Symposium on Second Language Writing 2006, Part II

The Symposium was a great success. It was great to see many of my friends in the field. I refer to them as friends because I treasure my relationships with colleagues in the field. It's not that we don't disagree with each other--in fact, we argue over many issues, but to me, that's part of what friendship is about.

What I enjoy about conferences in general is the opportunity to engage in sustained conversations about issues that we care deeply about. And we try to create opportunities for those conversations by organizing this Symposium. A lot of great conversations took place during the sessions, in the hall way, at restaurants, and even in hotel rooms.

I also met a lot of new people who attended the Symposium for the first time. I got to know some of them really well. I hope to get to know the others at the next Symposium ;-)

The "theory" theme was a challenging one to talk about even for experienced researchers, but the speakers did a great job of addressing various and sometimes conflicting definitions of theory as well as a wide range of issues related to practicing theory in the field of L2 writing. I can't wait to see the manuscripts based on these talks for the next Symposium volume.

I came back from the Symposium yesterday. Dwight was kind enough to pick up Steve, Matt and me at 4:45 a.m. to take us to the Indy airport. I know he did a huge favor because both Dwight and I are night owls (4:45 is about our bedtime). Thanks, D! I'll buy you a drink at AAAL in Montreal this weekend.