Christine M. Tardy’s research while affiliated with University of Arizona and other places

English is undisputedly the primary language of academic publishing, used now by a majority of internationally indexed journals. This dominance in the academic publishing world exerts great pressure on academic researchers to learn English and, often, to conform to a particular variety of English. This entry reviews the growing body of research on world Englishes and academic publishing, including the history of English in this domain, research into inequities caused by English's dominance, the use and varieties of English in academic publication, and suggested actions for creating a more equitable publishing landscape.

This Element offers readers an overview of the theory, research, and practice of teaching academic writing to second language/multilingual (L2) students. The Element begins with a discussion of contextual features and some of the most common settings in which L2AW is taught. The Element then defines and shares examples of several concepts, pedagogical approaches, and teaching practices that are particularly relevant to L2AW instruction. Reflective questions guide readers to consider how these aspects of L2AW might be carried out within their own educational settings. Finally, the Element considers the rapid changes in technology and their influences on texts and academic writing.

This volume contributes to ongoing discussions of ethics in Applied Linguistics scholarship by focusing in depth on several different sub-areas within the field. The book is comprised of four sections: methodological approaches to research; specific participant populations and contexts of research; (language) pedagogy and policy; and personal and interactive aspects of research and scholarship. Moving beyond discussions of how ethics is conceptualized or defined, the chapters in this volume explore ethics-in-practice by examining context-specific ethical challenges and offering guidance for current and future Applied Linguistics scholars. This volume responds to the need to provide context-specific research ethics training for graduate students and novice researchers interested in a variety of contexts and methodological approaches. After engaging with this volume, new and experienced applied linguists alike will gain familiarity with specific ethical challenges and practices within particular sub-disciplines relevant to their work and across the field more broadly.

Genre-based writing instruction has become a key approach to teaching second language writing (SLW). Genre scholars draw on diverse theoretical and research traditions (Hyon, 2018; Kessler & Polio, 2024), resulting in the development of distinct genre-based pedagogical approaches; nevertheless, across genre-based writing instructional approaches, sample texts, which are also referred to as mentor texts or genre exemplars (Swales, 1990), play an important role. Mentor texts serve as resources for analysis and rhetorical consciousness-raising (Cheng, 2018), and writers often draw on them when developing their genre-specific knowledge (Tardy, 2006). Using mentor texts in a genre-based writing classroom requires instructors to draw on a complex body of knowledge, yet, teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and instructional practices surrounding mentor texts have been underexplored. Teachers may face challenges in finding samples that reflect teaching aims, in selecting level-appropriate mentor texts, or in avoiding students’ misunderstanding the purpose of examples as templates to be imitated (Wette, 2015). Better understanding these concerns and challenges is crucial for SLW instructors to overcome them and for administrators and teacher educators to provide support for instructors to do so. To address this need, this presentation discusses preliminary results from a mixed-methods study that draws on interview and survey data from SLW instructors at two large US universities. The preliminary results indicate that even within the same SLW program, instructors hold different expectations for acquiring and using mentor texts. These differing approaches seem related to different values and priorities, such as language use, quality, availability, fit, and accessibility, as well as challenges and concerns like prescriptive teaching, a lack of creativity in student writing, and students’ misuse of sample texts. The preliminary results also suggest that the instructors’ differing approaches, priorities, and values may result in a limited use of textual mentors to highlight genre variability and innovation. Our presentation shares key insights related to the SLW teachers’ sources of knowledge around the use of mentor texts, the ways that instructors use mentor texts in the classroom, and the various factors that have shaped the instructors’ choices and practices surrounding the use of mentor texts. These insights add to a growing body of scholarship focused on better understanding teachers’ experiences implementing genre-based pedagogies (Tardy et al., 2022) as well as their underlying pedagogical content knowledge of genre (Worden, 2019). We conclude the presentation by sharing implications for SLW instructors, administrators, teacher educators, and researchers.

In this report, we discuss three studies of genre knowledge development which were presented at a colloquium at the 2023 Symposium on Second Language Writing. These studies showcase diverse research methodologies, contexts, and languages. The authors discuss the affordances and limitations of the methodologies, share findings, and consider implications for instruction and future research. In the conclusion, the discussant highlights key themes from the colloquium.

In this report, we discuss three studies of genre knowledge development which were presented at a colloquium at the Symposium on Second Language Writing, which took place in Tempe, Arizona in October 2023. These studies showcase diverse research methodologies, contexts, and languages. The authors discuss the affordances and limitations of the methodologies, share findings, and consider implications for instruction and future research. In the conclusion, the discussant highlights key themes from the colloquium.

Digital spaces offer scientists new ways to share scientific knowledge with a broad public audience, in some cases leading to the emergence of new genres. This paper examines one new genre intended to inform a non-expert audience about scientific content: the informational tweet thread, or tweetorial. More specifically, the paper explores the rhetorical structure of 50 tweetorials on COVID19 content, focusing on how writers use rhetorical moves to share scientific information and to attract and retain readers’ attention in the content-saturated space of social media. The analysis identifies eight rhetorical moves that regularly appear in these COVID19 tweetorial introduction and body posts. The moves emphasize urgency through their focus on immediate exigencies and their repetition and recirculation throughout a thread. The study’s findings contribute to a growing body of research on public science genres and how they support the goals of Open Science.

With the COVID-19 global pandemic, epidemiologists and other public health professionals have become important sources of insight for the general public. One popular means for reaching public audiences is the microblog Twitter. Understanding how prominent professionals tweet–and what might contribute to the visibility or reach of their tweets–can reveal insights into the emerging digital genres scientists use for communicating across specialist and non-specialist domains. Toward that aim, this study examines the use of Twitter by ten epidemiologists during a one-month period in 2020, focusing specifically on those with a strong following on the platform. The research analyzes 143 high- and low-engagement tweets in several genre-related areas: tweet types and elements; tweet topics, purposes, and audiences; and author identities. The study demonstrates that “tweeting science” involves the use of a range of emerging Twitter genres and identities that together engage diverse audiences for purposes. The paper also discusses the implications of this research for genre theory and ESP instruction.