GERT RIJLAARSDAM UniversityofAmsterdam & Utrecht University, the
Netherlands Multilingualism is becoming the default in our global world.
The present-day global citizens use different languages in different
situations. Apart from their mother tongue, they learn languages that
give them access to other regions, nations, and worlds. In all countries
ofthe European Union, for instance, at least one foreign lan- guage is
mandatory in secondary schools. Most students are taught English as a
for- eign language, the lingua franca in Europe. In large parts of the
USA, students move from Spanish to English schooling. In parts of
Canada, bilingual education is stan- dard. In Catalonia (Spain) children
learn Catalonian and Spanish, in Hong Kong English and Chinese. The
smaller the world becomes, the more languages are used and learned. For
writing process research, this development into multilingualism entails
at least two challenges. First ofall, studying the relation between
writing in L1 and L2 provides an opportunity for collaborative studies,
in different language settings. Second, the issue ofgeneralization of
findings comes to the fore. It becomes evident now that we have unjustly
neglected this issue in writing process research. We for- got to ask
whether it is feasible to talk about 'writing processes' in general,
without referring to the language of the written texts, and without
taking into account the educational and linguistic culture in which
these texts originate.
