When ESL college students write: The Influence of Prompt Selection on their Perceptions of Task Teacher and Text

English-as-a-second-language students who pursue post-secondary education in the United States typically face challenges when asked to respond to writing prompts. These challenges can include the selection of a teacher-designed prompt limited understanding of the teacher’s expectations for prompt selection and the difficulty of writing in response to prompts. Documenting ESL students’ interpretation of narrative prompts is the first concern of the study presented in this book. The second is to understand how ESL college students perceive their teachers’ expectations for prompt selection. The third concern is the narrative text that emerges from ESL writers’ interpretation of the task and their perception of the teacher’s expectation. This book then discusses the perspectives practices and written products of six ESL students at a public university in the United States with attention to how teacher-designed and student-designed prompts affect their perspectives and experiences of task teacher and text. Specifically the main question guiding this study is the following: What influence does writing prompt selection have on L2 students’ perceptions of teacher task and text?