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One of the institutional challenges of taking in large numbers of international graduate students is supporting their academic literacy skills. To accommodate a large population of international students, Japanese universities offer various services to support their academic studies and life-related issues, such as hiring international student advisors, offering Japanese language courses, and implementing peer-support programs. As a type of academic support for writing for international students, writing centers have caught the attention of universities in the last decade. To examine the institutional role of the writing center at a Japanese university, this study employs a language management lens to compare the beliefs and interests among administrators, tutors, and international students in improving international students' Japanese writing. Interviews with the three groups of participants displayed incongruences between the administrators' interests aligned with institutional goals, the educational philosophy of the writing center, and international students' language learning needs. The findings point to the tutors' crucial role as language specialists who inform organized language management, and the necessity for collaboration between academic support units and faculty members in providing sufficient academic socialization environments for international students.

This paper draws on autoethnographical insights and genre analysis in offering an introductory guide for writing a manuscript-style master's level thesis or doctoral dissertation in TESOL and Applied Linguistics fields. We report on our own recent experiences writing, defending, and preparing for publication from our own manuscript-style dissertations during and following our doctoral study, both conducted at the same major Canadian research university. While other work in TESOL and Applied Linguistics areas have addressed the manuscript-style format amidst more general discussions of thesis and dissertation writing (e.g., Paltridge, 2002; Paltridge & Starfield; 2007), this article concentrates specifically on the unique characteristics of this dissertation structure and the genre-features, processes, and considerations around planning, composing, presenting, and publishing in this format. The intended audience of this paper is primarily graduate students and supervisors in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, although other stakeholders involved in graduate-level writing across various disciplines can also benefit from our discussion. Our central goal in writing this article is therefore to provide an introductory discussion regarding the nuances inherent in this format of dissertation compared to other traditional monograph forms.

Increased pressures of internationalization compel universities worldwide to search for successful education models and frameworks that can enhance their entrepreneurial status and international competitiveness. This study aims to explore the political interests, power dynamics, and consequences of transferring educational systems, models, and concepts across context, by focusing on the popularity of the writing center (a writing support service originating in the United States) in Japan. To examine the political and socio-economic factors that motivated a Japanese university to establish a writing center, I trace the process of the writing center's establishment from documents and interviews with five university staff involved in the planning. Policy borrowing as a conceptual framework is employed to illuminate the ways in which participants exercised their agency and justified the writing center in relation to the university's internationalization mission. Given the findings, I discuss the impulses, externalizing potentials, and reference societies that attracted administrators to the idea of the writing center and critically examine the policy borrowing practices that aim to internationalize higher education.

The writing center is a common form of academic writing support in Canadian and U.S. universities (Moussu & David, 2015). With its nonproofreading policy, some scholars have indicated the service may be less effective for international students who require more explicit assistance on surface-level features in their academic writing (Harris & Silva, 1993; Myers, 2003). However, these discussions often omit or insufficiently address international graduate students as a distinctive population (Phillips, 2013). To address this gap, this article presents results from two complementary case studies involving the use of writing centers by three second language (L2) Chinese graduate students (two doctoral and one master's) at a research-intensive Canadian university. Drawing on a second language socialization theoretical framework (Duff, 2007; Zuengler & Cole, 2005), the researchers examine the role of the university's writing center in the participants' enculturation into academic discourses, practices, identities, and communities. Data indicate that international graduate students spend considerable time and effort seeking out writing support to improve academic practices. Only the master's student was able to make full use of the writing center tutorials due to her strategic socialization of the tutor. Implications are provided to minimize student burden and maximize specialized writing support for L2 graduate students.