翻译成中文 Our analytical method was research synthesis (Cooper, Hedges & Valentine, 2009; Norris & Ortega, 2006). We integrated research
by, as Cooper et al. (2009, p. 4), put it, “formulating general statements that characterize multiple specific instances (of research,
methods, theories, or practices).” We used three heuristics—namely, “metadisciplinary inquiry” (Matsuda, 1998), “historical inquiry”
(Matsuda et al., 2005), and “narrative inquiry” (Casanave, 2005)—to frame our analyses. The analysis was meta-disciplinary in that it
took a step back to examine the historical development and philosophical and methodological orientations of L2 writing research,
answering questions such as who we are, what we do, and how we do what we do (Matsuda, 1998). Similarly, our analysis involved
an historical perspective on “insights into the socially shared and discursively constructed identity of the field and its members”
(Matsuda et al., 2005 p. 335). In doing so, we produced a narrative inquiry (Casanave, 2005) that attempts to tell the story of the field as represented in the JSLW over its first quarter century of publication.
All issues of the JSLW over the last 25 years (1992–2016) were carefully read and all the published empirical articles were pulled
out to be included in the review. We defined empirical articles as those that had collected and analyzed first-hand data of any kind
(quantitative or qualitative), including those (e.g., corpus studies) that had no participants in the traditional sense. By first-hand we
mean research in which primary data were used, so “review papers” that were based on previous empirical articles or opinion or
theoretical articles that did not use primary data were excluded from our review. A total of 272 published empirical articles were
identified and included. The published articles were then imported to the NVivo (v. 11) program and were coded for the following
sets of themes:
• Contexts (macro and micro) and participants
• Research focus and theoretical orientation
• Research methodology and data sources
In addition, we also analyzed these themes in the articles across three time periods of 1992–1999 (n = 74), 2000–2009 (n = 89),
and 2010–2016 (n = 109), distinguishing them as the last decade of the 20th century, the first decade of the 21st century, and the last
seven years. The volume of empirical articles published for the most recent period (2010–2016) has increased significantly to 15.6
articles/year. This is compared with 9.3 articles/year in the first time period (1992–1999) and 8.9 articles/year in the second
(2000–2009). It should also be explained that we included the special issues in our analysis.
There were 14 special issues altogether including seven in the second time period (2000–2009) and seven in the third time period
(2010–2016) but none in the first time period (1992–1999). For the second time period, 9.0% (8/89) of the empirical articles
included in this study were from special issues. Upon examination of our coding results for these articles, we discovered they were
dispersed across multiple categorizations. Therefore, the influence of special issues within this time frame appears to be quite
minimal. However, for the third time period 22% (24/109) of the articles included in this study were from special issues. Upon
examination of our coding results from this time period, we discovered there was a more pronounced influence of empirical articles
published in special issues on research focus and theoretical orientation rather than contexts, participants, research methodology, and
data sources. Discussion of these influences are reported in our results whenever relevant.
4. Coding procedures
We coded the articles for themes of contexts and participants, research focus and theoretical orientation, and research methodology and data sources. To establish reliability, we conducted inter-coder analyses of 25 randomly-selected articles (about 10% of
the sample). We coded this sample in two separate rounds. In the first round (nine articles), our level of agreement for Contexts,
Participants, Research methodology, and Data sources was well above our established threshold of 80%. However, we did not surpass
this threshold of 80% for Research focus and Theoretical orientation in the first round, which required us to modify our approach for the
second round (see below for additional details). After discussion of the coding scheme and the sample coding, we ran a second round
of coding. For all themes, the level of agreement increased to over 90% in the second round. We then each coded a third of the sample
articles. Finally, each of us double-checked the coding for two of the six themes across all articles (the first author research methodology and data sources, the second author contexts and participants, and the third author research focus and theoretical orientation) and discussed cases when there were questions. All coding was done in NVivo 11 and the coding outcomes were analyzed
using SPSS 21.
4.1. Contexts and participants
The contexts (macro and micro) and participants were mostly straightforward to code based on factual information presented in
the original publications. The sub-categories of the contexts included the macro-contexts (countries) and the micro-contexts (programs) in which studies were conducted. The participants were distinguished by levels of education and status. Differing from
previous researchers (Kapper, 2002; Matsuda, 1997; Pelaez-Morales, 2017) who tracked the authors’ institutional affiliations to
identify the geographic diversity of the L2 scholarship, we coded the macro-contexts of the articles based on where the research was
conducted. For example, if a researcher from an American university conducted research in China, then the article was coded as
“China” rather than “U.S.” In addition, although Hong Kong was handed over to China from Britain in 1997, we coded Hong Kong as
a separate macro-context because it differs from Mainland China in that English is used as a medium of communication in some
schools and universities. We also coded Taiwan as an individual macro-context following the authors’ own descriptions. Eight of 272
articles did not specify the macro-context. Four of them mentioned regions such as North America, Central Europe, or the Middle
East. We could have guessed which countries they were based on the authors’ affiliations but decided to follow the original descriptions to avoid any possible miscoding. The other four articles focused on textual or corpus analyses of writing samples from
student writers, test takers, or manuscript writers from unspecified macro-contexts.
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).