Ownership of Texts, Ownership of Language: Two Students’ Participation in a Student-Run Conference

This paper examines two Generation 1.5 students’ experiences participating in a public, student-run conference in which English language learners present papers on their struggles and strengths as multilingual students. In this conference, learners have the opportunity to construct relationships to and between multiple communities through the texts that they produce and present. Such a public forum enables second language learners to develop a sense of ownership—of the production of texts, of the curriculum, and even of the English language itself. Ownership is conceptualized as being located not in any individual writer but in the interplay between the individual and the collective.