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Book Review: Teaching ESL composition - purpose, process, and practice

Despite beginning their book with an observation on the ‘relative newness of L2 writing as a field of expertise’ (p. xvi), Ferris and Hedgcock have assembled an array of research results vast enough to suggest a field that is rapidly maturing. An overwhelming impression is of the exhaustive attention to detail that the authors have given in identifying relevant research findings, relating these findings to each other, and then demonstrating their application to classroom practice. As a result, the book provides a rich resource for the four audiences it is aimed at: teacher educators, ESL teachers, mainstream composition teachers and L2 writing researchers. Written in a North American context, Teaching ESL composition is set against the background of a strong tradition of L1 writing research. The authors acknowledge this tradition, tracing its development from an orientation towards text as product into its later focus on text production as process. This focus on writing as process is identified with the approaches of the expressivists and the cognitivists, with the latter approach being represented by early cognitive psychologists and later social constructionists. Having acknowledged the parallel development of the L2 research tradition, the authors set out to make their case for the distinctiveness of L2 writers and the L2 writing process. Their goal is to provide a framework that will enable teachers ‘to begin to formulate our own operational theories of how ESL writers learn to write and how we can shape our instruction to meet their needs most effectively’ (p. 9). Recognizing that the quantity and variety of available research creates a ‘perplexing situation’ (p. 8), they state their intention of adopting a systematic approach to evaluating and applying research findings based on a consideration of the following components: the ESL writer, the NES reader, the