Scholars from across the world met at ASU Thursday to share their knowledge and ideas about second language writing and its surrounding issues.

Second-language writing is the study of writing performed by non-native speakers or writers of a language.

The 2009 Symposium on Second-Language Writing, which will continue through Saturday at the Memorial Union, was intended to develop the field of second-language writing at ASU.

The Symposium was founded by Paul Kei Matsuda, an associate professor of English and applied linguistics at ASU, and Tony Silva, professor of English at Purdue University.

“My idea when I came to ASU two years ago was to bring the Symposium and promote ASU as a center of second-language writing, teaching and research,” Matsuda said.

The conference is bringing specialists together to discuss future development, directions and key issues, like computerized language assessments. They also plan to discuss the definition of the 1.5 generation — people who immigrate to a country before or during their early teens — and writing in different contexts.

“There are issues with computerized assessments,” he said, referring to tests that measure how familiar a person is with a second language. “The [tests] are not people, and they are not perfect.”

Matsuda, who was born and raised in Japan, experienced learning English as a second language during college.

Speaking and writing a new language have different challenges, but the more often he wrote in English, the more he enjoyed it, he said.

“Literacy is an important skill for everyone, especially for schoolchildren who are bilingual and multilingual,” he said. “Being able to write in an academic context as well as a personal context is going to play a huge role in their future academic success.”

ASU graduate student Oey Rogers, who is studying rhetoric, composition and linguistics, said it is exciting to meet the authors and researchers she has been studying in class.

“It’s really cool when you get to see them in person,” she said. “They matter because they participate in the same field and contribute to that knowledge we are learning in the classroom.”

Rogers, who learned English in her home country of Thailand, said there are many different varieties of English.

“Everyone has different accents but we all use English to communicate,” she said.

She learned a combination of English and Thai growing up, she said.

“It is two languages, that when put together, become another variety of a language,” she said.

Rogers and fellow ASU rhetoric composition and linguistics graduate student Anita Chaudhuri, said diversity was a large part of the conference.

“The fact that you get to just see all these faces, you realize that your audience is not just American or native speakers,” Chaudhuri said. “It’s non-native speakers from across the world.”

Chaudhuri, who grew up in India, said she was raised multilingual and is used to different types of languages.

Matsuda said he is excited for the remainder of the conference and to bring all the scholars together to discuss issues they study.

“We’ve been lucky to have so many prominent scholars and researchers from all over the world,” he said. “To have them all together is just amazing.”

Reach the reporter at nathan.meacham@asu.edu.