Beyond ‘write-talk-revise-(repeat)’: Using narrative to understand one multilingual studentʹs interactions around writing

This paper offers a narrative framework for understanding how multilingual graduate students make sense of the continuous and frequently contradictory talk they engage in as they write. It illustrates how attention to the telling, form, and content of the stories such students relate about their ongoing interactions around academic writing can reveal aspects of the relationship between speaking and composing/revising that are not foregrounded in other approaches to data collection and analysis. Advocating movement beyond a ‘write-talk-revise-(repeat)’ model of L2 writing, the paper draws on Ochs and Capps’ (2001) multidimensional approach, adapting its use to a multilingual context. It then exemplifies how this modified model can be used by analyzing the stories told by one Taiwanese student in a U.S. university about her interactions with teachers, tutors, and peers. Analysis demonstrates how, through the act of storytelling, this student attempts to work through her model of what counts as ‘‘good’’ writing in her English language academic discourse community and to develop a sense of who she is as a multilingual writer. The paper ends with discussion of how a narrative approach provokes several shifts in perspective that serve to complement and extend existing work in the field.