Graduate Student: Zhaozhe Wang

Where are you from, and what are you studying?

Allow me to take the liberty of interpreting this question in three dimensions: where I am from geographically, professionally, and philosophically. There are quite a few geographical places I call home: Qingdao, Shandong in China; Springfield, Missouri, Orono, Maine, and West Lafayette, Indiana in the United States; and numerous other places I have set foot in, lived, studied, loved, and eventually left. So geographically, I identify myself as a cosmopolitan nomad moving from one academic institution to another.

Professionally, I did a fair amount of undergraduate coursework in general linguistics and sociolinguistics at Qingdao University and Missouri State University, moved on to finish my master’s degree in rhetoric and composition at the University of Maine, began my doctoral study in the Second Language Studies Program at Purdue University in 2015, and finally found my niche in the field of L2 writing that seeks to reconcile the expertise I have been accumulating in both fields. So professionally, I identify myself as a boundary-crosser moving from one discipline to another.

Philosophically, I have gone through my preparatory phase within a prescriptive and positivist paradigm (as most of our fellow community members coming from the expanding circle), painstakingly transitioned into a postpositivist yet pragmatic ideology in a new geographical and academic context, and now I’m still skeptical about the so-called “post-humanism.”

What is an “a-ha moment” you experienced recently in either teaching or research?

I’ve been interested in observing the gradual development of my L2 writing students’ authorial voice, which I’m inclined to define as their awareness of and the ability to articulate their informed and conscious rhetorical decisions. So the question “why are you doing this (a certain rhetorical move) here?” or “why are you doing it this way?” is one of the most frequent prompts in my teaching repertoire that I use during individual conferences with students. During a conference last semester, I noticed a Spanish word “fútbol” (soccer) in a narrative paper written by one of my favorite students. He came from Mexico. So naturally, I asked him “Why did you decide to plug in a Spanish word here?” I assumed he would attribute it to his difficulty in finding an English equivalent. To my pleasant surprise, he answered, “‘Fútbol’ is the sport that represents my culture and national pride. The word “soccer” would leave out those feelings.” His translingual consciousness made me say “a-ha.”

What in L2 writing research excites you right now?

Apart from my research interest in student writers’ voice, I have also delved into the interdisciplinary connections between applied linguistics and composition studies in various dimensions—historical, theoretical, and pedagogical. Additionally, reconciling L2 writing with translingual writing has recently been put on my research agenda.

Elena Shvidko is an assistant professor at Utah State University. Her research interests include L2 writing, multimodal interaction, and interpersonal aspects of language teaching. She is also a TESOL blogger, focusing on L2 writing. Her work appears in Journal of Response to Writing, System, TESOL Journal, and TESOL’s New Ways series.

Zhaozhe Wang is a doctoral student in the Second Language Studies program at Purdue University. His research interests include L2 writing, composition theory and pedagogy, corpus linguistics, writing across the curriculum, translingual writing, and writing program administration.