Decisions, Agency, and Advising

"Decisions, Agency, and Advising" considers the role of students’ own agency in the placement of multilingual writers — including international students and U.S. residents or citizens who are nonnative users of English — in U.S. college composition programs. Grounded in qualitative research and concerned equally with theory and practice, the book explores how multilingual students exercise agency in their placement decisions and how student agency can inform the overall programmatic placement of multilingual students into first-year composition courses.

Tanita Saenkhum follows eleven multilingual students who made their decisions about placement into first-year composition courses during one academic year at a large public university. She identifies the need for the process of making placement decisions to be understood more clearly, describes how to use that knowledge to improve placement practices for these students — particularly in advising — and offers hands-on recommendations for writing programs.

"Decisions, Agency, and Advising" is a significant contribution to the field and particularly valuable to writing program administrators, academic advisors, writing teachers, researchers investigating second-language writing and writing program administration, composition and second-language writing scholars, and graduate students.