In June 2005, the TESOL Board added of a new interest section on writing. The Second Language Writing IS; it held its first meeting in Tampa in March 2006, covering topics ranging from "Broadening Perspectives in Second Language Writing" and "Alternative Placement Methods for Second Language Writers" to "Issues in Technologies for L2 Composition Classrooms" and "Crossing Bridges with Second Language Writing Partnerships." As these suggest, the section provides a forum for researchers and educators at different grade levels and institutional settings to discuss second language writing. Specifically, the section's goals are:
to increase awareness of the significance of writing in teaching ESL/EFL,
to encourage and support the teaching of writing to ESOL students at all levels,
to provide a forum to discuss issues of writing assessment and the placement of second language writers, and
to disseminate and promote research on second language writing
The section facilitates communication about writing across teaching levels and settings. Recent research on the scope of second language writing scholarship suggests that most of the field's nationally and internationally circulated scholarship is produced by scholars in post-secondary education at research intensive institutions. Other contexts for writing often have much larger populations of ELL/EFL writers, but scholars, particularly teacher-researchers, in these settings do not often receive support for researching and writing. Given this, the section provides scholars with the opportunity to initiate more research and scholarship in these underrepresented contexts by supporting new collaborations and partnerships across levels and by providing a forum for discussing shared experiences. The section, like its parent body, TESOL, is distinctive in including all the academic levels and areas.
At CCCC
Second language writing scholars also participate in a Special Interest Group on the field at CCCC. In addition, the organization has a Committee on Second Language Writing to bridge work between CCCC and TESOL to involve more scholars in the field's discussions. Much recent attention focuses on the potential of computer-mediated communication to foster desire and opportunity to write. In addition, attention has been focused on the practical application of teaching Second Language writing not only in academia but in the field.
Perspectives and theories
Second language writing development has been investigated from many different perspectives. Manchón's edited book on L2 Writing Development: Multiple Perspectives provides an insight in which perspective second language writing development can be investigated. Her edited books includes studies on L2 writing development from dynamic systems theory, goal theory, genre-based systemic functional linguistics, and rhetorical genre theory. Second language writing development has been most extensively investigated by traditional cross-sectional methodologies such as pre-test post-test designs. However, in the early 2000s a novel angle has emerged called dynamical systems theory approach on second language development. Studies adopting the DST perspective explore interactions between different constructs such as lexicon, syntax, and accuracy by using moving correlations. The degree of variability in the constructs is usually explored by min-max graphs, data resampling and Monte Carlo Analysis. Among the researchers who have adopted this new angle are Verspoor, de Bot, and Lowie. These researchers used a time-series data to investigate development in second language writing.
Notable researchers
The following is a list of researchers who contributed to the field of second language writing research.
