LEARNING TO WRITE IN THE DIGITAL AGE: ELLS’ LITERACY PRACTICES IN AND
OUT OF THEIR WESTERN URBAN HIGH SCHOOL
by
Jiang Pu

A DISSERTATION
Submitted
to Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Curriculum, Instruction and Teacher Education – Doctor of Philosophy
2013

ABSTRACT
LEARNING TO WRITE IN THE DIGITAL AGE: ELLS’ LITERACY PRACTICES IN AND
OUT OF THEIR WESTERN URBAN HIGH SCHOOL
by
Jiang Pu
The definition of literacy is constantly changing and expanding. A sociocultural view of
Literacy considers literacy to be multiple, multimodal, and multilingual as situated in and across
the social and cultural contexts. As technology, new media and social network has reformed
many aspects of writing, they provide ELLs (English language learners) with supports and
resources while at the same time raising new challenges. Although adolescent ELLs are a
very active group that use technology, new media and social network, they remain an underrepresented group in the L2 writing research; and very little is known about the the social
practices of these writers as they use technology and digital media to develop and maintain
social relationships in the local and global contexts. It is important to examine their writing
practices across the school, home, and community contexts as they are immersed in technology
and digital literacy practices.
In the light of a sociocultural and socio-critical view of literacy, I conduct the year-long
ethnographically oriented multiple case studies of 4 high school students in a Western urban community in the United States in order to understand their school-sponsored and selfsponsored writing practices in the digital age; and to examine the relationship, potential link
and possible gaps between these practices. I observe their in-class writings in a 6-week period,
and throughout the year collect multiple sources of data from formal and informal interviews,
survey, field notes, literacy log, writing samples, and their self-select writing artifacts. I also become a member of their web-based social networks and gain access to their writings on the web
logs, forums, Facebook, and Twitter. In the inductive analysis of the data, I notice important
and recurrent themes such as the writers’ identity construction and negotiation, socialization,

and language use.
Findings reveal that while school-sponsored writings provide opportunities for both individual and collaborative writings and chances of sharing, students consider certain tasks more
meaningful than others. As the four participants in this study engaged in a wide range of selfsponsored out-of-school literacy practices, every participant was unique in their choice of the
types of literacy practices, their preferences for the medium of composing, the sharing of their
writings, and the language choices for their writings. One important findings is that their choices
of languages, code meshing, and frequent use of internet and urban slangs showed their eagerness to belong to an adolescent social circle which valued their ethnicity, gender, linguistic
heritage, and popular cultural literacies. As they consider English "extremely important", they
all value their heritage languages as part of their identity construction. The links between the
school and self-sponsored writings are obvious. There is overlapping in topics, genres, recurrent
themes, language uses, sociocultural experiences that feed the writings. The writing processes
are also impacted by each other. As for the gaps, while self-sponsored writings provide more
chances for sharing and expressing, they are more informal and sometimes even fragmentary. I
argue that while it is important to acknowledge the richness of students’ self-sponsored writings
and the potentials of technology and social networks, educators should not over-romanticize
these writings or the role of technology, as they may also become distractions. It is also important to focus on the meaningful connections and possible gaps rather than drawing a boundary
between the in-school and out-of-school literacy.
This study offers new understandings and insights into the writing practices of the English
language learners in the digital age. It calls for future longitudinal studies that connect the
secondary and post-secondary education which will provide more complete descriptions and
useful information on how they could be better prepared for college writing classes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Three years ago, a group of four students joined this research project which examines high
school English language learners’ writing practices in the digital age. I thank each of them,
Keres, Edward, Marissa, and Phoenix, for sharing with me their experiences, dreams, and struggles. I would also like to thank their English teacher, Mr. Diaz, who warmly welcomed me into
his classrooms; their principal, Ms. C.; their high school ELL coordinator, Mr. Moreno; and
the school counselors.
I owe my deepest gratitude to my academic advisor, Dr. Mary Juzwik. She has supported
my growth along the way with amazing patience and wisdom, and has helped me through many
crisis situations. I would never have finished my dissertation project without her help, support
and invaluable feedback. I thank my committee, Dorothea Anagnostopoulos, Samantha Caughlan, and Guofang Li, for spending time reading, reviewing and offering insightful comments
and feedback on this work.
I have benefited much from my fellow graduate students, especially those who participated
in the research club: Deb Vriend Van Duinen, Carlin Borsheim-Black, Christine Dawson,
Amanda Smith and Kati Macaluso. As I worked on my dissertation project thousands miles
away from the campus, they helped me to feel connected and supported with Skype discussions
and email exchanges.
Finally, I thank my dear husband, Guodong, for his love, support, and encouragement; and
our son, Jonny, for his hugs and cheerful smiles that light up my days. I am also deeply grateful
for the the support and understandings of my parents, who have been so patient and encouraging
during my long years of graduate study.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

vii

LIST OF FIGURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .
1.1 Statement of Problem . . . .
1.2 Purpose and Nature of Study
1.3 Significance of Study . . . .
1.4 Theoretical Framework . . .
1.5 Key Terms . . . . . . . . . .
1.6 Research Questions . . . . .
1.7 Overview of the Chapters . .

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CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2 A Socio-cultural View of Literacy and Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2.1 Literacy as Situated Social Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2.2 Literacies as Multiple and Multimodal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2.3 Literacy as Meaning-making and Identity Negotiation . . . . . . . . .
2.3 Literacy Learning across Contexts: Adolescent Writers’ In-school and Outof-school Literacy Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.3.1 Importance of Out-of-school Literacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.3.2 L2 Writers’ Out-of-school Writing Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.3.3 Adolescent Writers’ Out-of-school Writing Practices in L1 . . . . . .
2.3.4 Linking the In-and-out of School Writing Practices in Both L1 and L2
2.4 Technology, Online Reading and Writing, and Social Network: Current Research and Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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CHAPTER 3 METHOD AND METHODOLOGY
3.1 How I Approached the Research Questions? .
3.2 Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2.1 The City and the Community . . . . .
3.2.2 The School . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2.3 The Teacher and the Class . . . . . .
3.2.4 The Informants . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.3 Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.4 Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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CHAPTER 4 STORIES OF THE 2 MALE ELL WRITERS . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4.2

4.3

Keres: Story of an Advanced ELL Writer Striving for Academic Success . . .
4.2.1 Keres’ Emphasis on Academics and its Impact upon School-sponsored
Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.2.2 Keres’ Writings and his Personal and Social Life . . . . . . . . . . .
4.2.3 Keres’ Online Reading and Writing Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.2.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Edward: Story of a Poet and a Struggling Academic Writer . . . . . . . . . .
4.3.1 A Reluctant Reader and Procrastinating Writer . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.3.2 A Poet Eager to Share his Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.3.3 Money and Finance: Another Central Issue of Edward’s Writings . . .
4.3.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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CHAPTER 5 STORIES OF THE 2 FEMALE ELL WRITERS . . . . . . . . . . . 74
5.1 Marissa: Story of a Social Network Writer Who Used Writing as a Live Broadcast 74
5.1.1 Facebook: A Place to Share her Life Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
5.1.2 Web Log (Tumbler): An Ongoing Personal Ad Project . . . . . . . . . 79
5.1.3 Twitter: A Live Broadcast about her Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
5.1.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
5.2 Phoenix: Blogging about the Story of my Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
5.2.1 Blogging about Life and Blogging as a Way of Life . . . . . . . . . . . 94
5.2.2 Blogging vs. School-sponsored Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
5.2.3 Blogging to Tackle Difficulties and Release Stress . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5.2.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
CHAPTER 6 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS, DISCUSSIONS, AND IMPLICATIONS103
6.1 Summary of Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
6.1.1 School-sponsored Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
6.1.2 Self-sponsored Out-of-school Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
6.1.3 School-sponsored and Out-of-School, Self-sponsored Writings: Links
and Gaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
6.2 Discussions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
6.3 Limitations of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
6.4 Pedagogical and Educational Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
APPENDICES .
APPENDIX A
APPENDIX B
APPENDIX C
APPENDIX D
APPENDIX E
APPENDIX F
APPENDIX G

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Conventions Used in the Presentation of Transcripts . . . . . . . . .
Survey Questionnaire of ELL High School Experience . . . . . . . .
Literacy Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Warm-up Writing Notebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Writing Assignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Marissa’s Facebook Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Phoenix’s Tumblr Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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135
142
144
145

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

vi

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1

Ethnicity and the English language learners (2010). . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

26

Table 3.2

School performance (2009-2010). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Table 3.3

Self-sponsored writing log. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Table 3.4

Sample emerging coding categories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Table 6.1

Summary of literacy activity logs (E: English; S: Spanish; V: Vietnamese;
M: Mixed). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

vii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 4.1

To Rizz. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

69

Figure 5.1

Marissa’s personal Ad project and writing (I). (For interpretation of the
references to color in this and all other figures, the reader is referred to the
electronic version of this dissertation). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

80

Figure 5.2

Marissa’s personal Ad project and writing (II). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

81

Figure 5.3

Marissa’s personal Ad project and writing (III). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

82

Figure C.1 Phoenix’ initial literacy log. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Figure C.2 Edward’s initial literacy log. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Figure C.3 Marissa’s initial literacy log. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Figure C.4 Keres’ initial literacy log. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Figure D.1 Marissa’s warm-up writing notebook (I). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Figure D.2 Marissa’s warm-up writing notebook (II). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Figure D.3 Edward’s warm-up writing notebook. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Figure D.4 Keres’s warm-up writing notebook (I). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Figure D.5 Keres’s warm-up writing notebook (II). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Figure D.6 Phoenix’s warm-up writing notebook (I). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Figure D.7 Phoenix’s warm-up writing notebook (II). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Figure F.1

Marissa’s Facebook page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

Figure G.1 Phoenix’s Tumblr Picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

viii

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

1.1

Statement of Problem

As a fast growing number of English Language Learners (ELL) enter into American’s public schools, where 1 out of 5 persons over the age of five (18%) speaks a language other than
English at home (US Census Bureau, 2000), the topic of educating culturally and linguistically diverse students has provoked heated discussions among the educators and policy makers.
While ELL students as a group continue to lag behind their peers in academic performance, one
of the most crucial areas that these students need help with is in the development of literacy
(August & Hakuta, 1997; Grant & Wong, 2003; Nieto, 2002). ELL students face multiple challenges as English serves as both a medium of communication and the language in which subject
areas are taught (Faltis & Wolfe, 1999; Duff, 2001).
While the issue of literacy development remains pertinent for both younger and adolescent
ELL students, in this dissertation project, I focus on the writing practices of a group of urban
adolescent ELL students for several significant reasons. First, adolescent ELLs are the largest
sub-group among the second language writers in the U.S. Educational settings; and yet among
the very diverse ELL students, adolescent ELL students remain an under-represented group despite their demographic significance. The field in L2 writing research still occurs predominantly
with international ESL writers at institutions of higher education (Fitzgerald, 2006), and there
is very little research on the ELL students in the secondary level or in urban settings (Faltis,
1999; Fitzgerald 2006). Faltis argues that immigrant and bilingual students in the secondary
level may be “the most underrepresented, understudied group of students in the United States”
(Faltis, 1993, p.2). As Harklau (2000) has observed, there is a significant lack of understanding
of the writing practices of English language learners in the middle and high school grades. For

1

example, less than 3% of published scholarship in Journal of Second Language Writing had
focused on high school L2 writers in U.S. and international settings (Matsuda & DePew 2002).
This lack continues to exist, as pointed out by many researchers (e.g., Ball, 2006; Fitzgerald,
2006; Yi, 2007; Yi, 2010). Therefore, more research is needed to address the literacy experiences of the adolescent English language learners.
Another reason that I choose to address this particular group is that it is a very active group
that uses technology and new media in their writings, and yet little is known about the the social practices of adolescent ELL writers as they use technology and digital media to develop
and maintain social relationships in the local and global contexts. Lam (2009) found that in
the United States, “the study of literacy and socialization with new media has dealt relatively
little with young people whose first language is not English or who have allegiances to multiple linguistic communities, despite their current demographic importance in the United States”
(p. 377). As recent technologies have reformed all these aspects of writing, the meaning of
“writing” and “writer” has expanded in the age of new media and new literacies. Writing may
become instantly “publishable” with the new technologies such as blogs, zines, and blackboard
systems. At the same time, writing may involve virtual communications. The internet-based
platforms such as MUD, MOO, Yahoo messenger, MSN, emails, and online video games provide chances for communications in virtual settings. The writers can remain anonymous, and
even take on different “identities” in these communications. Writing may also involve an authentic, large audience. Posts published in blogs, zine, and web usually attract a large number
of audience, and can have lots of feedback. I examine the ELL adolescent writers’ literacy
practices and social experiences that involve the use of technology as they write in and outside
of their school.
Additionally, although ELL students of all ages face challenges in relation to English and
schooling, the adolescent students encounter unique social challenges as they transit to young
adulthood, develop a sense of identity in relation to self and peers, and negotiate different ex-

2

pectations and values. As observed by Harklau (2003), “learning to write in a second language is not simply the accrual of technical linguistic abilities but rather is intimately related
to identity—how one sees oneself and is seen by others as a student, as a writer, and as an
ethnolinguistic minority” (p. 155). Recent literature in the field of L2 writing argues that “any
understanding of L2 writers must begin with the acknowledgment that identity negotiation and
social interactions during the age of adolescence are significant to discussions about how these
teenage students respond to their writing tasks, writing instruction, and educational contexts”
(Ortmeier-Hooper & Enright, 2011, p.171). In addition, the challenges these adolescent second
language writers encounter become even more complicated when situated in the larger social,
cultural, and political contexts.

1.2

Purpose and Nature of Study

This ethnographically oriented multiple case study intends to examine the literacy and cultural learning experiences of a group of ELLs (English language Learners) within and across
the sociocultural contexts of a Western urban high school. In this study, I intend to focus on
their writing experiences both inside and outside of the classrooms, and discuss the possible
connections and gaps between their in and out-of-school writings. I assume that the students’
literacy and learning experiences are influenced by the broader and local sociocultural contexts;
and that language is not only a subject that they need to learn, but also a tool in itself that they
can use to explore the world, to communicate their intentions and opinions, to express emotions, to question, think, challenge, and celebrate. In other words, writing plays an important
role in their social lives, and is a tool that they can use to express and empower themselves.
This is particularly important for second language learners, since they face more stress than
their first language peers as they simultaneously learn the language and use the language as
a tool of learning. Based on the discussion of their in and out-of-school writing practices, I
explore the relationship between writing and the construction of their social identities, which

3

include their identity as second language learners. I pay attention to the students’ understanding
of learning and literacy, such as the purpose of learning English and the reason why they need to
learn writing; and the interactional dynamics these students have with their teachers and peers
as they communicate. I then discuss what resources are available for these students and the
challenges that they face as second language writers, and possible ways that could help them to
spontaneously use the resources and ask for help.

1.3

Significance of Study

Issues discussed in this study are not unique to this site and these students at all. This study
contributes to the field by understanding the complexities of ELLs’ literacy learning experiences, especially their writing practices, as contextualized in their sociocultural world; describing the support they have and challenges they face; discussing language use and interactional
dynamics in their literacy and cultural experience as they utilize technology and digital media;
and probing the factors that contribute to or impede them from becoming active agencies in
their own learning. It enriches the theoretical and instructional discussions of ELL education
in general and second language writing in particular by emphasizing the role of language as
an interactional and empowering tool. In addition, it also contributes to the interactional dynamics, and power relations between me, the researcher and the participants. Finally, there’s a
mismatch between a homogeneous population of beginning teachers for a more heterogeneous
and multicultural population of students (Wideen, Mayer-Smith, & Moon, 1998). Teachers, especially mainstream classroom teachers, are ill prepared for these ELL students (Hooks, 1994;
Ladson-Billings, 1999; Nieto 2002; Zeichner, 2003 ). The research findings will not only benefit classroom teachers who have a student population of linguistically and culturally diverse
students, but will inform teacher education as well.

4

1.4

Theoretical Framework

This study is framed by the sociocultural model, which emphasizes the important role of
social interaction in the learning process (Vygotsky,1978); and the ethnography of communication (Hymes, 1972, 1994), which examines language use in the social interactional events.
Literacy is conceptualized as social and cultural practices which both shape and are shaped
by particular contexts (Ferdman, 1991; Gee 1996; Barton and Hamilton, 1998; Purcell-Gates,
2007). As the learners participate in the daily interactional situations and events, they also negotiate their understanding of the social world and their own social role (Dyson, 1997). Such
an understanding of literacy as the construction of meaning within the sociocultural context
“attempts to account for aim, purpose, audience, text, and the context in which reading and
writing occur” (Perez, 1998). Writing research along the same lines considers such contextual
factors as school characteristics, class discussions and activities, parental input and peer interactions influence students’ writing development (Ball, 2006). As the ELLs learn English as
the second language, language is not only a target for acquisition, but also a media that they
use to interact with others and to express themselves. It is therefore important to understand
the ELLs’ writing practices across the contexts in the sociocultural light. This study is also
informed by the New Literacy Studies (NLS) tradition, which values students’ out-school practices. Literacy should be understood beyond the confinement of schooling (Gee, 2002; Schultz,
2002). Students’ sociocultural practices outside of the schools should be considered as “fund of
knowledge” (Gonzalez, Moll & Amanti, 2005) which could inform the in-class teachings, and
should be included in the writing research. Based on such understanding, I pay attention to the
ELLs’ language use and interactional dynamics as they learn to write in the classrooms.

5

1.5

Key Terms

English language learners (ELL): Federal definition1 of an English language learner refers
to an individual who is 3 to 21 years old and is enrolled or preparing to enroll in an elementary
or secondary school; who is not born in the United States or whose native language is a language other than English; and whose difficulties in speaking, reading, writing, or understanding
the English language may be sufficient to deny the individual the ability to meet the State’s
proficient level of achievement on State assessments, or to successfully achieve in classrooms
where the language of instruction is English. While English language learners is a general
term that refers to those students for whom English is a second language, based on the students’ oral English proficiency skills, they may be further classified as initially fluent English
proficient, limited English proficient, or re-classified English proficient. Those students who
are “re-classified English proficient” are considered to be ready for mainstream classrooms in
which English is the sole language of instruction (Rivera, Lessaux, & Francis, 2009).
School-sponsored writing and self-sponsored writing: I borrow these terms from Janet
Emig (1971)’s discussion of two modes of writing. Based on her observations of 12th grade
students’ composing processes, she discusses about two modes of writing: extensive writing
and reflexive writing. She describes the former as school-sponsored writings, which is usually
a detached writing task, such as prose writings assigned and evaluated by teachers on pieces of
literature texts or topics that have been studied on. Students have relatively little or restrained
time allowed for the planning, prewriting, writing, and reformulating, and usually receive technical suggestions on their writings and are seldom required to revise, since revision is usually
not built in the design of such writing tasks. In contrast, reflexive writings are usually selfsponsored writings, which means that students write on a variety of stimuli such as interest
or human relations, and their writings are usually evaluated by themselves or peers. As for
1 Public

Law 107-110, Title IX, Part A, Sec. 9101, (25)

6

the writing process, students usually have longer prewriting and writing period, more perceptible starting, stopping, and contemplating, and more opportunities for revisions. Besides such
factors as the context (e.g., assigner and evaluator), stimuli of writings, and time restraints,
another major difference between these two modes of writings is that the self-sponsored, reflexive writings usually bring more satisfaction and pleasure for the students as compared to the
school-sponsored writings.
In this research I borrow these two terms (i.e., school-sponsored writings and self-sponsored
writings) to describe and differentiate the writing tasks and practices in relation to the context,
stimuli and time restraints discussed above. In addition, I choose to use these terms instead
of the terms of “in-school writings” and “out-of-school writings” since students may do selfsponsored writings at school, and likewise do school-sponsored tasks at home. I do not, however, necessarily agree with Emig’s observations that school-sponsored writings trigger less
emotions or satisfaction. Instead, I leave these issues open for discussion based on the findings
of this research project.

1.6

Research Questions

I begin the study with this broad research questions in mind: How do a group of ELL
learners in a Western urban high school learn to write as contextualized in their sociocultural
worlds in the digital age? In order to answer this question, I explore their school-sponsored and
self-sponsored writing practices, their home and school literacy-related experiences that feed
their writings, and the possible home-school link as reflected in their writings and their sharing
of the writings. I therefore examine the research question in three layers:
First, what do their school-sponsored writing practices look like? I examine their writing
as situated in their schools, typically assigned by their teachers, especially in their English and
other writing-involved classes. I start out by examining the contextual factors, such as the state
and the school’s expectations and general requirements for their writing and literacy in general;

7

their own expectations and general in-school reading and writing experiences; the resources
available, and their perceived resources (e.g. access and availability) as they learn to write. I
explore their understanding of the English language and writing (e.g., a mere task or a means
to explore the world and express themselves). I then focus on their writing processes (in both
individual and collaborative writings), and examine their interactional contents and dynamics
in certain literacy events, such as the classroom discussions and writing conferences. I pay
particular attention to their sharing of the writings in class discussions, reading aloud, teacherstudent conferences, peer workshops, or other official and unofficial occasions. I make note of
the occasions that they refer to their home and community-based, literacy-related practices in
their class discussions or writings, e.g., when they transform the information that they obtained
from a book, a TV program, or other life experiences into certain writings. I also pay attention
to those literacy practices such as body discourses (e.g., dress codes, gestures, etc.) and oral
language discourses (e.g., Words, accents, and plays on language)2 as they write or talk about
writing. I look at their writing products to explore general patterns, language use, the recurrent
themes of their writings, and the possible home-school links.
Second, what do their voluntary, self-sponsored writing practices look like? I look at their
expectations, and the resources and their perceived resources. I’m particularly interested in how
they engage themselves in such self-sponsored writings. I ask what kind of voluntary writings
they do, through what medium (print or computer) and which language, for how long, and what
they generally write about. I will focus on the artifacts that they choose to present and share with
me, which they believe that best represent their spontaneous writings. I again look at their body
discourses and oral discourses that facilitates their writings; and look for common patterns that
turn up in their writings. Paying attention to the type of home and community-based literacyrelated practices that feed their writings, I examine whether they share their writings with others
(beside me); and if so, how they share their writings.
Third, what is the possible relationship between their school-sponsored and self-sponsored
2 These

two terms are used in a study on gangsta literacy conducted by Moje (2000).
8

writings, and what serves as their home-school link? I question whether the in and out-of-school
writing products are connected, or there exists certain gaps in relation to topics, genres, recurrent
themes, aspects of their sociocultural experiences presented in their writings, certain language
use as they communicate with their readers, and the general body literacy and oral literacy as
they talk about their writings. In addition, I explore the way they share their writings across
the various contexts. I examine on what occasions (such as through reading aloud, discussions,
or teachers’ presentation of students’ writing as examples, etc. within the classroom); in what
manners (e.g. self-initiated or teacher-initiated) they share their writings; and what opens up
or closes such sharings (e.g. Teachers’ questions or storytelling). I explore possible homeschool link as they share their home and community-based literacies that feed their writings
(e.g. Transforming the information that they obtained from a book, a TV program, or other
life experiences into certain writings; or transforming a school-related experience in their selfsponsored writings). Finally, I also explore the meaning of in-school and out-of-school writings
in students’ lives, such as the ways they perceive their own participation in the in-school and
out-of-school writings; whether they favor or value certain types of writings more than others;
if so, why, and what factors affect their participation in such activities. Based on this, I continue
to discuss what kind of social identity construction and negotiation are reflected in these writing
practices and the sharing of writing; and how such identity negotiation across the contexts create
opportunities for their engagement in socio-culturally based learning.

1.7

Overview of the Chapters

In this chapter, I discussed the purpose and nature of this study. I review the literature
in Chapter 2 which discusses the ELL students’ literacy practices in and out of school; and
the relationship between technology, online reading and writing and social network. I lay out
the methodology of this study in Chapter 3, in which I introduce the city and the community,
the high school, the mainstream English classes, and the participants. I also explain the data

9

collection and analysis procedures in details. I then detail the in and out-of-school writings of
the four participants in Chapter 4 and 5. I wrap up the study, summarize the findings and reflect
upon theoretical issues related to the the English language learners’ literacy practices in the
final chapter (Chapter 6). In addition, I explore the implications for the educational literature,
classroom practice and teacher education.

10

CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1

Introduction

This research project explores the nature of ELL students’ literacy practices in and outside
their urban high school. I situate this research in the field of literacy and first (L1) and second
language (L2) writing and connect my research to previous theoretical and empirical work. I
first examine the socio-cultural view of literacy and learning. Next, I review a number of studies
that have investigated adolescent students’ writing practices across contexts both in L1 and L2.
Lastly, I address the issue of technology, social media and youth writing in the multimedia
environment. This literature review lays a foundation for the data collection and data analysis
in the following chapters.

2.2

A Socio-cultural View of Literacy and Learning

The concept of “literacy” is constantly changing and expanding. While the term “literacy”
traditionally referred to functional skills of reading and writing in relation to print-based texts
such as decoding, analyzing and comprehension, over the past several decades it has expanded
to become a social practice within a sociocultural, historical, and institutional contexts (Gee
1999). Literacies have also moved beyond the singular print-based texts and become more
multiple, mutimodal, and multilingual as the New Literacy Studies scholars have recently added
a “digital strand” by including digital hypertexts and new media into the research tradition (Mill
2010). In addition, literacies are considered to be ideological instead of neutral, as they often
relate to power and differences (Street, 1984; Pennycook, 2001). Lankshear and Knobel (2003)
summarize the three major factors that contribute to the changing meaning of literacy over

11

the past decades. First, it has been influenced by Paulo Freire’s (1987) work which considers
literacy as the ability to “read the word and the world” (p. 5), and literacy education as a way to
achieve empowerment and liberation. Second, it has been influenced by the dramatic discovery
of the large extent of illiteracy among adults in the US during the early 1970s. Third, it has been
impacted by the socio-cultural perspective within studies of language and the social sciences,
such as the New Literacy Studies (NLS).

2.2.1

Literacy as Situated Social Practices

New Literacy Studies has been influential on both the theoretical expansion and educational
research of literacy as sociocultural practices. In contrast to a more traditional view of literacy
as a set of cognitive, functional skills of individuals, a sociocultural view considers literacy
as social practice and participation in which people use the tool of language for interactions
and communications. These practices and participation are considered to be “situated”, as the
everyday use of the written language is always considered in relation to the local and broader
social and historical contexts, such as the particular time and places (Barton et al., 2000). People
also participate in various communities and groups as they purposefully use, practice, and learn
literacy in different domains, such as home, school, and work place. In accordance to the
conceptual expansion, educational researchers have shifted their examination of the literacy
practices from academic and school-based only to broader contexts which include the local
and even global communities. For example, scholars in the past decades have examined the
children’s literacy practices both in school, and out-of-school, which will be further elaborated
in the next section.

2.2.2

Literacies as Multiple and Multimodal

Scholars in the sociocultural tradition have considered literacy as “multiple” and “plural”
(Heath, 1983; Street, 1984; Gee, 1996). The New London Group (1996), in particular, have

12

called for “multiliteracies” which can be inclusive of the new technologies and new media
of communication. Such reconceptualization of literacy has been influential in educational
research, as scholars made reference to multi-modaility of literacy. With the world becoming
increasingly globalized and networked, people reach a broader community as they access and
utilize the hypertexts and other resources in the web-based environment. In addition to the
network of texts and hypertexts, researchers have examined the literacies which are situated in
networks of social relationships within multiple communities (e.g., Gee, 2007; Lankshear &
Knobel, 2007). The notion of multiliteracies also apply for a growing population of cultural
and linguistic diversity, which has significance for the field of second language writing since
language learners are bilingual or multilingual in nature.

2.2.3

Literacy as Meaning-making and Identity Negotiation

The focus in New Literacy Studies research has been on the relationship and connections
between people and their literacy practices. The texts that people use and produce are impacted
by their sociocultural environment; while at the same time they also exert an influence over
their participation in various social communities. This corresponded with Vygotsky (1962)’s
theory of language learning, in which language is both impacted by social relationships and
interacts with and further shapes the sociocultural environment. In their everyday life, people
negotiate their social identities with others as they participate in the situated social, cultural, and
historical practices and interactional situations in their daily lives (Dyson 2007). This notion
of literacy and language learning as a tool for people’s social interactions, identity negotiations
and meaning-making has become particularly important for language language learners, as ELL
students’ learning to write in a second language is “intimately related to identity—how one sees
oneself and is seen by others as a student, as a writer, and as an ethnolinguistic minority”
(Matsuda, Canagarajah, Harklau, Hyland, &Warschauer, 2003, p. 155). As literacy scholars
examine the language learners’ identity negotiations and their writing experiences, they found

13

that adolescent ELLs often have “a shifting identity” that is constantly changing (OrtmeierHooper 2010) or even “oppositional identities” (Li 2008) which is a result of a clash and conflict
in the sociocultural values that they hold in their multicultural, multilingual contexts.

2.3

Literacy Learning across Contexts: Adolescent Writers’ In-school
and Out-of-school Literacy Practices

Kress (2003) argues that “it is no longer possible to think about literacy in isolation from
a vast array of social, technological and economic factors”. The notion that literacy is a social
practice in multiple contexts has provided new insight for literacy research within and beyond
the school settings (Dyson 2003; Hull & Schutlz, 2002). Dyson (1989, 1997, 2003) focuses on
the students’ incorporation of rich and sophisticated “unofficial” literacy resources within the
school contexts. In the field of L2, Li (2008) also acknowledges the importance of out-of-school
literacy, and argues that literacy practices of culturally-diverse students must be understood in
the interactive contexts of both their familial and cultural milieu and their schools. She also
advocates that, the minority families and children to “become successful cultural translators
who are able to move across diverse social and cultural borders and rewrite the hegemonic
domination of certain discourses, instead of just reproducing them.” (p. 25)

2.3.1

Importance of Out-of-school Literacy

As mentioned earlier, the adolescent English language learners remain an under-represented
group in the field of second language writing. Although L2 writing research still occurs predominantly with international ESL writers at institutions of higher education (Fitzgerald, 2006), our
comprehensive literature review on the multilingual/ bilingual writing research on preK-12 student population within the time period of 1995-2005 shows that there are some notable research
on the adolescent L2 writers (Curcic, Wolbers, Juzwik & Pu, 2012). A few researchers have
examined the L2 writers’ in-class writing practices and have supported the use of students’ lin-

14

guistic and cultural resources in a dialogic and interactive manner. For example, Tsui and Ng’s
study (2000) argued that the L2 adolescent writers’ interactions with teacher and peers improve
writing; while the studies conducted by Gutierrez (1993) and Larson (1995) both supported a
positive impact of interactive languages (e.g. narratives, group presentation, oral transformed
into written forms) upon writing instruction. However, these studies have focused exclusively
on the in-school writing practices, and have not include in the discussion the L2 writers’ outof-school writing practices.

2.3.2

L2 Writers’ Out-of-school Writing Practices

There are only a few studies that examined the L2 writers’ out-of-school writing practices
(e.g., Black, 2006; Black, 2009; Lam, 2000; Lam, 2004; Lam, 2006; Skilton-Sylvester, 2002;
and Yi, 2007). In Lam’s (2004) study, she presented a case of a Chinese immigrant student, who
created a website for the fans of a Japanese singer. His experience of hosting the website and
interacting with other fans and visitors in English helped him develop a “textual identity” and
gain confidence. Similarly, in another study, Lam (2006) presented another case of two Chinese immigrant high school student’s experience of maintaining a fan website. Black’s (2006)
study explored the experience of a Chinese immigrant student’s practice of fan fiction writing,
through which she built her online identity as a respected fan fiction writer. This also motivated
and encouraged her to become a self-sponsored writer in English. Skilton-Sylvester(2002) examined the voluntary writing practices of Nan, an ELL student who immigrated from Cambodia. Although she had very limited proficiency in academic English, she managed to engage
in a variety of self-sponsored writing activities on her tough life in Philadelphia. Yi’s (2007)
study looked at a Korean immigrant high school girl’s out-of-school writing practices, which
helped her construct a “writer identity”. Based on these research, the Asian (Chinese and Korean) L2 adolescent writers who had difficulties writing academic English all improved their
English writing skills through online literacy practices, and constructed online identity as writ-

15

ers. These research contribute to the understanding of the writing practices of L2 adolescents,
and yet they didn’t look at the possible connections between the in-school and out-of-school
writing practices.

2.3.3

Adolescent Writers’ Out-of-school Writing Practices in L1

Since there is only limited research on L2 adolescents’ writers, I also borrow from the line
of out-of-school literacy research in L1 (i.e. English as the first language or mother tongue)
writing research. Similar to those findings in the L2 research mentioned above, researchers
(e.g., Camitta, 1993; Mahiri & Sablo,1996; Tierney, Bond, & Bresler, 2006) have found that
students who tend to consider the in-class academic writing as irrelevant and inauthentic voluntarily engaged in meaningful and rich writing activities outside of school. These writing
activities played important roles in their identity formation and personal status construction
as they use writing for self-expression, and for building and maintaining social relationships.
Based on these findings, the researchers advocate for an inclusion of out-of-school literacies
into theoretical and pedagogical considerations.

2.3.4

Linking the In-and-out of School Writing Practices in Both L1 and L2

There is very little research on the connection between the students’ in-and-out of school
writing practices. In the field of L1 writing research, Schultz (2002) examined 22 students’
out-of-school writing practices, and argued that understanding of students’ out-of-school writing can serve as a resource for teaching and broaden a teacher’s understandings of the students’
capacities. In the field of the L2 writing research, Yi (2010)’s study explored a recent Korean
immigrant student’s writing products in the creative writing classroom and her journal writings
outside of the classroom. This student drew upon her journal writings for her creative writing
class; and she also mentioned about the creative writing class assignments in her journals. This
study revealed that ELL’s writings across in- and out-of-school contexts were influenced by

16

each other, especially in relation to topics and genres. Although these findings are important
for the field, both of these two studies focused on the writing products and ignored the writing
processes. They discussed what the students wrote without mentioning how the students engaged in their writings in and out-of school. In addition,writing was considered as an individual
writing practice rather than collaborative endeavors. There was no discussion on the sharing of
their writings either in or outside of the schools; nor the interactions the students had when they
talked about their writings with other peers and/or teachers. There is also very little discussion
of the students’ sociocultural practices that feed their writings. In other words, these studies
mainly discussed about the students’ writing products, rather than the writing practices and
their literacy-related sociocultural practices. Based on the literature review, this study intends
to fill two gaps in the field: the writing practices of an under-represented group–the adolescent
ELL writers; and the relationship between their school-sponsored writing practices and their
voluntary, self-sponsored writing practices, which is a topic that needs further research.

2.4

Technology, Online Reading and Writing, and Social Network: Current Research and Future Directions

Researchers have recognized that “the interpreting and representing ideas and information in
social contexts, both inside and outside of schools, is increasingly digitalized” (Mills 2010). In
my review of articles emerging from L2 writing studies on the relationship between technology,
online reading and writing and social network, I focus on those that provide insight into how
adolescent L2 writers’ use of technology impact their literacy practices.
Web is a very important location for adolescent literacy practices. A PEW Internet and
American Life Project (Lenhart, Madden, Macgill, & Smith, 2007) report reveals that adolescents in U.S. are very active participants in online spaces. Among the 935 adolescents interviewees who are between the ages of 12 to 17, 93% considered Internet an important venue for
their social life. Besides the computer-mediated communication such as emailing, blogging,

17

online gaming, adolescents also have gained easier access to the internet and social networks
via their cellphones, especially the smartphones. The PEW Internet and American Life Project
report reveals that most of the teens also users of mobile technologies, with 75% of all the teens
own a cell phone as of 2010; while the medium texters send out an average of 21-100 texts a
day (Lenhart, 2012). Scholars such as Hirvela (2004) has noticed that internet is probably the
most important contact point and the primary medium for English writing for English language
learners. It is important to note that almost all the out-of-school literacy practices of L2 writers
discussed previously occurred on the internet, since “adolescent literacy practices out-of-school
are so vibrant because of their access to technology and affinity for social networking” (Vasudevan & Campano, 2009).
A large number of researchers have examined the differences between paper text and hypertext in both L1 and L2. Although both require several of the basic skills such as decoding, monitoring understanding, vocabulary knowledge, and attending to structural cues (Kim & Kamil,
2003), Internet-based hypertext have unique features such as being non-linear, multimedia, and
self-referential, and therefore provides “new text formats, new purposes a more egalitarian relationship between readers and writers (Spires and Estes, 2002). There could be new challenges to
read and understand hypertext. Specific challenges of hypertext to language learners are listed
as follows: the need of navigating through the linked text; evaluating the relevance of information; reading text in non-linear ways; and integrating information presented in different media
and of varying degrees of relevance (Kim & Kamil, 2003; Reinking, 1997). Researchers also
point out that the there are many “distractions”, or “seductive details” in hypertext texts that
may recall “inappropriate knowledge”, such as hyperlinks to other pages, graphics and photos,
video tapes, sounds, advertisements, animations, flashing images, and other animations (Harp
& Mayer, 1998; Kim & Kamil, 2003; Selfe and Hilligoss, 1994). In this sense, users should also
acquire strategies to make decisions about the content of text, and have control over the timing
or speed of the reading (Kim and Kamil, 2003). Additionally, hypertexts are predominantly

18

expository in nature, while expository texts lack much instruction in the classrooms (Kim &
Kamil, 2003). All these factors lead to a different reading style, and a request for different
reading strategies. For example, Neilsen (1997) suggests that readers only scan text on the web
rather than reading the pages word for word. According to his observation, 79% of the participants always scanned new hypertext pages they encountered, and only 16% of the participants
read the pages word for word (Cited in Kim & Kamil, 2003 p. 168).
Technology not only changes the relationship between the reader/writer and the text, but also
changes the relationship among the users. Beside being hyperlinked and more hybridized and
intertextual, the digital literacies are also more productive, immediate, collaborative, dialogic
(between author and reader), linguistically diverse, and more informal (Mill 2010). Scholars
in the field of L2 writing have also examined the impact of the technology on learners’ writing
processes, such as on their use of emails and web-based writings. For example, Lam (2000)
examines a case of a Chinese student Almon in California, who connected to a community of
users from various countries via emails and online chatrooms on topics of popular and youth
culture. As they use English to communicate with each other, they also employ different dialects
with various levels of formality. Previously very silent in the English classes, Almon’s web
engagement helped him with language acquisition and improve his English proficiency. Lam
argues that the out-of-school multiliteracies are more engaging and empowering as compared
to the more homogeneous classroom literacy. Yi (2008) investigates on the collaboration of a
group of writers as they each compose a portion of a story in the form of relay writing. These
writers gained confidence and improved language proficiency as they engaged in the process of
collaborative writings for a broad audience. In a more recent research conducted by Lam (2009),
an immigrant high school student, Kaiyee, used instant messaging to develop and maintain
social interactions with multiple linguistic and cultural communities. Her participation in the
social networks has helped her improve language proficiencies in both English and Chinese.
Lam argues that the adolescents’ positioning in the digital networks enable them to develop

19

diverse perspectives and improve competence.
The literature review shows that the digital literacies have provided the L2 learners with
new opportunities as well as challenges. It has helped the L2 learners to go beyond their local and physical contexts to reach a global and virtual community, to change their roles from
consumer/reader of the information to become creators (from gathering information to the circulation of information). Technology creates a bridge for culturally and linguistically diverse
students who are leaning English (Chatel 2002). While most of the research in the field of L2
were conducted in the cognitive and functional aspects of language learning, very few have examined the use of digital media in the adolescents’ everyday lives or relationship between their
socialization and their literacy practices; and even fewer have connected their out-of-school literacy practices back to their academic learnings. It is therefore very important to conduct more
research to understand the L2 writers’ literacy experiences across the institutional contexts as
they engage in new media and multimodal practices.

20

CHAPTER 3
METHOD AND METHODOLOGY

Passing some oriental supermarket and Vietnamese restaurants in Little Saigon, a MacDonald, an auto shop, and a Metro adult education school, I drive to the neighborhood that embraces
Java City high school. Along the tree-dotted streets are one-story single family houses built in
1920s and 1930s with gray and brown roofs.
This is a busy Monday morning. Although it is still early March, it is already warm in Java
City. Many students on the hallway are in their hoodie sweatshirts and jeans; and some even in
t-shirts and shorts. It is the break time, and the hallway is very crowded. Students of different
colors are standing in small groups chatting, laughing, or busy texting on their cellphones. Some
are gobbling down their snack that they buy from the little campus store next to the auditorium.
With a loud “hi” some give each other a hug as they head to different classrooms for their next
class. Posters are everywhere, encouraging the students to work hard and informing the students
about the upcoming basketball match, speech contest, elections for the student union leaders,
and other after-school or community events. The trophies for the various sports competitions
are proudly glittering in the display cabinets; and the pictures of the Honor students for the
month are smiling to me from the glass door of the administrator’s offices. After I sign in on
the guest log, I head to Mr. Diaz’s classroom. I pass Mr. Moreno’s office on my way. Mr.
Moreno is the ELL coordinator who has been in this school for 9 years. He is in charge of the
placement testing for the ELLs based on their English proficiency levels. He has been a great
resource person that helped me learn about the school, the community, and the ELL students.
He also introduced me to Mr. Diaz, the teacher that I work with for my research project.
I am here to observe the second period. This is an ideal period not only because the students
are active and more cooperative according to Mr. Diaz; but also because Mr. Diaz and I could
discuss afterward since he has the 3rd period free. Mr. Diaz’s classroom is very spacious, and
21

neatly organized. There is a TV and a big screen hanging above the white board. On Mr. Diaz’s
desk, there are piles of student works, his laptop, and pictures of him and some former students
when he taught English in Japan. On the back of the classroom, there is a big blackboard with
a question written in white chalk: What do you want to see more on campus? And below that
some students have scribbled: Black people! The students are now sitting on their regular seats,
busy writing on their notebooks. As I sit quietly at the the back of the classroom, I shift the
focus of my observation from time to time, since I am here for a group of students: Phoenix,
Keres, Marissa, Edward, who have volunteered to participate in my dissertation project and
become my major informants.

3.1

How I Approached the Research Questions?

My research project is a year-long qualitative ethnographically oriented study. My overall
research question (as detailed in Chapter 1) is: How does a group of ELLs learn to write in
and outside of their classrooms as situated within and beyond the sociocultural contexts of their
Western urban high school? I kept the question open, and adopted a linear approach as I kept
revisiting, reflecting on, and revising my questions throughout the study as informed by the real
data. Intending to hear different voices, obtain various perspectives, and understand multiple
realities, I adopted a qualitative multiple case approach (Merrian, 1998). I utilized a “maximum
variation sampling” approach to “document unique or diverse variations that have emerged
in adapting to different conditions and to identify important common patterns that cut across
variation” (Patton, 1990, p. 182). I have therefore included both male and female students with
diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds and English proficiency in this study. I also strove
to choose both outspoken and silent students for the same purpose. I consider both qualitative
research and writing as a way to encourage participation, interaction, and open communication.
The goal of my research is to empower the participants rather than exploiting them as subjects.
My beliefs about research and writings have shaped my overall research design, such as my role

22

and participation in the study, the way that I collect and analyze data, and the final write-up.

3.2
3.2.1

Method
The City and the Community

Every week as I exit the highway and drove across the downtown area toward Java City high
school, I can’t help but notice how busy and vigorous this city is. The teachers and students
that I worked with live in a big metropolitan Western industrial city. Once a largely farming
community with bucolic hillsides and valley, Java city gradually shifted its economy from agriculture and food processing to industrial manufacturing after WII. The recent decades have
seen the booming of local high-technology and electronic industries with the rapid growth of
thousands of technology companies, which have accelerated the transition of the city from an
agricultural center to an urbanized metropolitan area with large concentration of technology
expertise. Currently, it is one of the largest cities in the nation in terms of population, land area,
and industrial development. Several of the nation’s largest technology companies serve as the
top employers in the city. Java city has a large population rich in cultural and ethnic diversity.
The racial makeup of Java City was 42.8% White, 33.2% Hispanic or Latino, 32.0% Asian, and
3.2% African American. According to the school district report (2009), the residents speak 56
different languages.
Java city has also witnessed a rapid growth of foreign-born residents (39.0% of the whole
population as of 2010) in the last three or four decades. These include many high-tech employees from East and South Asia, Eastern European immigrants, as well as poorer immigrant
workers from Latin America. Java city also has a very large Vietnamese community. Despite
its large population, Java city is proud of its low crime rate as it has been ranked as one of the
safest cities in the country with a population over half million people. According to a 2007
estimate, the median income for a household in the city was the highest in the U.S. for any city

23

with more than a quarter million residents. However, the living cost in Java City is also among
the highest in the nation as the rapid economic growth during the past decades sky rocketed the
housing prices and pumped up the costs in all areas of living.
Java city is home to several colleges and universities, and over 200 public elementary, middle, and high schools as of 2010. Most of the public education funding comes from federal
contributions (10%), the state business and personal income taxes and sales taxes (60%), and
local property taxes (23%). The recent statewide and district budget cut has caused the university enrollment to diminish, and has affected the K-12 public education in very negative ways.
For example, the massive budget cut has reduced expenditure per pupil, and therefore resulted
in the cut of the art and physical education, the supplementary and after school programs, the
home to school transportation, and educational services such as bilingual aids for English Language Learners, etc.. Most public libraries are now only open 3 days a week; and there are
fewer librarians. The school district that I conduct this research in has laid off 133 teachers and
lots of administrative staff and school counselors in 2009, while those teachers that have not got
the pink slips take 2.5 percent pay cut during the 2010-11 school year, which translated into five
fewer days of instruction. The student to teacher ratio has also been radically raised. In short,
all aspects of the public education in Java city has been affected in depth.

3.2.2

The School

It took me more than 6 months to finally meet with the students that participate in this study.
I gained access to the school and the classroom through a mixed approach of both bottom-up and
top-down. Right after I moved to Java city (which is more than 2000 miles away from my home
campus in Midwest) in Fall 2010, I read the school accountability cards which I downloaded
from the urban school district website. I then made numerous phone calls and sent out emails to
the staff members who are in charge of the secondary education in the urban school district in
Java city. I introduced myself and the research project that I planned to carry out, and sent them

24

a copy of the IRB application for the university human research protection program. I soon got
an email from the manager of Secondary Curriculum and Instruction, who sent out emails to all
the high school principals in the school district to see if anyone is interested in the study. After
we heard back from some of the principals, I discussed with the manager on the most suitable
site for my research, and finally decided on Java city high school.
I had an hour-long meeting with the principal, Ms. C., who later introduced me to the ELL
coordinator, the school counselor, and the personnel staff, etc. She also signed me up as a volunteer to help ELL learners with their English writings. After I finished a physical examination,
an official background check and finger printing through the district human resources department, I was considered to be “legally” present on the campus, although I still have to wait for
the final IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval from my university before I can contact and
recruit students for my study.
A small comprehensive high school serving 1036 students (graders 9-12), Java City high
school is the second oldest school in the state, which will soon celebrate its 150th anniversary.
Up until the opening of another public school in 1943, Java city students only attended this
high school, hence some of the city’s history is embedded within that of this school. About
two decades ago, in order to draw students from every part of the district, it became a magnet
for the IB (international Baccalaureate) Diploma Program. For example, for Reading and Writing, the freshmen begin an in-depth study of international literature that culminates in the IB
Diploma Higher Level English courses. It has also recently began another magnet program that
prepare students for design and engineering careers. Divided by a long drive way named after
the school’s mascot, Java city high school presents its big soccer fields, football stadium, and
baseball diamond on the left; and science building, music and media center, cafeteria, and five
wings of classroom building on the right side. School library is located on the second floor of
the administrative building. During the break the students hang out and chat on the big lawn
outside of their school building. Just like Java city, this school is also very “high-tech”, with

25

African American
Asian
Filipino
Hispanic or Latino (of any race)
White (Not Hispanic)
Socioeconomically disadvantaged
English Learners
Students with disabilities

2%
7%
3%
78%
9%
73%
31%
10%

Table 3.1: Ethnicity and the English language learners (2010).

over 700 student laptop and desktop computers and digital projectors in almost every classroom
and library room. Students have access to the internet anywhere at school since there is a full,
high-speed WiFi network on campus. A community member who lives nearby told me that this
school had great turn-around over the last four to five years in the school’s look with the new
engineering building as well as the new sign and clean grounds.
I choose this school since it is the most suitable one for this particular study. There are 8 high
schools in the school district, 7 regular high schools and 1 charter school for college preparation.
I have chosen the current school based on the suggestion of the Secondary School administrator
of the school district, and the unique characteristics of this school. It is the most culturally and
linguistically diverse school in the region (Table 3.1). The majority (78%) of the students are
Hispanic/Latinos of any race, and 10% of the students are Asian and Filipinos. It also has the
largest number of ELL students enrolled. According to the school accountability report card,
31% of their students are labeled as English language learners (the highest in the school district).
In addition, this school also has a reputation for its strong ELL program. Like other urban
schools, the poverty level in the school is high, as 73% of the students are socioeconomically
disadvantaged. Expenditures per pupil in the year 2009 is $10, 131, which is 9% above the
district average.
Students that I chatted with are generally proud of their school, and believe that the school
only “gets a bad rap from things done in the past”; and that it keeps improving under the new

26

administration. Most students were surprised to see how diverse and welcoming the school was
when they first arrived. There is a rich variety of languages on campus. Mr. Moreno, the ELL
coordinator, showed me a language code sheet which include more than 20 languages. Many
teachers and staff (such as the one in the register’s office) speak both English and Spanish.
Despite the budget cut, they provide language aid for students who speak Portuguese, Spanish,
and Vietnamese. The students that I talked to believe that it is unjustified for people to give
the school a poor academic image just because there is a large non-native English speaking
population.
The students love the fact that they have IB program, the design and engineer project, AP
classes, and the free SAT classes. There does exist a big gap in academic performance in this
school between the IB and non-IB students, and that affect the way the two groups interact with
each other. However, according to the students, everyone still “almost gets along with everyone
else”. Although many are not satisfied with the choices of extracurricular activities on campus,
they generally admit that there is a wide offering and lots of clubs.
Most of the students in this high school don’t work, because some of them are undocumented
and don’t have working permit. Some of them do work in places such as the mall and the
supermarkets in the downtown. Like other urban schools that is located in the center of the
city limits, Java City High School has its security issues like drugs, gangs, and violence. The
students that I talked to told me that there are 2 gangs on the campus: the Blue and the Red.
However, some also believe that gangs are typically acknowledged as a “subtle element” in the
school, while violence and fights are only rare occurrence. “Friendly” and “Welcoming” are the
two words that I frequently hear from the students and the teachers as well. Some students feel
sorry for their friends who attended other schools which are “full of less friendly and stressedout kids”. In general, there is not much parental involvement. Several teachers that I chatted
with mentioned that the Asian parents usually come and participate a lot, and the parents of the
IB students are also very active; while the majority of the Spanish-speaking parents tend to be

27

less involved. This is partly due to the fact that they work different shifts, and therefore they
may not be available for PTAs.
According to Mr. Moreno, this is also due to the parents’ misunderstanding of themselves
and the teachers. Some think that the teachers won’t understand them since they only speak
Spanish; and yet this is not true, since many teachers are bilingual themselves. They also think
that the teachers know the best, and therefore they don’t have anything to contribute to the PTA.
Like most urban schools, Java faces challenges in terms of the students’ academic performance.
During the time of my visit, Java was going through a new accreditation process by the WASK
(a Western association of schools); and it has successfully received a 6 year term of accreditation
based on its school performance (Table 3.2).

Indicator for School Performance
Standard Test
English Language Arts
Mathematics
(Percent of students achieving at
Science
the proficient or advanced level)
History-social sciences
Dropout rate (1 year)
Graduate rate

School
40%
23%
38%
37%
2.1%
86.9%

District
56%
51%
57%
49%
2.4%
86.7%

State
52%
48%
54%
44%
5.7%
78.2%

Table 3.2: School performance (2009-2010).

The school used to have very high mobility and drop-off rate. According to Mr. Moreno,
“I could have 25 students at the beginning of the semester, and then toward the end of the
semester, I had 25 brand new students who are totally different (from those at the beginning
of the semester). ” This situation has changed though due to the economy during the recent 3
years (i.e. The economic recession). Those parents who couldn’t find a job and couldn’t afford
the expensive living cost here would move out of the state. Now there may be 1 or 2 students
that would drop out or come in at the end of the semester.

28

3.2.3

The Teacher and the Class

I gradually got to know some ELL teachers and mainstream English teachers during my
volunteer work; and got a spectrum of experiences on the campus way before I started my
research. I learned a lot from Mr. Moreno, the ELL coordinator; and Mr. Diaz, the teacher that
I later worked with. This was the first year of Mr. Diaz’s teaching here. He taught in another city
for 1 year, where he received M.A. in Education from a prestigious public university. He learned
about the opening from his friends and former classmates here in the Java city, and considered
himself “lucky” to get this job. He also speaks Spanish, just like the majority of the students
here. Mr. Diaz now teaches 5 regular English classes, 3 junior classes and 2 senior classes.
According to him, most of the students’ decoding skills are generally 9th grade level; while
their comprehension is only 6th-7th grade level since vocabulary is one big obstacle. Lots of
students would rather remain silent rather than respond and be wrong. Parental involvement for
the classes are rare. He has had 4 PTA this semester. No parent has initiated the communication
with him about the students’ grade.
Upon receiving my IRB approval, I had in-depth discussions with Mr. Moreno and Mr.
Diaz to find an ideal classroom for my study. We decided on a senior-level English class for this
particular study. We chose the class based on the following criteria. First, this is a a regular (or
mainstream) English class instead of an ELL only class. The students that have been placed in
the regular English classes are those that have come to the country for more than 3 years. They
have gained some English proficiency, and yet are still struggling with writings. Therefore,
writing is considered to be a very important element in their English classes. In contrary, those
in the ELL -only classes are newcomers with very low English proficiency levels who can
barely write. The teachers place more emphasis on vocabulary and basic reading skills rather
than writing. I chose the first group of students based on the purpose of this particular study.
Second, there is the largest number of ELLs in this class. Third, this is a class that generally
is the most active and cooperative one according to Mr. Diaz. The students in general show

29

interest in learning and writing.
Although 34 students enrolled at the beginning of the school year, there are only 29 students
in the spring semester. Among them, 14 students have been labelled as ELLs, which include 6
LP (Limited Proficiency) and 8 RP (reclassified proficiency, which indicates a relatively higher
proficiency level as compared to LP). The majority of the students in this class identify themselves as Hispanic or Latinos (White and non-White), and most of them say that they speak
Spanish at home. There are also 2 Asians (Vietnamese), 2 Pacific Islanders (Filipinos, whose
mother tongue is Tangalo); and 3 White students who also speak Portuguese at home.
Mr. Diaz follows a structure or routine for his English class. He always begins with the
warm-up writing activities (See Appendix D). Usually it’s 4 to 5 sentences that respond to a
question. On Mondays he would also mention the weekend journals and ask what, who, where,
and why questions so that students can talk. He will then talk about the vocabulary before
teaching the literature text. After that there will be quizzes. He does both teacher-student
conferences and peer conferences in the class, although there is usually not enough time for the
one-on-one teacher-student conferences. Beside the warm-up writings, throughout the spring
semester between January and May 2011, Mr. D. also assigned reading logs for the book club,
the pacing guide (Appendix E), and academic essays.

3.2.4

The Informants

Among the 7 English language learners who showed interest in the study, I selected 5 key
informants based on the teacher recommendation and their own willingness to participate. I had
to drop one of the informants in the middle of the semester, since she was absent a lot.
Phoenix, Keres, Marissa and Edward are the four key informants for my study. Phoenix
and Keres are the only two Vietnamese students in this class. Keres was born in U.S., and was
labelled as ELL when he entered Kindergarten at the age of 5. Phoenix was born in Vietnam,
and she came to U.S. with her mom at around 10. They are both relatively new in Java City

30

High School, as Phoenix transferred to the school in Fall 2010 from another school district
in Java city, and Keres moved in late 2009 from another city. Marissa and Edward are both
Hispanic/Latinos, and they speak Spanish at home. They were all 17 years old at the beginning
of the Spring semester in 2011, and Edward and Keres turned 18 when I started the research
project.
In order to get to the know the students better, I also talked to their classmates; their other
teachers, and the school counselor and the language aids.

3.3

Data Collection

Since fall 2010, I started to collect the resources about the city, the school district and
the school from the relevant website, the local newspaper, and school documents such as the
students’ yearbook, and the school accountability report, etc..
I collected the primary data from Spring 2011 to Mid Summer. There are 3 sets of primary
data that I collected: the students’ school-sponsored writings; their self-sponsored out-of-school
writings; their school, home, and community-based literacy-related experiences that feed their
writings. I collected a data set from multiple resources, which consists of observational field
notes, survey questionnaires, formal and informal interviews of students and their teachers; and
artifacts such as their written work. In addition, video and audio-taped classroom interactions
(such as discussions and writing conferences) were transcribed.
In order to gather data on the school-sponsored academic writings, I visited their English
classes daily for a whole unit for 6 weeks. I did this not only to understand their in-class writing
processes and capture their talking about the writings, but to get to know each participant better
by observing them in their normal school settings. I introduced myself as a researcher at the
very beginning, during the recruitment; but at the same time also foregrounded myself as a
second language learner and writer who not only has interest in their writings and lives, but
someone who understands and wants to understand more about their experiences. Nonetheless,

31

in this initial stage, I was still considered an “outsider” in their classrooms 1 . I kept reminding
myself that like in any relationships, it took time and patience to build mutual trust. Although
I always brought with me a notebook and a hand-held video camera with me, I decided not
to use the video camera during the first week, so that they would not feel uneasy as if they
were suddenly “studied” by some “intruder”. Instead, I tried to be as non-obtrusive and nondisruptive as possible, sitting quietly at the back of the classroom with my notebook and pen.
Just like them, I was also a “writer”, as I claimed. After all, writing is a common literacy
activity in this English class that they engaged themselves in. After a few weeks of immersion
in the classrooms, the students got more and more familiar with my presence, and both their
and my own comfort level increased. Some students readily greeted me with a smile every
time I came to the classroom; and some even came to ask questions during the break. All (but
one student who was absent a lot and later dropped from the study) were already very relaxed
as I interviewed them for the first time, which I could tell from their facial expression, body
language, and their readiness and willingness to share with me.
During my observation, I quickly jotted down or drew the physical environment of the
classroom, such as their seating chart, their dress codes, etc. I also kept observational field
notes which included both the descriptive and reflective data (Bogdan & Biklen 1998). Besides
the physical environment of the classroom, I paid special attention to their interactions with the
teachers and their peer classmates as they shared or talked about their writings. I also made
notes on their self-sponsored writings during the class periods, such as writing and sharing
notes, writing down homework assignments, etc. Copies of their in-class writing products was
collected. With the students’ permission, Mr. Diaz forwarded some of their writings that they
submitted to his email account. When I talked with the students about these writings, I made
note of the occasions that they referred to their home and community-based, literacy-related
practices in their class discussions or writings, e.g., when they transform the information that
1 Although

I have been in their school for a while as a volunteer, I did not have the right to
officially approach these students before I got approved by the IRB office.

32

Writing Activities

Time:
How
long
did you
write?
(startfinish)

Place:
Where
did you
write?

Medium: In what
environment and
through
what
medium did you
write (e.g. Paper,
computer,
cell
phone, etc.)?

Note
comment

/

calendar/planner writing
scheduling (e.g. writing to-do lists;
memos; grocery shopping list )
keeping a diary (paper journal,
blogs, etc.)
Emailing
Hand-written notes
Scribbling
Website forum/BBS
Zines
Facebook/Twitter
Text message
Online chatting (MSN, Skype, etc.)
Others
Table 3.3: Self-sponsored writing log.

they obtained from a book, a TV program, or other life experiences into certain writings.
In my original design, I planned to visit the students’ other writing-involved classes on a
regular base throughout the school years, such as their social studies class, etc. I revised my
plan to collect some writing samples from these classes instead, since every student attended
different classes, which resulted in lots of conflict in time and schedule. The voluntary, nonacademic writing was more difficult, or challenging to gather since most of these are personal
and private, such as diary, text messages, or online chatting with friends, etc. Besides, the
participants may not remember their informal notes or scribbles at all. In order to gather data
on the voluntary, non-academic writing in the out-of-school writing contexts while remaining
unobtrusive, I took the following 3 steps.
First, I have brainstormed a literacy activity log (Table 3.3; Appendix C) with all the possible

33

writing activities (e.g., keeping a diary, scheduling by writing to-do lists, calendar/planner writing), emailing, chatting online, exchanging notes, and scribbling), and had the students check
them and add if there are extra activities. I ask for the types and length of writing activities as
well as the language, and the medium of the writing (print or computer-based). Questions in
the literacy activity log was worded in a kid-friendly way. For instance, in the initial log I used
such terms as “medium of writing: print or computer-based” (Appendix C), which caused some
confusions for the students. In the revised activity logs, I ask the question “In what environment
and through what medium did you write (e.g. paper, computer, cell phone, etc.)” instead. I conducted a preliminary, semi-formal interview with the students before the classroom observation
period to see if students have anything that they want to add to the list; and whether certain
writings activities are conducted more frequently than others. I have used the literacy activity
sheet as a conversation prompt. When I went to the classroom to recruit the students, I provided
guidance on using the literacy activity list; and also define “writing” to them because they may
not think some activities as writing.
Second, I provided them with the daily literacy activity log, and had them do it for 6 weeks.
Since it might be too much work for them to do the log daily for the whole period and became
a distraction, or worse, an “extra task” that took away their precious time, I only asked them to
do a 7-day log during the first week. In the following 5 weeks a sampling method was adopted,
and they only need to do it once or twice every week. I gathered their literacy logs to look for
patterns.
Third, after the observation was over, I interviewed them again in the summer. This interview was conducted in a home or out-of-school settings that they felt most comfortable and
relaxed in. I invited them to present to me some writing products that they feel comfortable
to share with me. They chose a typical sample of their self-sponsored, out-of-school writings
which they considered to be closely related for their own identity. I then discussed with them
about their sharing of other self-sponsored writings afterwards, based on their own comfort

34

level. Both interviews were audio-taped and video-taped and transcribed. In order to gather
information on their school, home, and community-based literacy-related experiences that feed
their writings, I not only rely on their in-class talk and writing products, but also frequently
talked to the students, their teachers, and school counselor after classes. As suggested by the
ELL program coordinator and their teachers, I also visited the public library which is close to
the school, as well as participated in some cultural events that the students showed great interest in. I went to an event called “Christmas in the park” in Winter 2010, as Mr. Diaz told
me that many students mentioned this event to him. In addition, in order to understand their
general experiences in the high school, I also conducted a survey (see Appendix B) for all the
English language learners in the whole class. The students’ writing artifacts, along with observational fieldnotes, survey questionnaires, formal and informal interviews of students and
their teachers, and the literacy activity sheets are used as the primary source. All the interviews
were transcribed word by word. I watched the classroom-observation videos and did selective transcription in order to facilitate the above data sources while at the same time avoiding
unmanageable amount of data.
In total, I accumulated a data set which consists of 15 survey responses, 44 Literacy activity
logs, 300 pages of in-class student writings (warm-up writings; term papers, self-advertisement
project, etc.), 150 pages of out-of-class student writings ( self-selected artifacts; facebook, twitter, tumblr entries, etc.), and 10-hour long interviews with the students, teachers, and the school
counselor. There are also teaching artifacts (e.g., lesson plans, assignment, etc.) and my own
observation protocols, memos and field note documents. Throughout the data collection process, I kept examining and shifting my own role(s) as I interacted with the students. Some
voluntarily sent me emails and online messages, and shared with me their personal writings,
which became part of the secondary data.

35

3.4

Data Analysis

In order to organize the collected data, I built a folder for each of the four key informants.
I numbered the pages and listed a “Table of Contents” as an index for me to easily locate the
detailed information. I divided the content pages into 5 sections. The first section is “basic
information” of the student, beginning with an official person summary report that I obtained
from the student administrator, which include the primary information of the student such as
name, gender, birth date, contact information, and race/ethnicity information. On the next page,
I summarized the students’ activities, interests, and entertainment as described by themselves
either in their writings, their conversations with me, or even from the “info” section of their
Facebook page. I included here their 6-week literacy activity sheets and the survey questionnaire. The second section is the interview transcripts (both initial and final) that I typed out. I
left a margin on the right of each page for the purpose of coding and notes. The third section
is the students’ “school-sponsored writings”, and the forth is their “self-sponsored writings”.
I marked the writing artifacts that the students chose as “representative” or “favorite”of their
writings, and used different color codes for their writings in L1 (their home language) and L2
(English). In the last section labeled as “Other”, I included other documents that are relevant,
such as my own research memos, transcripts of the teachers’ and school counselor’s interviews
that mentioned this particular student, etc.
I had another folder for my field notes and other written documents that I collected. I divided
them into the “City, Community & School” section and the “Class” section. I numbered and
arranged chronologically my observational notes and other relevant materials; and used a table
to document the date, time, settings (e.g. Classroom, library, or office, etc.), major participants,
the number of the field notes, a brief summary for the field notes, and a list of the artifacts that
I collected that day. This table provided me with an overview of my observational data across
the different settings. Keeping in mind that my overall research question deals with “students
learning to write inside and outside of the school in both L1 and L2”, I adopted a recursive

36

approach for data analysis (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998), constantly reading and coding my data
throughout the whole process of data collection. For example, I read my notes and the students’
in-school writings as soon as I obtained them after my class observations, when everything was
still fresh in my memory. After I completed data collection, I revisited these writings as I read
my observational notes, the interview transcripts, and the students’ in and out-of-school writing
artifacts, and wrote research memos as I tried to link the codes for evolving categories.
Through the reading and re-reading of the raw data, I explored the general or recurrent topics, themes and patterns in the students’ writings; and the specific occasions where the students
connect their in-and-outside of school literacy practices in their writing (e.g. Whether they mention one practice in the context of the other) and the sharing of their writings. As I examined
the kinds of writing practices that they engage themselves in and the types of writings that they
value as meaningful and choose to share (or not to share), I noticed important and recurrent
themes such as the writers’ identity construction and negotiation, socialization, and language
use (see Table 3.4). These are therefore categorized further analysis .
Discourse analysis was conducted on the language use, the opportunities for interaction and
the interactional dynamics among the participants. In order to examine on what occasions and
in what manners they share their writings as well as their home and community-based literacies
that feed their writings; and what opens up or closes such sharings, I select key events which
represent the everyday or routine literacy practices, such as classroom discussions, writing conferences, and peer workshops, etc. Participation structure (Philips, 1972) was used to examine
the interational dynamics, such as who talks, when, and under what circumstances. An inductive method was adopted in the analysis of the collected data. Instead of using a strict set of
pre-selected coding categories, I bear in mind some rough categories such as source of the discourse utterance, and the cognitive level of such utterances; and at the same time read the data
closely and let the coding emerge naturally. Comparisons among the 4 different cases (Phoenix,
Keres, Marissa, and Edward) were conducted in order to understand the similarities and differ-

37

Sample
major
coding
categories

Sample
subcategories

General schoolsponsored
and
self-sponsored
writing practices
(process
and
product)
Institutional
expectations; Pedagogical practices;
Writing
Process [Resources
and
Perceived
resources
for
writing; Quantity
of the writing
(e.g. Time frame);
Place of writing;
Medium
of writing; (paper/print/computer/
phone...); Rituals
of writing (e.g.
Music,
etc.);
Anxiety level of
writing; ] Writing
Product [Topics;
Purpose;
Genres;
Recurrent
themes; Recurrent
general patterns;
] Whether they
mention one practice in the context
(in/out of school
writing) of the
other; Similarities
and dissonances
across th contexts;
Oppositional vs.
Bidirectional, etc.

Writing as Identity Construction
and Negotiation
(Focus: self)

Writing as a social
act (Focus: communication
and
sharing)

Role
and
use of Languages
in
Writing

Self-image; Selfidentification (e.g.
Writer’s identity);
Race;
Gender;
Cultural identity
and
heritage;
Meaning/value of
writing; Purpose
of writing; Writers’ favor or value
of certain types of
writings over others; Understanding
and critical thinking of life and
world;
Voice;
Own theory of
writing; Oral/body
literacies as they
talk about their
writing; etc.

aspects of their
sociocultural experiences presented
and transformed
in their writings
(“funds of knowledge”); Individual
and collaborative
writings;
Peer
culture;
Writing opportunities;
Opportunity for interaction; Writings
to share or not to
share (private vs.
Public); Who initiates the sharing,
in what manner,
to whom (interactive dynamics
as represented in
the key writing
events);
Target
readers;
certain
language use and
language style as
they communicate
with their readers;
Anxiety
level
of sharing their
writings; etc.

Multilingual
writing;
Language
choice;
Language
preference;
Language
switch and
Language
transfer
between L1
and L2; Own
reflections
on language;
Joint development of
L1 and L2
writings;

Table 3.4: Sample emerging coding categories.

38

ences of the learning experience of the English language learners. For each case, I first describe
their general school-sponsored and self-sponsored writing practices, which include both writing process and products. I then examine their engaging of writing activities to explore the
similarities and dissonances as they write across the contexts. I focus on the discussion of their
identity and socialization as reflected in their writing practices in relation to their language use
and choice as they write.
In addition to triangulation of observation notes with interviews and writing artifacts, I also
invited the key informants to perform informal and formal member checks at different stages
of data analysis in order to enhance validity. After all, these are their writings, and I want their
perspectives and voices to be represented. The students made comments and provided insights
for my interpretations of their writings and other literacy activities. I also invited them to read
the draft of the chapter that dedicate to their writing practices.
As the data analysis was ongoing, I reflected on the form of the following chapters. Instead
of writing the data chapters based on the primary coding categories, I decided to dedicate the
data chapters to the recounting of the students’ stories. In order to bring my readers into their
writings, and their world, I tried to tell the stories in the ways that captured their uniqueness,
since each case is unique. Qualitative naturalistic inquiries can sometimes be recursive and
messy, and yet I still chose to narrate the case studies in a chronological order as in accordance
with the qualitative naturalistic inquiry to see how the stories unfolded. The stories of these 4
students’ in and out-of-school literacy practices and sociocultural activities were not based on
their own revelations. Rather, at some points of my research, I felt as if sitting in front of a
messy pile of jigsaw puzzles. I had to patiently search, find, and put the tiny scattered pieces
together in order to see the whole picture. Therefore, as I re-presented their stories, I chose
to provide a whole picture of their literate lives with a focus on their self-sponsored writing
practices, the meaning of writing for the participants as they perceived it, and a dominant aspect
in their writings.

39

I followed a rough outline as I presented the four case studies, integrating the descriptions
and interpretations of each participants’ literate lives. In each story, I started with a description
of each participant, which included the general background information such as their race, age,
gender, language learning experience, and their general literacy practices. As the stories how
I met with the participants and got to know each of them unfolded, the students’ family background, schooling experience, and their personalities and interests were also revealed. Next, I
provided thick description of the participants’ in-school and out-of-school writing practices with
attention paid to a dominant pattern that emerged from both the writing processes and writing
products. Based on the discussion of a representative sample of their writings, I then interpreted
the role that writing played in their lives, and the meaning of writing for that participant. Finally,
I summarized the discussion about their writings in relation to identity construction, formation,
and negotiation.
As mentioned above, after I put together the picture of their literate life through my own
interpretations, my participants provided me with feedbacks and corrected my mis-readings
and biases. Therefore, the stories that told in the following chapters were still a fruit of our
collaborations and bi-directional interactions.

40

CHAPTER 4
STORIES OF THE 2 MALE ELL WRITERS

4.1

Introduction

This chapter is devoted to recounting the stories of 2 male ELL writers (Keres and Edward)
as they were situated in their social and cultural world in and outside their urban high school.
Drawing on multiple sources of data, such as interviews, observations, field notes, their literacy
activity sheets, and their school-sponsored and self-sponsored writing samples, I provided thick
description of their individual and collective literacy practices within various contexts across
the school borders, with a focus on their writing activities. As I investigated the type of home
and community-based literacy-related practices that feed their writings, I also gathered rich information about their various family background, schooling and language learning experiences,
sociocultural activities, and influences of popular culture, which I considered of significant importance in understanding the nature of their lives as literate beings embedded in their own
social worlds.
In order to understand the nature of their writings both in and beyond the realm of their
school, I paid attention to both the writing process and product in their school-sponsored
and self-sponsored writing practices, and asked what kind of writings they did, through what
medium (print or computer) and which language, and what they generally wrote about. I looked
for common patterns that turned up in their writings, such as recurrent themes and topics, language use or rhetorical characteristics, and possible link or gap between their school-sponsored
and self-sponsored writings, etc. As I explored writing as identity construction and negotiation
for these ELL writers, I focused on the artifacts that they chose to present and share with me,
which they considered most meaningful or best representative of their spontaneous writings.
Finally, as writing was a social act, I also investigated what aspects of their sociocultural expe-

41

riences were presented and transformed in their writings; and how they chose to share (or not
share) their writings with their audiences in the official world of school and unofficial world of
peers.
In the following section, I started with the story of an advanced ELL writer, Keres, as he engaged in the type of writings and literacy activities which connected his desire to become more
competent in academic English. I then told the story of Edward, who presented a contradictory
image as reader and writer.

4.2

Keres: Story of an Advanced ELL Writer Striving for Academic Success

Keres was a senior student at Java city high school. He turned 18 right before I started the
classroom observations. He was part Vietnamese, Japanese, and Chinese. He spoke Vietnamese
at home, and had also taken courses on Chinese and Spanish. His hair was neatly cut, and he
loved to wear T-shirts.
Keres was considered a “very good writer” by his English teacher. As seen from his literacy
activity log, he spent lots of time on his assigned essay writings. His focus on academics also
fed and framed his self-sponsored writings. Keres discussed with his friends on school-related
issues on his social network. He chose to write in formal and complete sentences on public web
forums; and he also actively seek for opportunities to interact with others in a type of discourse
that was academically or institutionally recognized.
Keres was a highly motivated student. He was determined to apply for one of the state
universities with a major in civil engineering. When his teacher asked him his expectations for
the senior year, he responded, “This year I really don’t care about what goes on at school, and
don’t plan to get too comfortable over here in my senior year...In this class I would prefer to
work alone without the interference of everything else.” (Keres-notebook, 8/27/2010) As he was
among the first few students who, after my introduction about myself and my research project in

42

the class, signed the consent form and turned it right away to Mr. D, I was very glad that he did
not consider my observation and interviews as “interference”. He was also one of the few Asian
students in the class, and I was very thrilled when he and another Asian student volunteered to
participate in the study, as I believe that their stories could reveal important information about
minority urban high school English Language learners’ experience and literacy practices.
It turned out that he considered my interviews on his writing activities as an academic activity, and he expected to better understand and improve his English writings through this study.
Unlike other participants who considered me as an “elder sister” and readily invited me into
their lives, Keres seemed to label me as a “researcher” from the very beginning, and always
communicated with me in a formal manner. For example, when I asked whether I could cite his
writings in his in-class notebooks, he sent me an email in a formal tone:
“I’ll grant permission the use of this source to your work . . . And you’re so very
much welcome to ask for any sources in my access. I will try to find whatever is
available.” (04/06/2011)

4.2.1

Keres’ Emphasis on Academics and its Impact upon School-sponsored Writings

His emphasis on academics had a great impact on his school-sponsored writings, such as his
treatment for different genres and various topics. As I decided to be as non-obtrusive and nondisruptive as possible and sat at the back of the classroom during my classroom observations, I
got the chance to collect and read his in-class writings every week, which included his essays
and warm-up writing notebook. He treated the argumentative essays more seriously than the
warm-up writings. According to Mr. D., Keres was one of the few students that really took his
essays seriously, and put lots of efforts and energy into the essay writing. Although most of
his classmates handwrote their essays, Keres always wrote his essays on computer and printed
them, even though he didn’t have a printer at home and had to go to the public library for the
task. He also opened a gmail account just for the saving of his essays.

43

As a second language learner, Keres made great efforts to make up for the limited exposure
of the English vocabulary that he had at home. He therefore paid much attention to vocabulary,
diction, and grammar, and considered these strength in his writings. He checked for synonyms
of words and tried to use a rich variety of words in his essays.
Keres treated the warm-up writing in a much different way. In Mr. D’s English class, there
were 6 broad categories for the warm-up writing topics: language, literature, weekends, school,
family and relationship, and social-political issues. Generally, Mr. D required them to write 3-5
sentences for the warm-up writings. Keres usually elaborated more for the topics that related to
the literature texts they were reading and the socio-political issues. However, he always wrote
extremely briefly when it came to the topics related to personal issues. For example, he seldom
mentioned his family members or friends for those entries on “weekends”, and in most cases
simply listed, rather than described the things that he did. A typical example of his weekend
entry was like the follows:
“I was planning to go out of town this weekend but changed my mind. I stayed
at home and did some reading and homework (instead). There may be plan here and
there, but there won’t be much. I think that’s pretty much it.” (Keres, 11-24-2010)
He used such vague words as “some reading” and “plan here and there” in his narrative;
but he did not get into further details. It seemed that he did not feel comfortable sharing his
personal life, especially feelings on the notebook, even though he knew that Mr.D would only
scan the writings and left a stamp. He showed his awareness of the audience clearly when he
responded to the prompt question “When do you feel most guilty?”:
“Normally I would keep this confidential, but I will start loading this off my
chest in this situation.” (Keres, 12-2-2010)

44

4.2.2

Keres’ Writings and his Personal and Social Life

Keres never chose to share his writings on personal issues publicly with his classmates, at
least during the 6 weeks that I was there in the classroom; although he did briefly share his
opinion on “voting” once.
I did not learn much about his out-of-school literacy practices from his warm-up writing
notebook. There was also very little information mentioned on his personal life, including his
family, friends, and his after-school activities. As I hadn’t had a chance to talk with him during
the break, I had to rely on the interviews to get to know him better. It was certainly not an
easy task to get him come out of his shell. Keres was the first student that I interviewed. After
talking with Mr. D., we both agreed that the school library would be an appropriate place for
my first round of interviews with the students. Keres came promptly for our first interview.
This first interview was supposed to be semi-formal, and the purpose was to get to know the
participants better. Since he didn’t do the first literacy activity sheet, I started the conversation
to ask about his plan for the upcoming Prom, which I hoped to serve as an icebreaker. However,
he just bluntly told me that he’s not going to the Prom at all, and remained silent afterward. Our
conversations remained a little awkward for a while, with me asking questions and him giving
very brief answers. I decided to change the topic to ask about his personal interests, such as
the type of music that he loved. This question seemed to turn him on, and helped him to open
up a little bit, as he told me about the that he played three instruments: piano, classical guitar,
and bass. He then told me that he subscribed to lots of blogs of some musical D.J.s, and also
emailed them from time to time. It seemed that his interests and hobbies were tightly woven
with his literacy activities. From there, our conversations on his literacy experiences became
smoothy; but he still remained very brief when our topics touched his personal space, such as
his family, and his socialization, etc..
I learned from the first interview that he participated in discussions on the web forums.
However, he did not consider his discussions on the web forums as “writings”. This is in

45

accordance with recent research findings that most of the teens who engage in some forms of
electronic personal communication do not consider themselves “writing”(Lenhart, et al., 2008).
I explained to him that anything he wrote online would be considered as a type of “writing”,
and I invited him to choose an artifact that represented his self-sponsored writing. I emphasized
that it should not be an academic essay done for the classes.We had several email exchanges
before the second interview, and I made sure that he understood what I expected to discuss with
him.
Unexpectedly, when he came to the interview, he brought with him some academic essays
that he wrote for certain classes. Seeing my disappointment, he explained that those writings
that he did on his own were either “personal”, or some “subjective” opinions and feedbacks
that he posted, which he did not even save a copy. He didn’t think those “subjective” pieces
deserve any serious consideration. Since I did not want to add to his already busy schedule
before graduation, I offered to postpone our second interview to the summer, after the spring
semester was over.
We met for our second interview in a public library close to his home, since he did not
have a car, and had to walk there. Probably due to the factor that this interview was conducted
after the spring semester was over, and he knew that he was admitted by the State college he
applied to with financial aid, Keres was much more relaxed and willing to share this time. His
identity has been transitted from a busy, anxious senior student to a proud high school graduate
and prospective college student. This also impacted our relationship as well. Although he still
considered me as a “researcher”, he ceased to treat me as a distant and remote observer, but
someone who sincerely cared about him and shared with him his pride and joy. He even invited
and added me as a contact on his Facebook page toward the end of our conversation, so that I
could have a glimpse of his personal life.
Keres still didn’t bring his “self-sponsored” writing sample this time, but luckily, I brought
with me my laptop this time, and there was WIFI in the library. We checked out some web

46

forums that he frequented, and used the search engine to look for some old posts of his. He
picked one post as the sample writing which he believed was quite representative of his posts
on the web forums. We got to talk more about his family, schooling, and socio-cultural life and
activities that fed his writings.
Keres lived with his parents and younger brother. His parents immigrated from Vietnam to
U.S. before he was born. They could understand English although they didn’t speak it. Keres
talked to his parents at home in Vietnamese; and spoke English when he talked to his younger
brother. Although his first language was Vietnamese, he could barely read or write in it. He felt
that he had a negative impact trying to learn English late-term for the “unnecessary price of the
native tongue” (Keres, 8/23/2010).
His extended family were scattered. He had an uncle in Java city who worked as a civil
engineer, which was partially the reason why he decided to major in Civil Engineering in college. He had lots of relatives down in the Southern part of the state from his dad’s side; and the
relatives from his mom’s side lived in Hannoi and Saigon, Vietnam. He found it a most lifechanging and inspiring experience when he took a trip to Vietnam. He felt at home and really
wanted to communicate to his extended family members there freely, and to understand his own
cultural heritage. After he came back, he took courses on Vietnamese, hoping to re-learn it. He
also enrolled in some language courses in Chinese, and did very well for the first semester, but
he had to drop out since he found it too difficult to learn by the second half.
Keres moved to Jave city High school in 2009 with his family. This was actually the second
time that he moved as a high school student. His family lived in a Southern city of the state as
he started his freshmen year in 2007; and then moved to a Northern city shortly after, where
he spent the first two years of high school. He found that it was very difficult to measure up
over there, with the majority of student body mainly Caucasian and Asian, and competition
extremely intense. He didn’t have a good studying environment at home, since the apartment
that his parents lived in was very noisy. He had to study at the public library, and it took him 45

47

minutes to walk back to their apartment. When the market crashed in 2008, his family lost a lot
of savings from a bad investment, and both parents lost their jobs. They were forced to move
again. In August 2009, his family moved into an apartment in Java City, right by the major high
way. Only after they settled down, his parents then looked for schools for him and his younger
brother near their apartment, and enrolled them in Java City High. This school was the closest
one that they could reach, and also had easier registration requirement compared to the other
option in the area.
Keres loved his new school, and believed that it was a very good decision to attend this
school. Although there were not a significant amount of Vietnamese students here, and the
majority of student body were Latino students, he found this school to be fairly welcoming.
Since he transferred as a junior, he found that he hadn’t had much problems as being stereotyped
or teased, since the issue of intolerance was usually among the younger people.
In the second interview, Keres admitted that it was not easy for him to make friends at Java
City high school. He ascribed this to the fact that he was “different” from his peers, just as he
once wrote in his warm-up writing:
“I know one particular word other people would describe me, and that is particularly peculiar. In other words, I’m known to be just plain weird. I’m known
to be different because of the way I think, which my values are much apart from
others, the things I say, which I do make people very silent towards me, the music I
listen to, which I’m known not to listen to what everyone else listens to, and so on.
In other words, there isn’t a lot I have in common with other people here.” (Keres
notebook 03-29-2011)
It seemed that he didn’t consider himself being “peculiar” in others’ eyes in terms of such
broad and clear-cut categories as race, ethnicity, or cultural heritage. Rather, he considered
himself more as an individual, and focused on such issues as personal value, ways of thinking,
and interests (e.g., music that he listened to). Although he used such negatively connotated
48

word as “weird”, he was actually proud of what he was; and did not want to change who he
was to become more “trendy” or more “popular”. He considered himself lucky since it was not
too hard to get along with other people here being such a “peculiar” and “weird” person, as
he managed to join a small social circle of about 10 kids of both girls and boys. They always
met in front of the hall nearby the office to chat and plan for after-school activities. Keres was
introduced to the circle by his best friend, Josh, who was a Latino student that he met in his
English class. Keres was proud of his friends, since these were all “smart kids” that focused
on hard work and good grades, who had nothing to do with the gangs and drugs. He did make
efforts to negotiate his identity as he socialized with his friends though. Under the influence
of his Spanish-speaking peers, he started to study Spanish beginning his Senior year, using this
course to make up for the Foreign Language credit. He didn’t get the chance to have lots of
serious conversations with his classmates in Spanish outside of his Spanish classes, but he did
find it easier for him to reach out and get along with his Latino peers after he learned some
Spanish. When it comes to writing, he would occasionally wrote in Spanish, but according to
him, those were usually not serious, but just “fooling around and for fun”. His knowledge of
Spanish became a type of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) that helped him to obtain a sense of
belonging at this school where the majority of students speak Spanish.
Keres’ social life, along with his emphasis on academics, influenced his out-of-school literacy activities and self-sponsored writing as well. He used his writing to interact with his friends
in his social circle. On his social network page, he shared with his friends about his favorite
books, movies, TV programs, music, and video clips. Although he was not aware of it, he also
actively seek for opportunities to interact with people outside of his social circle in a type of
discourse that was academically or institutionally recognized.
With his knowledge in multiple languages, Keres had access to a wide range of popular
and youth literacy resources from different cultural backgrounds. He read widely after school,
mainly in English and ocassionally in Spanish and Vietnamese. He listened to broadcast in

49

Vietnamese, Spanish, and British/American English. As for the print-based materials, he read
literacy canons such as The Great Gatsby and The Lord of the Flies. Books on popular culture,
such as The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star, was also on his
reading list. Besides books, he also habitually read the local newspapers. If there were topics
in the news that triggered his interests, he would submit opinions and feedbacks to the editors
via email. Usually these topics would be related to the local social and political events, and
most of the time involved issues like the current state budget, and the policies of the current
governors. Keres did not save these emails, but according to him, these were usually short
pieces of opinions and feedbacks.
His personal writings were mainly done on paper and was kept private. For example, he
handwrote his diaries to keep track of important things in his life twice a day, which he only
kept for himself. He even sent handwritten letters to his girlfriend, which was not very common
now among his i-generation peers. Just like he never allowed his warm-up notebook to be too
revealing, he never shared with me any of such personal writings throughout the research; and
always refrained himself from talking too much about this in detail. I loyally followed this rule
as well, never allowing my antenna to probe too deep or cross the boundary.

4.2.3

Keres’ Online Reading and Writing Practices

Although Keres described himself as “not an internet person”, he actually did lots of reading
and writings online. His web-based literacy activities fell into 3 major categories: Web logs,
web forums, and web-based social network.
Web logs: Keres did not consider himself very much of a blogger. Although he did use Twitter
for a while, he never really enjoyed it. Twitter is a micro-blogging service that enables its users
to send, read, and respond to short text-based posts called “tweets” of up to 140 characteres.
It was created in 2006, and as of 2011 it has gained worldwide popularity and become one of
the most popular micro-blogging and social networking site1. Keres found this type of micro50

blogging very distractive, since one could get bombarded by the messages sent by others. It
also to some extent invaded his sense of “privacy”, as he did not want others to have access
to every little detail of his life. Rather, he preferred to read the weblogs which could give him
some useful information. He subscribed to the weblogs of some musicians and musical D.J.s,
faithfully followed those blogs and read lots of song lyrics, and sent emails to the D.J.s and
other music fans from time to time to keep himself connected. What he mainly did was not to
create, but to remix the song lists and share them with friends.
Web forums: He frequented a website called Crunchyroll, which was an American website
and an international online community of more than five million members focused on streaming
East Asian media such as anime, music, etc. He wrote self-introduction on the forum by telling
others his real name, age, and his passion for music. “Duh! Music is my life!” he stated,
and shared a list of the East Asian bands that he listened to. According to him, he also joined
discussions on the animation or music there; although I did not get the opportunity to read those
posts since he didn’t save a copy. He was very aware that most of his peers at his high school
did not listen to this type of East Asian music. As he found a group of people in this online
community who enjoyed the same type of music as he did, he felt connected to his minority
cultural identity.
As for the North American popular culture, he subscribed to a few popular music channels
on Youtube, one of the most popular video-sharing website since 2005, on which users can
upload, view, share, and leave comments on videos1 . He also subscribed to some political
documentary websites and the Youtube channels with a focus on social or political issues to keep
up with the current events in the world. He wrote comments under those videos sometimes. For
example, he encouraged people to vote in his state by writing that “Election day is especially
important because we (are) the people to decide who we bring into office and what laws we pass
that will take into effect. In other words, we have these days to change the politics of our state.”
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube

51

He has also made up some forums by himself, which were more like short surveys evolving
around certain video games and some social issues.
By engaging himself in these writings, Keres created his public identity as a “thinker” who
loved to explore and critically reflect upon social and political issues. He explained to me the
meaning of his writing for him in our second interview:
J: Do you consider yourself a writer?
S: well, writer?
I can’t claim, although I do still write for some occasions.
But this is rather subjective.
Because I really don’t.
Writing is really not much of a hobby for me.
But it’s more like keeping me active in some organizations and communities.
Like I sign for petitions, making efforts to have other people to help other
people.
Achieve certain aims (Keres, interview #2).
Although he did not consider himself a “writer”, he used writing as a medium of empowerment as he exhibited a critical stance on social issues and actively participated in social organizations and communities.
Social network: Although he was not a big fan of online social networks as some of his peers
did, and was never addicted to them, he did still read the updates of the webpages of his friends,
and discussed about various issues on his own page. Like most of his peers, he also created
a profile on Facebook, one of the most popular social networking service and website2 ; and
visited it on a regular base, although not daily. Interestingly, all his “contacts” online were
actually friends that he met offline, such as his classmates, schoolmates, or relatives. He only
2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

52

interacted with a limited number of friends; and those that he communicated regularly with
were mainly from his own small “circle”. He shared some audios or videos of the music that
he loved, and discussed about them with his friends. He discussed about the school schedule
on his page, expressed his opinions for school-related issues, and scheduled meet ups with his
friends after school. He even discussed about homework and his participation in some academic
support groups with his friends, as seen in the following example.
Keres: I have to check through my transcript...
Josh: What classes you need??
Keres: I wanted to take gov/economy and orchestra but i’m having a hard
time clarifying myself on my schedule...o.o looking through it, i feel little
confused about which classes i passed and which ones i haven’t...
Josh: Damn JCH*3 why can’t it just be simple
Keres: exactly
Josh: Oh well damn ib
Keres: To be honest I don’t see a point in taking full IB
Josh: Just looks good on college app
Keres: I think it’s just for the college credits (oh and have you thought of
something of the link I just posted?)
Josh: Hmmm well its hard to see it on mobile grrr
Keres: i’ll tell you about the joke when we go back to school
Josh: Lol okay its like 2 days away
Keres: I know right?
Josh: Did you ever get orchestra back?
Keres: They didn’t tell me anything about the schedule change yet
Josh: Damn hurry back ahahahaha
3 *Java

City High

53

Keres: Yep, still waiting. Hmm...I think I’ll go to the office first thing in the
morning
Here, Keres was discussing with Josh about such topics as the transcript, classes, schedule,
government class, economy class, the orchestra, IB class, college credits, college preparation,
and the school office, etc, which all belonged to the official world of school. The fine line between the in-school and out-of-school was actually blurred; and the social network had become
an extension of his face-to-face communications with the friends, and a bridge between his official world of schoolmates and classmates and unofficial world of friends. This conversation
cited above also revealed some unique characteristic about Keres’ writings on the online spaces.
Keres seldom used acronyms, and almost never used curse words as Josh and some of his friends
did. He chose to write in complete sentences and paid attention to spelling and grammar even
when he was just “chatting” with his best friends on his own social network page. Again, he
seemed not to value those “trendy” or “cool” discourse among his peers such as cursing; but
placed more value on the institutionally accepted discourse.
Besides the personal interests and school-related topics, the recurrent themes on his Facebook pages were social and political issues. For example, he sometimes shared links to some
news articles and Youtube videos, and encouraged his friends to participate in the pledge of
stopping the Internet Blacklist Legislation in order to protect free speech and internet innovations. What distinguished him from the other participants on the sharing of videos, was that he
was not only sharing, but also engaged himself in very serious discussions related to the video.
He seemed to lay an emphasis on his opinions rather than emotions on public forums; and seldom allow his writing to be overly revealing his feelings. Through the discussions of these
topics, he also had the chance to interact with the strangers that he met on the web forums.
The piece of sample writing that Keres selected in our second interview was a typical example of his sharing and discussion on the videos about social and political issues. It was a
video clip from the CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System, a major US commercial broadcast-

54

ing television network) news broadcasting, about a town in a Southern state laid off its entire
police force after the city council cut the police budget to zero to make up for a budget deficit
of $185,000. Keres posted the link of this video on both his personal page and a public page
on Facebook and added a comment in bold font: “At least there’s one less necessity to pay
for with taxes. Now go buy a gun.” A few minutes later, this comment attracted some other
Facebook users4 , and they started to have a discussion on this topic: At least there’s one less
necessity to pay for with taxes. Now go buy a gun. 9:19 a.m.
Bibo: At least Chief B recognizes the the police are not supposed to be in
place to generate revenue. (9:24am)
Keres: Clarification please? (9:28am)
Bibo: The police chief, in the posted video, said, in response to the claim
that the police department didn’t generate enough revenue through tickets,
that police departments are not revenue generators. This starts at about 50
seconds into the video. (9:50am)
Bibo: My point is that here’s a decent cop that isn’t merely a tool for the
state. (9:51am)
Keres: Okay now I get what you’re saying. But the police does have expenditures as well. (9:55am)
Bibo: I do not dispute that. Expenditures are an integral part of almost
all endeavors. However that is not a valid reason to mandate that police
generate revenue through tickets. If government at any level cannot operate
within their budget hold a bake sale. Come up with a legitimate means of
generating income, like we are expected to do, and leave us alone if we’re
not harming others. (10:12am)
Keres: Of course not, the police have duty for safety of the people. Un4 All

the names in the cited discussion were pseudonyms.

55

fortunately, the means of revenue from tickets and fines aren’t justified. It’s
common in my area unfortunately, the police trying to claim a driving violation for example. (10:15am)
Bibo: In my area at the county level deputies have been told that, with
the current economic state, they should issue few warnings. I learned this
from a friend with connections therein. When he was told this, he tells me,
that all he could think was how right I am. Honestly I wish I were wrong.
(10:26a.m.)
Keres: So what’s going on around that area? (10:28a.m.)
Bibo: How do you mean? (10:51a.m.)
Keres: The state of the police enforcement in terms of economic means,
how are they getting by? (10:59a.m.)
Bibo: Locally, I honestly don’t know. I haven’t researched it yet. But I
do know that this states economy is in the crapper and because of that
I speculate, based on the use of quotas by law enforcement and the everpresent “authorize us more money” campaigns every local election cycle in
addition to what seems to be an emerging pattern, that they will soon be
operating in the red. I think this will lead to more citations for the sole
purpose of generating revenue. I have heard of a federal investigation into
the activities of the local prosecutors office, but I can’t say if that is related.
Again, I hope to be wrong. (11:10a.m.)
Bibo:Sorry to cut this short, but I must prepare for work. Good day to you,
sir. (11:16a.m.) Keres:See you too. (11:18a.m.)
Paula: Or... you know... tax fraud, kidnappings, etc? (11:57a.m.)
Keres: Idk, some vigilante? (12:00p.m.)
Matzuda: How about... oh I don’t know, a simple tax increase? (1:34p.m.)

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Keres: I can say with absolute confidence the Republican party, especially
members in power, don’t want it (but the taxpayers will still have to pay).
(1:37p.m.)
When asked why he decided to start the conversation here rather than adding to the already
existing comments on the Youtube webpage, he replied that, “There are pages and pages (of
comments)...too many comments on the Youtube, and people don’t usually follow up on you
unless there are strong emotions involved.” (Keres, interview #2) In other words, by posting the
link in this forum, he consciously picked his own target audience, and had expectations for the
participants to have some “real” discussions. Another reason that he provided was that he felt a
sense of membership in this much smaller web community.
After Keres initiated the discussion, he monitored this thread closely. Although this discussion was an asynchronized one that involved 4 participants, it was also an ongoing discussion
that lasted for more than 4 hours with the first comment posted on 9:19a.m. and the last comment posted on 1:37p.m.. During the time period, Keres kept a close eye on the thread that he
started, and almost always responded within 5 minutes after other people posted a comment.
He also took an active role as the discussion host, by asking open-ended questions such as
“Clarification, please?” and “What’s going on in that area?”
This online discussion shared discourse features of both oral and written language. A good
example would be that they used both “cop” and “police” in the conversation. It was also
interesting to note that, although Keres did not know any of the people that participated in the
discussion, they still followed a kind of etiquette and said goodbye to each other as if in real life,
face-to-face conversations. Bibo, the participant who engaged himself in a serious discussion
and produced the most input, called Keres “sir” after he said his farewell. By doing so he was
not only showing some respect to Keres the discussion host, but also added a formal tone to this
discussion.

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The discussion also shared some common features with the academic discourse, such as the
linguistic and rhetorical forms. Except for the use of “IDK” (the acronym for “I don’t know”)
once, which showed his familiarity with the internet slang, Keres did not use abbreviations elsewhere. Both Bibo and him spelled all the words correctly and also wrote complete sentences.
They also used formal diction as “clarification”, “in response to”, “dispute”, “research”, “justified”, “emerging pattern”, “for the sole purpose of”, “vigilante”, etc, which were more common
in the written discourse. In the contrast, the other two participants, who simply left some simple
opinions without further elaboration, wrote in a less formal manner by using the punctuation
mark “...” and wrote incomplete sentences. Their conversation did not develop into discussions
as between that of Bibo and Keres.
Academic writing in the English-speaking world is concerned with argumentation, summary, synthesis, evaluation, reflection, and analysis (Lillis & Turner, 2001). As Bibo and Keres
engaged themselves in the discussions, they also utilized some elements that were common in
the writing of an argumentative essay, such as stating the issue, stating the position, supporting
the argument with details or examples, writing in a cohesive manner, supporting the argument
with details or examples, responding to the readers’ reactions, concerns or objections, and writing a cogent conclusion. For instance, both Keres and Bibo cited examples from their local area
or other resources (e.g. “It’s common in my area...”, “I learned this from a friend with connections therein”) and to support their opinion that “the means of revenue from tickets and fines
aren’t justified”. In so doing, they transformed their sociocultural experiences into evidence of
their arguments. Another example was when Bibo cited the police chief, he started his statement
by using the exact phrase that Keres used (“At least...”), either consciously or unconsciously. He
also provided the information where this citation was (“This starts at about 50 seconds into the
video.”), as if he was expecting Keres to ask, “Where was that?” They also made evaluations
of each others’ opinons (“of course not”, “I do not dispute that”) as they followed up with each
other. Instead of re-stating the same points, their conversations flowed and developed.

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The above-mentioned elements of Western Academic writing, especially the rhetoric and
socio-linguistic norms, were considered to be one of the biggest challenges for the second language writers. Typical writing courses targeting at the English language learners have included
the learning of such skills as recognizing and understanding audience, paraphrasing and summarizing information from various resources, providing examples to support conclusion, and
writing ffective thesis statement as important objectives (Ferris & Hedgcock, 2004). These
were also listed as learning objectives in Mr. D.’s English class. Although he never considered
these as “writing” before my interviews, Keres chose this as a sample representative of his writings, which showed that he highly valued the participation in this type of writings, which served
as an opportunity to extend his learning of the academic writing. When Keres engaged himself
in the the web-based discussions that shared similarities with the academically accepted argumentative essays, he got the chance to “escape from the limitations of the social group in which
he was born, and come into contact with a broader environment” (Dewey 1916, p20) through
such interactions. He also gained himself access to a type of “social capital” (Bourdieu, 1986)
which was valued by the institutions.

4.2.4

Summary

Overall, Keres’ motivation for academic success had influenced his school-sponsored and
out-of-school, self-sponsored writings in many aspects, such as topics, genres, and characteristics of the language. For example, he frequently wrote on similar topics such as school, music,
and socio-political issues in both his in-school warm-up writings and his self-sponsored writings. It was obvious that he preferred certain genres to others, as he never wrote poems, or short
stories, but preferred discussions. He also valued certain discourses more than others. He placed
more emphasis on argumentative essays than warm-up writings. For his “public” writings, he
chose to write in complete sentences with correct spelling and grammar. He unconsciously used
certain types of self-sponsored writings, such as his engagement on web-based discussions, as

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opportunities to interact with others in academic discourse and extend his learning of the academic writing. For him, academic writing was a type of “social capital” that could help him
have access to higher education and better career.
Keres used writing as a social practice to establish and negotiate his own identity. He drew
a clear line between his private and public writings as he wrote outside of school; and between
what he was willing or not willing to share. He wrote his private writings, such as journals and
love letters on paper, which he chose not to share with others. At the same time, he kept his
discussions on schooling and society open and public. To some extent, the boundary between
his official and unofficial world was crossed and blurred, as the major audience of his selfsponsored writings were the same social circle of friends that he had at school. Besides the
interactions with his “circle of friends”, he had also managed to expand the scope of social
interactions in his self-sponsored writings. He used writing on the web forums as a venue to
keep himself active in some communities and organizations while articulating a critical stance,
such as signing petitions, submitting opinions to local newspaper editors, and discussing about
social or political issues on the Youtube channels that he subscribed to. Through this, writing
became a medium for him to articulate a critical stance, and helped him establish his public
identity as a “thinker”.

4.3

Edward: Story of a Poet and a Struggling Academic Writer

Edward was a 18-year old male Hispanic student in Java city high school. He’s short, tanned,
and very energetic. As a sport fan, he did wrestling for 2 years, and took a weightlifting class
during the senior year. Despite his very busy schedule as a senior student, he managed to go to
gym regularly. He planned to study Kinesiology at a local community college after graduation
and his professional goal at that time was to become a sport trainer.
Edward’s family immigrated from Mexico and now lived in the downtown area in Java
City. The whole family shared a condo with some relatives in a clean neighborhood in the

60

downtown area, where the trendy and the dumpy constructions co-exist in close proximity. His
family attended a local Catholic church, but Edward stopped going there since 7th grade as he
considered himself not a “church-goer”.
Spanish was his first language. His parents, brothers and sisters all spoke Spanish at home.
Edward considered himself “lucky” as compared to his elder brother, who came to U.S. at 10
and didn’t know any English at all. “He struggled a lot, and even today he still kinda has an
accent, sort of, and my sister too. I don’t have an accent, so a lot of people confuse me for being
Filipino sometimes.” (Edward interview #1) He learned English by watching cartoons, and was
proud that he was the only one in his family that did not “have an accent”. He still remembered
that English was his best subject during his elementary school years, which made him “one
of the smartest students” in his classes. As a high school student, Edward was labeled a“RP”
(Reclassified proficiency) student, which meant that he was considered a limited English proficiency student when he enrolled as a freshman, but later passed a literacy test of the school and
was reclassified and put into the mainstream English class. He took Spanish courses during the
first two years of high school, and put “Spanglish”5 as the “language spoken” on his Facebook
page.

4.3.1

A Reluctant Reader and Procrastinating Writer

He was recommended to me by Mr. D., who commented that he was a “good writer”. I
expected to see lots of reading and writing activities from him before meeting with him for
interview, as I had with the other participants. When I saw his initial literacy activity sheet,
however, I realized that this would be a difficult case for me. Edward very briefly answered the
questions about his top 3 out-of-class activities: exercise, texting, and listening to music. His
literacy log showed very few types of literacy activities. He left most of the items blank and only
5 Spanglish

refers to the blend (at different degrees) of Spanish and English, in the speech
of people who speak parts of two languages, or whose normal language is different from that
of the country where they live. The Hispanic population of the United States and the British
population in Argentina use varieties of Spanglish.
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checked two items on the sheet: Facebook: 23 hours/day, everywhere; and text message: 24/7,
everywhere. There was no mentioning of his engagement with any other literacy activities; and
neither did he answer any other questions related to his literacy practices. I started to wonder
why he volunteered to participate in my study while refusing to provide detailed information
about his literacy life.
I had a glimpse of his in-class notebooks before the first interview, hoping to get some ideas
about his personal and literate lives. I found it challenging to read his writings, since he wrote
most of his warm-up entries in pencil, and his handwriting was very hard to recognize. The
longest entries that he produced were almost all about the weekends. He spent many of his
weekends with family, relatives, and friends. He worked on some weekends as a Cashier at
big retailer supermarkets, such as Target. He loved to bike on his beach cruisers with friends,
visiting the flea markets with family members, and watching wrestling tournaments. He used
some Spanish words in his writings, especially when he talked about food.
Edward did not appear very accessible at first, since he did not like to smile. We managed
to have a great chat about his family and friends in our frist interview based on the information
that I learned from his in-class notebook. I learned that he fit well in the school and felt very
comfortable here. Most of his friends attended the same school, and they went outside of school
over the weekend to eat downtown and party. The conversations became less smooth when we
started to talk about his reading and writing practices. When asked whether he did blogging or
twittering, he seemed as if these were some kinds of insults:
Jiang: Do you blog?
Edward: Blogging? No.
Jiang: No? Twittering?
Edward: NO! NO twitter, NO.
Jiang: What about a website called “tumblr”? Do you...
Edward(interrupts): OH NO, only girls. ONLY Girls.

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He used three “No”s in a row; and as if that was not enough, he also emphasized that “only
girls” loved such social media as Twitter or Tumblr, which was not the fact at all. He also denied
himself to be a hard-working student or even a reader in the following conversations, as quoted
below (underline added by me):
Jiang: What do you do when you are not studying?
Edward: Honestly I never study Chill on the couch, listen to the music, cool
out of it Go to gym. That’s pretty much it.
Jiang: Do you write something?
Edward: I text message all the time.
Jiang: What do you guys talk about?
Edward: Generally, it’s like “let’s do something”.
Jiang: Do you read anything?
Edward: Do I read?
Jiang: Yeah, like, beside the things assigned by your teachers?
Any novels? Any magazines?
Edward: I read because I have to
Not because I want to
So if someone says “Read this for fun”
Then I’m like “No”
Although he told me that he never read any webpages, he reluctantly admitted that he did
read his friends’ Facebook pages when he was talking to them over the phone. He pointed out
that he only read those pages when he was “not working”. He also used to visit the web forums
and leader boards when he played the online video games. Those, he emphasized, was not for
the purpose of “reading” per se, but for winning the video games; and he had stopped playing
video games because this was a very busy time and he needed to do his work to graduate.
When asked whether he read any newspapers, he told me that he only read magazines on sports
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and fitness, but refused to go in details about those magazines, as if those were something
inappropriate for him. Edward appeared more relaxed and confident as he talked about certain
topics (e.g., sports, hip-pop music, video games) while refrained from other topics such as
Twitter, study and reading. It was probable that he considered such topics as sports more “cool”
and “manly” than Twitter or “study”. This seemed to explain his different attitude toward the
topics, and yet i still found it hard to understand why there was a string of unwillingness attached
for him to admit that he ever read anything for fun. I left a question mark on this issue in my
post-interview research memo, since I expected a boy to talk passionately about the sport and
fitness magazines, especially when he was such a big fan of sports. After our first interview,
Edward voluntarily added me as a friend to his Facebook, so I got a chance to peek into his outof-school world. I was very excited, since I considered it a great opportunity to see the ways
in which his engagement with reading and writing were enacted in the online social spaces. He
used text messages most of the times, and I did not have access to those personal and private
data. I expected to learn more about his social world from this famous social network website.
Like all the other participants of this study, he had hundreds of friends on his Facebook account.
However, unlike his peers, he was not that active at all on the social media, although he claimed
to be on Facebook for 23 hours a day. He frequently added people as new friends, and pressed
the “like” button for many links, such as local restaurants, movies, music platform, pop singers,
youtube videos, and radio stations. Those were the two major activities that he engaged in, and
there was not many things for me to explore at all. He almost never updated his status to tell
people about his feelings, etc., although he did change his profile photos from time to time and
text message with some friends about the photos. On very rare occasions he would provide
extremely short answers to a couple of questions, such as “Class 2011” to the question “Which
class is the best?” and “Oaxaca” to the question “Best state in Mexico”. Although Edward built
a personal profile by selecting “favorites”, such as the music, movies, comic websites, television
programs, and personal interests, he did not write anything about himself on his Facebook page.

64

I noticed that he listed music, sports, and procrastination as his “hobbies”. When I asked him
what it meant during a break after my observation, he told me that he always procrastinated
with homework, especially when it came to academic essays.
I started to wonder whether I should continue to include him in my study. His self identification as a reluctant reader was alarming to me. After all, during the early stages of data
collection I had not been able to create a full profile of his literacy engagement as I did for other
participants. Besides, toward the end of our first interview I made it very clear to him about my
expectations for the literacy activity sheet, and made sure that he understood every item listed.
To my great disappointment, the literacy activity sheet that Edward submitted remained blank
for most items; and the pattern continued. Just as I was hesitant whether I should drop this case,
I ran into Edward on my way to the school library. When asked whether he was heading for
a class, he replied to me that he worked as a teacher’s assistant in the Freshmen English class,
helping the teacher grade papers. Surprised, I suddenly remembered that Edward was not an
at-risk student at all, even though he seemed to deny the “good student” identity and labeled
himself a “book-hater”. Mr. D. recommended him to me as a “good writer”, not an at-risk,
struggling reader or writer in the mainstream English class.
Although Edward identified himself as a reluctant reader and claimed that he “never study”,
I finally realized it was not really the case. Had he not worked hard, it won’t be possible for him
to keep a good academic record, as several of his teachers told me. Besides English, biotech,
and physics, he even took an I.B. Class in history (an I.B. Class, or International Baccalaureate
class is similar to an Advanced Placement class, but it is also internationally accepted) . In
other words, Edward was actually boasting, if not lying, about the little time that he spent on
studying and reading. The image that he presented to me in this first interview and the image
that I learned from his teachers and through my observation seemed to be very contradictory.
With confusion and amazement, I borrowed his in-class notebook and read it again, more
carefully this time. I noticed that he seldom mentioned about his reading or writing activities,

65

unless directly asked about by the prompts. Among the few times he wrote about literacy, his
I.B. History class seemed to be a recurrent theme. One entry caught my eyes, as he considered
the quick writing-up of homework a “waste of his break time”:
“Ohh I didn’t do my homework for IB history last night, Damn that’s going to
suck because that’s what I got next period. I could do it at break real quick but then
again do I want to waste my break doing that. Nope, don’t think I will.” (Notebook
08/19, 2010)
I would have been a little more judgmental had I not read a more recent entry first:
“So this week I want to have all my work done because I’m worried my grades
are slipping, especially in History. The IB paper is worrying me. I want to spend
more time doing work and less time doing non school related activities.” (Notebook
3/12/2011)
It seemed that he had mixed feelings about the IB history assignment. He was apparently
stressed out on both occasions. It was interesting to note that he handled the two situations
in different manners. In the first case he was thinking loudly, as if having a conversation or
even “bargain” with himself. He then used the tactic of a complete denial of the value of the
assignment to justify his own procrastination. He made it look so meaningless or valueless that
it was not even worth a brief 10-minute break. While in the second case he seemed to take the
task more seriously, making a resolution but at the same time feeding on a guilty conscience for
the “non school related activities” to beat himself up for harder work. There was an undertone
of negative feelings associated with both cases, as he suffered from a conflict between what he
wanted to do and what he had to do. This might partially explain the contradictory images that
he presented in relation to study and literacy, since my first interview with him was conducted
around the time he wrote the second entry. He presented to me an “ideal image” of himself
who could breeze through this tough senior year: “never study...chill on the couch...cool out of
66

it”; while in reality he was very frustrated and challenged, especially with the academic essays.
This could also been seen from his assessment about his own essay writing (underline added by
me):
“I need to work on my Introduction because I feel like I write too much in the
intro. My conclusion seems weak to me too. I can never really summarize my essay
without repeating myself too much. I don’t know what is good about my writing
honestly. I don’t feel like I’m a very good writer.” (Notebook 02/11/2011)
I did a “validity check” with him during my second interview on this issue. He admitted
that he was lacking the type of support for academic writings. With compassion, I expressed
a concern whether an advanced class like an I.B. history Class was difficult. And here’s his
response:
“Yeah, I’m stressing like crazy
If I don’t pass it, I don’t graduate
You have to write a lot
You have to write lots of essays
You have to outline about some history
They give you like document, and then
You have to write an essay based on the document and the crap
It’s like next Thursday
3 hours of testing
And then another 3 hours Friday" (Edward interview #2)
He was very honest with his feelings this time, although for some reason he used the second
person when he talked about the writing assignments. On the one hand, he was proud of himself
that he was smart enough to take the I.B. Class; while on the other hand he was overwhelmed
by the heavy load of homework. As we compared the writing tasks of the I.B. History class
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to those of the English class, we found that the former was much more demanding and not
“culturally relevant” (Ladson-Billings,1995) for him, since there was usually no connections
between these writings and his real life at all. He then gave a very long narrative venting about
the history class, telling me that it was always so packed and full that there was only lectures
and no small group discussions or any help from the teacher. He seemed to feel much better
after our conversations, as he commented “This is cool!” Edward promised to bring his binder
for that class for me to have a look at, which he did later. He refused to use his written work
from this class as a representative written sample though, since he admitted that he was just
“getting by”.

4.3.2

A Poet Eager to Share his Writings

There was a subtle change in our relationship after the second interview. He ceased to put on
the mask of a reluctant reader and became more open to share with me about his literate lives.
He even expressed his eagerness to read the book “The Catcher in the Rye” in his warm-up
writing (which he knew that I would read and make a copy). Later, he also shared the writings
with his classmates in the English class:
“I am looking forward to reading the book. I’ve heard so much about it, so it
makes it interesting for me.”
He also shared his opinions on the theme, the main conflict, the protagonist, the tone, the
mood, and the motif of the book as well in the small group and whole class discussions. It was
the first time that he ever took down a lot of notes on his notebook.
It was around this time that he shared with me one of his poems as a writing sample for
this study representative of his writings (Figure 4.1). I was pleasantly surprised, since this was
the first time that I ever had access to his “real” self-sponsored writings. It was actually a love
poem to his girlfriend, which he wrote when he was required to attend Saturday school and sit
in the school cafeteria doing his homework for four hours. When I was reading the poem, he
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Crazy how we started off as friends
I don’t know from where to begin
Been a while since I felt like this
Ever since that first kiss
Glad I took that shot and didn’t miss
Although were not together it feels as if we are
I would feel empty if we were ever to depart
With you it’s different
Im not quite sure how to explain
All I know is that I’m here to stay
Good and bad I’ll make sure to never go away
I’m hoping you feel how I feel
Because my feelings for you are just real
I know it may be hard to believe
Especially coming from someone like me
But trust in what we have...
Figure 4.1: To Rizz.

looked both proud and anxious, reminding me that this poem had been written in a hurry and
there were lots of typos.
Despite the fact that this poem was “briskly wrote it in about 30 minutes”, I found that
he used a rhyme scheme (e.g., kiss (Line 5), miss(Line 6); stay (Line 10), away (Line 11);
feel (Line 12), real (Line 13)) and some rhetoric devices, which showed his sensitivity and
familiarity to the genre of poetry. There also seemed to be some influence from popular music
as well. Apparently, this was a type of recreational writing that he enjoyed doing, and yet it
was not solely for the purpose of fun. He crossed out some of the lines toward the end of the
poem, which showed that he went through a process of revising for this short poem. He not only
showed an interest in the exploration of language and self-expression, but also created a space
of his own from the “Saturday school”. It was a way that he was making sense of his life as an
adolescent and taking power(Camitta, 1993; Knobel, 1999). His voluntary sharing of this poem
with me indicated that he was taking pride in his own writings and hence became more open up
both his literate and personal world to an adult reader who showed interest in and compassion
for his experience.

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His interest or abilities were not valued or supported in his school practices, however, as in
the case of many urban youth who tried to construct their independent identities in adolescence
(Moje, 2000). When asked whether Mr. D. or any of his classmates knew about his poetry
writings, he shook his head. He told me that he had written “lots of” poems here and there, but
he didn’t keep them, so he ended up losing most of them.

4.3.3

Money and Finance: Another Central Issue of Edward’s Writings

As I periodically made copies of his warm-up notebook and read the entries intensively, I
also gradually found out that his worry about money and finance seemed to be another dominant,
or even central theme of his writings. He constantly mentioned the issue of money on a variety
of topics. For example, when asked whether he believed in the “American dream”, he wrote,
“If you want to be successful you have to go to college and right now it is a lot. Loans can
help you go through it but you still have to pay it back and it derails your success. ”(Notebook
9/8/2010). In response to the prompt “what is the key to success?” His answer was, “ I think
that wealth is a great key to being successful. With wealth comes great benefits like going to
prestige schools and knowing the rest of your life is guaranteed. Wealthy kids can buy their
way into any university and could afford the best of tutors if they need help. They also likely to
inherit money from their parents from a business or something like that.” (Notebook 9/15/2010)
Around the same time, he recorded an experience of being tricked by a letter which informed
him that he had won a million dollar fortune. Although deep in his heart he knew this must
be a spam, he still made the phone call “just in case”, paid 20 bucks over the phone and was
pissed off to find out that “it was a mistake”. He even shared his personal financial information
in detail in one of his in-class writing entries, as if he was doing some bookkeeping:
“I guess when I was working from May to September of last year my goal was
to save all my money. I planned it all out n guessed that I would make at least
$2,000. But then I would have to pay my phone bill, I would go out each weekend,

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I bought shoes and clothes. I had at least $1,000 in my bank n then I was down to
almost $700. Now I have $400. It sucks that I didn’t save up.” (Edward 01/06/2011)
I noticed that he was using the simplified “n” for the word “and”, as if he were writing online
or text messaging. I also felt his desperation of earning and saving money. After reading this,
it suddenly occurred to me that he was the only student that made the issue of money upfront
in our first interview. He told me that he only applied to a local community college since they
would provide him with financial aid. “The counselors said I should go state(The state college)
, but the State (college) won’t help me financially... parents make too much, supposedly. I’m
gonna go to the community one.” (Edward interview #1) I did not get a chance to talk with him
on the issue of money during or after our second interview, since it was somewhat personal and
sensitive, and I felt inadequate and under-prepared for this topic. I also considered this a tough
ethical decision that I had to make, since I wanted to keep my non-obtrusive stance. Instead, I
scheduled an appointment with one of his counselors. It actually took me a long time to do so,
since there were four different types of counseling programs offered at his school, among which
one of them have worked with all of the four informants of this study on academic issues only.
The one that provided help with college application advices was funded by the U.S. Department
of Education and worked with the seniors only. Students who are eligible should submit an
application to participate in this program. Edward was the only one among my informants and
also the very few among all the senior students that submitted an application. When I finally
got the chance to talk to Cindy, the school counselor for this program, she told me that Edward
had actually seen her for several times on the issue of scholarship and college application at
the beginning of the senior year. Based on his academic records Edward deserved for a better
college, and yet despite her best efforts, he was not convinced at all. He declined her suggestion
to apply for a state university due to financial reasons. He even told Cindy that his elder brother
went to a community college first, and then successfully transferred to a 4-year university 2
years later., saving a lot of tuition by going this route.

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After my visit to the counseling center, I now understood why Edward mentioned money
in almost every warm-up entry in September 2010, which marked the beginning of the fall
semester in his senior year, when he met with the school counselor. The issue of money had not
only become a burden on his mind, but also led him to question the cost and benefit of college
education in general, since he believed that the paying back of college loan “derails” one’s
success. As observed by Barton (1991) and Street (1984), “Certain socially situated beliefs,
values, and purposes could shape how and why people use literacy”. It may also partially
explained why he was so calculating about the reading and writing tasks that he chose to engage
in. In the case of Edward, such beliefs and values even affected his school and career choices.
About one year later, as I was writing up my dissertation chapters, Edward dropped out from the
community college and joined the U.S. Navy. It seemed that he did not find value in a college
degree, at least in this stage of his life.

4.3.4

Summary

The case of Edward was that of the identity negotiation of a second language reader and
writer. Many factors, such as class, race, gender, culture, age, and their relationships could all
contribute to the shaping of one’s identity (Heath, 1998) as well as the way they engage with
literacy. Edward presented to me an image of a reluctant reader and a procrastinating writer at
first; and later gradually revealed to me a different image as an eager reader and even a poet.
These seemingly contradictory images were actually a sign that he had been struggling with
and reconciling between some inner conflicts. There were deep reasons for his procrastination
with academic writings. As a student with good grades, he wished to go to college and achieve
success; and yet his determinations were impeded by his constant worry about the financial
burden of the college loan and his doubt in the real value of the college degree. Although
he was considered “a good writer” by his mainstream English teacher, he actually felt very
challenged and helpless with the academic essay writings, especially those in his A.P. History

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class, and considered “nothing good” about his own writing.

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CHAPTER 5
STORIES OF THE 2 FEMALE ELL WRITERS

5.1

Marissa: Story of a Social Network Writer Who Used Writing as a
Live Broadcast

Marissa was a 17-year old Latino girl with big eyes and curly long black hair. She was of
medium height, and was very slim. She looked fashionable with light makeup, trendy clothes,
and delicate milky white nail polish. She was a cheerful girl who liked to smile, which made her
appear very friendly. She was a migrant student, which meant that her parents or guardians were
migrant workers who had moved for the purpose of finding temporary or seasonal employment
during the past three years.
She started as a LP (limited English proficiency) student as a freshman, but later made rapid
progress in English skills and moved to the category of RP (reclassified English proficiency).
As I discussed with Mr. D. whom I should choose for this study among the group of students
who agreed to participate, he recommended her as a hard-working student who always turned in
her homework and who “wrote well”. I noticed that she was very determined to graduate with
good grades as she set her goals at the beginning of the school year: “This year I hope to pass
all my classes with a B or better. I plan to do all my homework and all the work the teachers
assign me. I also wanna be involved in all the school activities such as March madness, Prom,
home coming etc.” (Notebook 08-17-2010) She was also very active in class, always raising
hands to answer questions or share her in-class writings.
I was very impressed with the initial literacy activity sheet that she turned in. She selected
every single writing activity on the checklist except calendar/planner writing. She spent most
time on the internet (mainly on social network websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube),
watching movies, and talking with friends over the phone or through text message. Besides her

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engagement in online chatting, text messaging, blogging, and twittering, she also spent one hour
emailing every day, which was very unusual among her peers. She wrote to-do lists and kept
hand-written sticky notes and scribbling all the time, and always made a shopping list before
she headed toward the market or the mall.
Marissa’s initial literacy activity sheet served as good tools of icebreakers as I had the first
interview with her. We were not familiar at that time, and it was basically a question-answer
mode at the beginning. She became relaxed and started to open up when we talked about her
family members. Her mother and step father were both migrant workers in industry, who did not
know or speak English at home. She had an elder sister, a younger sister (freshman in the same
high school), and a younger brother who was in elementary school. According to her, she spoke
English only with her sisters. My impression was that she seemed not very comfortable about
the topic of herself as a second language learner, as she showed some hesitation and uneasiness
as she talked about her first language:
Jiang: What is your first language?
Marissa: My first language...um...(pause)well, Spanish I think.
Marissa: Because I was
I speak Spanish at home
But only because my mom and dad
Because they don’t speak English so
And with my sisters now we ONLY speak English
Jiang: Do you write in Spanish from time to time?
Marissa: Not really
Just a little bit I guess
Jiang: Do you listen to songs in Spanish? And what about movies?
Marissa: Mainly English.
Her uneasiness with the topic of Spanish was not equal to the refusal of her home language,
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however. After all, most of the students at Java City High School speak Spanish at home,
and it was considered a dominant language on campus besides English. Mr. Moreno, the
ELL coordinator at Java City High School, once explained to me about some students’ mixed
feelings about their home language: “I would say that 90% of the Spanish-speaking students
treasure their cultural heritage. And yet a small percent of students tend to deny their ability
of (speaking) Spanish. They would say, I don’t know that, although we know that they do
know. They feel insecure as teenagers....and they associate some negative images with speaking
Spanish. They feel that if you speak Spanish, you are poor. ” I was not sure whether this was
the case for Marissa, though, since it was also likely that she considered her English proficiency
a source of pride. She has gained much respect from her peers as a good student; and had the
privilege to serve as a literacy “agent” between her family and relatives in Mexico, translating
documents, and writing mails as she transcribed her parents’ words. She explained that although
she liked to email some of her friends, she didn’t like to email her family, since “they don’t have
(emails).” Instead, she used Skype and chatted online with her extended family members back
in Mexico.
I learned more about her literacy practices during our first interview. Besides her role as the
“literacy agent” for her family members, Marissa was heavily engaged in literacies practices
out of school through social network, such as Facebook, Youtube, Tumblr, and Twitter. It was
rare for her to read a book or newspapers, since she did most of her readings online. Citing her
own words, she “lived online from 7:00a.m. To 1:00a.m.”, and was “heavily addicted” to these
social networks. Just like my experience with Keres and Phoenix, I got a welcoming ticket into
Marissa’s personal and social world via the internet. This has been one of the most important
means for data collection in this qualitative research that I have conducted with these adolescent
students. It was through our online communication that I further explained about my study,
asked her follow-up questions, got access to her public and personal writings,maintained our
relationship, and provided support and suggestions for her future career choice as an elementary

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teacher. She had always wanted to become a teacher but found herself unsure about that. As the
babysitter for her younger brother, who was always in trouble, she couldn’t imagine “teaching
twenty something kids who are all crazy at that age.” She also shared with me the story of her
cousin who never knew what she wanted to be and wasted a lot of money changing her majors.
Thanks to these online chatting and email exchanges, I became a legitimate “member” in her
social world.
Marissa was a very active and proliferate writer on her social network. With her permissions,
I had accumulated over 100 pages of her Facebook writings and Tumblr posts, and about 120
pages of her twitter writings, not to mention the numerous videos that she had uploaded and
shared with her friends on Youtube. As I browsed through pages and pages of writings, I kept
thinking about Mr. D.’s comments “They don’t write by themselves” and wondered how much
their English teacher had missed about their literacy lives. I would never even imagine how rich
the data could be had I not been invited to her social network. I got to know more about her
family, her literacy life, and her social and cultural activities through email exchanges, online
chatting, and browsing her social network pages.

5.1.1

Facebook: A Place to Share her Life Stories

Marissa was a very sociable and popular girl, who had more than 420 friends on her Facebook. Every time she updated her status on Facebook (See Appendix F), no matter how trivial
or short, there would always be lots of comments and “likes” from her friends. She was constantly updating her status to keep her friends informed about what she was doing or planning
to do (e.g., “Work was pretty interesting today x) hella tired thoughh. gona eat tacos from los
3 eyes!!! best tacos in town :)”). She even set up her GPA goals on her status: “Finals baby!
GPA goal: 3.8! I’ll get this! i hope-_______- Dang i have to start doing all my work!” She was
cheered by lots of her classmates on the goal. Her sharing of this academic goal showed her
confidence and pride in her identity as a good student.

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One of the major genres of her Facebook writings was short narratives about her life stories
both in and out of school. Most of these narratives were written in spoken language or with
internet slangs in good humors. She wrote many anecdotes about her on-campus experience,
such as “haha hella crazy!!! u should of seen me at school. One of my admin saw me and i said
i picked up some balloons. then i left and cindee called me so i can get my money so i go all the
way to the other side of skoo (school)and then the teachers thought i wanted to ditch! lmao.”
Some of these life stories were about her family members, such as “My punk brother just told
me and my sister to leave his school because we didnt tie his shoe right! ”leave,ur annoying
me! ima call the guards¡‘ wat a punk!” She then responded to the comments from her friends
in a cheerful and witty manner, frequently code switching between English and Spanish.
Sometimes she even wrote half of the sentence in English, and another half in Spanish. A
typical example would be, “A bit sentimental today...Perdon si te busco y lloro en tu cara1 .”
Although in my initial interview with her she seemed to downplay the role of Spanish in her
life, she showed much comfort in using both languages among her peers in her unofficial social
world, who were mostly Hispanic or Latinos.
Besides life stories, Marissa was very open to share with her friends about her feelings and
emotions. She was once again found to code switch frequently between English and Spanish as
she composed. One of the most beautiful writings that she has produced on her Facebook page
was in memory of her father:
I love dreaming about the past, ’cause apparently its better than my present. I
miss having you around, going to your soccer games in the summer time. I got
to say me haces mucha falta papi2 ;( but like kassandra said:“A good-bye is never
painful unless you’re never going to say hello again” I just pretend your still alive
but your simply taking a life time vacation. I love you daddy♥& i miss you with
all my heart..
1 Sorry
2 Dad

if I look at your face and cry.
I really need you.
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She received numerous comments from her friends, who showered her with comfort and
consolation. Her social network had become a venue where her friends could witness her growth
and struggle, and share with her moments of joy and sorrow. In contrast, she did not feel that
her life stories as valued in the school-sponsored writing tasks. Although Mr. D. worked hard
to assign socially and culturally relevant topics in his English class, she felt those writings did
not satisfy her needs for social connection and participation. Even if she did share some stories,
she usually got evaluations rather than “real feedback” from the readers (i.e. the teachers). She
found herself more motivated in writing on Facebook rather than on her in-school notebooks.

5.1.2

Web Log (Tumbler): An Ongoing Personal Ad Project

The internet urban dictionary defines Tumbler, a micro-blogging website, “a place to fantasize where you want to be and what you want to be doing”. Unlike Phoenix, who wrote a lot
of her personal stories and journals on Tumblr, Marissa mainly treated it as a public pin board.
She almost never wrote anything by herself there. Instead, she posted pictures or shared songs,
videos, or repost. She typically posted once or twice daily.
Her Tumblr reminded me of her in-school Personal Advertisement Writing project, which
was an optional assignment for her English class based on the literature text A Doll House, in
which Henrik Ibsen portrays the charater Nora as having a dual personality. Mr. D. asked his
students to use four images and three adjectives to describe their public and private personality on a double-sided poster and write a 1-page response comparing their public and personal
identities (See Appendix E for the handout of assignment). Marissa was one of the few students
who chose to do this assignment and turned it in (Figures 5.1, 5.2,5.3). Although she spent a
significant amount of time looking for, clipping and pasting images from magazines, she spent
much less time writing up the response and only wrote less than half of the required length.
She used very informal spoken language (e.g. “And I am a boss!?”) and internet slangs in her
written response, such as “Lmao” (the acronym for the internet slang “laughing my ass off”)

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and “Dickhead”(missing a letter “D” on her poster). It seemed that she was either confused
about the genre of this writing assignment, or chose to write this way as a subconscious act of
resistance against the academic linguistic norm.

Figure 5.1: Marissa’s personal Ad project and writing (I). (For interpretation of the references
to color in this and all other figures, the reader is referred to the electronic version of this
dissertation).

Later, in our second interview, she explained to me in detail about her personal Ad., how
she drew the social and cultural resources from the youth popular culture, and what these meant
for her. She considered her public personality as outgoing (“Never hide”), trendy (wearing
jeans, sunglasses and bright colors) and sometimes silly (“Dickhead”). Pointing at the slogan
“Listen to the heart”, she said that “On the magazine it actually says ’don’t listen to the heart,
listen to the mind’, but I adapted it.” She also elaborated on the phrase “Thug life”, which was
both the name of a group of hiphop singers and the name of their first musical album. She
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Figure 5.2: Marissa’s personal Ad project and writing (II).

chose this phrase because she admired the effort of people who lived in poverty but managed
to keep optimistic and courageous. She didn’t even explain what “Thug life” means in her
written response. Her deliberate choice of the internet slangs showed her identification with the
social group who favored such language usages. She found it extremely hard to express her real
identities in academically accepted linguistic norms.
Compared to her oral elaborations, her written response was to some extent superficial and
tokenistic. Her Tumblr was to some extent similar to her in-school Personal Ad. Writing project,
in which she used lots of pictures and images to create and exhibit to others the “public”side
of her personality, which included her interests, her fashion style, and the things that made her
“cool” and fun. Although she did not consider this a type of ’writing’, since she put a lot more
images on it than words, she took this website very seriously, and constantly changed the back-

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Transcription: Use the space below to describe your ad. Be sure to include personal examples,
details and support for your project.
“The black side is all the characteristics that not many people know about. I really hate when
they talk bad about women. How I live the Thug life. Am I a boss!?? Lmao. The colorful
side is what everyone knows I am an outgoing person. & I love clothes and [chiliax...] with my
dickheads. Always show who you like. ”
Figure 5.3: Marissa’s personal Ad project and writing (III).

ground, the title, and her self-introductions, etc. For her, the Tumblr was like a “significant
social laboratory for experimenting with the construction and reconstruction of self that char-

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acterize postmodern life” in which she “self-fashion and self-create” (Turkle 1997, p.178). The
songs, videos, slangs, or the pictures of certain hairstyles, trendy clothes and cool gestures were
all signs and symbols for her own identity formation. Since the majority of Tumblr users are
young females, especially teenage girls, Marissa’s readers were mainly her girlfriends and other
girls who she has never met before. Through re-posting, she was actually reading, “borrowing”
from, and co-authoring with others to experiment and create a shared experience of growing up.

5.1.3

Twitter: A Live Broadcast about her Life

Marissa was constantly twittering to her friends in which she revealed more of her “private”
side of her personality. Her definition of “Twitter” was a place “where you show what you
do”. Per her suggestion, I signed up a Twitter account, and she instantly invited me to have
access to her twitter. I was shocked at how much and how frequently she tweeted. She had
213 followers and was following 183 people. The people that she followed and who followed
her were mainly her classmates, friends, and online friends of her age. She also followed some
local blogs, movie stars, popular singers and song writers, and rapper and recording poets who
have not earned their public fame but have been considered popular in her social circles. In
addition, she followed one feminist blogger whom she considered “inspiring”, and a parody
writer who played Steve Jobs by making up stories, thoughts, and actions of the famous figure.
From time to time she would re-post the twitters from these people that she follows as she found
their tweets “cool”. These has become one major source of literacy exposure in her daily life
besides the literature texts assigned by her English teacher.
Marissa had produced 14221 tweets by the time I visited her page within a 1-year time
frame. She wrote about 39-40 tweets per day on average, not to mention the number of tweets
that she read. Most of the tweets were short, since there is a 140 character maximum allowed for
each tweet. However, considering the fact that she was a full time student, I still found it hard to
imagine how she even managed to twitter like this. She expressed her attachment to her twitter

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in one post to her friend: “Oh I missed you twitter.” It was interesting that she was talking to a
friend but used second person for “twitter”. As described by a tweet which was she reposted:
“Wake up. Tweet. Stand up. Tweet. In class. Tweet. Break and Lunchtime. Tweet. At home.
Tweet. Music. Tweet. Faded. Tweet. ” What on earth did she twitter about? After a glimpse
of her twitter pages, I had an initial impression that her twitter was like a constant broadcasting
live show about herself. She told others what she was doing (e.g., morning: getting ready for
church); what she was dressing and how she looked (“Feelin like a tomboy today. Hoodie &
adiddas”; “just recoat my nail” ); what she was eating (Had cereal for breakfast and lunch); and
how’s she’s feeling (“drunk and depressed”; “why do I feel so alone”). There were also dirty
talks with her girlfriends which she thought that made her look cool (“Good night good time
spent with good bitches”). Many times it was just gossip, or some random thought that crossed
her mind. School was also a big topic in her twitter, which blurred the boundary between inschool and out-of-school interactions. It was not uncommon to see her moan on her low test
score (“80 on my quiz (:” ); or complain about how much homework that she got (e.g., “bye !
im loaded with homework & havent started. Mr. S. throws hella work at us.”). It seemed that
Twitter became a way for her to vent or release her stress, when she was constantly negotiating
between her own identities as a “good student” and as that “popular, cool girl” who refused to
be nerdy.
When Marissa was out of school, she usually read tweets all the time and wrote a new tweet
on every 10-minute intervals, even when she was doing her homework. In other words, she
was always multi-tasking as if opening parallel windows. It became a major way for her to
communicate with others. She found it exciting to type or text message with her friends online,
but awkward to “chat” with them on Skype. I had to admit that I did not really enjoy reading her
twitter pages the way that I read her longer writings. When I was browsing through pages and
pages of her tweets, I couldn’t help but notice a critical voice arise from my inner educator and
researcher: Why did she spend so much time reading and writing down those random thoughts,

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or fragmented information? Did she feel overwhelmed and distracted sometimes? I found most
of the tweets written by her and her friends superficial in general, lacking deep interactions or
careful reflections. I had to constantly remind myself that instead of making quick judgments, I
need to hear her side of story first. This has become the central topics in our follow-up interview:
why was she so attracted, or even addicted to twitter? And how has this part of her literacy life
impacted her in-school writings?
Our second interview went so much more fluently than the first one. Marissa raved about
her twitter with shining eyes and I ended up not using much of my prompt questions at all.
According to her, there were many reasons why she loved twitter. First, it was very simple to
use and easy to write:
“With Twitter everything is just easy...easy writing, easy connection...you just
text message or type whatever you want to say. Or you simply post cool links or
re-tweet the cool stuff that you see. Some of my friends are like, what the hell are
you guys doing there ALL the time? For me it’s just natural. I’m a Gemini, and
talking is a Gemini’s favorite hobby. I can send updates to all my friends without
giving out too much of my personal information. It was not blocked at my school,
so I am always on(line).” (Marissa, interview #2)
For her, writing (i.e., typing on computer or text messaging on her cell phone) was equivalent
to talking or chatting. Just like her writing on the Facebook, she also did lots of code-switching
between English and Spanish on her Twitter. She did not pay much attention to grammar or
spellings as she wrote tweets, and used lots of abbreviations and acronyms. Many sentences
were broken or incomplete, but this did not seem to affect communication. Second, she found
it enticing to be able to follow anyone that she wanted, and to be always up-to-date with the
“cool stuff” among her friends, locally in the real world, and with what those popular idols do.
“I can always see what music my friends are listening to, what show they are watching. It’s also
useful (for) following some singers, rappers, and other celebrities, ’cause I like to keep up with
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what they are doing, what they are wearing, their new hair styles, makeups, or where they are
touring. Twitter is the first place they post their updates nowadays, you know? You can’t even
find these information on their official websites sometimes.”
Since her friends and her followed some common popular Tweeters and shared links to certain blogs, songs, photos, and videos, these online resources have become a shared “adolescent
cultural literacy” among them in their unofficial social world. Twitter, like other social networks, was a type of “cheap or free entertainment” for these adolescents. They were listening
to the same songs, laughing at the same joke or comic lines, and talking about the same show on
the movie channel. There was certain peer pressure involved here, since these were the topics
among their peers both in and outside of school, and her knowledge of these topics assured
her with the “membership”, or a sense of belongingness in her social circles. On the contrary,
those who did not have knowledge of these were considered not “in”, or even outcasts from
their social circles. In other words, her participation with such online literacy activities actually
impacted her opportunities to interact with her peers in both the unofficial virtual world online
and the official, real world on campus.
She was also excited that so many people were following her, as she considered this an
important sign that she was popular and had influence over people. “It was satisfying that you
know you’re followed by so many people. You might think that I’m attention starved, but the
truth is, you are a nobody in the online world if you don’t twitter.” She did admit that it could
get tiring sometimes, but “It’s hard to stop...once you are in, you are always in. If you can’t
keep coming up with new things to say, your account will be considered dead. People will get
bored (if you don’t update) and turn their back to move on to someone else.” All these kept her
motivated as a social network reader and writer.
Her heavy involvement with Twitter has impacted the ways that she read, write, and communicate in general. Although the tweets are usually short, reading these tweets did provide
her with lots of literacy exposure. She probably would never have read so much local news or

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events had she not used these social networks. She was constantly reading and writing: during her school breaks, when she was waiting in line, in the bathroom, and even when she was
waiting for red lights. Since there was always so much information to read, she had developed
skills to scan past the topics that she was not interested in and only spotted the ones that she
wanted to read. This definitely had helped her with her English reading skills. She also had a
larger vocabulary thanks to her daily diligent readings of her social network pages. At the same
time, she found it more pleasurable to read short posts rather than long stories, which made her
an impatient reader for some literature texts assigned by her English and history teachers. As
it came to writing, she transferred some of these resources to her in-class writings, especially
the warm-up writings, and the personal Ad project mentioned previously, which made her a
connected reader and writer. Many topics that she wrote in her in-class notebooks were similar to those on her Facebook or Twitter pages, especially when it came to the topics of family,
weekend, friends, etc. When I re-read her in-class writings, I often found myself very excited as
I recognized those phrases or examples cited from her Twitter or Facebook page. For instance,
when she was asked to write on the topic of election, she not only quoted one of her Tweeter
friend’s opinion on voting, but also used the exact internet slang that her friends used describe
a political candidate. When Mr. D. assigned a prompt on “fate” one day in the Lady Macbeth
unit, she referred to her readings from her daily Horoscope delivery on Facebook:
“I believe in astrology because you don’t know where it’s from. I read Gemini
horoscope every day. The Horoscopes talk about your personality. It sometimes
describe what (is) going on in your life. Even though you think it’s not real at the
time maybe in the future it’s real.” (Notebook 11-9-2010).
The way that she wrote on her social networks also impacted the way that she composed
for academic writings. I was shocked to find that a heavy computer user like her could only
handwrite her academic essays instead of typing it on the computer. “I simply couldn’t write
this kind of long essays on the computer. ” Marissa said. Once she was in front the computer,
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she would never resist the attempt of opening other windows such as the Youtube website, her
social networks, etc. And could easily got distracted. Even when she was using pen and paper,
she still could not turn off her cell phone. It seemed that she often composed her essays at the
same time when she tweeted. What caught my eyes when I read her tweets were how frequently
she mentioned her in-school writing tasks on her twitter, such as “Working on the literature unit
project”; “Should I write my essay or watch a movie? Errrrrrr”; “I really need to start this essay.
I haven’t done a S***!”; “I have to finish this essay tonight! screaming”; “I am shitting bricks
over my English final, weeping”. There was often an undertone of guilty or anxiety attached
to her in-school writing tasks, especially when it came to formal essays. As an addicted twitter
user, she got too used to the genre of conversational/oral writing, and had struggles with her
academic essays. When she was asked to reflect upon her writings in Mr. D.’s English class,
she wrote, “My writing sock(sucks)3 . I am not a good writer, ‘Cause I’m not good with essays.
I write like I talk. I don’t think there’s nothing good about my writing. I simply need to practice.
How I write. Better.” (Notebook 2/1/2011) This paragraph was handwritten on her notebook,
but the last two sentences read a lot more like her tweets. Apparently she was not valuing
her self-sponsored writings, as she found “nothing good” about her own writings. She was
also unsatisfied with her academic essay writings, even though Mr. D. Considered her a “good
writer”. Just like most of her warm-up writings on her notebook, she did not get any feedback
from her teacher, except that at the bottom of the page Mr. D. gave a red stamp of a lion along
with the word “Excellent”.

5.1.4

Summary

Reading and writing on the social network was a dominant theme in Marissa’s literacy lives.
Writing played multiple roles for her, as she used the social network to share her life stories,
to create and promote her public personalities, and to constantly keep people updated about her
3 Should

either be a spelling mistake or a slip of pen.

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life. Through these practices she was not only exposed to, but was herself participating, creating
and co-authoring a youth cultural literacy and a shared experience of learning and growing up.
Since most of her friends online were also her classmates or schoolmates, the boundary between
the online virtual world and the real world was blurred. There was an overlapping in her official
and unofficial social world; therefore her social network living style was more an extension
rather than escape from the real world.
As observed by Ibrahim (2006), “To learn is to invest in something that has a personal
or a particular significance to who one is or what one has become...One invests where one sees
oneself mirrored. Such an investment includes linguistic as well as cultural behavioral patterns.”
Marissa’s investment of her time on social network reading and writings was also a type of
learning. Her deliberate choice of languages, code switching, and frequent use of internet and
urban slangs showed her eagerness to belong to an adolescent social circle which values her
ethnicity, gender, linguistic heritage, and popular cultural literacies. Besides language skills,
she was also learning to make connections, communications, gather and scan information, etc.
At the same time, as a “good student”, she also had some inner struggles between the certain
linguistic patterns that she chose and identified with, and the expectations of the academic
institutions. This negotiation of her identities was an intrinsic part of her language learning.
She showed mixed feelings toward her own writings: both pride and self-denial. On the one
hand, she took pride in and obtained psychological satisfaction and pleasure from her social
network writings, which not only served as a means of communication, but more importantly
a way for her to share about her lives and to remain popular among her peers. As a social
network reader and writer, she had amble exposures to the type of popular youth literacies that
she identified with. She had lots of opportunities to interact with a community of learners that
consisted of both first and second language learners, and was able to connect her in and outof school readings and writings, especially when the topics were culturally relevant for her.
On the other hand, she felt inadequate about her academic essay writings and found “nothing

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good” about her writings. She neither had enough exposure to this genre of writings in her daily
literacy practices nor much support from her own social world.
Researchers and educators in the second language education have called for the closure of
the gap between minority students’ “identities and the school curriculum and between those
identities and classroom pedagogies, subjects, and materials” (Ibrahim, 2006, p. 146). One
possible way is the application of the students’ sociocultural practices outside of the schools as
“fund of knowledge”(Gonzalez, Moll & Amanti, 2005). When used properly, social network
has potential to be a learning tool. While social network provided students with instant access to
valuable information which was related to their personal interests, students could use more help
from their teachers to engage in meaningful and thoughtful conversations rather than superficial
information sharing.

5.2

Phoenix: Blogging about the Story of my Life

Phoenix was a 17 year old Vietnamese girl. She had straight black long hair. She always
wore makeups, black thick eyeliners, foundation, and rosy lip gloss. She loved to wear vest, and
she complained that the school refused to use her picture since“I have to wear this ugly green
shirt from the office b/c I didnt know you cant wear shirts w/o sleeves” (Phoenix, blog entry,
8/18/2010).
Phoenix was born in Vietnam, and moved to U.S. when she was almost 10 years old. Right
after they arrived in U.S., her parents divorced. She lived with her younger sister, her mother,
and her mother’s boyfriend in downtown Java city. Her elder sister and other extended family
members stayed in Vietnam, but she kept close contact with them via chatting on the AOL or
Yahoo messenger. Her father was in another Southern state far away from Java City, who came
to visit her for the first time in 5 years before the spring semester started in 2010.
Phoenix didn’t know much English at all at the time of immigration, and was placed in the
ESL program. She was considered a “Generation 1.5 student”, which refers to the particular

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group of English language learners who were born in foreign countries or territories but came to
U.S. in elementary or secondary school and received education here in the U.S (Roberge, Siegal,
and Harklau 2009). They got the title of “Generation 1.5” since they share characteristics of both
first and second generation immigrants, and yet they have unique characteristics as compared
to the more traditional categories of English as a Second Language students, such as that they
usually speak two or more languages fluently; they usually have limited knowledge of academic
English, and are considered to have lower English proficiency than native speakers; they have
either never acquired literacy in their home languages or have gained basic proficiency but are
losing it due to various reasons. There is a connotation of a sense of in-betweenness as these
students were considered neither first generation of immigrants (such as their parents) nor the
second generation of immigrants (such as their U.S. born peers or their future offspring). They
have to fit themselves in the different cultures, languages, and literacies as they need to learn
both English and the subject matter. In the case of Phoenix, she also needed to experience the
calculation and manipulation “just how far they want to go in pushing a particular identities”
(Leki, 2000, p.105) as an Asian or Asian American as she grew up as an American teenager
in a broken family. Despite all these difficulties, however, these generation 1.5 students may
also have stronger desire to become more fluent and competent in both English and their native
languages. Phoenix expressed to me her strong will to learn English and preserve her native
tongue. Although she seldom wrote in Vietnamese now, she proudly told me that she still spoke
the language pretty well.
Phoenix spent hours every day reading other people’s blogs on the social networks such as
Tumblr 4 , Twitter, and Facebook webpages, and writing responses in a very timely manner. She
was a very prolific and passionate writer out-of-school, as she wrote blog entries almost every
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumblr.

Tumblr is a microblogging platform and social networking website that allows users to post text, images, videos, links, quotes and audio
to their tumblelog, a short-form blog. Users can follow other users, and “reblog” their posts,
or choose to make their tumblelog private. As of January 2012, Tumblr has over 39.5 million
blogs.

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day. She used emails from time to time, mainly using it to submit homework and connect with
the university programs that she applied for. She also spent lots of time chatting online via
MSN or Skype with family members back at Vietnam. On the contrast, she was a reluctant and
procrastinating writer for school-sponsored academic writings.
I learned about her family and social life through her warm-up writing notebook, before
our first interview. She wrote a lot about her family, friends, and boyfriend under those “weekend” prompts in her warm-up writings; but seldom, if not never, wrote about other things (esp.
homework). I noticed that like Keres, she was also a transfer student, as the first entry of her
warm-up writing was a brief sentence: “I was not enrolled in school yet.” (08/18/2010)
I used her literacy activity sheet as a conversation prompt for our first interview. According
to her first literacy activity sheet, she spent most of time browsing internet, watching T.V., and
talking with friends. We had a few question-answer sessions at first, with me asking questions
and she providing very brief answers. When I asked her whether she wrote blog, she merely said
“Yeah”; and when asked whether her page was public, she replied that “Yes, it’s public” without
saying anything else. What finally opened her up was when I asked her about her experience
transferring from another school:
Jiang: What happened? Did your family move?
Phoenix: No, because they didn’t want me to go there any more.
Jiang: They, they as your parents?
Phoenix: Yeah
They think I’m doing bad there, so I transferred here.
I’m glad I’m here.
Jiang: Could you say more? Because I think it would be difficult to say
goodbye to your old classmates
Phoenix: YEAH! I DON’T KNOW ANYONE HERE.
AND THIS IS MY SENIOR YEAR TOO!

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She was literally shouting now rather than talking, and from here she seemed to reveal
more of herself to me as I stepped from her official world into her unofficial world and showed
compassion for her experience as a transfer student. She told me that she was very upset about
her mother’s decision to transfer her “only because this school has better test results”. As
some researchers have noted, many Vietnamese parents hold the traditional cultural values to
emphasize the importance of education and hard work, and relate the child’s achievement to
family pride (Zhou and Bankston, 1998). They usually try their best to provide support for
their children’s education, as they often hold high expectations for their children, and consider
their high academic performance essential for their future success in America (Li, 2008; Zhou
and Bankston, 1998). The second generation, however, sometimes feel that their parents impose
their values and wills on them, and feel the pain of an inner struggle due to the clash and conflict
of values. Although Phoenix finally gave in to her mother, she remained bitter inside. She felt
like an “outcast” at Java City High since there were not a lot of Asian peers. And although
there were some Asian students, they seemed to have already formed a small circle which she
found hard to fit in. Although Keres and her were in the same English class, she had never
spoken to Keres and didn’t even know that he could speak Vietnamese. She admitted, with a
little embarrassment, “I had no friends (here), so I wrote a lot on my blog.” She then talked
passionately about her blog. She was very aware of her audience, and was very eager for me to
read her blog as well:
“There are many friends from my old school that follow me on Tumblr Here
in this school I don’t know anyone that follows me on Tumblr You don’t have to
be my friend in order to read my Tumblr, it’s like a PUBLIC thing! Even my old
entries were still there, you just have to go all the way, all the way back.” (Phoenix,
interview #1)
She seemed to forget that I already asked her whether her blog was public or not; and
earnestly invited me to become a reader. As if afraid that I would not visit her blog, she pointed
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to me the address of her blog that I requested her to write down on her literacy activity log.
She also double-checked the spelling, and found that she missed a letter, which she instantly
corrected. Both of us laughed heartily as we considered ourselves lucky, which made the conversation more friendly and relaxed.
She also talked passionately about how the counselors at Java City High really changed her
mind. She didn’t really care about college in her old school, and didn’t have any plan attending
one. She just wanted to graduate from high school. However, the counselors here called her in
and talked her into continuing school.

5.2.1

Blogging about Life and Blogging as a Way of Life

I learned about her self-sponsored writing and gradually entered her world through her blogs
on Tumblr (See Appendix G). Phoenix chose to write her blogs on Tumblr because it was one
of the most popular choices among her girlfriends from her former high school. As mentioned
earlier, Tumblr is a micro-blogging platform and social networking website which is constantly
growing in popularity. In addition to immediacy of posting and reader response, it also allowed
the users a versatile of formats since the users could conveniently post text, images, videos,
audios and hyperlinks to their blogs. The emergence of research on blogging, a relatively new
form of web-based writing, has revealed a variety of factors that contribute to its increasing
popularity:
“Bloggers are driven to document their lives, provide commentary and opinions, express deeply felt emotions, articulate ideas through writing, and form and
maintain community forums. . . Blogs combine the immediacy of up-to-the-minute
posts, latest first, with a strong sense of the author’s personality, passions, and point
of view.” (Nardi et al, 2004)
Phoenix did use the blog as a medium to document her life, as she entitled her blog “Stories
of My Life.” She started to write blog since April 2010, and she wrote an average of 49 blog
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posts every month since then. Up till June 2011, she has written a total of 689 blog entries;
among which 421 were her original posts in the written form, and only 268 were her own
photos, other type of pictures, music, video clips, and reblogs from other users. Although blogs
on Tumblr are usually considered as micro or short-formed blogs, the blog entries that Phoenix
produced were usually not that short, with an average word count of 130. In other words,
between April 2010 and June 2011, she had written 54,730 words (or about 195 pages) on her
blog.
Phoenix spent at least 3 hours every day reading other people’s blogs and twitters and writing
responses in a very timely manner. She was “addicted” to her blogs, as she wrote whenever she
had access to the computer and internet: on her own laptop, on the computer when she worked
in the counseling center, or computers in the school or public library, and on her cell phone.
She even wrote her blog when she was doing something else, such as in the middle of writing
an academic essay. She spent lots of time changing the background picture and layout of her
Tumblr page, and expressed a sense of dissatisfaction toward her efforts as she commented on
her own Tumblr in an entry with the title of “I hate my Tumblr”:
I look at other people’s Tumblr &it looks so nice. They’re so creative like they
got background music on their page & pictures..im so jealous i wish i know how
to customize my tumblr -___-’ My tumblr is so fuccen plain&ugly. . . (Phoenix,
04/28/10)
Phoenix faithfully “followed” 49 bloggers, who were mainly her American-born Asian
friends from her old schools. She did not read books or newspaper beside those assigned by her
teachers, so this type of web-based reading was her major reading practice outside of school,
and the most important way that she obtained information besides watching TV. By subscribing
to these blogs, she kept herself in the fashion and caught up with the most popular songs and
videos that her peers were listening to or watching. She sometimes cited the lyric of the popular
songs in her blogs to describe her own emotions, such as “Can we pretend that airplanes in the
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night sky are like shooting stars? i can really use a wish right now...”5 . She explained to me
that she thought these lyrics were as good as, if not better, than some of the poetry that she read
at school. Besides, she got the chance to read and share some of the most popular blog entries
on tumblr. The ones that she chose to share were usually about friendship, relationship, and
school-related topics. Some of these reblogs were actually about the blogging experience itself.
For example, she shared on her page a post which had been reblogged by 12,743 bloggers:
“I always wanted to vent on Tumblr. Like really vent, like blog about how I
really feel. So I always click the text box and I just stare. Then I write a few
words then I backspace it. Then I stare at the blank box. Then I just go back to my
dashboard. It’s not that I don’t know what to say, it’s just that I don’t know how to
say it. So that’s why all my posts are all reblogs of other people because I’d rather
have someone else explain what I’m feeling than try to explain mines.” (Phoenix,
7/8/2010)
Although she did not re-blog as often as most of her peers did, she found this post resonating
with her own writing process sometimes. Backspacing and editing was very common when she
was writing online, which also applied to her original posts as well. She was constantly thinking
about the possible feedback of her readers when she wrote her blogs. She even apologized when
she considered herself not “writing much”. These all showed a sense of ownership of her own
writings. The above example showed the importance of blog in the development of the writer
identity despite the fact that she thought there was nothing good about her writing in her school
notebook.

5.2.2

Blogging vs. School-sponsored Writings

Phoenix often wrote about the same topics on Tumblr and on her school notebook under
the “weekend” category, which were drawn from similar social and cultural resources. The
5 It’s

from the lyric of a song by B.o.b. , entitled “Airplanes”.
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recurrent themes were family, school, relationship, and popular culture.
Party and police were a recurrent theme on her entries on “weekend”. Among the 14 entries
that she wrote on her warm-up writing notebook about weekend, 3 involved party and police.
One of her longest entry was on this topic:
“I enjoyed my weekends because on Friday I went to a party. It was cool at first,
everybody was socializing and having fun. However, as it got late there was some
uninvited guests that came and started drama with my friends. They were being too
loud and I didn’t want to get involved. I wanted to go home but my ride wanted to
stay. Then cops came and crashed the party because it was past our curfew and we
were disturbing the peace. We all got citations while two went to juvie.” (Phoenix
notebook 08/30/2010)
She wrote more specifically and expressed her emotions in her blogs. One typical example
would be on her elder sister’s visit to U.S. She wrote about this very briefly in a matter-of-fact
manner in her warm-up writings:
“Over the weekend I spent time with my sister and my family. My sister just
came over from Vietnam on a business trip. We went to eat and went shopping.”
(Phoenix notebook 02/07/2011)
This same experience was also recorded more specifically in her blog under the title of
“Imma miss you );<3”, with more emotions and feelings revealed:
“My sister’s leaving tomorrow, at first I was half excited/half sad cos honestly
I could care less. . . I’d rather go out &kicc it than stay home to chill w/ my family
but these past three weeks went by so quicc )’: Im finally staying home &spending
quality time with family, going out to family’s parties, dinners, shopping together.
She taught me the meaning of a real family. My mom, my little sister, &mom’s

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boyfriend are never home. We’re always incomplete but because of my older sister’s business trip here we finally get to spend sometimes together as a family. I’ll
miss you when you leave, these past few weeks were great hopefully we’ll reunite
during summer.” <3 (Phoenix blog 02/27/2011)
Here she was more open about her feelings. Although her elder sister did not read her blog,
she switched from the third person“her” to the second person “you” in the last few sentences.
This was just one example that while she did not feel comfortable sharing about her feelings in
her warm-up writings, she used her blog as a medium to express her emotions. In fact, the word
“mood” was one of the most frequently appeared words in her blog. She often wrote directly
and specifically about her mood in the blog, such as “Wow the fuccen rain is just adding on to
my mood. . . ” and “Mood: feeling better. ” Other words that appear most frequently are “love”
and “hate”.
Phoenix was very aware of the difference between the audience and genres in warm-up
writings and her blogs. As Mr. D. remained her only reader for her in-class writings, she
seemed to be comfortable sharing with him about her family and social life, but at the same
time reserved from expressing her feelings. She was writing for her teacher in the warm-up
writings for the aim of class credit. When it comes to blog writing on Tumblr, she had a group
of “authentic audience” whom she both wrote for and wrote with, as they not only provided her
with instant feedbacks and comments, but also sometimes reblogged her entries on their own
blog pages. In our first interview, Phoenix exhibited to me her knowledge about her audience,
as she knew clearly who her readers were, and knew there was a gap between those from her
official world (current schoolmates) and unofficial world (schoolmates from old school) and
encouraged me to read her blog. Later, I found out that she was actually very eager to reach
out to a larger audience. On the top of her weblog, she included the following into her selfintroduction: “Get to know me, hit that follow button! I follow back <3 I’m a real sweetheart
if you get to know me!” It is noteworthy that she share her writings not only to maintain

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friendship with her former classmates, but also to actively create and involve in a community of
adolescents of similar age, interests, and sociocultural background.

5.2.3

Blogging to Tackle Difficulties and Release Stress

Phoenix also used her blog as a venue to tackle difficult situations and release her stress, a
characteristic which was never seen in her warm up writings. This was also observed by Schultz
(2002) as the students used their private writing to explore difficult issues and make sense of
their lives in the moment. As a teenager she was stressed out in many areas of her life: surviving
the divorce between her parents, transferred to a new school and broke up with her boyfriend,
homework and tests, college application and the upcoming graduation, financial stress, and peer
pressure. As a second language student, she was also learning English and the subject matter at
the same time. All these resulted in lots of stress and anxiety. Party and occasional use of drug
was her way to combat stress; while blog seemed to be an ideal, and healthy way for venting.
Procrastination and anxiety was another major theme, shown as in the following example:
“10/15/2010 I hate homework I have to write 3 essays for Government &another
essay for English &its due tomorrow. I had like 5 days to do alla the essays but I
hadda lagg until the last day. . . .)”
This also impacted the language that she chose to communicate with her readers and express
herself. She used lots of curse words in her blog entries to express strong emotions and release
stress and anxiety. “So much emotions are bottling up inside me, i feel like im gonna explode
one of these days fucc.-_-” (5/19/2010) She also wrote in a type of vernacular language similar
to AAVE. In her self-introduction, she wrote, “Aint got no trust for no bitch.” Later she revised
and changed this to “Give respect to get respect.” She was also a very proficient user of “web
literacy”. She loved to use expression icons, and acronyms like “LOL” (“laughing out loud”),
“IDK” (“I don’t know”), etc., as if to show off her knowledge of the web literacy. In fact, she
used so much internet slangs in her blog entries that I had to look up the urban dictionary from
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time to time in order to understand her writings. She learned these slangs from her peers or the
internet, and considered it very “cool” to write them. For instance, she used the word “hella”
and “helluh” instead of “very” or “really” in most of her blog entries. She wrote “I fnk love my
team, they are hella funny.” and “My mom hella cried.” She used these language to vent, to
build a “cool” identity, and to show off her knowledge about popular culture. More importantly,
she wrote this way to participate in a web community where her peers talk in a similar manner.
It seemed that she did not care about her spelling, since many words were mis-spelled. For
example, she spelled “phone” as “fone” in lots of places. She loved to repeat the last letter of a
word to show some emphasis, such as spelling “hardd” and “sadd” instead of “hard” and “sad”.
She deliberately used “c” to replace the letter “k” in many cases. Below was an example of her
writing:
“Seems like everyones getting locced up nowdays..)’= Anyways the testing was
helluh hardd &boring. . . I only knew like 2 math questions &guessed on the rest
lol. the weather is making things look sadd.=/..” (Phoenix, blog entry, 4/21/2011)
It was interesting to note that she transferred some of these linguistic characteristics in her
handwritten in-class writings as well. For example, in her warm-up writings, she wrote: “I went
to a kicc bacc which was a good thing.” (Phoenix notebook 1/10/2011) Here she spelled “kick”
and “back” in the way that she would in her online writing. I noticed that she even mis-spelled
the word “back” in her original draft of “Death of a Salesman Commentary Essay”, which she
wrote on the computer:
“In the first scene Willy came bacc after a failed business trip, his salary was
taken away and he has to live off of commissions.”
Fortunately, she used the automatic spelling check and got this corrected in her draft that she
submitted to Mr. D. This was not an issue with knowledge of spelling, since these are relatively
easy words. Rather, this was a habit of spelling that she transferred from her online writing to
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her offline writings, either handwritten or typed. Phoenix never noticed this issue until I pointed
it out.
I had to point out that there were not only overlapping in the topics and linguistic characteristics in her blogging and in-school warm-up writings, she actually sometimes composed
her academic essays and her blogs simultaneously. Phoenix often multi-tasked when she was
writing. She would switch back and forth between chatting online, twittering, and blogging;
while at the same time also writing her academic essays. In the following example, when she
was engaged in essay writing and online chatting at the same time, she even got help from
her boyfriend by asking him to edit her essay. She recorded her experience of writing two
last-minute school-sponsored academic essays in the following blog entry:
“Im so exhausted.
Dammn yesterday i stayed up til 1 something trynna finish my two last min.
essays. Boyf called to keep me company but i couldnt tlk so i told him to go on
AIM &talk to me there. He helped me edit a paragraph in my essay, he told me that
before i used to write good essays &now my essays are so simple& wack. Lol that
asshole but at least he stayed up to edit it for me<3...(omission)...Now im home &
about to do more essays. omg im so drained. . . .” (Phoenix blog 5/27/10)
The above was also another example how she used her blogging to tackle a difficult situation
(i.e. writing last minute essays). She was very aware of the anxiety level as she engaged
in academic writing. She even got some comments from her boyfriend how her essays have
changed; and she also commented on her own writing task.
Although there were some overlapping in the topics that she wrote in the two contexts of inclass and out-of-school writings, these writings differ significantly in many ways as it comes to
the language style, rhetorical features, details, etc. She drew from a wider and richer resources
as she composed on blogs such as audio files, video clips, etc.

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5.2.4

Summary

Phoenix was an avid reader and writer on social networks, such as Twitter and Tumblr. She
spent many hours reading other people’s blogs every day as a passionate, curious reader. She
also used the tool of microblogging to document her lives, tackle difficulties, and de-stress by
writing diaries and personal memoirs. Although there was an overlap in the topics between her
blogs and her in-school warm-up writings, she tended to be more open as she wrote her blogs.
As Sumara (2003) observed, “unlike face-to-face conversation, blogging facilitates conversation
without the usual commitments of in-person conversation.”(p.94) Unlike her teacher, the young
adolescent readers of Phoenix’s blogs are never critical of the spelling and grammatical errors
and are always eager to comment and interact. In Phoenix’s case, she was always anticipating
and constantly refreshing her pages to check for new comments and feedback from her readers.
This to some extent helped second language learners like Phoenix to be more motivated to write
on a weblog in a more confident, relaxed manner. In other words, Blog as a genre has benefited
Phoenix on terms of language and identity development due to the following factors: authentic
audience; a new venue to release her emotion and to reach out for support; and a medium for
her to participate in group collaboration and obtain a sense of community.
As a Generation 1.5 student, Phoenix has always struggled between different languages, values and expectations. As a result, the choices that she made and her identities sometimes seem
contradictory. On the one hand, she was eager to learn English, to maintain the “good student”
status, and to meet her mother’s high expectation for her academic achievement. On the other
hand, she felt very anxious about the academic writing assignments and was a procrastinating
writer. She used curse words and vernacular language as a way to rebel against the “standard
language” and “model minority” image and to seek for a sense of belonging in her adolescent
circle. Some educational scholars have observed that adolescent English language learners can
often hold “seemingly opposing identities simultaneously” as they are “simultaneously young
and old, learning and learned, working and in school” (Lesko, 2001, p. 197).

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CHAPTER 6
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS, DISCUSSIONS, AND IMPLICATIONS

In this concluding chapter, I first summarize the findings of my study. I link my findings to
the literature in the field of L1 and L2 literacy studies, and discuss about how the findings from
this research echo with, clarify or contradict previous findings. Next, I consider the findings in
relation to the larger theoretical discussions in the sociocultural stances of the literacy learning
and teaching, with a particular focus on the sociocultural notion of “participation”(Lave and
Wenger, 1991) and the three-folded notion of“literacy” which includes functional literacy, cultural literacy, and critical literacy (Williams and Snipper 1990). In the final section, I discuss
the limitation of this study, explore pedagogical implications and suggest avenues for future
research.
This multiple case study aimed to understand how 4 adolescent ESL students learned to
write as they were situated within and beyond the sociocultural contexts of their Western urban
high school in the digital age. This study further examines the following questions:
• First, what do their school-sponsored writing practices look like?
• Second, what do their voluntary, self-sponsored practices look like?
• Third, what is the possible relationship between their school-sponsored and self-sponsored
writings, and what serves as their home-school link?
Besides examining the kinds of school-sponsored and self-sponsored writing practices they
engage in, I also investigate the outstanding characteristics of the school-sponsored and selfsponsored writings, especially in relation to language; the factors that motivate them to write or
discourage them from writing; whether they share their writings with others; what opens up or
closes such sharing; and the potential links and gaps between their self-sponsored and school-

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sponsored writings. I also question how these participants construct or negotiate their identities
in the writing practices, and how their participation in and sharing of these writing practices
create opportunities for their engagement in literacy learning.

6.1

Summary of Findings

The case studies in previous chapters depicted each participant as a unique writer, as they
engaged in their literacy practices in and out of their schools in many ways for various reasons.
As I acknowledge their individuality, I also explore the common patterns that emerged from
these ELL adolescent writers. In the following section, I summarize the findings based on their
school-sponsored writings and self-sponsored writings, and discuss the possible relationships
between the two.

6.1.1

School-sponsored Writings

In this research, I mainly focused on the participants’ school-sponsored writings in their
mainstream English classes. The participants engaged in a variety of writing tasks, such as the
daily warm-up writings in their in-class notebooks, 8 reading logs for book club, and 2 academic
essays (Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House Personal Advertisement Project response essay in March
and the Explication final essay due in May).1 The in-class warm-up writings invited the students
to share their life experiences and sociocultural world with the teacher, since the topics covered
school, weekend, family, friendship, language and literacy, the literature texts, and broader social issues such as voting. Some of the writing tasks were multi-modal and encouraged the use
of media and popular culture, such as the personal advertisement project discussed in Marissa’s
case. While most of these writing assignments were individually based, the students had oppor1 The

warm-up writings dated between August 2010 and May 2011, while their academic
essays were written between Jan 2011 and May 2011.

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tunities to collaborate, such as in the book cover design and book club presentations depicted in
the case of Edward, which motivated him to read and write the assigned novel.
The participants each had different preference for the medium of their writings. They all
wrote their warm-up writings, the reading pacing guide (See Appendix E), and the reading
logs in a notebook at the beginning of each class, which were placed in a bookshelf after each
class. Most of the participants wrote their essays on the computer and sent to teacher via email.
Marissa, however, chose to handwrite all of her essays. Since all of the participants had easy
access to computers, it seemed to be more of an issue of habit and personal preference.
The chances for sharing usually encouraged the participants’ writing, but sometimes may
also discourage their writings, depending on the nature and the interactional dynamics of the
sharing. The sharing of their writings were usually teacher-initiated during the period of my inclass observations. The participants generally showed more interest and were more motivated
to work on their book club-related writings as they were required to have a group presentation
on a novel that they picked. Most of them also thought highly of the Personal Advertisement
project, where they used images and words to share the public and private identity of themselves.
Edward, however, refused to participate in and failed to turn in the writing assignment since he
did not feel comfortable to “reveal himself to others”. Marissa and Phoenix spent much more
time choosing and clipping the pictures from magazines than writing up the short reflection
essay, as they considered the former much more “fun” to share than the latter. They also enjoyed
the warm-up writings on their notebooks, since it served as a channel for them to communicate
with their teacher in a more personal way. On some occasions, their quick writings also served
as prompts for discussions that were related to the literature texts that they were reading, as I
observed Marissa and Edward shared thoughts on the issue of “American dream” in class. In
most cases, however, it was only a one-way communication channel between the students and
the teacher. Since it was hard for the teacher to give detailed feedback, they usually only got a
stamp of “very good” or “excellent” without any written comments. The participants treated the

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warm-up writings in different manners. For example, Keres took it less seriously than the way
he treated the academic essays. For Edward, however, it served as a great way to safely vent
his anxiety and his financial insecurity, and he was usually very open and frank when he wrote
on his notebook. Marissa and Phoenix shared some of their personal lives on the notebook,
but chose to write in more details and depth in their web logs instead, since they usually got
the instant, “real” feedback from their peers. Nonetheless, the warm-up writings allowed their
teacher to have a peek into their personal lives.
The participants found some of the school-sponsored writing assignments more meaningful
than others. They all valued the book club-related writings and the warm-up writings to different
extent. The participants had mixed feelings about their academic essay writings. On the one
hand, they all considered the academic essays as “most important”, since their grades mostly
depended on these writings. It was also notable that in the interviews, they often used the term
“writing” in reference to “essay writing” only. On the other hand, most of them had a negative
feeling associated with this literacy genre. Keres was the only one who volunteered to use an
academic essay as a representative form of his writings. This showed that he took pride in his
essay writings. He was also the only one who included both strength and weakness in his essay
writings when Mr. D. asked the class to reflect upon their own writings. The other participants
all focused on their weaknesses only, and believed that there was nothing good about their
writings at all.
All the participants referred to their academic essay writings as “difficult” at some point of
their interviews. For most participants, the composition of the academic essays was a painful
process. Edward explicitly explained how stressful his IB history writing assignment was in his
interview and his notebook. Although Phoenix and Marissa did not complain about the essay
writings in their interviews, they both used strong terms such as “hate” and “anxious” when
they mentioned the essays to their peers in their social network spaces. Procrastination was a
shared pattern among these adolescent writers when they tried to write and finish their essays,

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and there was also a negative feeling of guilt associated. It was a common practice for them to
burn the midnight oil right before the date that their essays were due.
There were a couple of reasons that contributed to the participants’ negative feelings associated with academic writings. Firstly, they were ill prepared for the genre of academic essay.
The units of their English classes were based on the canonical literature texts, such as the Great
Gatsby, and the Catcher in the Rye. There was a lack of readings that could model the essay
writings. They did not have enough exposure to the academic essay writings through their selfsponsored readings either, which were popular youth literacies such as songs, media, comics,
etc. Secondly, as English language learners, many of them either did not have access to the support; or did not know about the resources available in and out of their school. They could not
obtain any support from their working class parents who did not speak any English. The school
counseling center discussed with them about their academic performance without providing
specific aid on their academic essay writings. It was also unlikely for them to obtain support
from the peers in their own social world, although Phoenix sometimes asked her boyfriend from
another school to help her with editing. I had to point out that resources and support did exist
for these students, however. For example, there was a free tutoring service provided by their
school, and yet Keres was the only one who took advantage of it. Keres also tried to practice
and improve academic English in the web forum when he was using computer at the school
or city library. There were also resources in the local libraries and churches that targeted at
teenager writers, which the participants were not aware of. Therefore, a gap seemed to between
the available resources and the perceived resources by the participants.

6.1.2

Self-sponsored Out-of-school Writings

The four participants in this study engaged in a wide range of out-of-school literacy practices. Due to their unique sociocultural background, different understandings of the notion of
“writing” and various purposes for their writing practices, every participant was unique in their

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Online or
mobile
phone
Web
forum (E)

Offline

Keres
Web forum (E)
Email (E)
Facebook comments (E/S/M)
Youtube video
upload & comments (E)

Edward
text message
(S/E)
Email (E)
Facebook
(E/S/M)
Youtube
video upload

College Application
forms
(E)
Handwritten
letter (E)
Love letter (E)
Handwritten diaries (E)

College Application
forms (E)
Poem (E)
Budgeting (S)

Marissa
Twitter
(E/S/M)
(14221)
Tumblr (E)
Email (E)
Facebook (E/S/M)
Text Message (E/S)
Online
chatting
(E/S)
Youtube video upload
Application forms
(E)
Scheduling (E)
Handwritten notes
(E/S)
Letters (S)
Post cards (S)
Shopping list (E/S)

Phoenix
Tumblr (E/V) (689)
Twitter (E/V/M)
Online
chatting
(E/V)
Email (E)
Youtube video upload

College Application
forms (E)
Handwritten notes
(E)
Scribbling

Table 6.1: Summary of literacy activity logs (E: English; S: Spanish; V: Vietnamese; M:
Mixed).
choice of the types of literacy practices, their preferences for the medium of composing, the
sharing of their writings, and the language choices for their writings. This study uncovered
some common patterns among these adolescent, ELL writers along with their distinctive characteristics. I summarize the findings based on their literacy activity logs in relation to the set of
research questions.
1. What did they write? They all wrote a significant amount on their own on a wide variety of topics for various purposes. The girls were more proliferate, as Marissa wrote
14221 tweets within one year and Phoenix produced 689 blog entries between April 2010
and June 2011, aside from their other self-sponsored writings. Despite the pressure and
time constraints for graduation and college preparation, all of the four participants wrote
on a regular basis. The topics of their writings covered both personal lives and larger
sociocultural issues; and the genres of their writings included poetry, web logs/diaries,
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emails/letters, tweets, text messages, etc.
2. In what languages did they write? Although their home languages were different and they
made individual language choices as they wrote, they all sometimes mixed and switched
languages. English was the primary language for their writings, although they did use
their heritage languages in different ways. Keres and Phoenix used their home language
in a tokenistic way, such as the name of food, or the name of a song. For Marissa and
Edward, they often did codes-switching between Spanish and English, and sometimes
even mixed the two languages. They all used lots of vernacular language and urban
slangs in their self-sponsored writings.
3. In what environment and through what medium did they write? Their self-sponsored
writings occurred in both the offline (e.g. memo, diary, letter, poetry) and online environment (e.g. email, web forums, social network, weblogs), although they had different
preferences for the offline/online literacies. It is important to note that much of their
out-school-writings occur on some type of web-based social networks, such as Facebook,
Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube, etc., which are all socially constructed spaces. As observed by
some scholars, “adolescent literacy practices out-of-school are so vibrant because of their
access to technology and affinity for social networking” (Vasudevan & Campano, 2009).
There was individual difference among these writers as they chose the medium for their
self-sponsored composing, however. For example, although all of them used Facebook
and Youtube, only the girls used Twitter and Tumblr for chatting and sharing pictures with
their friends. The boys (Keres and Edward) seemed to value the paper and print-based
literacy more than the girls, as they both chose to write love letters, diaries or poems
on paper, and wrote less frequently on their Facebook pages or public forums. They attached a special meaning to paper-based writings and actively engaged in them. It was
a surprising finding despite the easy access to computer and the powerful influence of
computer-based technology, and suggested that print-based literacy and computer-based
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literacy could co-exist and be mutually complementary rather than being mutually exclusive. The two girls (Marissa and Phoenix), on the other hand, wrote solely online or via
their cell phones, except the rare cases when they had to write down memos, shopping
lists, or English letters to their relatives for their parents.
4. What motivates them to write or discourages them from writing? Some common reasons
that prompted them to write was to communicate with friends and family members, to
have fun, and to record their lives. They were also motivated to write for unique reasons.
For example, Keres loved to participate in web forums to criticize and express his opinions
on schooling, social and political issues; Edward wrote poems as a way of escaping from
homework and stress; Marissa used her twitters not only to record, but also to broadcast
about her lives, maintain her status of popularity, and solidify friendship; while Phoenix
used her web logs to express the emotions and tackle the difficulties in her lives. These
participants attached significance to their own writings in their own ways.
5. Did they share their writings with others, and if so, how did they share? They all chose to
share some of their writings, as each participant maintained a different degree of privacy.
There seemed to be a spectrum for their level of comfort as it comes to the sharing of
writing. The two boys were very careful, and even calculated in choosing what to share
and what not to share. Keres only shared school-related issues with his friends; and for
public, he only wanted to share his thoughts and opinions on social and political issues,
and intentionally removed the emotions from those writings. He handwrote the letters and
diaries so that no one would have access to his private life. Similarly, Edward only shared
his handwritten poems with his girlfriend, and never shared his true feelings or emotions
on his social media pages. Phoenix was on the other end of the spectrum. She was very
willing, or even eager, to share her feelings and emotions with others, strangers included.
She considered her web log a channel to tell her private life stories, and posted on it
her school and family life, her fight with friends, her bitter-sweet love stories, and how
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she cried as she broken up with her boyfriend. The boundary between public and private
writing was blurred and crossed in her case. Marissa tended to share more personal stories
only with her social circle of friends, and only posted pictures and multimedia files on the
public Weblogs to maintain a public image that she wanted to reveal. Both girls expressed
in their interviews that they got excited when they had more “followers”(i.e. readers).

6.1.3

School-sponsored and Out-of-School, Self-sponsored Writings: Links and Gaps

This study uncovered some interconnections between the participants’ in-and-out of school
writings. The participants’ in-and-out of school writing products were connected in various
ways, such as topics, genres, recurrent themes, language uses, and aspects of their sociocultural
experiences presented in their writings. Besides, the writing processes, especially the writing
processes of academic essays and online writings were impacted by each other in some cases.
The participants’ social-cultural and life experiences in and outside of school fed both their
school-sponsored and self-sponsored writings. There was an overlapping in the topics of their
warm-up writings in the mainstream classroom and those that appeared in their blogs, twitters,
and Facebook pages, as they wrote about their family, friends, their school experience, their
hobbies, the songs that they listened to, the movies or TV programs that they watched, and
other weekend events that they attended. Their life experiences were also often transformed
into writing materials for those non-personal topics.
Their school-sponsored writings were often mentioned in their out-of-school, self-sponsored
writings. It was also not unusual to see a school-related life experience talked about and transformed into their self-sponsored writings. For example, Keres discussed about homework and
test scores and his participation in some academic support groups with his friends. Phoenix
and Marissa recorded anecdotes that happened in school and complained about their homework, especially their academic essay assignments in their web logs, twitters, and Facebook
pages. The participants learned about academic literacies as they engaged in their out-of-school

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literacy practices, either consciously or unconsciously. For example, a highly motivated English language learner Keres participated in web-forum discussions utilizing the elements of
argumentative writings, aiming at improving his academic essay writing skills. Edward used a
rhyme scheme and rhetorical devices in his poem writing. Marissa quoted a Tweeter friend’s
opinion when she was asked to write on the issue of voting in class. Phoenix borrowed from and
transformed the song lyrics in her blog writings. Besides writing skills, they all learned other
important literacy-related skills such as vocabulary, the awareness of the audience, scanning
information and make citations, etc.
The language of their in-school writings were impacted by their self-sponsored writings.
Most participants transferred some of the linguistic characteristics of their online writings to
the in-class writings, especially when it came to diction and spelling. Edward, Marissa and
Phoenix often used vernacular, internet slangs, and the simplified spelling of certain words in
their school-sponsored writings. For example, Phoenix spelled the word “back” as “bacc” in
her blog deliberately as a personal stamp. She then unconsciously mis-spelled the word in the
same manner in her warm-up writings and even academic essay. Marissa also used some curse
words and expression icons in her academic essay on the personal advertisement project. This
showed that the students were either confused about the distinction between academic writing
and online writings, or habitually mixed the two different types of genres.
In addition to the interconnection on the content and language of their writing products, an
equally significant finding is that the writing processes were also influenced by each other. Some
of them did their school assignments and self-sponsored writings simultaneously in a “parallel”
manner. For example, Edward wrote his academic essay while text messaging his friends during
the process. Keres usually had other windows (e.g., discussion forum, news, etc.) open on his
screen when he was working on his academic essays, although he usually wrote in quiet places
such as library and turned his cell phones silent or off. Marissa used to work on her homework
and academic essays while checking her tweets constantly and writing a new tweet on every

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10-minute intervals. It was not unusual for her to update on the process of her essay writings
through tweets (e.g., “2 more pages left”). Phoenix was the most multi-tasking one among all,
as she often switched back and forth between essay writing, online chatting, twittering, and
blogging, and even let her boyfriend help with editing of her paragraph as she simultaneously
chatted and wrote at the same time. They all expressed in their interviews that their engagement
with online chatting and text messaging had become distractions for their writings, but it also
served as boredom busters. They also used such communication as a way to break their “lonely
writer” identity, as if they were writing with their classmates and friends, since most of their
peers were doing the same homework assignment at the same time.
There also existed gaps between the practices. One major difference between their schoolsponsored and self-sponsored writings was that the latter were not only more informal, but
also fragmentary writings in many cases, especially when it came to their online chatting (e.g.,
tweets, text message). For example, among the 40 tweets that Marissa wrote per day, most of
them were incomplete sentences or phrases. It was the same for their text messages and most
entries on their Facebook pages. In addition, the participants had more chances to share their
self-sponsored writings than the school-sponsored onces. Although they did have opportunities
to share their warm-up writings, such sharings were usually very brief and non-spontaneous.
In most cases, Mr. D. was the only reader for their writings, especially when it came to their
academic essay. In contrast, most of their self-sponsored writings were meant to be shared, and
even the handwritten love letters and love poems had more authentic audience.

6.2

Discussions

This study uncovered several significant characteristics of the participants’ school-sponsored
and self-sponsored writing practices that broaden our understandings of the complexities of literacy and learning. First, these ELL adolescent writers crossed the boundaries between schoolsponsored academic writings and self-sponsored, personal writings. Second, as they partici-

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pated in the literacy practices in and out of school, they learned about and participated in a culture of sharing and collaboration, while the level of their participation could either encourage
or discourage the writings. Third, the participants were constantly constructing and negotiating
their own identities as they engaged in their literacy practices and learning.
The interconnections and a blurred boundary between school-sponsored and self-sponsored
writing practices was one noteworthy aspect of my study. Previous literature on L1 and L2
adolescent students seemed to suggest a dichotomy between school and personal writings, and
a difference attitude toward literacy for school and for personal purposes (e.g. Myer 1992;
O’Brien 1998). For example, the participants in O’Brien’s study viewed self-based literacy as
useful and enjoyable and school-based literacy as boring and irrelevant. Other studies (e.g.,
Emig, 1971; Knobel, 1999; Mihari & Sablo, 1996;and Schultz, 2002) seemed to imply that
the adolescent writers were more interested and motivated in personal writings but not schoolbased writings. My study seemed to contradict with such dichotomy since there existed interconnections between the participants’ school and self-sponsored writings in relation to both the
writing products and processes. The participants’ attitude toward their own writings were more
individual-based and complex rather than reaching a unanimous consent. All the participants in
my study valued certain aspects of the school-sponsored writing practices, such as the warm-up
writings and book-club related writings, which were more related to their own sociocultural
experiences and encouraged collaboration and sharings with their peers. They each had different attitudes towards other types of school-sponsored writings. Although Phoenix and Marissa
warmly embraced the personal advertisement project, Edward shuddered at the idea of sharing
his personal identity with others and refused to work on this project. When Edward suffered
from the essay writings in his IB history class and refused to use any of those as a representative
piece, Keres took great pride in his academic essays and voluntarily engaged in a web forum
discussion utilizing academic English. Similarly, some participants had mixed feelings toward
their self-sponsored writings as well. Marissa, for example, felt both proud and guilty for her

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heavy use of twitters. She used the word “addiction” to describe her engagement in Twittering.
There might be several possible reasons that contributed to the difference between my findings and those in the previous literature. One might be the literacy practices, especially the
writing practices, in Mr. D.’s English classes were more socioculturally related and meaningful
for these adolescent writers as compared to those classes one or two decades ago. Another was
that since my participants were all ELL writers, they were generally more motivated to improve
their English through writings. Any activities that involved English could be potential opportunities of learning for them. In addition, due to the advancement of technology and social
network, the writings that were produced by this generation of adolescents writers were different from those produced earlier. The adolescent ELL writers in my study had more chances
to produce more instant, fragmented writings as they text messaged or chatted on social media
websites. The boundaries among speaking/chatting, reading and writing were also blurred in
many cases, since they considered their text message, twitter, and other social media-sponsored
conversations as “chatting” instead of writing. These all contributed to a more sophisticated
attitude toward these writings. As Lincoln and Guba (2000) observed, “There is good news
and bad news with the most contemporary of formulations. The good news is that the multiple
selves-ourselves and our respondents-of postmodern inquiries may give rise to more dynamic,
problematic, open-ended, and complex forms of writing and representation. The bad news is
that the multiple selves we create and encounter give rise to more dynamic, problematic, openended, and complex forms of writing and representation.” (p. 183) Due to the complex nature
of the participants’ literacy practices, it would be very challenging to completely distinguish
their academic literacies from the personal ones. I argue that it would make more sense if we
focus on the meaningful connections and possible gaps between the school-sponsored and selfsponsored literacies rather than attempting to draw a boundary between the two or to find out
their preferences of one over the other.
As complex as their school and self-sponsored literacy practices were, the participants all

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learned about and participated in a culture of sharing and collaboration as they were provided
the opportunities for participation to different extents and in various ways both in and outside
of school. Lave and Wenger (1991) considered the opportunities for participation in a community of learners an integral part of language learning, which provided apprentices access to
resources and opportunities for interactions as they gradually acquired the skills through practices with more experienced, or expert members. Besides learning from their English teacher,
the participants were granted some opportunities to interact with and learn from their L1 peers
in such collaborative projects as the book club in their mainstream English classes. They also
had chances to participate in the sharing of their personal advertisement project using the tool
of both oral and written languages. They did not have as much opportunities to have interactional dialogues with their English teachers, however, since there was mainly grading but
little feedback on their writings. There was even less opportunities for such interactions and
participations in other classes, such as in the IB history class in Edward’s case.
The participants’ engagement in the out-of-school, self-sponsored writings also provided
some opportunities for learning and interactions. Their online literacy activities, especially
their engagement with social network (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.) represented a significant portion of the participants’ out-of-school literacy practices. As boyd (2008) observed,
one reason that social networks have gained popularity among adolescents is that these teenager
students can hang out in the virtual space without being watched by their parents or teachers.
They were all friends on the social network such as Facebook, although there was little interactions among these four participants. In other words, there was some overlapping between
their offline, school-related, official community and the online/virtual community, and yet each
participant had their own circle of friends. In the case of Marissa and Edward, the members of
their social circles were mostly Spanish-speaking students from their high school. For Phoenix,
most of her friends were old schoolmates from the former high school that she attended, and
there was little interactions between her and the students at Java city high school. Keres was

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rather picky in choosing friends, since he only wanted to hang out with those students who
were strong in academics. He was also the only one who voluntarily seek for opportunities to
interact with the “experts” in the larger virtual community which was beyond his own social
circle in real life, such as the newspaper editors, or native English speakers on web forums. All
of the participants chose to share at least some of their writings to their social circle in order to
participate in their peer group and solidify friendships with each other. Writings on the social
network, and the constant reading of and responding to their peer’s writings, had become a way
of life for all of them. Thanks to the technological devices such as internet and cell phones,
their writing practices all evolved from personal to public in different degrees, despite their
individual comfort level with sharing.
It was worthy to note that the participants had never, or seldom reflected on their voluntary
participation in the web-based social spaces. Most of them often did not consider their selfsponsored writings as “real” writings, and failed to see any cultural or educational value of
these literacy practices. When some literacy researchers and teachers believe in the value of
multiple literacies (e.g., Barton, 2001; Dyson, 2003; Gee, 2000; Street, 2001), the students
themselves seemed to have a relatively narrow definition of “literacy” and “writing”. They
seemed to view literacy from the functional level but not from the cultural and critical level
(Williams and Snipper 1990). It is therefore necessary to discuss with the students directly
about these important concepts so that they could also see their own literacy practices and their
participations in and out of schools in a more critical but affirmative manner.
The participants also engaged in ELL-specific and adolescent-specific writings as they constantly constructed and negotiated their identities through their literacy lives and their participation in various sociocultural practices. In the light of sociocultural theories, literacy could be
viewed as a social dialogue with other community members (Bakhtim, 1981; Vygotsky, 1978),
while languages are cultural and symbolic tools that are important for meaning-making and
social interactions (Street, 2001). For these adolescent second language learners, language(s)

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served as both medium for such social dialogues and cultural and symbolic tools. It was also
an identity marker (Rickford & Rickford, 2000). They may not be able to choose their other
identity markers such as their individual race, gender, family background, ethnicity, cultural
heritage and immigrant experience, and yet they could choose what languages to speak and
write in. In other words, as they made the choices for certain languages and dialogues, they
were also choosing and negotiating who they were and what kind of people they wanted to be.
As mentioned earlier, English was the primary language for both their school-sponsored
and their voluntary writings. This was not a surprising finding considering the fact that the
participants in this study were either U.S. born or had immigrated to U.S. for over 5 years, and
they all proudly embraced their identities as being “American”. They all considered English,
and Standard English in particular, “extremely important” for their academic and future career
success, and were eager to improve their English skills (i.e., listening, speaking, reading, and
writing).
When the participants had a strong desire for “the knowledge of the rules and conventions
of English” (Canagarajah, 2005, p. 936), they all valued their heritage languages. Some of
the participants, however, were forced to make a tough choice to focus on English only despite
their belief in an equal status between their heritage languages and the dominant language (i.e.
English). There were various factors that led them away from the learning of their heritage
languages, which included time and energy constraints, a lack of resources, and peer pressure.
Keres’ case was the most complicated. As part Vietnamese, Japanese, and Chinese, he spoke
Vietnamese at home and had taken courses on Chinese in order to better understand his cultural
heritage. However, he decided to quit since Chinese was too difficult and time-consuming
to learn, which simply could not fit into his busy schedule. He then chose to study Spanish
out of peer pressure, since most of his classmates spoke Spanish. Although Spanish was not his
heritage language, it also became part of his sociocultural identity since it allowed him a bordercrossing venue for him to obtain membership into a peer culture in and outside of his school.

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Due to his relatively low proficiency in both Chinese and Spanish, he used these two languages
in a tokenistic manner in his self-sponsored writings, such as using some Chinese characters
in his screen name, or citing a Spanish lyric on his Facebook page. Phoenix was in the same
boat, as she usually wrote primarily in English and only wrote the name of food, restaurant,
or cite song lyrics in Vietnamese. Although she was able to read and write some Vietnamese
before she immigrated to U.S., she gradually lost her proficiency in it after immigration and her
enrollment and immersion in the ELL program. Both Keres and Phoenix expressed regret in
having low proficiency in their heritage languages. Phoenix, in particular, experienced a feeling
of split in her cultural identities (Igoa, 1995), especially when she went back to Vietnam to visit
her elder sister and other relatives. She actually updated her web logs daily and wrote explicitly
about such feelings during her Vietnam trip as a way to vent and to seek for support from her
readers who had similar experiences with her.
Despite the low proficiency, they still consider themselves “bilingual” or “trilingual”. This
seems to be in accordance with Chiang and Schmida’s (1999) observation that English language
learners’ self-definition may not be “grounded in a clear or competent ability to speak the ethnic
language; instead, it is informed by a sense of cultural identification” (p.93). While they use
English as a major communicative tool to express their multilingual and ethnic selves, they still
psychologically maintain a cultural affiliation with their heritage languages.
The participants who had higher proficiency in their heritage language chose to write in it
in more meaningful ways. Marissa and Edward both took Spanish courses since the Freshman
year and were very proud of their capability of talking and writing in Spanish. They considered themselves lucky since their heritage language was a dominant language at school besides
English, and many faculty members and school staff spoke both English and Spanish as well.
They used Spanish extensively in their self-sponsored writings as they communicated with their
peers; and sometimes even wrote here and there in their in-school, warm-up writing notebooks
since they knew that their English teacher was also able to read Spanish. Marissa often found

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Spanish to be a more effective tool to express her deep feelings and strong emotions, such as
in her mourning of her dad. They also sometimes used Spanish as a “secret code” to communicate with their Spanish-speaking peers in their social media spaces. Spanish was a integral
part of their identities and peer culture. According to Igoa, knowing two languages enables the
students to “think differently” from two perspectives at the same time(Igoa, 1995, p. 81). Their
use of Spanish was intentional, which made them different from those students at Java city high
school who spoke Spanish at home but chose to avoid the learning of Spanish and denied their
capability of speaking Spanish at school. Although they were aware of the potential socioeconomic benefits of remaining bilingual, they chose to maintain their heritage language mainly
because they were proud of who they were. This echoed with previous studies in the field (e.g.
Durgunoglu & Verhoeven, 1998), which found that bilingual or multi-lingual minority students
chose to use their heritage language as a way to deepen their own ethnic roots.
It was also noted briefly earlier that besides their heritage languages, the research participants also chose to write in a type of internet slang and vernacular language, as they considered
such usage “cool”. They seemed to share the knowledge of a common pool of internet slangs,
including the local-based internet slangs such as “hella”. According to Lisa Delpit, people
from different class, race, and social-cultural backgrounds use different “codes” in communication(Delpit, 1988). In Moje’s study (2000) on gansta literacy, the adolescents used their own
symbols and language as secret codes to signify “identification and membership” (p. 651). In
addition, they also used lots of curse words in their online writings. It was interesting to note
that the two girls used these curse words more heavily to express strong emotions and to vent
their stress and anxiety. I argue that their choices of languages, code meshing and switching,
and frequent use of internet and urban slangs showed their eagerness to belong to an adolescent social circle which valued their ethnicity, gender, linguistic heritage, and popular cultural
literacies.

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6.3

Limitations of the Study

This study examined only four cases of ELL students situated within and beyond their Western high school. Although I managed to include both genders, several racial groups, and socioeconomic backgrounds as I recruited my participants, I only included those participants whose
English levels was between intermediate to more advanced. They were either U.S. born or
Generation 1.5 immigrant students who came to U.S. years ago. Therefore, I did not include
in my study more recent immigrant students or underperforming students with lower or limited
English proficiency. I was also not able to attempt to generalize the results to apply to the entire
ELL population.
In addition, the scope of the study only allowed me to look at the participants’ writing
practices in and outside of their school during their senior year but not in the college level. Longitudinal studies that connect the secondary and post-secondary education will provide more
complete descriptions and useful informations of what kinds of challenges ELL students experience over time and how they could be better prepared for the college writing classes.

6.4

Pedagogical and Educational Implications

The findings of this study suggest several pedagogical and educational implications for literacy scholars and teachers, especially those who work with English language learners.
One of the major findings of this study was that the ELLs engaged in a rich array of literacy practices on their own as they actively participated in the interactions with the peers within
and beyond their social circles. Unfortunately, the participants did not consider most of their
writings as “real writings”; and their English teacher believed that these students were “not
doing any writings on their own”. This suggests that we should expand our understanding of
“learning” and “writing” and take into consideration the sociocultural nature of second language
education. Instead of seeing the ELLs from a deficit model, language educators, researchers,

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and parents should consider these learners as voluntary participants in socially organized practices. In addition, the students themselves should also be aware of their own participation in the
learning process. Collaborations and interactions should also be encouraged.
Second, the participants made meaning of their lives through writings that involved various
medium, languages, and genres, which helped to broaden our understandings of writing and
literacy in general. It was crucial for the language educators to be aware of the co-existence of
multiple literacies (New London Group, 1996), online literacies, vernacular literacies (Camitta,
1993), and everyday literacies (Barton & Hamilton, 1998). We should also consider the connotation of literacy from the functional, cultural, and critical levels (Williams and Snipper 1990)
rather than viewing literacy learning as the acquiring of a set of skills. It is important for educators to learn about the students’ literacy experiences, to discuss with them directly about the
educational and cultural value of their writing practices, and to empower the students to have
a more positive attitude toward their literacy practices. At the same time, language educators
should also explicitly teach about and discuss with the students about the differences between
academic English and the vernacular English or other dialogues.
Third, the interconnections and gaps between school-sponsored and self-sponsored literacy
practices suggest that we should view learning beyond the scope of school, but in a larger
ecosystem of school, family and community. It was important to consider and understand the
sociocultural and literacy practices that the students already engaged in. Teachers should take
effort to link the students’ sociocultural experiences and their knowledge of popular culture in
the curriculum as “funds of knowledge” (Moll, Velez-Ibanez & Greeberg, 1989). Similarly,
language teachers should not work in isolation either, but work with other language teachers,
and universities so that they get support and gain access to more teaching resources and effective
assessment tools which are informed by research.
Fourth, as the reading and writing on the internet and social networks is a dominant pattern
for all of these participants, English teachers could make use of the potential of technology, dig-

122

ital media and social networks while at the same time educate the students on the distractions
and pitfalls of them. For example, the students have learned to collaborate as they compose in
online forums or social networks. English teachers could encourage this culture of collaboration in the classroom as well by having more group writing projects and peer conferences, as
Mr. D. does in his class. While it is important to acknowledge the richness of students’ selfsponsored writings and the potentials of technology and social networks, educators should not
over-romanticize these writings or the role of technology, as they may also become distractions.
As Warschauer (2007) has observed, it is impossible for English language learners to make academic improvement in a technological and digital environment without sufficient support and
guidance from their teachers. In the case of this project, the two female students spent lots of
time on Twitter, and share lots of links to videos, audios, blog posts, and articles. English teachers could educate them on the evaluation of these resources and the use of these resources as
potential individualized learning tools. They could also provide instructional scaffolding (Vygotsky, 1978) by showing students how they themselves use it strategically as a learning and
researching tool to sift through information, to access and exchange ideas, and to build interpersonal and professional relationships with those who share the same interests as they do. In so
doing, they could teach students to think more critically about all the information that they get
in order to help them move from relatively superficial and simplistic ways of communication
to deep and critical thinking, and more meaningful interpersonal interactions. Teachers could
also teach explicitly about the differences between the new genres and the academic writings in
relation to spelling, grammar, etc. With such help and guidance from the teachers, English language learners will learn to improve their English as well as other essential 21st-century skills
for their future success in the digital spaces.

123

APPENDICES

124

APPENDIX A

Conventions Used in the Presentation of Transcripts

Notation

Description

()

Parentheses enclosing text contain notes, usually about contextual and nonverbal information, e.g. laughs and nods. Empty parentheses indicate talk too
obscure to transcribe

[]

Brackets contain my explanatory information inserted into the quotations

NO

A capitalized word or phrase indicates increased volume

/n:/

A colon inserted into word or sentence indicates that the sound of the previous
letter was elongated

...

Ellipsis points inserted in the middle of a blank line indicates omitted materials

125

APPENDIX B

Survey Questionnaire of ELL High School Experience

I. Please choose the number that is most accurate in describing your feelings.
1. I feel support in my high school to achieve success.
1) strongly agree 2) agree 3) not sure 4) disagree 5) strongly disagree
2. I know where to get support if I need help in school, life, or at home.
1) strongly agree 2) agree 3) not sure 4) disagree 5) strongly disagree
3. I participate in lots of activities, such as sports, clubs, and after school programs.
1) strongly agree 2) agree 3) not sure 4) disagree 5) strongly disagree
II. Short questions:
4. When I came to the high school , I felt the following feelings (you may choose more than
one items):
Happiness
Joy

Pressure
Fear
Anger Anxiety

Freedom
Other

And why?
5. How many students (do you think) sitting by you right now have experienced similar
struggles in this country, and in this school?
6. What would have helped me the most when I first arrived in my high school to feel
successful?
7. What can schools do better to help students like me?
8. I believe that at this stage of my life, the most important things are: (e.g., learning English
well, get good grades, become popular in school, etc.)
9. If I had to choose between three jobs in my future, I’d like to be either:
A,
B,
C,
10. In order to have one of the jobs above, I must set the following goals for myself:
1).
2).
3).

126

APPENDIX C

Literacy Log

Figure C.1: Phoenix’ initial literacy log.

127

Figure C.1 (cont’d)
Transcription of Figure C.1
Name:
Today’s Date: 03/31/11
Out-of-class activities that you spend most time on today: (e.g. Reading, Listening to/singing
songs, video game, browsing internet websites, watching TV/movie, sports, emailing, talking
with friends, etc.).
1. browsing internet websites
2. watching TV/movie, sports
3. talking with friends
Activities

Time
startfinish

Zines
Facebook/Twitter
Text message
Online
chatting
Skype, etc.)
Others

(MSN,

sometimes
class
school
after
school

home/school computer
school
paper
paper
school
Twitter

after
school

calendar/planner writing
scheduling (e.g. writing to-do
lists; memos; grocery shopping list )
keeping a diary (paper journal, blogs, etc.)
Emailing
Hand-written notes
Scribbling
Website forum/BBS

Place

school

computer

after
school

home

computer

128

Medium:
(e.g. Paper,
computer,
cell phone,
etc.)

Note /
comment

Tumblr

Figure C.2: Edward’s initial literacy log.

129

Figure C.2 (cont’d)
Transcription of Figure C.2
Name:
Today’s Date: 03/31/11
Out-of-class activities that you spend most time on today: (e.g. Reading, Listening to/singing
songs, video game, browsing internet websites, watching TV/movie, sports, emailing, talking
with friends, etc.).
1. exercise
2. texting
3. listening to music
Activities

calendar/planner writing
scheduling (e.g. writing to-do
lists; memos; grocery shopping list )
keeping a diary (paper journal, blogs, etc.)
Emailing
Hand-written notes
Scribbling
Website forum/BBS
Zines
Facebook/Twitter
Text message
Online
chatting
(MSN,
Skype, etc.)
Others

Time
startfinish

Place

23 hrs
24/7

everywhere
everywhere

130

Medium:
(e.g. Paper,
computer,
cell phone,
etc.)

Note /
comment

Figure C.3: Marissa’s initial literacy log.

131

Figure C.3 (cont’d)
Transcription of Figure C.3
Name:
Today’s Date: 03/31/11
Out-of-class activities that you spend most time on today: (e.g. Reading, Listening to/singing
songs, video game, browsing internet websites, watching TV/movie, sports, emailing, talking
with friends, etc.).
1. internet
2. movies
3. talking with friends
Activities

Time
startfinish

Place

Medium:
(e.g. Paper,
computer,
cell phone,
etc.)

12:00 4:00

mall

money

4:00

home

computer

1 hour
all day

home
school

Scribbling

all day

home
school

Website forum/BBS
Zines
Facebook/Twitter

all day am

home

7:00-1 am
7:00 pm

home
home

calendar/planner writing
scheduling (e.g. writing to-do
lists; memos; grocery shopping list )
keeping a diary (paper journal, blogs, etc.)
Emailing
Hand-written notes

Text message
Online
chatting
Skype, etc.)
Others

(MSN,

132

&

paper, pencil
paper
&
pencil

all, computer
all
computer

Note /
comment

Figure C.4: Keres’ initial literacy log.

133

Figure C.4 (cont’d)
Transcription of Figure C.4
Name:
Today’s Date: 03/31/11
Out-of-class activities that you spend most time on today: (e.g. Reading, Listening to/singing
songs, video game, browsing internet websites, watching TV/movie, sports, emailing, talking
with friends, etc.).
1. sports
2. listening to music
3. browsing internet websites
Activities

Time
startfinish

Text message
Online
chatting
Skype, etc.)
Others

Home
School

home

hours

Hand-written notes
Scribbling
Website forum/BBS
Zines
Facebook/Twitter

once in a
while 30
min

10-15 min

calendar/planner writing
scheduling (e.g. writing to-do
lists; memos; grocery shopping list )
keeping a diary (paper journal, blogs, etc.)
Emailing

Place

home

Everyday
(MSN,

134

Medium:
(e.g. Paper,
computer,
cell phone,
etc.)

/

Note /
comment

Computer /
Cell

only to
teachers

computer

computer /
laptop
Everywhere Cell

APPENDIX D

Warm-up Writing Notebook

Transcription:
• Warm Up Jan 6, 2011 grade. My goal for this class was to get an A for the semester.
At the end I got a B. I’m really bummed that I didn’t get that grade but it was my fault
because I didn’t do some of my work. I talked a lot, so that’s one reason why I didn’t get
the grade I wanted.
• Warm Up Jan 10, 2011 weekend. The whole weekend was ugly. I was bored out of
my mind. My mom was mean and got on my last nerves. I was happy on Sunday night
because I ate Subway! I got happy when I eat.
Figure D.1: Marissa’s warm-up writing notebook (I).

135

Transcription:
• Warm Up Jan 11, 2011. A person that I admire. I admire my great grandma. She’s a
very giving person and cares for everyone. She loves having conversations with people
even though she’s pretty old. I love when she tells stories of when we’re young. It shows
that she remembers us. It seems like my uncles try to make their kids stand out & making
them seem more important but my grandma loves everyone.
• Warm Up Jan 14, 2011. 3 things that I learned this week. 3 things that I learned this
week are we shouldn’t slack off. I learned new vocabulary and [...] read statistics show
people who don’t study fail.
Figure D.2: Marissa’s warm-up writing notebook (II).

136

Transcription:
• 9/9/10. I always feigh [fake]to be asleep when people text or call me at night. Or when
someone calls when I don’t feel like talking to. Another thing I do is when people text
me during class and I just say I had on silent so I didn’t know. So I always feigh [fake]
that I didn’t know that people tried to talk to me.
• 9/13/10. I had a pretty good weekend. On Friday I went to my cousin’s house and hung
out. Saturday morning I woke up pretty late and then went to the movies at Oakridge with
a girl who was my co-workers friend. On Sunday I got up early kind worked on my beach
cruiser. Then I went to the bike junkyard downtown and bought some extra parts. After
that went to eat burritos at Iguanas. Got home put the parts on my bike and then bought
some shoes and sck[...] deads online.
• 9/16/10. Fitzgerald uses the words hope and dream frequently because that’s what he
tries to convey as the central message of the story. It signifies how people hope and
dream about what they want there lives to be like. It’s also part of the American dream
which Fitzgerald tends to write about.
Figure D.3: Edward’s warm-up writing notebook.
137

Transcription:
• Warm up 3-23-11. The statement is arguable. The world can be a stage with everyone a
player. There can be a story and there can be a setting at anything. Some parts may occur
by fate, or may be changed and take a different course. This is up to the story teller’s
eyes, however, of how the story of the world will be interpreted.
• Warm up 3-24-11. So many plays [...] the audiences’ life styles and events they can
identify. The metaphors also represent the audience’s manners of thinking and ways of
identifying themselves as well. Ibsen can also be remembered writing such plays that go
beyond audience’s imagination and expectations and moving forward to the progression
to Modern Literature.
• Warm 3-25-11. Pet names and views varies per relationship. For men, some women
can feel either inferior or flattered from being called such. For women, men likewise can
feel flattered or just plain scared. I really used them myself, but I have been with several
people do call me names like babe, boo, sweetheart, etc..
Figure D.4: Keres’s warm-up writing notebook (I).

138

Transcription:
• Warm up 3-28-11. For this I have to work as hard [Ioa...] on all of my work, not to [...]
return to finish PowerPoint I currently am having trouble with. Beside I’m doing fine w/
the book and I have to keep up my pace. I will have to finish everything at some point,
but now it will be fine.
• Warm up 3-29-11. I know one word other people would describe me, and that is particularly peculiar. In other words, I’m just known to be just plain weird. I’m known to
be different because of the way I think, which my values are much apart from others, the
things I say, which I do make people very silent toward me, the music I listen to, which.
I’m known not to listen to what everyone else listens to, and so on. In other words, there
isn’t a lot I have in common with other people here.
• Warm up 3-30-11. I feel a bit indecisive on this subject for many reasons. She shouldn’t
have borrowed the money to get by her means. On the hand, there isn’t much else she can
do for her husband expecting to pay for his recovery. However, there are other means of
work she could do to avoid the bank [...] actually asked her father to financial help (which
can be true to some other people).
Figure D.5: Keres’s warm-up writing notebook (II).
139

Transcription:
• Warm up 08/24/10.
– When a comparison is made with the words “like” or “as”, it is called a simile. When
a comparison is expressed without the words “like” or “as”, it is called a metaphor.
– He is a giant.
• Warm-up 08/25/10. In my opinion I think Benjamin’s mom is in shock to have born
Benjamin. Benjamin’s mom was probably expected a new born baby and was hoping to
be a mother but having born a 70-years old son is a big shock to a mother. Benjamin’s
case is different than everybody else. His father is ashamed of Benjamin because he was
born to be different than everyone else.
• Warm-up 08/26/10. Benjamin started doing typical activities to make his dad happy.
He started hanging out with kids and playing kids game. Life was more simple in the
1860s, I don’t think Benjamin would survive 21st century America. 21St century is more
complicated, the paparazi would follow Benjamin everywhere because he is unusual.
Scientists would want to make him their research and his life would be different.
Figure D.6: Phoenix’s warm-up writing notebook (I).
140

Transcription:
• Warm-up 08/27/10. Within this week I learned how to write and define similes and
metaphors in English class. In Govt class I learned about politics and government. Politics and government are two different things but they relate to each other. I also learned
in Biotech how to draw a workinking drawing.
• Warm-up 08/30/10. I enjoyed my weekends because on Friday I went to a party. It was
cool at first, everyone was socializing and having fun. However, as it got late there was
some uninvited guests that came and started drama with my friends. They were being
too loud and I didn’t want to get involved. I wanted to go home but my ride wanted to
stay. Then cops came and crashed the party because it was past our curfew and we were
disturbing the peace. We all got citations while two went to juvie.
• Warm-up 09/01/10. My neighbor just moved in a couple of weeks ago. She is a conscientious person. However, she seems to have a wan smile lately. I’ve never really talked to
her because she was different and such. One day I talked to her and she told me she lives
by herself because she had lost her son in a war. Her husband passed away recently because of cancer, leaving her by herself. After hearing her story, I empathized her situation
and started to be more friendly w/ her.
Figure D.7: Phoenix’s warm-up writing notebook (II).
141

APPENDIX E

Writing Assignments
Reading Pacing Guide

In your groups today, you will:
1. Create a Reading Pacing Guide. In your pacing guide include dates and the pages that
should be read by the specific date.
• You will be required to write 8 entries of a 3-sentence summary and a 1-sentence
analysis.
2. You will come up with deadlines for the following 3 assignments associated with your
book.
•
•
•
•

Book cover design + rationale for design
Open mind (characterization)
Reading Log – should be 8 entries total.
Date preference of novel presentation (no guarantee of date)
– Novel presentation should be 5 minutes per person.
– Date 1: Wed, May 11
– Date 2: Thu, May 12
– Date 3: Fri, May 13

3. Deadlines:
• Monday, April 25, 2011: All readers should have read the first 25 pages.
• Friday, April 29, 2011: At least one assignment should be turned in.
• Friday, May 6, 2011: An outline of your presentation should be submitted.
– Presentation should be roughly 30 minutes.
– All readers have to present a minimum of 5 minute
– Monday, May 9: 2 sample presentations will be given. Extra credit will be
given to members who present. This will be an opportunity to receive critique
and feedback as to what is expected from presentation.
Everything is due Friday, May 13, 2011 – No exceptions

142

Personal Advertisement Project Assignment

Henrik Ibsen’s A doll House Personal Ad Project.
In A doll House, Ibsen portrays Nora as having a dual personality; she conceals a secret from
her husband and the rest of society while maintaining a public façade. Similarly, we also have
dual personalities; we often have a secret side – a part of our own identify which we choose to
separate from the rest of the society – and one by which most know us. For this project you will
be doing the following:
1. Create a two-sided ad portraying both sides of your personality – a public, and a private
one. On your ad you must include the following on each side:
•
•
•
•

Four images/symbols
Three adjectives to describe your side
A color scheme to represent the mood of your identify/personality
Your entire page must be filled in.

2. A page response comparing your public vs your personal identify. Your personal side
does not have to be a secret per say, it can be something a basic as a little known facts or
details about you, but it must be contrasted with your public side.
• You do not have to feel pressured to reveal a secret/secrets.
• All images must be suitable for an educational environment and are subject to Mr.
D’s approval. Good luck!

143

APPENDIX F

Marissa’s Facebook Page

Transcription:
LA ORIGINAL BANDA EL LIMON DI QUE REGRESARAS LETRA
***** LA LETRA COMPLETA DE LA CANSION DI QUE REGRESARAS DE LA ORIGINAL BANDA EL LIMON *****
Like · · September 19 at 9:23pm via mobile · Privacy:
5 people like this.
Write a comment...
RECENT ACTIVITY
Your Daily Gemini Horoscope has been delivered. You could find yourself in the middle of a
challenging dilemma in the workplace today. If you are asked to take sides, see if you can’t find
the middle ...
See More: apps.facebok.com/getyourhoroscope
Like · · View your Horoscope · September 19 at 3:16pm via Horoscopes · Privacy:
La guti in problem solving mode(:
September 14 at 12:32pm · Privacy:
Figure F.1: Marissa’s Facebook page.
144

APPENDIX G

Phoenix’s Tumblr Page

Story of My Life
May 2010
54 posts
Text May 04, 2010
Goodnight tumblr,
Wow its been a while since ive finshed all of my homework in one night. i helluh lagged until
like 9 or 9;30ish to do my homework &yet i still managed to finish them. Im proud of myself
<3 Well goodnight im tired sweet dreams!
Text May 19, 2010
Yesterday i saw my dad for the first time after 6-7years? Dammn its helluh unexpected, i dont
even know why he came back for. Im overwhelmed with everything thats happening & i dont
know what to do. So after how many years now he decided to come back to take me&my sister
away? Hells nno. Alot of questions are runnign thru my mind, like why did you leave us? Why
are you suddenly coming back into my life? What do you want ? Whatever the reasons are it
dont matter to me because im not gonna leave my mom, im content with what i have right now.
So much emotions are bottling up inside me, i feel like im gonna explode one of these days
fucc.-_Photo May 24, 2010 tumblrjunkie: (via heytherefiona, joycakes)
5,835 notes

Figure G.1: Phoenix’s Tumblr Picture
Text May 31, 2010
1,191 notes
I bet Viets can get more notes than Filipinos! Reblog if you’re Viet!

145

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