Modes of Engagement in Foreign Language Writing: An Activity Theoretical Perspective

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2 Modes of Engagement in Foreign Language Writing: An Activity Theoretical Perspective Mari Haneda Abstract: This article makes the case for using activity theory to explore the learning and teaching of writing in a foreign language. I illustrate my argument by bringing this theory to bear on a re-examination of the different modes of engagement in writing by university-level students of Japanese as a foreign language that I identified in an earlier study. The first half of the article develops a perspective on writing as a social activity/ practice, building on an interdisciplinary body of work and focusing particularly on activity theory. The different modes in which students engaged in writing in my earlier study are then interpreted from this perspective. I examine these modes both synchronically and diachronically in order to explore the students underlying values and attitudes with respect to learning the target language, suggesting that an activity-theoretical perspective can be a useful heuristic for the systematic detection of problems in writing that foreign language learners may encounter, so that instruction can be tailored to their needs. Keywords: foreign language writing, activity theory, modes of engagement, literacy as social practice Résumé : Dans l article, on démontre qu on peut explorer l apprentissage et l enseignement de la rédaction dans une langue étrangère au moyen de la théorie de l activité. Pour expliquer mon point de vue, je procède à un réexamen des différents modes d engagement dans la rédaction par des étudiants de niveau universitaire qui apprennent le japonais comme langue étrangère, un contexte dont je me suis déjà servi lors d une étude précédente. Dans la première moitié de l article, je parle de la rédaction en tant qu activité/ pratique sociale, en me basant sur un corpus de travail interdisciplinaire et en me concentrant particulièrement sur la théorie de l activité. Les différents modes d engagement des étudiants dans la rédaction, qui ont été évalués au cours de mon étude précédente, sont ensuite interprétés de ce point de vue. J effectue une analyse synchronique et diachronique de ces modes d engagement, afin d explorer les valeurs et l attitude sous-jacentes des étudiants en ce qui a trait à l apprentissage de la langue cible. Enfin, je suggère que le point de vue de la théorie de l activité peut être une heuristique pratique pour la détection systématique des problèmes de rédaction

3 302 Haneda que peuvent éprouver les apprenants d une langue seconde, pour que la formation soit adaptée à leurs besoins. Mots clés :rédaction en langue étrangère, théorie de l activité, modes d engagement, littératie en tant que pratique sociale Introduction In today s foreign language (FL) classrooms, particularly in metropolitan cities across North America, students are increasingly diverse in terms of their ethnic origin, their family home language, and their goals with respect to becoming biliterate. Given this diversity, it is important to consider carefully what it means to teach and learn an FL in multilingual and multicultural environments. My concern here is with students uptake of writing assignments in a university-level FL classroom, more specifically with the ways in which students with diverse ethnolinguisic backgrounds and experiences with the target language engage in writing tasks and how these relate to their underlying conceptions of what it means to be a writer in an FL. My intention in this article is to make the case for the advantages of using activity theory to explore the learning and teaching of writing in an FL. I illustrate my argument by bringing this theory to bear on the re-examination of the differential modes of engagement in writing by ethnolinguistically diverse university students of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) identified in my earlier work (Haneda, 2004, 2005). The research question addressed here is, What light can an activity theoretical perspective throw on students differential modes of engagement in writing in an FL? The first half of the article develops a perspective on writing as a social activity/practice, building on an interdisciplinary body of work, particularly activity theory. The modes of engagement found in my earlier study are then interpreted from this perspective. I examine these modes both synchronically and diachronically in order to explore the students underlying values and attitudes with respect to learning the target language. Finally, I discuss some implications of adopting this perspective for theory and practice. Perspectives on university-level FL writing In the late 1980s and early 1990s, some scholars began to suggest that historically, within the FL profession, there has been little sustained attention to the development of students FL writing abilities and

4 Modes of Engagement in FL Writing 303 equally little research on FL writing (Heilenman, 1991; Terry, 1989; Valdés, Haro, & Echevarriarza, 1992). This neglect was attributed primarily to a programmatic emphasis within FL departments on developing spoken language ability and reading skills; writing was downplayed, since FL students were considered to have little need to write in the target language outside their FL courses. In recent years, however, efforts have been made to stimulate further research in this relatively under-explored area of FL writing through the compilation of a bibliography of research and the publication of state-of-the-art reviews of this research (e.g., Reichelt, 1999, 2001). Reichelt s (1999) review of three decades of research on FL writing provides important insights into the changing conceptualization of writing that has taken place in the FL profession. In the early days, writing was either considered only in terms of the production of short pieces or was assigned no place at all in FL pedagogy. More recent recommendations, on the other hand, have called for increased attention to writing and for a shift from the earlier view of writing as sentence-level, error-free production of written language to a more communicatively oriented view. The notion of writing for communication tends to be variously interpreted, however, depending on the knowledge base on which the different scholars draw. Some address the curriculum for writing in FL courses in terms of the goals described in the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines (1986, 1999). Omaggio (1986), for example, recommends the use of process-oriented composing tasks only at the advanced and superior levels of proficiency. Scott (1996), on the other hand, suggests that both writing as an academic exercise (i.e., language exercises without any real communicative purpose) and writing for communication (e.g., note taking, letter writing) are necessary. Nevertheless, these suggestions seem to be based on two implicit assumptions. First, FL writing consists of language practice without a communicative purpose or of writing to communicate, but only for a generic audience. Second, communicative writing tasks become an achievable goal for FL student writers only when they reach advanced proficiency in the target language. By contrast, other scholars who draw on L1 writing theory and composition studies, advocate adopting the process approach to FL writing and also insist that writing should always have a communicative purpose (e.g., Greenia, 1992; Morocco & Soven, 1990). In this body of literature, the underlying conceptualization of writing appears to be that of writing for communication in order to express one s ideas, either for a particular community of readers in an appropriate genre or for oneself.

5 304 Haneda However, Heilenman (1991) cautions against a wholesale adoption of the process writing approach in the absence of a critical examination of current classroom practices. She argues that FL writing instruction has made only cosmetic changes over the years and that most teachers seem to be concerned primarily with grammatical correctness, even when they make students write drafts or engage in dialogue journals. Nevertheless, she proposes the inclusion of FL writing as an effective means of developing integrated language skills, since writing has the potential to allow FL students to reflect upon their language learning and to work out problems with lexicon, grammar, and organization in the context of their own meaning making (p. 283). This is akin to the view of L2 writing proposed by some other researchers, such as Cumming (1990) and Swain and Lapkin (1995): writing enhances cognitive and metalinguisitic awareness by encouraging L2 learners to think in, and reflect on, the target language, which is conducive to their overall L2 learning. Yet more recently, other scholars have argued for a reform of FL curriculum that would place the development of literacy at its heart. Drawing on current thinking in literacy studies, genre theory, and educational linguistics, these scholars suggest that a focus on literacy can serve as an effective organizing principle for academic language teaching and for fostering integrated learning in an FL (e.g., Byrnes, 1998; Byrnes & Sprang, 2003; Kern, 2000, 2003; Swaffer, 2003). From this perspective, writing is no longer addressed as a separate skill but, rather, is treated as a part of the FL literacy tool kit. Kern (2003), for example, suggests that, as proposed by the New London Group (1996), a literacy-based FL curriculum needs to incorporate four curricular components: situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice. That is, FL students need to express their personal experiences, thoughts, and feelings about a particular topic (situated practice) while at the same time developing metalanguage through teacher scaffolding (overt instruction on aspects of language use). They also need to engage in transforming practice (e.g., transforming content gained through reading into an oral report or a written draft) 1 and in critical framing (e.g., analyzing and discussing relevant texts in terms of the relationship between language use, social contexts, and purposes). These four components, it is argued, need to be incorporated, to varying degrees, in projects undertaken throughout the study of an FL. Thus, from this perspective, writing is considered an important aspect of a literacybased FL curriculum, in which literacy is conceptualized as a social practice.

6 Modes of Engagement in FL Writing 305 Literacy as social practice This section unpacks the notion of literacy as social practice: what it means to think of literacy in these terms. My starting point is the work done by Scribner and Cole (1981) in Liberia, where they constructed a framework centred on the notion of practice in order to adequately examine the multilingual practices of the Vai people they studied. Scribner and Cole define practice as a recurrent, goal-directed sequence of activities using a particular technology and particular systems of knowledge (p. 236) and, from this perspective, show that the Vai engaged in practices involving reading and writing in three different languages, each serving specific purposes. For example, literacy practices using the Vai script were used, among other purposes, for commercial dealings and to exchange letters; by contrast, the use of Arabic was tied to religious practices, which were based on memorization of the Qur an. Finally, for those who attended school, literacy practices in English were central to academic learning. While in Scribner and Cole s early work (1981) practice explicitly includes notions of skill, technology, and knowledge, together with patterned activity, in ethnographic studies of literacy in the recently conceptualized field of New Literacies Studies (NLS) (e.g., Gee, 1996; Street, 1993), practice is interpreted as more ideologically loaded. Street, a proponent of NLS, defines literacy as an ideological practice rather than simply as the use of neutral technical skills. As he argues, literacy is always embedded in socially constructed epistemological principles, in that the ways in which people address reading and writing are themselves rooted in conceptions of knowledge, identity, and being (2003, pp ). From this perspective, he also further distinguishes between literacy practices and literacy events. A literacy event is a concrete instantiation of a literacy practice; quoting Heath (1983, p. 93), a literacy event is any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of literacy participants interactions and their interpretive processes. People bring their socially learned models of literacy to bear in a literacy event in order to meaningfully engage in it. On the other hand, literacy practices involve the broader cultural conception of particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing in cultural contexts (Street, 2003, p. 79). However, despite their focus on connecting micro-analyses of language and literacy events with macro-analyses of the power differentials inherent in different literacy practices, proponents of NLS have not provided a method of systematically distinguishing between different literacy practices. Here, activity theory is more helpful in

7 306 Haneda allowing such discriminations to be made and in placing practice in a larger framework. Activity theory, which grew out of the work of Vygotsky and Leont ev, subsequently expanded by Engeström, locates individual actions in larger cultural activity systems. The original model of mediated action, as proposed by Vygotsky (1978), represents an action carried out by a single human being with the aid of mediating artefact(s). Leont ev (1981) developed this model by making a distinction between three levels, in which action is a particular instantiation of an activity that is itself realized through situationally appropriate operations. Also useful is Leont ev s explanation that, while an activity is a contextualizing framework driven by a motive, an action instantiates the motive in the form of goal-directed behaviour, which, in turn, is realized by operations, defined as automatized or habituated actions that respond to the immediate social-material conditions at hand (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006, p. 216). Engeström (1987) further contextualizes action by situating it within an ongoing community, or activity system (see Figure 1). In this expanded model, activity is conceptualized in terms of a set of interconnected triangles. The top triangle depicts a specific action. The subject refers to the individual or sub-group whose agency is chosen as the point of view in the analysis, and the object the raw material or problem space is that to which the activity is directed and which is molded and transformed into outcomes with the help of physical and symbolic, external and internal mediating instruments, including both tools and signs (Engeström, 2006). This action triangle is then FIGURE1 Representation of an activity system (adapted from Engestro«m,1987)

8 Modes of Engagement in FL Writing 307 related to the activity system, of which it is a particular realization, through the inclusion of three further triangles that represent the influence on the action of three critical aspects of the system: the community, composed of people who are concerned with the same general object; the rules, norms and conventions that constrain actions and interactions within the activity system; and the division of labour, the distribution of community members responsibilities and roles in carrying out object-oriented actions. Within a collective activity system, the actions of individuals on particular occasions occur at the nexus of three factors: the tools and artefacts available; the community; and its understood rules and division of labour (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006, p. 222). Practice and activity are often treated as synonymous, since, as Cole (1996) points out, they both derive from the same formulation by Marx in the first of his Theses on Feuerbach (1845/1967), which attempts to overcome the dualisms of, on the one hand, individual and community, and, on the other, material and ideal. However, the two terms tend to be associated with different fields of research. The term practice has been adopted in several of the social sciences to refer to the meanings and normative patterns of interaction that make possible the shared endeavours of a community; the emphasis here has been largely on the use of symbols and ideational artefacts (e.g., Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986; Taylor, 1987). Activity, on the other hand, while addressing essentially the same domain, has given greater emphasis to goal-directed, material action by members of a community (e.g., Engeström, Miettinen, & Punamaki, 1999; Nardi, 1996). Thus, while both practice and activity denote the use of artefacts to mediate individuals achievement of goals according to community scripts and normative procedures, the use of these terms has tended to be associated with different disciplinary emphases within the common field of interest. However, if we follow Cole s (1996) argument concerning the dual nature of all artefacts, it becomes apparent that the two terms refer to essentially the same basic configuration of participants, which Wertsch, Tulviste, and Hangstrom (1998, p. 342) have called individual(s)-operating-with-mediational-means. Thus, when considering literacy, it seems appropriate to treat literacy events as corresponding to particular actions and literacy practices as corresponding to community-shared activities in which texts of various kinds play an essential mediating role as semiotic artefacts. Furthermore, shaping both practices and activities are community scripts and norms of differentiated participation, which are enacted in concrete literacy events/actions.

9 308 Haneda FL writing as a situated activity/practice This section, drawing particularly on the work of Engeström (1987, 1999, 2001), sketches out a way in which to understand FL writing as a social activity/practice. Here, it may be helpful to discuss briefly how a sociocultural perspective, in particular activity theory, affords an enriched vantage point from which to consider L2 learning. According to Lantolf and Pavlenko (2001, p. 144), in addition to a concern with what the individual is doing (the focus of traditional approaches to the study of mind), sociocultural theory incorporates three additional dimensions: how the person is acting (i.e., in consort with artefacts or other individuals); where the person is acting (e.g., the classroom, the home); and why the person is acting (i.e., the motives and goals underlying the activity). To put it differently, instead of acting alone, in a cultural vacuum, individuals within this theoretical perspective are seen as agents who engage in goal-oriented actions with cultural tools, both symbolic and material, as members of a particular sociocultural community. Further, since individuals actions are energized by their own underlying motives, even when they are seemingly engaged in the same action, they may, in fact, in carrying out a given task, be engaged in different activities/practices (e.g., Gillette, 1994; Wertsch, Minick, & Arns, 1984). For example, in her investigation of university students studying French, Gillete (1994) argues that the kind of learning strategies her participants employed in learning French were influenced by their histories, in which were rooted their motives for studying the FL and their goals on specific occasions. She noted that two students, both taking their French classes to fulfil the university s language requirement, considered the learning of French as two completely different activities: while one student saw it as deeply relevant to her desire to become a writer, the other did not see any real-life relevance in language study. While sociocultural approaches, which build on a variety of socially oriented theories, including Vygotskian theory, Bakhtin s dialogism, and situated learning theories, have been effectively incorporated into L2 writing research (e.g., Casanave, 2002; Hirvela & Belcher, 2001; Leki, 2001, 2007; Parks & Macguire, 1999; Spack, 1997), much less use has been made of activity theory. On the other hand, activity theory has been used quite extensively by a number of scholars in L1 writing research to make sense of the complex interactions among writer agency, diverse activity systems, and their associated genres (e.g., Bazerman & Russell, 2002; Prior, 1998, 2006; Russell, 1995, 1997). From an activity theoretical perspective, it has been suggested that

10 Modes of Engagement in FL Writing 309 particular writing events should be understood in light of the workings of particular activity systems (Russell, 1995) and thus as a mode of social action (Prior, 2006). When the focus is on written text as the means of communication between writers and readers in which both are active participants, however, Engeström s (1987) triangle has some limitations. The model of activity it represents treats action as unidirectional a subject acting on an object to produce an outcome. For this reason, when the focus is on communication, the absence of representation of the reciprocal relationship between the participants in communication is a serious problem. In order to overcome this limitation, Wells (2002, in press) has proposed a modified representation of an activity system, which aims to capture the joint and reciprocal nature of communicative action. I have adapted Wells s model for the case where communication is conducted by means of a textual artefact, as represented in Figure 2. In this model, a writer takes up the position of a subject who has a particular set of linguistic resources (artefacts) at her or his disposal. The writer, addressing a particular topic, produces a written text in a specific genre (e.g., rhetorical strategies, overall structure of argumentation, and appropriate register) that is appropriate for readers who are involved in the same cultural community. Here, although the roles FIGURE 2 A model of writing in the context of activity (modified fromwells, 2002)

11 310 Haneda performed by writer and reader constitute a division of labour, the relationship between them is one of reciprocity. With this modification, activity theory can serve as a useful conceptual tool for understanding instances of writing in different activity systems. Modes of engagement in writing in a foreign language I use the term modes of engagement to describe ways in which people approach and carry out literacy practices, either in reading or in writing. What give rise to writers characteristic modes of engagement are their underlying values and attitudes with respect to the learning of the target language. These are strongly affected by their motivation for learning the language, which, in turn, is rooted in their life trajectories and expectations for the future. Thus, modes of engagement are instantiated on a particular occasion of writing (a literacy event) in the chosen goals for writing and the use of particular composing strategies, and they are fundamentally shaped not only by the degree of the individual writer s proficiency in the target language but also by his or her underlying conceptions of what it means to write in an FL. The second half of this article re-examines the differential modes of engagement in JFL writing (Haneda, 2004, 2005) from the perspective of activity theory, in order to show the advantages of using this perspective to explore the learning and teaching of writing in an FL. With this aim in view, I will describe only those aspects of the original study that are relevant to the question addressed here: What light can an activity theoretical perspective throw on students differential modes of engagement in writing in an FL? My study was carried out in a fourth-year JFL reading and writing course that I taught in a Canadian university over the course of one academic year in 1997/1998. The nine participating students were of diverse ethnolinguistic backgrounds: four were Taiwanese students who immigrated to Canada as young adolescents; two were Canadian anglophones; two were of Japanese descent; and one was a visiting student from Korea (see Table 1 for the profile of participant characteristics). Their proficiency in Japanese varied from intermediate to superior, according to the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines for Japanese, and their goals for learning Japanese also varied (e.g., developing literacy competence sufficient to pursue graduate degrees in Japan or North America in their chosen fields, meeting language requirements for their degree, maintaining their heritage language).

12 Modes of Engagement in FL Writing 311 TABLE 1 Profile of participant characteristics Student Ethnic background L1 Dominant spoken languages Dominant written languages Japanese proficiency (Japanese SpeakingTest) Majors in university Reading and writing in Japanese outside JFL class June Japanese Japanese Japanese English Jim Japanese Canadian Edward Anglophone Canadian Japanese English Superior East Asian Studies Extensive reading in multiple genres Japanese English English Advanced English, Classics Reading Japanese comics; writing letters to relatives in Japan English English English Advanced Business Reading newspapers and business books Keith Korean Korean Korean Korean Advanced Translation Chat room; extensive reading in multiple genres Ewan Anglophone Canadian English English English Inter-high Japanese Studies Reading Japanese source materials for classes Clive Chinese Canadian Chinese Chinese Chinese Inter-mid Economics, East Asian Studies Reading business books (occasional) Cindy Chinese Canadian Chinese English Chinese English Chinese Inter-mid Japanese Studies Reading Japanese source materials for classes Chris Chinese Canadian Chinese Chinese Chinese Inter-low Actuarial Science, East Asian Studies Rare Craig Chinese Canadian Chinese Chinese Chinese Inter-low Economics, East Asian Studies The first letter of each student s pseudonym represents his or her L1.The four Chinese students emigrated fromtaiwan to Canada around the age of14. Although their L1wasTaiwanese, their dominant language was Mandarin, through which they were educated. Rare

13 312 Haneda The original study revolved around a pedagogical intervention, which took the form of the introduction of writing conferences; it examined the dynamics and quality of teacher student verbal interaction in writing conferences in Japanese and the social construction of writer identity by multilingual students. While evidence for modes of engagement can be sought in writing-conference talk, the students written productions, and the students self-reports in subsequent interviews, here I draw primarily on the transcripts of three sets of retrospective interviews with each of the nine participants. I chose to focus on the interview data because I was particularly interested in examining how the students expressed their own perspectives on writing in Japanese with a high degree of self-awareness. The interviews, which were conducted in English, addressed the students composing/revising processes and strategies and took place after each of the three writing conferences; each interview ranged in length from 30 minutes to one hour. Other data sources from the original study were consulted in a supplementary manner: the students argumentative expository essays in Japanese on the topics of the status of women, the value of lectures, and the system of lifelong employment (800 1,000 characters); field notes documenting my thoughts about each class and frequent informal conversations with the students (52 entries in total); and the transcripts of the three writing conferences carried out in Japanese with each student (ranging from 20 minutes to one hour). The interview transcripts were analyzed using open coding to develop conceptual categories and core themes and then axial coding to build up and elaborate analytically interesting themes by relating and grouping identified codes (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). My research assistant and I first coded all the interview transcripts independently; where there was disagreement in our judgements, we recoded until we reached consensus. Foregrounded in this study are the students differential modes of engagement in the same writing tasks (explained in detail in a later section). The modes that I identified included writing as a language practice; writing a coherent argument; writing in a genre appropriate for a particular community of target language speakers; and writing in sophisticated Japanese in order to maintain one s identity as already a strong writer in another language. While the first three modes appear to overlap, to some extent, with approaches to FL writing discussed above, the fourth mode, which was the way in which one heritage language learner 2 approached JFL writing, has not been addressed, and so I address this issue more fully toward the end of the article. It is my contention that a coherent and adequate explanation of all the

14 Modes of Engagement in FL Writing 313 observed modes calls for the use of the sociocultural perspective on writing sketched out above. I begin by considering the students composing strategies. Composing strategies I present here a brief sketch of the composing strategies the students used, so that, in later sections, I can refer to them in discussing their modes of engagement with the writing tasks. I use the term composing strategies to refer to the online processing that takes place while composing in Japanese, as reported by the students in their interviews. The analysis of the students self-reports in the retrospective interviews revealed a range of strategies that appear to be directly related to their Japanese language proficiency. In general, the more proficient they were, the less they depended on their L1 (or on English as L2, in the case of multilingual students) when composing in Japanese (see Table 2). Most of the students followed a similar sequence while composing the three texts: (1) generate ideas in L1 or L2; (2) write ideas and/or an outline in L1 or L2; then (3) try to compose in Japanese as much as possible. I grouped students according to the extent to which they reported looping back to their L1 or L2 while composing in Japanese. Here the Chinese students showed interesting patterns in terms of their preferred language for planning. Two students, who reported that they had seldom read or written in Chinese since their arrival in Canada, used English instead of their L1 as a resource for formulating ideas. By contrast, the other two students, who had maintained active literate lives in Chinese, drew on Chinese or Chinese and English, respectively, as their preferred language(s). Further, intermediate Japanese-proficient students, who tended to report more difficulty in expressing their ideas in Japanese than those with advanced proficiency, appear to have used such common coping strategies as simplifying sentence structure and abandoning segments that were too difficult to write in Japanese (see Uzawa & Cumming, 1987). These students also reported reverting to other language resources and performing mental translations while composing in Japanese. On the other hand, the advanced and superior Japaneseproficient students considered the task of composing in Japanese a manageable one, with the notable exception of Jim, who used a translation strategy despite his advanced Japanese proficiency (as elaborated below). All students appear to have assigned particular

15 314 Haneda TABLE 2 Composing strategies in Japanese Reported sequences of steps in composing Japanese essays Compensatory strategies Step1 Step 2 Step 3 Student Self-rating of writing competence in dominant language of literacy Japanese proficiency (Japanese SpeakingTest) 1 Generate ideas in Japanese 2 Generate ideas in Japanese 3 Generate ideas in English (L1or L2) 4 Generate ideas in L1 5 Generate ideas in dominant language of literacy Make notes in Japanese Develop ideas in L1and write down points in Japanese Create mental or written outlines in English Brainstorm and write down ideas in L1and L2 Write a draft in dominant language of literacy Compose entirely in Japanese Try to compose in Japanese, with sporadic loop back to L1 Try to compose in Japanese, with intermittent loop back to English Try to compose in Japanese, with constant loop back to L1and L2 Translate sentence by sentence and then refine text in Japanese by sounding it out N/A June Good Superior Rely on superordinate words; substitute lexis Reduce information; simplify syntax; substitute lexis Reduce information; simplify syntax; substitute lexis Rely on the translation strategy Edward Excellent Advanced Keith Excellent Advanced Clive Good Inter-mid Ewan Excellent Inter-high Cindy Good Inter-mid Craig Good Inter-low Chris Excellent Inter-low Jim Excellent Advanced

16 Modes of Engagement in FL Writing 315 functions strategically to the different language resources they could bring to bear on the task. Modes of engagement with writing tasks With the exception of Jim, the students composing processes/ strategies appeared to be fairly directly related to their Japanese language proficiency. Nevertheless, my analysis revealed that, in terms of their modes of engagement, students who displayed similar composing processes/strategies nevertheless engaged in the tasks differently. This section describes the students writing practices in terms of the first three modes of engagement noted earlier; however, these are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The first mode represents engagement in JFL writing as a language exercise and as a means of developing overall FL skills. Five students Ewan, Clive, Cindy, Chris, and Craig, all intermediate Japaneseproficient expressed their views about JFL writing in a manner that can be interpreted as manifesting this perspective. All except Cindy, who had taken an intensive Japanese summer course in Japan, had encountered Japanese primarily in the context of JFL classes, and they all considered writing in Japanese to be a means of improving their lexico-grammatical accuracy in the language. This perspective is exemplified by the following comment from Ewan: I am a lot more concerned with grammar [in writing in Japanese]...correct grammar and getting correct vocabulary...as opposed to writing in English where I m a lot more concerned about expressing ideas succinctly and the grammar doesn t enter my mind. (Interview, 03/02/98) Correspondingly, in the conference talk, lexico-grammatical issues tended to be the main focus of attention for these five students. Typically, sequences in the conference talk started with my asking the students to clarify their intended meanings in certain passages and then, on that basis, moved to some form of error correction. As described above, these students used similar composing strategies, although they differed in terms of the language resources on which they drew in formulating their ideas and in the reported frequency of using their L1 or L2. They also reported the use of compensatory strategies characterized by Uzawa and Cumming (1987) as lower-the-standard strategies (reduction of information, simplified syntax, and substituted lexis). Of these, the most commonly used was simplification of sentence structure, as exemplified

17 316 Haneda by Ewan s comment: I have to split up ideas into smaller sentences that I know I can make clear, very clear, rather than more complex sentences (Interview, 02/04/98). In this respect, as reported by Uzawa and Cumming, JFL writing resembled a mental dialectic between two tendencies: lower-the-standard strategies and keep-up-the-standard strategies (extensive rehearsal and revision, together with seeking assistance). Thus, the gap between cognition and linguistic competency emerged as a major theme in these students conferences and interviews. Notwithstanding these frustrating experiences, all stated that they regarded writing in Japanese as an opportunity to consolidate their JFL knowledge by reviewing previously learned grammar and lexis and learning new expressions (Swain & Lapkin, 1995). The importance of distinguishing between composing strategies/ processes and modes of engagement becomes salient in the case of Ewan, a specialist in Japanese Studies who planned to pursue a doctorate in the same field. Unlike Craig and Clive, whose focus was on language skills, Ewan read extensively in Japanese outside the JFL class in preparation for his thesis research and, for this reason, gave serious consideration to the rhetoric underlying the Japanese prose he read. At the time of the research project, he was torn between his desire to develop a deeper understanding of Japanese ways with words (Heath, 1983) and his inclination to dismiss them as illogical. He commented that he had difficulty understanding why he had to do so much work as a reader, reading between the lines, when he dealt with Japanese texts, since he felt it was the writer s responsibility to construct a coherent and explicit argument as he himself was obliged to do in writing academic essays in English. He considered Japanese texts sloppy and too loosely organized, so he concluded that it was not worth his effort to understand and emulate Japanese rhetoric. Agonizing over this matter for months, he opted to focus only on language form in his Japanese composition. The point I wish to make here is that, while students may share similar composing processes, their reasons for engaging in a particular mode of writing may differ considerably. In the second mode, writing is approached with the goal of writing a coherent argument. Edward, an advanced Japanese-proficient student, appeared to adopt this approach, although he also embodied the first mode because of his simultaneous focus on improving his lexico-grammar. Edward, an anglophone Canadian, learned Japanese when he lived in Japan for one year as a high school exchange student, developing sufficient conversational fluency to interact with people around him. On his return to Canada, he received help with reading in

18 Modes of Engagement in FL Writing 317 Japanese from a private tutor, and he was able to read Japanese newspapers with ease. Outside the JFL class, he continued to read newspapers daily, as well as business books, since he wanted to become a business executive. He invested time and energy in reading because of its perceived utility for his future job: obtaining information about the Japanese market. However, he did not consider writing ability in Japanese to be nearly as important as reading ability. As a result, he regarded writing in Japanese as an occasion to practise the target language, and, initially, he focused primarily on lexico-grammar. In the writing conferences, however, he discovered, to his surprise, that his Japanese compositions displayed the same writing problem that he experienced in English difficulty in constructing a coherent argument. With this recognition, he became determined to write a clear essay : I have all these ideas I want to get on paper, so instead of taking one idea and focusing and elaborating on it and I have this trouble in English I ll just try to throw all the ideas together, and I ll just figure someone who reads this will understand, all these ideas together, and then my concluding statement will be a conclusion, based on analyzing all of this data, but I haven t analyzed it all on paper, I ve put it down, I ve analyzed it in my head, and I put a conclusion, but no one knows how the hell I got this, this conclusion, because I analyzed it in my head, so I ve gotta focus more on, you know, doing the analysis on paper, and making it clear what I m saying. (Interview, 03/02/98) While Edward was keen to improve his clarity of expression, he paid little attention to the subtlety of the Japanese language and to the way in which arguments are linguistically realized in Japanese. In fact, he equated writing a Japanese essay to writing a high school English essay (thesis statement supporting evidence conclusion). While Edward wanted to write a clearly expressed and coherent essay to an audience, he appeared to be addressing not a Japanese reader but, rather, a generic reader of English. Further, he stated that he was not interested in learning about the rhetorical devices used in Japanese writing because he saw little utility in learning them in terms of achieving his future career goals. In the third mode, writing in Japanese is approached as a communicative activity: writing to communicate ideas in a rhetorically appropriate manner for an educated Japanese audience. In this mode, the focus on lexico-grammatical accuracy is supplemented by a concern for the appropriate choice of register, expression, and overall

19 318 Haneda rhetorical structure. Three students Cindy, Keith, and June appeared to hold this view of JFL writing. Despite their shared perspective, their individual profiles with respect to the learning of Japanese differed dramatically from one another. Cindy, an intermediate Japanese-proficient student, was interested in improving her Japanese lexico-grammar. Nonetheless, she also showed a keen awareness of Japanese rhetorical conventions and indicated a desire to master them. Being a specialist in Japanese Studies, she read Japanese source materials extensively in order to write research papers for other courses. In the process of reading, she became attuned to ways in which arguments are made in Japanese. She felt that she needed to master appropriate hedging strategies to mitigate the force of her assertions so that the reader would accept her opinions more easily: I use a lot of expressions like ki ga suru (I feel that), kamoshirenai (it may be that). I used to use a lot of straightforward words [as I did when I wrote in English]...I m giving more space to the readers instead of trying to force them to accept my ideas. (Interview, 02/10/98) June, the most fluent speaker of Japanese in the class, also read extensively in Japanese outside school, mostly in non-academic genres, such as news media and novels. Although she moved to North America from Japan in the intermediate grades because of her father s job, Japanese remained the language with which she felt most comfortable. Her friendship circle consisted of Japanese sojourner students like herself, and the language of communication among them was Japanese. June s main concern and focus in the conference talk and in her writing was the sophisticated use of the language and rhetorical effectiveness at a level equivalent to that of Japanese university students. Keith, a Korean international student, had a completely different trajectory from the other two. Prior to coming to Canada, he had studied Japanese independently in Korea by seeking opportunities to interact with Japanese people there and by reading extensively. He eventually passed the first-level certificate in the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test, indicating that his overall Japanese proficiency was advanced enough to study at a Japanese university. As Keith s career goal was to become a trilingual interpreter (Korean, Japanese, English), he wanted to master the subtleties of the Japanese language. Thus, his overall focus was on the use of appropriate vocabulary and hedging expressions as well as on overall rhetorical effectiveness.

20 Modes of Engagement in FL Writing 319 He also noted that reading and writing in Japanese by reading novels and newspapers and participating in Japanese chat rooms was part of his daily life. Despite their very dissimilar learning trajectories, common to these three were their extensive reading in a variety of genres in Japanese outside the JFL class, their awareness of the audience for whom they were writing (generic educated Japanese), and their desire to master the subtleties of Japanese in order to be rhetorically effective. However, Cindy showed evidence of the first as well as the third mode of engagement, perhaps because of her limited Japanese proficiency. The case of a heritage language learner Jim engaged in writing in a rather different manner from the other students. He had already established himself as a competent writer of academic essays in English, with much stylistic sophistication; this was his second language but his dominant language of literacy. When it came to writing in Japanese, however, his problem was that he had a reduced range of registers in Japanese because he used Japanese only in the home domain, and then only in speech; as a result, he had not encountered the sorts of registers used in the public domain, either in oral or in written language. Another factor that separated him from others was his motive to learn Japanese, which was to maintain his linguistic and cultural heritage. Jim did not have much difficulty in writing in narrative genres, but he had enormous difficulty in expressing his ideas in the genre of expository argumentation. Nevertheless, unlike the first group of students described above, he did not seem to regard JFL writing as a language exercise. Coherence was not an issue; unlike Edward, Jim had no problem with this aspect of writing. On the other hand, unlike the third group of students, he lacked a sense of audience when writing in Japanese, as he did not have the foundation on which they had developed such a sense by reading extensively in Japanese. Instead, he appeared to want to meet his own criteria for good writing rather than those considered appropriate for good writing in Japanese. The question is why he approached JFL writing in this manner. To give some brief background about Jim, he is a second-generation Japanese Canadian, whose only experience in Japan was a two-anda-half-month visit when he was a high school student. Jim used Japanese with his family except when he needed to discuss

21 320 Haneda complicated issues, for which he used English. Outside home, he had studied Japanese for six years at a heritage language school during his elementary years and had taken a few JFL classes in high school. Although there were always many Japanese books and magazines in the family home, Jim rarely read them, because he was overwhelmed by their frequent use of Chinese characters that he could not comprehend. At the point when he entered university, his Japanese literacy ability was assessed as approximately Grade 5 equivalent. According to Jim, his stumbling block was his limited vocabulary, because he had learned Japanese from playing games and comic books and watching TV, films and listening to Japanese songs (Interview, 04/02/98). Notably, Jim was the only member of the class who consistently used a translation strategy, despite his advanced proficiency in spoken Japanese. In discussing the first expository argumentative task, he told me in desperation that he could not do it because he did not have words to think in Japanese. In order to bridge the gap between his cognition and his Japanese competency, he resorted to a translation strategy:...if I m coming up with a proper composition, I ve got to write it in English first, which is something I can t break out of, but yeah, I write it in English first...it s like, for me, um, that way [generating ideas and writing in English and then translating into Japanese] I can pretty much break down the words I want and put the vocabulary in, and I can t do that with Japanese, because my vocabulary in Japanese is somewhat limited, actually it s really limited, um. (Interview, 03/04/98) It should be noted that it was particularly in the context of argumentative writing that Jim relied on a translation strategy; in the previous semester, when compositions required narrative and descriptive genres, he was able to write in Japanese without much difficulty. Thus, his difficulty with JFL writing was not a general problem but, rather, was related to the expository and argumentative written genres and their associated features (i.e., the formal register). In both interviews and conferences, Jim repeatedly expressed his frustration at not being able to write sophisticated prose in Japanese, since he took pride in his refined writing style in English. It appeared that Jim s identity as an accomplished writer in English was a handicap when he was called upon to produce argumentative writing in Japanese. Consequently, in order to keep up his own standards, he used translation as a compensatory strategy.

22 Modes of Engagement in FL Writing 321 Activity theoretical perspective on the observed modes of engagement This section, using Wells s (2002) diagrammatic representation of discourse in activity theory, represents schematically the different modes of engagement described above. The first mode of engagement, that of writing as a language exercise, can be represented as occupying only the far upper-left corner (Figure 3). The writer composes a written text on a particular topic, using the linguistic resources available to her or him, such as her or his lexico-grammatical knowledge in Japanese and literacy competence in L1 (or L2, in the case of multilingual students). If writing is perceived as a language exercise (writing for self and the teacher), little attention is paid to an envisaged reader or to the cultural activity system in which the writing is embedded. The second mode of engagement, that of writing a coherent argument, can be interpreted as being an expanded version of the first mode, in that the writer shows concern for the reader (Figure 4). However, the reader assumed in this model does not appear to be a Japanese reader with relevant linguistic and cultural tools; rather, he or she is a generic reader of academic writing in English. In addition, FIGURE 3 Writing as language exercise

23 322 Haneda FIGURE 4 Writing a coherent argument for a generic reader because JFL writing is not perceived as a social practice embedded in a Japanese cultural community, there is little concern to choose a culturally appropriate genre for the writing. In the study reported here, Edward adopted this mode, in combination with the first mode; on this basis, it can be tentatively surmised that the second mode is close to the first. As shown in Edward s case, a student may focus on a more general problem of composition when writing an FL composition in order to improve his or her overall writing competence. In contrast to the first and second modes of engagement, the third (see Figure 5) fully utilizes all the points presented in Figure 2 but goes beyond them. In this mode, JFL writing is approached as a communicative activity: writing to communicate ideas in a specific genre for an educated Japanese audience by attending to appropriate choice of register, expression, and overall rhetorical structure. In this mode, JFL writing is not only about practicing the target language and writing a coherent text but also about producing a written artefact with linguistic realizations that are culturally appropriate and acceptable for an educated Japanese reader. Here, the mode of engagement is more dialogic (Bakhtin, 1986), in that the reader is expected to take up a responding stance, even though this might not give rise to a written response.

24 Modes of Engagement in FL Writing 323 FIGURE 5 Writing for fellow members of an activity system To a considerable degree, these three modes of engagement overlap with the perspectives on FL writing that were reviewed earlier. The first mode, with its orientation to writing as a meaningful language exercise, appears to be generally similar to the perspective put forward by scholars who regard FL writing as an effective tool for the integrated development of FL skills. The second mode shows that, although this idea is not much discussed in the literature, FL students may on some occasions also use a writing task as an opportunity to improve their general writing competence. The third mode is similar to the perspective proposed by scholars who advocate a literacy-based FL curriculum, in which literacy is conceptualized as social practice. Recall that within this perspective reading and writing are considered in their social context of use as complementary dimensions of written communication, rather than as distinct linguistic and cognitive skills (Kern, 2003, p. 3); thus, reading and writing are regarded as mutually reinforcing. This view fits well with the third mode of engagement, because the students who adopted this approach read a wide range of Japanese materials on a daily basis. In fact, it was through their extensive reading that they became attuned to the subtle ways in which the genre of argument is realized linguistically in Japanese.