Decisions, Agency, and Advising ─ Key Issues in the Placement of Multilingual Writers into First-Year Composition Courses

Decisions, Agency, and Advising considers the role of students’ own agency in the placement of multilingual writers—including international students and US residents or citizens who are nonnative users of English—in US college composition programs. Grounded in qualitative research and concerned equally with theory and practice, the book explores how multilingual students exercise agency in their placement decisions and how student agency can inform the overall programmatic placement of multilingual students into first-year composition courses.

Tanita Saenkhum follows eleven multilingual students who made their decisions about placement into first-year composition courses during one academic year at a large public university. She identifies the need for the process of making placement decisions to be understood more clearly, describes how to use that knowledge to improve placement practices for these students—particularly in advising—and offers hands-on recommendations for writing programs.

Decisions, Agency, and Advising is a significant contribution to the field and will be of particular interest to writing program administrators, academic advisors, writing teachers, researchers investigating second language writing and writing program administration, composition and second language writing scholars, and graduate students.

Tanita Saenkhum is assistant professor of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she directs an English as a second language (ESL) program and teaches courses on second language writing and TESOL. She has published in?Journal of Second Language Writing,?WPA: Journal of the Council of Writing Program Administrators,?Journal of English for Academic Purposes, and?WPA-CompPile Research Bibliographies. Her writing has appeared in several edited collections.