ESL Students' Narratives of Writing Process: Multiplicity and Sociocultural Aspects

Within a framework of sociocultural approaches to writing process, this study examined six ESL graduate students' writing processes in depth based on individual interviews and their narratives of writing process. The narratives and interviews were analyzed to discover salient aspects of the students' writing processes and to understand the socially situated nature of the writing processes. First, it was observed that these six students displayed multiplicity in terms of their representations of writing process, episodes, textual practices, and concerns. Several factors including the writing task, students' familiarity with genre, literacy skills, attitude toward writing, and involvement in interaction contributed to individualized trajectories of writing process. It was also revealed that writing is unavoidably a socially situated practice. Students were situated in their cultural arenas as well as their disciplinary arenas, and these contexts helped the students serve as active agents producing and sharing knowledge. The confluence of personal, cognitive, and social factors observed in their writing processes suggests that writing process should be understood from multiple perspectives.