Technology and “Self-Sponsored” Writing: A Case Study of a Korean-American Adolescent

Abstract In this paper, we look at one of the newly emerging populations in literacy research—1.5 Generation students (that is, immigrant students who emigrated to an Anglophone country like the United States and have completed at least some of their K-12 education in that new setting)—and, through an exploration of one student's personally oriented writing outside school, explore how such writing unfolded, particularly with respect to the use of computers and other forms of technology. Building on the notion of ‘self-sponsored’ writing and the New Literacy Studies orientation toward literacy research, we examined a Korean 1.5 Generation high school student's out-of-school composing choices and activities. Our findings reveal that the participant was an active out-of-school writer who used both her native and second language as well as print-based and computer-based forms of technology while composing for self-sponsored purposes.

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