Roberge, M., Losey, K. M., & M. Wald (Eds.). (2015). Teaching U.S.-educated multilingual writers: Pedagogical practices from and for the classroom. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. 344 pages, paperback.

An under-addressed topic in composition scholarship is serving the unique literacy needs of U.S.-educated multilingual writers. Two prior texts, Generation 1.5 in College Composition (2009, edited by Roberge, Siegal, & Harklau) and Generation 1.5 Meets College Composition (1999, edited by Harklau, Losey, & Siegal), address writers who are now broadly referred to as “U.S.-educated multilingual writers.” The 1999 text examines the range of identities and classroom/program domains of U.S.-educated multilingual students, while the 2009 book focuses on the theoretical scholarship focused on this population.

With the increasing number of multilingual writers who have had experience in the U.S. K–12 education system now entering college writing programs, scholarship on pedagogical tools and programs for these writers is now much needed. The 2015 volume edited by Roberge, Losey, and Wald attempts to fill this void. The editors chose to include scholarship only by teacher-researchers (i.e., those in the field who are creating practical composition pedagogy for linguistically diverse college writing classrooms). Article topics, which cover a wide range of learning and classroom contexts, fall into two groups: specific classroom pedagogical tools and more general curricular development. To increase reader accessibility, every chapter follows a similar format; each article includes information about the pedagogical context, the specific pedagogical practice, a scholarly rationale, the outcomes of the practice, and a reflection of the practice. Additionally, many of the authors include examples of assignments, rubrics, or other materials as appendices.

Chapters 1 and 2 begin the section about specific pedagogical tools for instructors of U.S.-educated multilingual writers. Chapter 1 (“Inclusivity through community: Designing response systems for ‘mixed’ academic writing courses”), by Dana Ferris, highlights responses and feedback between students and instructor and feedback between students, providing a response system within the classroom community. In Chapter 2, (“Increasing student metacognition and transfer through reflective writing”), Gita DasBender focuses on student reflective writing by requiring student writers to express what as well as how they are learning.

Chapters 3, 4, and 5 describe pedagogical practices in which students analyze the functional and lexical elements of texts in order to advance their academic writing competencies in English. In Chapter 3 (“Genre play: Moving students from formulaic to complex academic writing”), Sunny Hyon explains how “genre play” can help multilingual students learn to adapt their writing for particular contexts and goals. In Chapter 4 (“Using systemic-functional linguistic analysis to explain expectations of academic discourse”), Luciana C. de Oliveira proposes how textual deconstruction practices can help multilingual students understand the conventions of academic writing. Chapter 5 (“Students as ‘language detectives’: Teaching lexico-grammatical features of academic language”), by Megan Siczek and Gena Bennett, proposes another avenue for composition instructors to guide writers in examining academic word choice and use through a corpus approach.

Chapters 6, 7, and 8 address students’ multiple literacies and diverse cultural backgrounds. In Chapter 6 (“Screencasting: Incorporating personalized video feedback in hybrid writing classes”), Anna Grigoryan details how she utilizes screen capture software to provide feedback on student writing in her hybrid first-year composition courses, which she found can lead not only to higher student satisfaction, but also to improved writing results. In Chapter 7 (“Digital storytelling: Developing academic writing skills through multimodal texts”), Joel Bloch discusses a curriculum in which students participate in digital storytelling to improve their digital literacies and learn how to incorporate academic scholarship into their own texts. Chapter 8 (“In their own voices: Validating multilingual identities through student literacy narrative”) by Vanessa Cozza, explains how the literacy narrative can be used as a springboard for U.S.-educated multilingual students in finding their voice in academic composition.

Chapters 9 through 13 compose the “Curricular Approaches” section of the text. In Chapter 9 (“‘Seeing and writing the world’: Exploring personal experience and cultural knowledge through academic writing”), Kristi Costello and Paul Shovlin propose a hybrid pre-101 course in which students begin with an identity narrative and then move into working with secondary source material of varying media, eventually composing a portfolio that integrates their personal experience with a public argument. The approach explained in Chapter 10 (“Critical reading, rhetorical analysis, and source-based writing”) by Joanne Baird Giordano and Holly Hassel addresses Hmong students’ academic literacy needs in reading, analyzing, synthesizing, and producing academic writing by using scaffolding tasks that prepare them for credit-bearing composition courses. In Chapter 11 (“World Englishes: Academic explorations of language, culture, and identity”), Shawna Shapiro illustrates how she introduces her NESs and NNESs to the global concepts of identity, language, and culture.

Chapters 12 and 13 move to domains outside the classroom. In Chapter 12 (“‘Active editing’ workshops in the Writing Center: Modeling and practicing hands-on strategies for addressing sentence-level concerns”), Kristiane M. Ridgway addresses how writing centers can assist U.S.-educated multilingual students with sentence-level editing through modeling and guided practice. In Chapter 13 (“Learning from each other: Pairing pre-service teachers with U.S.-educated multilingual writers”), Cathryn Crosby, Debbie Lamb Ousey, and Myra M. Goldschmidt show how pairing preservice TESOL teachers with U.S.-educated multilingual students can result in a collaborative experience.

Overall, this book is a practical resource for instructors in first-year composition, as well as in second language writing, as it provides pedagogical tools and curriculum concepts focused on the unique learning needs of U.S.-educated multilingual students. The practices have been implemented in authentic contexts and supported by scholarship, and the outcomes and observations provide further insight into possible adaptation to other contexts.

Melinda Harrison earned her MA from Illinois State University and researches the literacy needs of U.S.-educated multilingual students in first-year composition. She is an adjunct instructor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and teaches courses in UAB’s first-year composition program and English Language Institute.