翻译成中文Most of the articles specified the micro-context to indicate whether the study was situated in an ESL (English as a Second
Language), EFL (English as a Foreign Language), or FL (Foreign Language) context at a university or college, K-12 school, or language institute. We considered an ESL context to involve English learning and teaching in English-dominant countries including the United
States, Canada, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, and Ireland. An EFL context was considered to be where English is learned
or taught as a foreign or additional language in all other macro-contexts (i.e., societies where languages other than English dominate), including Hong Kong and Singapore. An FL context was defined as learning or teaching a language other than English in a
country where the target language is not the dominant (or students’ first) language, such as Arabic in the United States or Japanese in
Singapore. Articles with an ESL or EFL context also included mainstream academic content programs. For example, an ESL context
could involve both first and second language learners in a mainstream program. Compared with public universities or schools,
language institutes which enrol adult learners are privately owned, government sponsored, or affiliated with universities. A universitybased language institute was not coded as a university program unless the author of the article indicated or referred to the learners in
the program as university students rather than adult learners. The identification of these contexts suggests the dominance of Englishmedium settings in the JSLW research articles as we did not identify any second language studies other than those conducted in
English-medium settings (e.g., research conducted in China on writing in Chinese as a second language). Of the 272 articles, 33
(12.1%) were coded as other, focusing on data analyses or participants not related to a specific micro-context or learning program,
including textual or corpus analyses of writing samples of manuscript writing (n = 4), TOEFL and university writing (n = 21), writing of
scholars (n = 3), workplace writing (n = 2), and experimental studies (n = 3).
Participants were distinguished in terms of educational status and level. In terms of status, we coded participants into five
categories of learners, instructors, instructors and learners, other participants, and not specified. Concerning level, the category of learners
included K-12, undergraduate, graduate, mixed levels, and adults. The category of instructors included instructors (tertiary education) and
teachers (schools). In some studies, data were collected from both learners and instructors, so any combination of these two categories
were specified and coded accordingly. The category of other participants included schools, professional writers, proofreaders, raters, and
teaching assistants. 4.2. Research focus and theoretical orientation
Given the plethora of categories and subcategories that describe research foci and orientations, and the resulting challenges to
maintain consistency across articles and coders, we opted for a data-driven thematic approach (Boyatzis, 1998; Braun & Clarke,
2006). That is, we drew on the actual words of the authors as much as possible to describe the research focus and orientation rather
than imposing a set of pre-conceived categories. The initial stage of this analysis was conducted at the “semantic level” in which the
“analyst is not looking for anything beyond what … has been written” (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 84).
Our coding of research focus was based on the area of research interest expressed in the abstract, introduction, and research
question(s) of the articles. Strings of relevant text from each article were identified and discussed to continually inform our evolving
list of categories and subcategories. For several articles, multiple research foci were identified. For these articles, a closer reading of
the article was conducted by two of us to determine if there was a primary research focus. Any challenging articles were further
discussed in ongoing meetings. Following this procedure, all 272 articles were identified with a primary research focus.
The coding of theoretical orientation was, however, more interpretive (compared to the coding of other themes) and required
considerable discussion among our team. One of the main challenges in the coding of articles for this theme was identifying strings of
text that explicitly indicated the theoretical frameworks, theories, approaches, concepts, and notions that were informing the research undertaken and reported. All articles we were able to identify with a theoretical orientation were coded in only one category. As
with research focus, this often required a closer reading and discussion of challenging articles.
Based on our initial discussions, we generated preliminary categories for research focus and theoretical orientation and conducted
inter-coder analyses of 25 randomly-selected articles (about 10% of the sample) in two separate rounds (9 articles, then 16 articles).
For theoretical orientation, we obtained only 67% agreement in the first round. We felt this result was primarily influenced by a lack of
theoretical explicitness in several of the articles. For this reason, we added a Not identified category for articles that did not state their
theoretical orientation explicitly enough for us to warrant positive identification. In the second round, we obtained 88% agreement.
4.3. Research methodology and data sources
Silva’s (2005) classification of research designs was used as a basis for coding the methodological orientation of the L2 writing
research. For the scope of the current review we only coded the general methodological orientation (qualitative, quantitative, or mixed
methods) used by the researchers. This approach is in line with Silva (2005) who used “main methodologies” to refer to popular and
recognized methodologies of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. We adapted the empirical branch of Silva’s framework to
fine tune Silva’s “mixed” category. Silva used “mixed” to convey an “eclectic” methodology in which any combination of quantitative
and qualitative data and analysis could be used. Instead, we adopted Riazi and Candlin (2014) and Riazi (2016) classification of
mixed methods research—namely, “eclectic”, “principled”, and “innovative”—for a more nuanced categorisation of mixed methods
research (MMR) in L2 writing. Accordingly, Silva’s “mixed” category became, in effect, the eclectic category in our coding scheme.
The mixed methods category was used to code those articles where the authors explicitly referred to their design as mixed methods and
had drawn on the literature of mixed methods research in the design of their studies. Those studies that used “narrative” inquiry were
coded under qualitative. Table 1 presents the guidelines for our coding of the methodological orientation.