This section focuses on three major findings in terms of the six Salem high school students’ exercise of agency in the process of L2 writing and the influence of their L2 writing practices on the development of their agency and vice versa. The students indicated that both linguistic and non-linguistic resources came into play in their L2 writing practices and processes. Especially when speaking of their use of linguistic knowledge in English writing, all of them acknowledged that both languages (English and Korean) took a pivotal role in crafting English essays or creating written responses in English. They also stated that the use of semiotic resources (e.g., images) helped them to successfully deliver their intended meanings in English to both Korean audience and speakers of other languages (e.g., English, Filipino). Further, their voluntary participation in varied L2 writing programs, contests, and activities enabled them to raise their awareness of placed resources and available actions they could take to further develop their L2 writing practices. Lastly, the students also discovered and agentively made use of funds of knowledge which became the basis for all kinds of English learning and writing practices.
4.1. Agentive use of multiple linguistic and non-linguistic resources in L2 writing practices
One of the major findings of this study is that the EFL students’ flexible and fluid use of varied linguistic and non-linguistic resources was voluntary. In other words, without any prior guidance from their teachers, they voluntarily utilized multiple resources in L2 writing practices in order to explicitly express their intended meanings in written form in any given situations (e.g., English writing and presentation contest). Further, even under the circumstances where the students were encouraged to use L2 only, they voluntarily and agentively utilized other resources such as their L1 (Korean) and images.
For instance, when the students recognized L1 and images as shared resources with their audiences, they came into play. On one occasion, they created PowerPoint presentations as part of an English speech contest in school. Although their teachers advised them to use English-only, the students voluntarily included Korean definition of English words and corresponding images in their PowerPoint slides for their Korean audience (mostly their Korean peers who were learning English). The reasons for the use of L1 and other semiotic resources can be found in the excerpt below. Similar to the other students, Hyung-Seo pointed out the importance of employing Korean and images for his audiences, Korean English learners, considering that some of their peers might not be able to understand the content of his English presentation if it was offered in English only.
[Hyung-Seo: Although it was an English speech contest, I thought that informing people was the main purpose of the speech. So, I did not want to make people less informed because of difficult English words or jargons. That’s why I personally included Korean definitions for some particular English words [along with images], expecting many people to clearly understand my speech.]
The students’ agentive use of L1 and other semiotic resources in L2 writing practices was also frequently observed in their performance in academic assignments. Yet, the purpose of the use multiple linguistic and non-linguistic resources in their English assignments was slightly different from that in their presentations. The students seemed to believe that the inclusion of L1 and images would enhance their English teachers’ understanding of their written works if their intended meanings were not explicitly expressed in L2. In other words, they were afraid that their English expressions might fail to express their intended meanings and ideas; thus, they attempted to make it be backed up by the Korean translations of their English writing and semantically related images.
For instance, the students often asked to write a review of an English book as part of independent reading assignment for English class. In developing and presenting their book reviews, there was no strict forms, constraint, or rules to follow; however, their English teacher highly encouraged them to use English-only for the assignment. Some (Jaemin, Jisoo, and Sumin) reported their book reviews solely in a written form while the others (Junsang, Jonghoon, and Hyeong Seo) created them in the form of PowerPoint presentations and user-created video content (UCC).
Particularly, Hyeong Seo’s UCC video of book review on the English version of The Selfish Gene was distinctive in that he did not simply cut and paste from existing images but recorded the process of his drawing which outlined the flow of the book. To clearly present his understanding of the English book, before creating the video he first reviewed the Korean version of The Selfish Gene, which he had read a few years before. Then, based on his understanding of the two different versions of The Selfish Gene, he included Korean subtitles right below English ones in his book report video (as shown in Fig. 1). Like he did in his PowerPoint presentation, he voluntarily made use of his L1 (Korean) along with English. Further, in order to explicitly deliver his intended meanings and ideas, he by himself drew pictures following the storyline of the book. It is important to note that Hyeong Seo maintained his use of Korean and images in crafting his English book review on his accord because he strongly believed that the use of the multiple linguistic and non-linguistic resources would help his English teacher better understand his English expressions in the book report. Namely, Hyung-Seo’s L2 writing practices well indicate that he considered the purpose of his English writing – delivering an understandable message in a written form – and voluntarily and agentively used L1 and other semiotic resources as a shared resources to support his readers’ understanding of his message.
When giving presentations to linguistically and culturally diverse audiences, they made use of semiotic resources (e.g., images) adding to linguistic resources (English). The significant example can be found in their L2 writing experiences and presentations in the 2018 program for international exchange and cultural engagement –a cooperative project between two Catholic schools in Korea and Philippine. When Filipino students visited Salem High School in Korea, the six students performed as the cultural ambassadors and gave presentations about their school to Filipino high school students and Korean peers, mainly introducing the history of Salem High School, school facilities, and what they learned in the courses they were taken.
In that process of making and offering the PowerPoint presentations, they all stated that they attempted limit their L1 use while mainly utilizing L2 (English) as they perceived English as a shared linguistic resource between Filipino and Korean speakers (Fig. 2 below). Further, they voluntarily made use of multiple images and pictures in their PowerPoint to clearly show the audience what they intended to talk about. Figure 2 below shows Jaemin’s PowerPoint presentation on “hydrogen peroxide decomposition with catalase” which he learned in science class. In terms of his use of L2 and images, Jaemin said, “I thought… I might not be able to express my science knowledge, which I learned in Korean, […] exclusively in English. So, I included images so that both Korean and Filipino students could understand my presentation.” His statement indicates his voluntary and agentive act in choosing and employing multiple resources reflecting on the shared resources, audience, and a presentation space in the development of his PowerPoint.
Their voluntary use of multiple resources in L2 writing practices indicates that they do not merely employ L2 to complete or present their L2 writing products. Rather, they exercised their agency to looked for more available resources and actions in a given situation for meaningful communications with the speakers of other languages (Korean and Filipino) and for the aim of academic accomplishment (e.g., book report), even under the circumstances where English-use-only was encouraged.
4.2 Enhanced awareness of possible resources and actions in L2 writing practices
One major finding is that the students frequently and continuously reflected their out-of-school L2 writing experiences when engaging in L2 writing practices in school, which heavily influenced their awareness of available or limited resources in English classroom. To be specific, beyond school walls, they seemed to utilize rich and varied resources such as online search engines (e.g., Google), translation apps, and proofreading and grammar apps. However, because cell phones were banned in school –having limited access to the Internet and online resources, in order to write in L2 (English) for English writing tasks, the students had to heavily rely on help from their teachers and peers and needed to have paper dictionaries or the English versions of the books on particular subjects (e.g., The Selfish Genes).
They acknowledged that a wide range of online resources in out-of-school environments was useful in their L2 writing practices and processes while showing frustration with resource-limited school environments. Yet, they did not quit writing in L2 but (re)developed their agency to facilitate their L2 writing, even under a very challenging, resource-limited context such as in an English essay contest held in school. For instance, Hyung-Seo perceived the paper English Korean dictionary, the only placed resource in the contest, useless. It was because the paper dictionary merely showed Korean definitions of English words. Also, his perception seemed to be resulted from his sense of failure in using online resources (e.g., online search engines).
Yet, he did not stop writing but exploited possible acts to further develop his L2 writing. Specifically, he implemented new actions such as circumlocution to substitute English words that he could not think of so that he could express his intended ideas without using online resources. Further, with permission from his teacher, Hyung-Seo included the summary of his English essay in Korean to address and clarify the main points of his writing that might have been drew away from because of his use of circumlocution. It is important to note that the resource-limited environment pushed him to find, evaluate, and implement resources and acts available in a particular situation which shows the exercise of his agency in L2 writing practices and processes.
Like Hyung-Seo, other students, Jaemin, Jisoo, Jonghoon, and Sumin also troubled with changing Korean expressions, which came up in their minds, into English when engaging in L2 writing practices in school. Yet, such challenges did not hamper their acts to accomplish successful outcomes in L2. For example, since they already knew that the online resources would not be allowed in the contest, in advance to the contest, they searched for English articles at home. The articles were mainly about the latest news topics such as self-driving cars on the assumption that the essay topics would be related to current news stories. Then, they memorized English expressions that would help their writings later in the English essay contest. The four students denoted that their agentive and strategic moves indeed helped the flow of writing by enabling them to better express their ideas in English.
On the other hand, Junsang often troubled with his grammar when involving in L2 writing practices in English classroom. Since he had perceived grammar, particularly the use of conjunctions, as his weak point in his L2 writing, he used to ask feedback from his peers to overcome the challenges. Yet, since there was no channel to seek peer feedback during his participation in the English essay contest, Junsang had to figure out the other way to enhance the grammatical aspects of his L2 writing. Specifically, he stated that the resource-limited context thwarted his efforts to receive peer feedback. Nevertheless, he decided to finish his essay by applying other grammatical rules instead of the ones that he was less confident with, which shows his expressing agency.
All six students were not provided with a clear guidance on how to utilize placed resources in school and what acts they could take to further develop their writing. Further, the school environment constrained their flexible and fluid use of multiple resources. Despite the resource and time constraints, they reshaped their agency through the selective use of resources to produce their desired outcomes despite the suboptimal conditions for exercising agency, which elevated their awareness of placed resources and acts in a given context.
4.3. The (re)development of agency through using funds of knowledge
Although there was not much explicit guidance for their L2 writing practices and processes in English classroom, all the six students brought up their previous experiences of using various resources (e.g., online search engines), knowledge, and skills while reshaping their L2 writing practices accommodating on the resource and time constraints. Particularly in searching for the content of their L2 writing, they agentively made use of their personal interests reflecting on their former reading and writing experiences. The best examples were found in the students’ participation in semester-long projects, an English book report and Researching and Authentic Writing (RAW) projects, which uncovered their agentive actions grounded in their interests and knowledge.
For the English book report project, their English teachers instructed the students to read English books and create a book report in English in any forms (e.g., videos, PowerPoints). Yet, the teachers did not provide detailed guidelines such as how to search books online or on the assumption that their students might have more knowledge of online searching and the books that they would like to read. Further, because the project aimed to have the students expose to extensive reading, not L2 writing, the teachers did not expect the students to submit polished book review report but to share their understanding of the readings and knowledge with other peers.
In searching for books in English for the project, the students did not search for new ones but the English version of the books they previously read in Korean and felt interested in. To be specific, Junsang embarked on the project after reading the English version of his favorite manga series, Your Lie in April by Naoshi Arakawa, which he read in Korean during his middle school years. He stated that his interests in the particular manga drew his attention to the English version of the manga series because he believed that he might be able to “fully understand the English texts without looking at dictionary definitions of new English words.” His expectation was resulted from his certainty in knowing the content of the manga –having memorized almost all expressions in the Korean version of Your Lie in April.
Similar to Junsang’s example, the other students also highlighted the fact that they by themselves made use of English version of the books reflecting on the Korean versions they had read before. In other words, they did so, following their interests that resulted from their Korean reading experiences. The course of actions in the book review project showed the exercise of their agency in applying their funds of knowledge for the development of their English language skills and for the achievement of successful outcomes of their English writing tasks.
In the Researching and Authentic Writing (RAW), which asked the students to write English summaries of research articles, the students chose their own research topics considering their current interests and future majors. Then, they were instructed to search at least five research articles that best fit into their research interests through search engines such as Google Scholar and Research Information Sharing Services (RISS)– academic article search engine in South Korea. Particularly, I introduced Google Scholar to them, whereas RISS was suggested by the students. According to them, they were used to RISS since it had been used for their social science projects. After obtaining the articles and reading them, they were asked to write summaries of the articles in English and uploaded them to Google classroom. At the end of the program, they commented on each other’s summaries.
Although it was the first time for them to read English articles and do summary writing in English, they seemed very excited to participate in the program. It seemed that their pre-existing funds of knowledge and English learning experiences reinforced their awareness and beliefs in their own L2 writing skills. For example, Jonghoon’s research interest centered around vaccines for Ebola virus disease and Jisoo focused on articles about a heart defibrillator. The research articles they found seemed difficult for them to understand; however, they brought to the project all the knowledge they obtained from their Korean readings on the same topic. Further, they searched more articles in Korean and English respectively, and even they reached out to experts and professors via email seeking help in understanding the specific concepts from the articles.
As such, they prioritized and focused on understanding the articles comprehensibly because they perceived a summary writing as a condensed version of the original reading. In other words, they seemed to indicate that the likelihood of writing a good summary would decrease without complete text comprehension. To better understand the content of the articles, the students focused on reading comprehension first, and even emailed experts in the particular field for their text comprehension. Then, they skimmed through the texts several times while summarizing them in Korean prior to writing up an English summary to examine the overall organization of their writing. Their L2 writing practices reveal that their agentive actions in summary writing had evolved from their funds of knowledge – their previous experiences of several writing projects (e.g., social science project).