Creative Writing and Decolonizing Intersectional Feminist Critical Reflexivity: Challenging Neoliberal, Gendered, White, Colonial Practice Norms in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Creative writing during the COVID-19 pandemic can serve as a decolonizing intersectional feminist method for critical self-reflexivity. We share responses to the prompt: “If my therapeutic practice came with a warning label in COVID-19, what would it say?” and provide an analysis of the neoliberalism, whiteness, and colonialism embedded in our creative writing and practice. Engaging in critical self-reflexivity through metaphor carries potential for revealing hidden gendered, racialized, colonial, and neoliberal biases and norms related to social work practice, particularly when done in a collaborative, dialogic manner. We conclude by providing possible creative writing prompts that might be used in social work practice, supervision, and teaching to advance existing practices of self-reflexivity in social work both during and beyond the pandemic.

Exploring and Comparing High Stakes Writing Test Prompts Content Structure

TOEFL and IELTS are two major tests that measure language preparedness of prospective college students. The writing section of these two tests provide a measure of readiness for academic writing. However, to what extent these two tests measure the same contents has not been quantitatively investigated before. In this paper, multidimensional scaling (MDS) is applied to explore the content structure of writing prompts in TOEFL and IELTS examinations.

Reflections of Healing Narratives

This narrative discusses research illustrating how writing assists patients in healing from both emotional and physical pain. An English professor and physical therapist collaborated to design a survey that uses writing prompts to assess goal setting for physical therapy patients. Advice for patients, such as keeping a pain journal of symptoms to share with a medical professional, demonstrates how writing helps the healing process while leading to collaboration between a patient and the medical team.

Identity and investment in language learning

Norton (2000) argues that investment in L2 acquisition is also an investment in learner identity, which changes in the context of time and space – a notion that also has relevance for heritage learners. As such, the purpose of this study is to examine investment in language learning among HL Spanish speakers and the role of identity in their learning experiences. This study comprises of ten participants enrolled in an HL Spanish course who completed a background questionnaire, interviews, and writing prompts. Using narrative analysis, this study examines participants’ reflections on their heritage identity, HL exposure, and their investment, experiences and progress in their HL course. Results show that participants demonstrate varying degrees of investment in the HL, and heritage identity plays a role in this variance.

To Whom Are You Writing? Examining Audience in L2 Textbook Writing Activities

A sense of audience is important in the development of student writing (Many & Henderson, 2005). Research shows students need to consider an audience’s attitudes, beliefs, and expectations to be effective writers (Midgette, Haria, & MacArthur, 2007). Therefore, students need learning opportunities in L2 classrooms to develop this ability. Yet, the incorporation of audience in L2 textbook writing activities has not been sufficiently addressed. This study examined textbook activities to whom students write based on parameters of audience influence proposed by Grabe and Kaplan (1996, 2014). Writing prompts from six high school textbooks in Saudi Arabia were analyzed. The results indicate prompts instruct students to write to a single reader, known/unknown readers, as well as write about general topics. However, prompts do not provide information for students about three parameters (age, gender, and social status) which are necessary ingredients in developing a writer’s sense of audience and play a significant role on textual variations. This study also modified a model of audience that can be used for textbook evaluation. The findings benefit textbook developers and teachers by motivating them to consider parameters of audience influence when they design lessons and materials for L2 writing classrooms.

Walking, Talking, Performing in Place: Learning from/with/on the Land

This autoethnographic essay describes an ambulatory workshop with fellow graduate students, a walking tour to remote parts of campus where we paused to consider writing prompts and to create short performative sketches highlighting the nature of our relationships to the land around us. In this reflection on our “walk and talk,” I consider how teachers and students co-create what we learn together, the mysteries of engaging in interactive drama and poetry methods, and the performative ways in which we might come to know the places where we live and work more intimately and more imaginatively.