Hyland, K. (2009). Teaching and researching writing (2^nd ed.). Harlow, England: Longman, 280 pp., paperback.

This latest edition of Teaching and Researching Writing emphasizes the importance of writing; guides practitioners in conducting focused action research; and situates findings within the broader fields of writing research, teaching applications, and Internet communications. With its strong emphasis on linking relevant research, specific teaching applications, and resources, it is a clear, comprehensive text that works well for training graduate students and developing writing teachers. Although much of the content remains consistent with that of the first edition (2002), the second edition includes two new chapters, a dozen new references on research trends (Chapter 1), incisive observations of the relationship of theory and practice, and a compendium of resources.

Section I, Concepts and Issues, offers a concise, perceptive history and map of approaches and key issues. In thought-provoking pairings (including “writing and context” and “literacy and expertise”), Hyland examines writing in relationship to contextualized factors. Although the series title lists teaching before researching, Chapter 1 demonstrates the complex interplay between the two elements by listing research first and then teaching. It reviews approaches and dimensions of teaching and researching writing, including text (products and code), writer (process and encoder), and reader (social and decoder). Chapter 2 takes up key issues and research models and paradigms with an emphasis on those that have inspired recent developments and pointed to future directions.

Section II, Applying Writing Research, clearly demonstrates how research informs practice. Chapter 3 describes four programs and settings: an academic writing course for undergraduates, a genre-based approach to K–6 writing development, a collaborative writing experience linked to a social goal, and an initiative for increasing access to higher education through writing training. Each case examines the complex relationships among research, course applications, methods, materials, and underlying orientations. Chapter 4 describes how six configurations of methods, materials, and resources work in various applications: an EAP textbook, a corpus of data, a prioritized high-frequency word list, a sequence of writing frames, an automated feedback tool, and writing portfolios for teaching and assessing. These examples illustrate how established methods and materials combine with newer ones to provide variety and depth in writing teaching applications.

Section III, Researching Writing, includes an accessible review of research practices and issues in Chapter 5, a close-up view of five kinds of observation protocols in Chapter 6, and examples of five situated research projects in Chapter 7. Chapter 5 unifies approaches to research and to teaching in such clear ways that busy teachers can learn and carry out classroom-based, practitioner-directed action research. Using the guidelines of Cohen et al.(2000), Hyland illustrates a recursive action research cycle for teachers to identify and refine a current problem; gain perspective from stakeholders and relevant literature; set up research design, evaluation, and implementation; and analyze the results. Hyland also reviews nine methods for studying writing, ranging from self-report and introspection to experiments in which one feature is controlled and observed. He takes up the issue of research topics by comparing and contrasting research of texts, writers, and readers. Information thus gained can inform individual teachers and can shape larger policy and practice issues.

Chapter 6 includes detail on how research methods in five small-scale studies worked out. In each instance, Hyland provides a case summary about (1) the study’s aims, methods, and results; (2) commentary; and (3) suggestions for further research. Chapter 7 analyzes five samples of text research, including genre analysis, contrastive rhetoric, case study, and ethnographic and literacy across a variety of text types and topics. By combining current themes and methods in these demonstrated ways, teachers and practitioners can engage more readily in action research on writing.

Section IV, References and Resources, includes Chapters 8, Key Areas and Texts, and Chapter 9, a list of Key Sources. Chapter 8 describes fields that contribute to current and emergent knowledge about writing and writing pedagogy, ranging from literacy studies to scientific and technical writing to computer-based blogs, wikis, and web pages. Hyland arranges discussion of these key areas along a continuum of social practice, analytical approaches, writing for a particular community, and interactive forms. Chapter 9 presents lists of general writing books and textbooks, core and online writing journals, professional associations, writing conferences, Listservs, websites, and databases. Finally, a concise glossary makes key concepts accessible.

Although this edition includes a good description of current, dominant paradigms and of the “more or less intact” (p. 1) body of basic research about writing, it misses an opportunity to fully describe the emergent paradigm shifts driven by World Englishes or English as an International Language and our flat world as the ultimate context for English use. In computers and international ventures, “blended models are probably the future” (Friedman, 2006, p. 107). In teaching English writing, new models for managing the explosion of English writing are the current reality and future. Although the field of writing already motivates research on how so-called nonnative users can become “experts” (Swales & Feak, 2004, p. 1), the book could have more fully addressed the conundrum of how to research or teach about tolerance for some degree of variety in ways of expressing (though not, of course, tolerance for ambiguity or lack of clarity) while still managing writers’ patterns of error. Similarly, Chapter 2 takes up the topic of contexts but stops short of describing the broader global context in which English is used. Context of situation and context of culture are, in fact, located within “macro-level social and political structures” (p. 47) beyond families and research agencies; the enlarged context of English as a global language needs to be more fully considered.

Nonetheless, this perceptive collection of methods, materials, and resources demonstrates the exciting complexity of the field of researching and teaching writing, and it points the way for busy practitioners to take up thoughtful study of their own questions.

REFERENCES

Cohen, L ; Manion, L & Morrison, K (2000). Research Methods in Education (5th edition). London, Routledge Falmer.

Friedman, T. (2006). The world is flat. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Swales, J., & Feak, C. (2004). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills (2nd ed.). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Susan Olmstead-Wang, PhD, teaches graduate writing to a wide variety of students: nonnative users of English in medical settings, including Chinese-speaking environments, and native and nonnative users who are writing research journal articles and dissertations at the University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB). She also teaches Instructing and Assessing Reading and Writing for master’s students in UAB’s international track of the Master’s of Arts in ESL Education.