Student Appropriation of Writing Lessons through Hybrid Composing Practices: Direct,Diffuse,and Indirect Use of Teacher-Offered Writing Tools in an ESL Classroom

Abstract

This is a qualitative case study (conducted in an urban, public school classroom in the United States) of the collaborative composing processes of two groups of first-grade students designated as English Language Learners (ELLs) as they wrote in a writing workshop context. I focused on a specific type of the students' hybrid composing practices: those that featured them combining elements of their cultural and linguistic repertoires with writing tools offered by the teacher's lessons. These hybrid composing practices served as a medium for the students to appropriate (Wertsch, 1998) the teacher-offered writing tools into their composing repertoires. I identified three types, or degrees, of student appropriation of lesson elements: direct, diffuse, and indirect. During direct appropriation, students incorporated elements from the writing lesson during the composing period immediately after the lesson. In cases of a diffuse or indirect relationship between the lesson and situated composing, students used lessons from previous days in unpredictable ways, used a broader theme or idea from the lesson, or transformed the purposes of the writing period to explore practices not anticipated by the lesson. Several pedagogical implications related to ELL-designated students' uses of hybrid composing practices in workshop settings are also discussed.