The Journal and the Journey from Contrastive to Intercultural Rhetoric

Empowering English Writing Students: Reflecting on Aspects of the Process That Helped Me Most?

“…Along with Murray's workshop-orientation, other useful theories include capitalizing on engaging students in social learning (Vygotsky, 1978) and implementing instruction in a non-direct style whenever possible to increase learner autonomy and empower student writers to take control and gain voice over their own writing and writing processes. Some useful techniques in writing pedagogy for executing such a theoretical approach, then, include engaging students in prewriting activities such as journaling; training students in peer review and holding peer review sessions with them for each formal paper prior to grading it as a teacher, and conferencing with students about their work as much as possible (Walker, 2006(Walker, , 2001(Walker, , 2016. These are all techniques that I personally use in addition to others with the writing classes I teach at California Baptist University, English 103 (remedial freshmen), English 113 (entry level composition), and English 350 (research writing for English majors).…”

“…For L2 writers many of these benefits apply and more. Second language writers, in addition to the aforementioned, also are aided in negotiating between the rhetorical writing cultures of the L1 and L2 while also increasing their writing fluency and building an enhanced cultural identity as a second language learner (Walker, 2016;Walker & Guan Lau, 2011;Xing, Wang and Spencer, 2008). Both L1 and L2 writers can use journals as speaking notes that can facilitate Vygotskian (1978) social learning.…”

“…Both L1 and L2 writers can use journals as speaking notes that can facilitate Vygotskian (1978) social learning. Moreover, both L1 and L2 writers may benefit if the journals are also used to support the non-direct instruction of teacher conferencing, peer review, and ethnography (Walker, 2016).…”