International Undergraduate Students’ Socialization and L2 Writing: A Case Study

This qualitative study applies the frameworks of language socialization and social network theory to investigate how international students’ construction and negotiation of their identities influence their L2 writing development. Two students (One Korean and one Motswana) at a US university, one from South Korea and one from Botswana, participated in a year-long study, which included semi-structured interviews and classroom observations. For purposes of triangulation, the data for this study were collected for a year from multiple sources. The findings indicate that instructors can play a crucial role in enabling international students to expand their social networks, for example, by helping them locate and utilize available resources to develop their L2 writing, and by providing additional scaffolding to help them understand group dynamics and become active learners in their new communities. The results offer pedagogical implications on the role of instructors and universities in providing explicit guidance to empower international students to better socialize into the new community.