Chapter 8: Testing the Grounds of Reciprocity and Multilingualism: Forays into Writing Collaborations among L2 and L1 Writers

Imagine a writing program administrator (WPA) taking a job at a university where multilingual students accounted for a significant percentage of the overall population. Picture what it would be like for all students in such an environment. Laden with authentic and immediate opportunities to engage with people from diverse cultural, linguistic, and educational backgrounds, monolingual and multilingual students alike could experience a university of language capacious and provocative. No Babel or nirvana, but a place and space worth inhabiting. This setting, for one of the co-authors of this paper (John), is an imagined one, because he works at an institution with a majority of the student population constituting traditional college-aged domestic US students. Many have studied a second language, but most are monolingual.