Institutional Forces and L2 Writing Feedback in Higher Education

There has recently been growing interest in the relationship between second language (L2) writing development and the institutional contexts in which this process is embedded. The present study examines this relationship by reporting on an eight-month qualitative investigation of international university students and their perspectives on the impact of feedback practices for L2 writing development in content courses. Drawing on interviews with five focal students and four focal instructors, as well as on writing samples and course documents, this study illustrates the powerful but often unspoken impact that institutional factors such as departmental budgets and prescribed grade distributions have on L2 writers and their instructors. These factors are shown to constrain students’ and instructors’ abilities to discuss how discipline-specific writing is structured and how it might be negotiated and ultimately understood. Implications focus on the challenges of helping L2 students develop academic writing skills without also addressing the institutional factors that underlie writing and feedback practices.