade students (57%), and a higher percentage of the 6th grade students(43%) expressed negative epistemic stances than the 8th grade students (38%). Perhaps, the most interesting pattern waswith regard to the downward trend of students (86% of 6th graders; 38% of 8th grade students; 43% of 10th grade students;and 0% of 12th grade students) who voiced a positive epistemic stance indicating knowing how to write or being able towrite well.

4.2. Stance attributions

Next, in response to our second research question (To what factors do ELLs attribute their stances toward writing?) wediscuss relationships between these stances and two factors: language background and genre.

4.2.1. Language background and writer identityWhen ELLs were asked to respond to how they saw themselves as writers, five students in 8th, 10th, and 12th grades

situated their perceptions within the context of previous language experiences by expressing stances toward writing in their

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native languages. For example, we can see how Christiano’s (12th grade) stance toward writing in Spanish and in Englishwork to construct a somewhat ambivalent posture. He explained, “writing is not my strongest suit. I’m okay with it. I go tochurch a lot and write there in Spanish as I do at home. I don’t have to translate from Spanish into English; I canwrite directlyin English.” Kalee’s (12th grade) initial response to being asked how she viewed herself as a writer was to discuss herbilingualism as a challenge to her writing in English, and to subsequently identify herself as a “not very good” writer. Shedraws a negative causal link between her bilingualism and her writing ability, reasoning, “I speak two language so sometimesmy writing is difficult.” Similarly, Lila (8th grade) said, “it [writing] is really hard for me.”, and qualified her statement with,“. to write in English”. In contrast, Katarina (10th grade) followed up a negative evaluation of her writing with a positivestance toward writing in her first language (L1), indicating that she “would be more comfortable writing in Spanish.”Reflecting the same pattern (contrasting perceptions of self as writer depending uponwhether it is in the L1 or L2), Nala, (12thgrade) after expressing a negative stance regarding her writing ability, explained that it was “difficult to learn all of theEnglish.”

Such responses suggest that for these five students their L2 writer status was viewed as a deficit as opposed to a resource,which raises questions as to how native language and other prior learning experiences with writing in particular are drawnupon as ELLs are tasked with writing in their secondary classrooms. However, it is important to note that when asked howthey viewed themselves as writers, students’ overwhelming tendency was to assume the question pertained to writing inEnglish (as opposed to the L1). Thus, responses to this question do not necessarily reveal students’ perceptions of themselvesin all of the languages in which they write.

4.2.2. GenreEight of the 26 ELLs indicated genre preferences in their responses to the question regarding how they viewed

themselves as writers. For example, Paco (6th grade) explained, “I like to have fun, and I sort of don’t like writing thatmuch. I really don’t like making up stories.” In contrast, Dahlia was enthusiastic about her frequent diary writing (“I feellike whoa, that’s what I wrote!”); Gabriella (10th grade) took a positive stance toward writing letters to her mother andinstant messaging; and Janet enjoyed her “notes to friends.” D’Andrea (8th grade), echoing a common response acrossthe interviews, appeared to reject static conceptualizations of writing by explaining how her position depended on thesubject and genre, signaling her preference for “adventure, love, poetry.” Consistent with previous research regardingadolescent males’ writing preferences (Newkirk, 2002), male participants were more likely than females to indicatepositive stances toward action and adventure genres, such as in the following examples: “I like writing stories, likerealistic kind of stories, adventures” (Andre; 8th grade); “I like best to write action adventure story, like when someoneis trying to save the world and stuff.” (Tony; 6th grade); “I enjoy writing and reading science fiction and fantasy mainly”(Shane; 10th grade).

Overall, students who discussed genre when describing themselves as writers tended to express positive affective stancesboth toward writing and toward the genres they identified. Notably, students most often preferred genres that are not typicalof school writing tasks and were engaging subjectively when prompted to describe themselves as writers (i.e. diaries,adventure stories). However, as we explain below, participants discussed more conventional school genres when asked todescribe the writing tasks they were assigned in content area classes, suggesting that theymay have had few opportunities toengage in the types of writing that connected most closely to their positive views of themselves as writers.

4.3. ELLs’ stances regarding writing across content areas

Here we turn to our third question regarding variation in students’ stances toward writing in different content areas andby type of writing.When asked to discuss their favorite and least favorite assignments, ELLs varied greatly in terms of whetherthey preferred to compose lab reports in science, personal narratives in English, or document-based question (DBQ) essays insocial studies. Consistent with the generally favorable attitudes toward writing discussed in the prior section, students weremore likely to express positive than negative stances towardwritten school genres, evenwhen explicitly prompted to identifytheir least favorite assignments. Table 3 presents frequencies for students’ affective stances regarding school genres. Whendiscussing the writing tasks in which they engaged in each of their school subjects, students tended to discuss them inrelation to stances toward their teachers (as wewill discuss in more detail in our illustrative case of Lila), the subjects of theirwriting, or their perceived abilities.

Although students tended to express positive affective stances regarding genres such as poetry and personal narratives inELA, there was also a tendency to voice unfavorable opinions toward writing literary analysis essays in their English classes(among students in all grade levels). The negative patternwith respect to literary analysis assignments in ELA runs counter tothe generally positive stances students indicated when discussing academic, source-based genres such as research reports inELA and science, and DBQs in social studies. Students’ stances regarding favorite and least favorite school genres shed light onhow they perceived disciplinary content and context, and how these in turn influenced their attitudes about writing in school.For instance, Nala’s (12th grade) stance regarding literary analysis is of particular interest because it suggests how features ofcanonical literary texts may present particular challenges for ELLs when they contain different registers. As can be seen in thefollowing excerpt, after stating her dislike for writing assignments involving “questions about the books,” Nala elaborated onher negative assessment by focusing on the source text:

Table 3Stances toward writing in ELA and writing in social studies (question four) by state.

State Content-area class Genre Affective stance Students

CA ELA Personal essay þ 2Journal þ 1Poem þ 1Literary analysis essay � 1

Social studies Poster/multi-modal þ 1Analytic exposition � 1

KY ELA Personal essay þ 2Journal � 1Feature article � 1

MI ELA Research paper þ 1NY ELA Imaginative narrative þ 2

Book report þ 1Poem þ 1Literary analysis essay � 1Analytic exposition � 1

Social studies DBQ D 2TX ELA Personal essay D 7

Literary analysis essay L 3Analytic exposition þ 1Research paper þ 1

� 1Poem þ 1Journal � 1

Social studies Poster/multi-modal þ 1Travel guide þ 1

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Nala: The most I don’t like is for my class in English, I have a book that was.I don’t remember what it was..the wordswere different than English people.

Interviewer: Was it Their Eyes were Watching God?

Nala: Yes. Their Eyes were Watching God. I don’t like that book.

Interviewer: You didn’t like that book?

Nala: No, because it was difficult to understand the English, and how to write it and explain.

Nala’s stance regarding the literary analysis essay seems to be more informed by her experience with a text that she foundinaccessible due to the non-standard register than by her understanding of the goals of the writing task and features of thegenre. A focus on the source text or content for a particular writing assignment, rather than the rhetorical aspects of theassignment genre, was quite prevalent when students discussed their preferences regarding school-based writing tasks.When discussing writing about self-selected topics in science, ELA and social studies, students tended to focus on how theyenjoyed researching such topics, or, to a lesser extent, how they disliked some essay topics, as Nala’s example illustrates.

4.4. Stance and authorial agency: a focal case in context

Since this study purposefully examined schools with reputations for excellence in writing instruction and to glean resultsthat would inform ways educators might support the development of adolescent writers, we provide a description of oneELL’s experience (Lila) characterized by a generally agentive stance within the context of a school with a strong emphasis onwriting across content areas. We begin with a description of the school context drawn from teacher interview and classroomobservation data, followed by discussion of Lila’s stances.

4.4.1. Lila’s schoolIn addition to high ethnic and linguistic diversity in Lila’s school there was also substantial economic disparity, with some

students residing in million dollar homes and others being homeless. Educators generally expressed that this mix was anassetdthe makings of a culturally rich environment. Many of the teachers reported that they remained at the school becauseof its supportive community, described by one teacher as “the magic of [our school]. everyone is open and willing to help –

the bottom line is we want to help the kids.”The principal was seen as a driving force in the school’s emphasis onwriting. A former English teacher, shemodeled for her

staff a value of writing and writing instruction. Every teacher and administrator interviewed reported that writing and theteaching of writing was a focal concern and many reported that monthly school-wide professional development meetingswere centered on writing. All departments had been asked to incorporate writing into their instruction, whether throughreflective journals, analytical writing, or content-specific writing tasks. One common practice in instruction across content-

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area classrooms was modeling, where teachers wrote along with students and shared their writing. Classroom observationsand teacher interviews also revealed that writing instruction at the school emphasized process approaches sometimes using awriter’s workshop4 wherein students work together on their writing in collaborative groups.

Teachers at the school were encouraged to choose how to integratewriting into content-area instruction, and they differedwith respect to how this was done across school subjects. ELA teachers’ attitudes towards writing were enthusiastic, and theyexpressed a desire for students to do evenmore thanwhat was expected on the state exams. Some of the genres ELA teachersdescribed assigning included: short story, biography, poetry, character analysis essay, and narrative. Social studies teacherssaw writing as an integral part of the curriculum. They focused mainly on analytical essays, developing an argument, sum-marizing, and crafting good paragraphs. Social Studies teachers used writing mainly to make sure the students understoodthe content and could develop and articulate written arguments. Math teachers used writing as a way for students to explaintheir thought processes when solving math problems. These teachers used open-ended questions to prompt students toprovide written explanations for the reasons behind their answers and to promote the idea that math problems can be solvedin more than oneway. Science teachers used writing to develop and assess students’ understanding of science concepts. Theyfocused on analysis, for example, analyzing the results of an experiment. Science teachers also presented narrative writing asan opportunity for students to practice explaining science concepts.

With regard to high-stakes writing assessment, English was the only subject that required an on-demand (i.e. test-likescenario) writing taskda character analysis essaydwhich was administered in the 7th grade. In general, educators atLila’s school did not teach writing for test-preparation. Rather, their observed instructional practices and interview responsessuggest that they were strongly influenced by the principal’s philosophy that the meaningful integration of writing activitiesacross content-area classrooms would adequately prepare students for high-stakes assessments.

4.4.2. Lila’s stancesHere, we closely examine Lila, an 8th grade student, whose stances illustrate how she variably responded to writing tasks

in different content-area classes. As noted in the previous section, when Lila was asked to describe herself as a writer, shecontextualized her response with references to her language background. When we inspect her response to this question inlight of surrounding stance utterances, we see how Lila constructs, as did Christiano and others, an ambivalent sense of herauthorial agency with interconnected negative and positive stance utterances.

4 See

I think for me it’s really kind of hard to write in English because English is my second language. But I think that I really,it’s hard forme but I really trymy best. Sometimes I’m finewithmywriting, it’s not excellent but I try really hardwhen Ido my writing. I’ve been here for five years and the first language is Spanish. When I lived in Mexico there was a placewhere we’d learn basic language so when I came here it wasn’t as hard because I understood some things, but it’s hardto talk.

Here Lila’s stances regarding her previous English learning experiences in Mexico are embedded within characterizationsof herself as a resilient writer who tries “really hard” despite feeling that “it’s really kind of hard to write in English.” The factthat she includes the qualifying phrase “to write in English” (emphasis added) in her initial response to the question regardingher perception of herself as awriter suggests that the interview, conducted in the context of a U.S. public school where Englishis the dominant language of instruction, did not fully capture her sense of authorial agency as a bilingual writer.

In addition to highlighting the role of language background, an analysis of Lila’s stances suggests a relationship betweenwriting content and teachers’ approaches toward writing in her development of agentive authorial stances. In Lila’s case,variability in her stances toward writing across content area classes is, at least in part, attributable to the positions she oc-cupies in relation to her perceptions of teachers’ stances toward her and her writing.

4.4.3. Stances toward writing in ELAAn analysis of Lila’s stances regarding school writing tasks shows a pattern of generally negative stances toward writing in

ELA contrasted with generally positive stances toward writing in math, science, and social studies. Lila’s responses suggestthat her positions are largely informed by her feelings toward her teachers and the extent to which she feels they haveunderstood her strengths and needs, as her discussion of her experiences in her ELA class shows.

I have a B in [ELA] class but it has been difficult for me because sometimes when we do writing tests, because in someways I don’t understand it and I get it wrong. I feel bad but withmy teacher of ELA I don’t feel comfortable. I feel it is myfault because I should ask more things and ask for more help. Some persuasive essays and we do book reports, everytimewe do a book report we get a test about that book. The tests we have they give us a prompt andwe have towrite anessay about the prompt. It has been hard and easy at the same time. Last week we were doing poems and it’s hard forme to find the words and to explain.

In the context of ELA class, Lila voiced negative affective stances toward evaluative “writing tests” and toward a teacherwith whom she didn’t “feel comfortable” asking for help. However, she also suggests she is responsible for seeking out help,thus indicating an agentive stance toward improving her writing. Below, we further discuss the nature of Lila’s stances toward

Elbow (1973) for early articulation of this method as well as the more recent iterations by Calkins (1991).

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writing across content areas as a means of understanding variation in these stances. That is, Lila’s stances toward writingwithin a particular content area are constructed through multiple acts of positioning, including how she positions herself inrelation to her content area teachers as well as to specific writing assignments within those classes.

4.4.4. Stances toward writing in mathLila’s stances toward the writing she did in math suggest that it provided a means of communicating her strengths as well

as her needs and contributed to positive perceptions of writing in that subject:

In the beginning of the year we wrote a mathography. We got to write about ourselves and I got to tell her a little moreabout me. This helped me because I’m shy and she [the teacher] knew why I might not participate in class . And it’sbeen easy for me because she can see that I do understand even though I don’t talk much. Sometimes she gives us workon a problem and we have to explain what the error is using math words. We have to explain where the error was andhowwe can correct it. Whenwe turn in homework, wewrite on the top in the corner, if it was easy or hard and if it washard we can write to stay after class and she can help us.

The contrast between Lila’s reactions to writing in math and ELA suggest that assigning low-stakes and informal writingtasks in content areas other than ELA may contribute to engagement in writing in those subjects.

4.4.5. Stances toward writing in scienceLila’s favorable opinions about writing in her science class provide another basis for comparison to ELA writing. When

asked about her favorite writing assignments, she responded:

.science, wherewe had to find the diseases of each patient– because it was hard.We had the symptoms andwe had tofind the diseases that had the most symptoms and it was a lot of research. He gave us Web pages and we could see thediseases and see the symptoms. It was fun because we got to research. Hard and fun at the same time.

Though the writing assignment Lila described appears quite technical, she expressed her enjoyment in positioning herselfas a doctor and researcher in response to this task. Elsewhere in the interview, she described as “fun” the challenging task ofsummarizing source content (“put our own words what the diagnosis is”). This positive affective stance toward a research-based writing task provides an interesting basis for comparing the difficulty she described in ELAwhenwriting about poetry,inwhich “it’s hard for me to find thewords and to explain.”One interpretation regarding this contrast is that Lila is expressinga preference similar to those voiced by other participants regarding the accessibility of academic source content. That is, wenoticed a pattern in which students expressed negative stances toward academic, source-based writing tasks where literarytexts provided the source material. Yet, they tended to express more positive stances toward source-based writing tasks withself-selected research topics, historical documents (e.g., DBQ tasks), or scientific sources. The finding that Lila is lesscomfortable writing about literary texts or writing poems in her English class than writing about diseases from web-basedsources in her science class is perhaps not surprising when we consider Lila’s stance toward her writing in English whereaccuracy and appropriateness of the language itself that she uses is perceived as most important.

4.4.6. Stances toward writing in social studiesConsistent with her responses about writing in other content areas, Lila’s perception of her social studies teacher’s attitude

toward her and her writing seems to influence her stance toward writing in that content area. Lila’s perception that her socialstudies teacher had recognized her progress in that class seems to contribute to her engagement in constructing historicalknowledge through writing. She explained,

My teacher toldme that she’s so proud and sometimes the things I miss I give it to her and she says I’mdoing really well. For the last big essay we did we had to choose different groups to show challenges inWestward Expansion. It helpedme a lot because I learned a lot about them that I didn’t know before and helped me to explain it.

Lila’s positive stances toward writing in content areas other than ELA are complicated, however, by her discussion of herleast favorite assignments. Though she previously expressed favorable positions regarding social studies, when prompted toidentify her least favorite assignments she identified social studies writing and related this opinion to her perceptions of herteacher’s stances, which she projects in her retrospective account:

Social studies were my least favorite assignments because it’s easy but also hard to explainwhat I’m saying. It’s hard forme to make sentences. The Westward Expansion essay was hard to explain what I really wanted to say. It was also, Itried to read bigger words, so it could make the topic and get extra points. It really helped because I got a B and I wasreally surprised. The teacher thought that I copied it from the Internet because she wasn’t expecting that much, but myliteracy support teacher helped me and told her that I wrote it myself.

Lila suggests that it may have been her interaction with her social studies teacher that contributed to her negative stance,as much as (if not more than) the difficulty she encountered with the task itself. She returns to the theme of identifyingdifficulties with language (e.g., “to make sentences”; “to explain what I really wanted to say”) when discussing writing essaysin social studies. But these statements are situated within a context in which her social studies teacher didn’t “expect thatmuch,” in terms of Lila’s ability to “use bigger words” in English. Thus, Lila’s strategy of trying to use more sophisticated

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vocabulary backfires, resulting in an apparent accusation of plagiarism. When comparing her perceptions of a teacher who is“proud” of her to perceptions of a teacher who “wasn’t expecting that much,”we can see how Lila’s stances toward writing insocial studies are connected to the teacher attitudes she perceives. Figure 1 shows an essay Lila wrote for her social studiesclass. In this example, Lila was able to fulfill the task to the level of what was assessed by the teacher as a C – a passing grade,but close to failing.

In this example, Lila expressed her opinion in a thesis statement, provided detail on the topic in the supporting paragraphs,and restated her thesis in the conclusion. However, the teacher’s feedback indicated that Lila needed to provide moreexplanation based on her thesis statement and fix errors in spelling, mechanics and tenses.

In sum, Lila aligned herself with her perceptions of her teachers’ attitudes of deficiency. This was most apparent in herresponse to her social studies teacher’s accusation of plagiarism and the focused attention on her non-native-like control ofspelling, mechanics and verb tenses. Yet, she also expressed that shewas not denied opportunities in all content classrooms toengage in discipline-specific writing tasks and received support of a literacy specialist to help bring her writing in alignmentwith her teacher’s expectations through explicit instruction in foundational writing skills. In this way, Lila’s example speaks tothe role of school-wide supports for writing and a general emphasis on providing ELLs with opportunities to engage in avariety of disciplinary writing tasks across subject areas.

Figure 1. Lila’s social studies essay.

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5. Discussion

Our study revealed that ELLs generally expressed positive stances toward writing as well as toward themselves as writers.However, we also found that students’ positive stances were sometimes accompanied by negative expressions toward theirperceived writing abilities and these abilities, for some, related to L1 background, and for others, related to the genres theywere asked to compose in their content classes. Furthermore, a higher percentage of ELLs in the lower grades voiced positivestances than their peers in the higher grades and this may be due to the increasing complexity of academic writing tasks atthe higher grades, decreasing supports (i.e. literacy specialists) at the higher grades in comparisonwith the lower grades, andpossibly – and more disconcerting – a developing sense of deficiency in the face of complex academic writing tasks.

The general pattern of responses indicated that if the ELLs identified themselves as poor writers they did so based on theirperceived abilities to produce error-free writing in terms of syntax, conventions and mechanics. However, some studentsexpressed variable authorial agency depending onwhether writing in their L1 or L2 and whether the writing was in the formof a personal or informational genre. These findings echo previous research pointing to the dynamic nature of ELLs’ agencyacross native and other languages (Grosjean, 2008) and the results regarding genre resonate with other studies that suggestELLs’ authorial agency is not static and is in part shaped by the disciplinary norms for writing embedded in classroom tasks(Chang & Kanno, 2010; Enright & Gilliland, 2011).

We also sought to identify how ELL’s stances might differ across content areas and what these stances might reveal aboutcontexts that support the development of ELLs’ authorial agency with regard to disciplinary writing. We found that somestudents described personal writing (writing done primarily outside school typically in the form of a diary or journal as wellas memoirs) when they responded to questions regarding writing. However, in general, ELLs in this study reported thatsource-based writing tasks with self-selected research topics, historical documents (e.g., DBQs), or research reports that werecognitively-demanding and on topics of interest were affectively engaging and provided opportunities to express un-derstandings of content – which they associated with positive epistemic stances.

5.1. Limitations

Although the larger national study provided a wealth of rich data across a broad spectrum of students in the U.S., the dataset also posed challenges.With regard to the sample, the identification of students as ELLs, we acknowledge is problematic. Asother scholars have asserted, students identified as ELLs come to U.S. classrooms with oftentimes very different literacyexperiences and other qualities that influence their development as writers: they are not a monolithic category of people(Birdsong, 2005; Cummins, 2001; Enright, 2011). We also acknowledge that the adolescents who chose to participate werepromised anonymity; therefore, data including language backgrounds, numbers of years of study in U.S. schools, and in-formation regarding previous schooling, were not collected. In addition, since the interviews uponwhich our stance analysisis based were conducted in a large national study, the authors note that the positions each interviewer took toward writingand the asking of the questions about writing might vary as well as how they related to each of the students interviewed.Finally, findings regarding distinctions by grade level and contexts are limited as the participant sample was quite small. Eachof these factors is acknowledged as having potential impact on the nature of the data collected and on the results derived.

6. Implications and conclusion

This study has several implications for practice and future research. Implications for practice include the need for: (1) ELLsto be exposed to awide range of writing tasks across content areas, not only those tasks emphasized in the Common Core (e.g.source-based informational), but also creative writing that encourages subjective engagement (see on this point Ortmeier-Hooper, 2013); (2) for the instruction surrounding this writing to be supported by school administration and throughdepartmental and interdepartmental teacher collaboration about what is valued in different disciplinary genres and how toscaffold the learning of these genres: This scaffoldingwould build foundational writing skills, but also pay explicit attention tothe unique qualities (e.g. rhetorical structure) of disciplinary genres; and (3) for ELLs to be encouraged to draw on their nativelanguage and their interests and prior experiences in addition to the supports of literacy specialists to develop both academicwriting competencies and positive affinities toward writing in general.

All of this implies that the deficit perception of ELLs as lacking particular characteristics of ideal learners (and writers) (seeCanagarajah & Wurr, 2011; Canagarajah, 2013) needs to be reframed in secondary school contexts. As Ortmeier-Hooper andEnright (2011) and Ortmeier-Hooper (2013), and as others have asserted (Enright, 2011; Harklau, 2011) adolescent ELLs are aprominent component of the “new mainstream” of U.S. classrooms and they bring to these classrooms, a rich variety ofcompetencies, perspectives, and affinities toward academic work that need to be attended to, drawn upon, and celebrated.

Our study suggests that if ELLs are to build agentive authorial stances and participate in disciplinary discourse commu-nities as they proceed into adulthood, they will need to have opportunities to be seen as individuals who have something tosay in their writing. This is not to be taken tomean that our findings suggest that there is no place for feedback on and explicitinstruction around syntax, conventions and mechanics, but rather that the development of positive affective and epistemicstances toward writing (which we found to be inextricably connected to one another), has the potential to contribute toauthorial agency. This is so, because as evidenced in this study, ELLs’ authorial agency is closely related to having opportu-nities to use writing as a form of expression of one’s knowledge and subjectivities. Furthermore, the finding that ELLs had the

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most positive stances toward writing tasks that were cognitively demanding, yet of high interest in terms of the topic, suggestsome directions educators can take in developing ELLs’ authorial agency. Specifically, rather than simplifying the complexityand range of writing tasks adolescent ELLs experience, they should be encouraged to engage in writing that is both appro-priate for their language proficiency level and stretches them to engage deeply in expressing their understandings of contentin a variety of genres and using multiple modes of communicating their ideas (see discussion in Wilcox, 2013; Wilcox, 2014).

Future studies of adolescent ELLs’writing development may find that the melding of close investigation of stances towardwriting using a micro-level discourse analysis approach as we have done here, has the potential tomake sense of the complexrelationships between adolescent ELL disciplinary writing performance and instructional contexts that support their learning.On the horizon for us and we hope for other researchers interested in academic writing development, are advances intheoretical frameworks that place multilingual adolescent agency at the center of the discussion of what disciplinary writingpedagogies should be employed in secondary settings.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Arthur Applebee and Judith Langer for guiding the National Study of Writing Instruction fromwhich this study emerged. We would also like to acknowledge the National Writing Project and the Spencer Foundation fortheir support of this study. Finally, we greatly appreciated Christine Feak’s assistance with final revisions to this article.

Appendix. Student Interview Protocol

[Relate questions or follow-up questions directly to samples of student work where possible.]

1. Tell me a little about yourself and how you see yourself as a writer.2. Tell me about the kinds of writing you do in the different classes you are taking. [List classes and types of writing for

each.]3. Let’s look at the writing you did so far this semester. Of the writing you have done for English, how much do we have

here? (List specific assignments that are missing, and estimate how complete the collection is for each type of writing.E.g., 4 out of 7 analyses of literature; 3 out of 3 book reports.) Repeat for social studies, science, and math.

4. What were your favorite writing assignments this semester? Why? Which assignments did you like least? Why?5. Tell me the steps you took for one of your longer writing assignments in English? [Go through this process for one or more

of the writing samples of one paragraph of more in each subject that included extensive writing.]6. Are there differences in what makes “good” writing in each subject? [List subjects and criteria.] How do your teachers

give you feedback about your writing in each subject? Are there opportunities to revise and re-submit work in any ofthese classes?

7. How much do you feel that you’ve been helped to understand the kinds of writing you need to do in each subject andhow to do it better? Tell me about it.

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Kristen Campbell Wilcox is an Assistant Professor in the Educational Theory and Practice Department of the University at Albany. A former ESL and EFLteacher in the U.S. Puerto Rico and Brazil, her areas of research interest have focused on the intersections of language, culture, and cognition in multiculturaleducational contexts. Recent research has related to identifying pedagogical recommendations for the improvement of academic writing among diverseadolescents and identifying school-wide initiatives for improving academic performance among ethnic and language minority students.

Jill V. Jeffery is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies and the Department of English at the University ofNew Mexico. Prior to obtaining her PhD in English Education from New York University, she taught high school English language arts in the U.S. for sevenyears. Her research interests includewriting assessment, writing instruction in multilingual classrooms, adolescent literacy, writing in the content areas, andtransitions between secondary and postsecondary writing demands.