Mason Hosts International Writing Research Across Borders Conference

reported by Ben Wilkins, MFA, English

Writing researchers, teachers, professionals, and students from around the world came to Mason in February for the 4th International Conference on Writing Research, otherwise known as Writing Research Across Borders (WRAB). This year’s conference included over 600 participants from 40 wide-ranging countries and many of the world’s leading organizations. After the conference, Paul Rogers, assistant professor in English who co-chaired the conference with Charles Bazerman, a Writing in the Disciplines scholar, talked about some of the highlights.

“The first thing that really jumped out at me for this year’s conference was that it was truly international,” Rogers said. “Not only were over 40 countries represented, but they were from all over the world. They weren’t just clustered from Europe and North America.” In addition to the individual scholars from all over the world, Rogers listed a diversity of organizations that were represented at the conference: “Just to name a few: NCTE [National Council of Teachers of English], CCCC [Conference on College Composition and Communication], AERA [American Educational Research Association], and also several from Europe. And because of Mason’s location, we had a number of government agencies come, like the NEH [National Endowment for the Humanities] and NCHD [National Commission for Human Development], among several others.”

“More than the quantity though, I was impressed by the quality of this year’s conference,” he added. “It’s exciting how much excellent research on writing is going on in so many countries, including strong interest in disciplinary genres and L2 writing. I think the conference emphasized the idea that writing instruction and practice is vital at all stages. For all of us, but for second- and third-language writers especially, every new writing task has its own set of standards and challenges. There is no one right way to write.”