Xiqiao Wang | University of Pittsburgh (original) (raw)

Papers by Xiqiao Wang

Journal of Basic Writing

Writing teachers have begun to explore how multilingual students draw on rich semiotic and lingui... more Writing teachers have begun to explore how multilingual students draw on rich semiotic and linguistic resources to engage in translingual practices, with negotiation of difference at the core of such language work (Canagarajah, "Shuttling"; Lorimer Leonard; Lu and Horner). But theoretical recognition of and empirical investigation into translingualism have yet to fully explore concrete teaching strategies to facilitate students' inquiry into language differences or offer ways to help students develop an attitude of openness toward such differences. In this article, I offer a writing theory cartoon assignment as one pedagogical enactment of translingualism, with its emphasis on helping multilingual, basic writers develop translingual dispositions through multimodal representations of and inquiry into their language practices. The assignment aims to create a space for teachers and student writers to describe, analyze, and strategize ways of negotiating language differences.

The International Journal of Lower Extremity Wounds, 2020

When exposed to thermal factors, collagen in the dermis denatures, which could affect the biologi... more When exposed to thermal factors, collagen in the dermis denatures, which could affect the biological behavior of cells. Previous studies have demonstrated that denatured collagen could influence the activity of fibroblasts and induce fibroblasts differentiate into myofibroblasts. However, information on the regulation of fibroblasts by denatured collagen-modulated autophagy and apoptosis during the wound healing process is limited. In this article, we researched the effect of denatured collagen-modulated autophagy and apoptosis on fibroblasts. An in vitro model comprising fibroblasts and denatured collagen was established to identify the potential ability of denatured collagen to modulate autophagy and apoptosis. Western blotting, quantitative polymerase chain reaction, transmission electron microscopy, TUNEL assay, and immunofluorescence staining were used to examine the changes induced by denatured collage. Protein and mRNA levels of LC3 and beclin-1 were significantly increased a...

L1 Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 2017

This collaborative project examines the challenges to reading and writing that surround internati... more This collaborative project examines the challenges to reading and writing that surround international students who enroll in U.S. first-year-writing courses, with the goal to both query and enhance the students' ability to read and write in their target language, while drawing on their home languages and cultures as translingual and transcultural resources. Specifically, we discuss the reading and writing practices of multilingual students in the context of a translation assignment. This assignment is unique in its use of learner-centered pedagogy to place the students' translingual movement among languages as a site for inquiry and a subject of analysis in their development of L2 reading and writing skills.

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy

Literacy for the new millennium, 2007

College Composition and Communication, 2019

Positioning reading as a site of translingual negotiation, this article provides a fine-grained a... more Positioning reading as a site of translingual negotiation, this article provides a fine-grained account of one multilingual, transnational student's literacy practices for personal, academic and disciplinary purposes across spaces. Drawing on the notion of "disconnect," I examine the tensions and fissures that disrupt the flow of literacies across spaces. With the increasing linguistic and cultural heterogeneity of students enrolled in U.S. institutions of education, how to better support such students' literacy learning through strategic leverage of their rhetorical repertoire has become a critical question for literacy teachers across all levels. In writing studies particularly, scholars have called for a holistic understanding of such students' literacy repertoire and their everyday experiences of crossing linguistic, cultural, and disciplinary borders (Gilyard; Guerra; Horner et al.; Jordan; Matsuda). The translingual turn in composition highlights the practice-based, negotiated, and mutually constitutive nature of languages (Canagarajah, "Lingua"; Lu & Horner). In particular, writing scholars challenge a monolingual view of languages, such as English, Chinese, or French, as "discrete, preexisting, and enumerable entities" bound to geographical territories, nation states, or speech communities (Lu and Horner 587). Recognizing languages, including standard English, as historical codifications that change through dynamic processes of use, translingualism approaches language as inherently dynamic, evolving, and varied and focuses on the innovative ways in which language users shape language and other semiotic modes to specific ends (Fraiberg, "Composition"). Such a perspective not only recognizes the increasing linguistic heterogeneity as the norm, but also values the rhetorical and linguistic resources non-dominant students bring to their writing.

Computers and Composition, 2019

Writing research has yet to fully explore multilingual, transnational students' literacies as neg... more Writing research has yet to fully explore multilingual, transnational students' literacies as negotiated across formal, informal, and digital spaces and as mediated by semiotic and identity resources mobilized across local and translocal contexts. This study draws on theoretical concepts of polycentricity and scale (Blommaert, Collins, & Slembrouch, 2005a, 2005b; Canagarajah & De Costa, 2016) to examine one Chinese international student's literacies across an honor-designated first-year writing class and WeChat (a popular social networking smartphone application). Based on detailed tracing of the student's literacies, this study examines her language and identity practices as mediated by local and translocal semiotic resources distributed across spaces and times. In connecting WeChat and the writing classroom as two centers of Morgan's multilingual work, this study provides a nuanced account of spaces as semiotic resources that operate with normative values that legitimize certain language practices while constraining others. Through juxtaposing the students' self-sponsored literacies on WeChat to school-sponsored literacies expected in FYW, it complicates current accounts of digital literacies as expanding opportunities for literacy learning by suggesting ways in which the mobility of literacies might be constrained by power differentials that position spaces and language practices in hierarchical orders.

Research in the Teaching of English, 2020

Journal of Second Language Writing, 2020

comparative literature , this study complicates current understanding of translation as a cogniti... more comparative literature , this study complicates current understanding of translation as a cognitive phenomenon by theorizing translation as distributed, mediated, embodied, and negotiated. In so doing, this study positions translation as an important feature of multilingual writing. The focus on translation as negotiated across multiple languages, modes, brokers, times, and spaces also takes insights from a mobility framework (Leonard-Lorimer, 2017), which enables an analysis of multilingual writing as mediated through writers' interactions with texts, people, and technology across informal, formal, an digital spheres (Black, Drawing on multiple strands of data, I observe how the Memoir takes shape through its circulation in a transnational network, which enables the mobilization of multiple brokers, languages, semiotic resources, tools, and artifacts. Shifting away from the dominant metaphor of literacy mobility as marked by fluidity, I analyze friction and fixity as equally important dimensions of translation practices (Leonard-Lorimer, 2017). Such an approach complicates an understanding of translation as a cognitive phenomenon by pointing to the dynamic and heterogeneous process of meaning negotiation, which brings into convergence, and friction, multiple streams of cultural narratives, multilingual and semiotic repertoires, rhetorical traditions, and learning trajectories. Tracing the distribution of translation labor provides a nuanced picture of the exigencies, consequences, and strategies of translation, thereby pointing

Situated in the context of a first-year writing course at a Midwestern public university in the U... more Situated in the context of a first-year writing course at a Midwestern public university in the United States, this study examines Chinese international students' networking practices through the mediation of WeChat, a popular social networking application for smart phones. Based on interviews with 36 students and detailed accounts of one focal student's activities in WeChat study groups, this study shows that students' literacy practices and identities are dynamically coconstructed with intersecting local and global forces. Social theories of identity (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner & Caine, 1998) and the Chinese concept of guanxi (carefully cultivated personal connections that are used to gain social advantages) provide ways to examine identities at the intersection of local and distant circumstances and practices that span geographical and linguistic spaces. Findings reveal the implications of such identity work on students' social and academic experiences, while encouraging teachers to consider pedagogical practices that leverage students' rich cultural and linguistic knowledge.