ABSTRACTLEARNING TO WRITE IN THE DIGITAL AGE: ELLS' LITERACY PRACTICES IN ANDOUT OF THEIR WESTERN URBAN HIGH SCHOOLbyJiang PuThe definition of literacy is constantly changing and expanding. A sociocultural view ofLiteracy considers literacy to be multiple, multimodal, and multilingual as situated in and acrossthe social and cultural contexts. As technology, new media and social network has reformedmany aspects of writing, they provide ELLs (English language learners) with supports andresources while at the same time raising new challenges. Although adolescent ELLs are avery active group that use technology, new media and social network, they remain an under-represented group in the L2 writing research; and very little is known about the the socialpractices of these writers as they use technology and digital media to develop and maintainsocial relationships in the local and global contexts. It is important to examine their writingpractices across the school, home, and community contexts as they are immersed in technologyand digital literacy practices.In the light of a sociocultural and socio-critical view of literacy, I conduct the year-longethnographically oriented multiple case studies of 4 high school students in a Western ur-ban community in the United States in order to understand their school-sponsored and self-sponsored writing practices in the digital age; and to examine the relationship, potential linkand 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 be-come a member of their web-based social networks and gain access to their writings on the weblogs, forums, Facebook, and Twitter. In the inductive analysis of the data, I notice importantand 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 indi-vidual and collaborative writings and chances of sharing, students consider certain tasks moremeaningful than others. As the four participants in this study engaged in a wide range of self-sponsored out-of-school literacy practices, every participant was unique in their choice of thetypes of literacy practices, their preferences for the medium of composing, the sharing of theirwritings, and the language choices for their writings. One important findings is that their choicesof languages, code meshing, and frequent use of internet and urban slangs showed their eager-ness to belong to an adolescent social circle which valued their ethnicity, gender, linguisticheritage, and popular cultural literacies. As they consider English "extremely important", theyall value their heritage languages as part of their identity construction. The links between theschool and self-sponsored writings are obvious. There is overlapping in topics, genres, recurrentthemes, language uses, sociocultural experiences that feed the writings. The writing processesare also impacted by each other. As for the gaps, while self-sponsored writings provide morechances for sharing and expressing, they are more informal and sometimes even fragmentary. Iargue that while it is important to acknowledge the richness of students' self-sponsored writingsand the potentials of technology and social networks, educators should not over-romanticizethese writings or the role of technology, as they may also become distractions. It is also impor-tant to focus on the meaningful connections and possible gaps rather than drawing a boundarybetween the in-school and out-of-school literacy.This study offers new understandings and insights into the writing practices of the Englishlanguage learners in the digital age. It calls for future longitudinal studies that connect thesecondary and post-secondary education which will provide more complete descriptions anduseful information on how they could be better prepared for college writing classes.
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