Successful ESL Writing for Publication: The Role of Writers’ Autonomy Linguistic Competence and L1/L2 Critical Reading Skills

Abstract

The main aim of the research is to examine professional L1 (Russian)/L2 (English) writing experiences among staff members of one Russian research-intensive university as well as to provide more insights into the universal pedagogies of professional writing. The empirical paper focuses on assessing writers’ ability to reflect upon linguistic competence, independent L1/L2 writing skills and L1/L2 critical reading issues which help multilingual scholars position themselves as successful writers in L1 and L2. Text-based semi-structured interviews aimed at measuring self-assessed overall writers’ autonomy in L1/L2, linguistic competence and critical reading skills in their L1/L2 writing experience were conducted. The key findings include L1/L2 writing features and support the idea that successful professional and autonomous writing seems to be closely related to a set of one’s metalinguistic competences, defined in this paper as a critical reading competence, once a certain level of L2 proficiency has been achieved. The paper concludes with some pedagogical implications in the field of writing for publication.