ABSTRACT
As numbers of L2 graduate students in North American institutions have increased over the last 25 years, research attention has shifted from L2 undergraduates toward the L2 graduate student population. As noted in the section on identity below, graduate students may experience particular threats to their identities as they make the transition to the unfamiliar ways of writing demanded by their disciplines in English-dominant educational environments. Often much is at stake for these students, who may leave jobs and family behind to pursue degrees abroad, be required to make significant financial investments in their education or have them made on their behalves by their employers or governments, experience threats to their disciplinary expertise (for example, being regarded as or assumed to be less expert than they really are), and be required, in addition to studying, to work as teaching or research assistants in contexts they have never themselves experienced before.
