Back Cover Text: At our institution, identified as the most diverse in the nation, "contrastive rhetoric" is not an abstract communication theory but an everyday instructional reality. In this publication, Writing Center researchers describe their efforts to better understand this reality through an HSRB-approved research project for which they gathered stories from students from varied cultural and linguistic backgrounds in order to discover how these students recreate their identities as writers in the US academy. Framed by the scholarship on language acquisition, ESL pedagogy, and ethnographic theory, the research data includes students' responses to interview questions about learning to write in their native language and in English, the differences they perceive between writing in both, and where they feel the cultural disconnects. This publication shares the challenges non-native students face adapting to US academic writing, including struggles with interpreting assignments and teachers' comments and their anxieties over grammar and syntax. Along with the stories of these students, two members of the research team, both non-native writers, share their own experiences. The issue concludes with a section that discusses the implications for teaching and future plans for a website to present both the students' stories and their voices.

To read the introduction, click here.