ABSTRACT
The field of L2 writing in English, while still relatively young, has clearly come of age. The last 25 years have seen several firsts in L2 writing research: the first journal devoted exclusively to L2 writing (the Journal of Second Language Writing); the first book linking L2 reading and writing (Carson & Leki, 1993); the first book focusing on adult education and L2 English (Burnaby & Cumming, 1992); the first book on what is being called Generation 1.5, that is, high school immigrant students (Harklau, Losey, & Siegal, 1999); the first bibliographies of published work (Silva, Brice, & Reichelt, 1999; Tannacito, 1995); the first conferences devoted exclusively to L2 writing (Purdue Symposium on Second Language Writing and others). Several accounts of the history of L2 writing pedagogy and of the discipline itself document the development and growing importance of L2 writing studies as a field of practice and investigation. (See for example Blanton, 1995; Cumming, 1998, 2001b; Kaplan, 2000; Matsuda, 1998, 1999, 2003c, 2003d; Matsuda, Canagarajah, Harklau, Hyland, & Warschauer, 2003; Raimes, 1991; Silva, 1990, 1993; Silva & Brice, 2004; Silva & Matsuda, 2002.)
So many L2 writing subfields have evolved, in fact, and with such rapidity that it has become difficult for area specialists to stay abreast of findings in subdisciplinary areas outside their expertise. As an obvious example, a great deal of L2 writing research has focused on aspects of undergraduate writing in English-medium institutions. Increasing numbers of these students in North America are immigrants and coming to university study as graduates of U.S. and Canadian high schools. Yet university researchers and practitioners are often not familiar with the research on L2 writing in, for example, secondary schools.
