Pre-service Teacher Preparation for L2 Writing: Perspectives of In-service Elementary ESL Teachers

Abstract

After more than 20 years of development, second language writing, or more specifically ESL (English as a second language) writing, has reached maturity as a scholarly field—not necessarily as an entirely separate field of research from ESL/TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) but more as a complementary sub-field. However, since the first issue of the Journal of Second Language Writing, the flagship journal of the discipline, was published in 1992, historically the early focus was on investigating the characteristics and experiences of international student writers at the college level in both ESL and EFL (English as a foreign language) contexts (Matsuda & DePew, 2002). To a certain extent, this is not surprising, as that is traditionally where the bulk of academic writing instruction takes place. As the field of L2 writing has evolved, investigations of immigrant ESL writers transitioning from U.S. secondary schools into college have become a focus of numerous studies throughout the 1990s (Leki, Cumming, & Silva, 2008). More recently, interest in adolescent ESL writers has emerged and picked up in frequency as evidenced by a number of studies (e.g., Bunch, 2006; Enright, 2013; Kibler, 2011, 2013; Ortmeier-Hooper, 2010; Ortmeier-Hooper & Enright, 2011; Reynolds, 2002, 2005; Villalva, 2006; Yi, 2010).