Writing to mean in middle school: Understanding how second language writers negotiate textually-rich content-area instruction

Drawing on theoretical perspectives and analytical tools that view writing as meaning-making, we examined student writing associated with an instructional intervention designed to expand the kinds of texts that second-language learners of English were asked to engage with, and produce, in social studies classrooms in a U.S. middle school. Exploring the writing of 40 students on one essay assignment, we documented what students could do with their developing linguistic resources to respond to a prompt that presented unanticipated challenges. Our findings illuminate the dialogic and multimodal process of meaning-making in school-aged second-language writers’ essays. We discuss implications of a meaning-based approach for expanding the textual repertoire of second-language writers in school settings, and for understanding how students navigate the associated challenges.