Re-Envisioning the Giants: A Longitudinal Case Study of One ESL Learner

Abstract

With the continued focus on building L2 writers’ abilities within the context of school, scholarship dealing with what kinds of abilities these writers bring to the classroom has been slower to emerge, leaving us with incomplete portraitures of students’ lives. This thesis argues that such work has overlooked second-language learners’ ability to employ a host of literate skills. Drawing on a the ‘funds of knowledge’ framework (Moll and Gonzales) that foregrounds students’ out-of-school literate practices, this thesis employs Moll and Gonzales’ work to explore what literate practices ESL students already have and how those skills might be harnessed to make them more active members of the academy. The thesis suggests that making second language learners active participants in school settings means both acknowledging what abilities they have but also deliberately shaping activities to involve them in ways that see those skills as being an asset.