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In the United States, students grow up learning the building blocks of essays: introductions, conclusions, and the importance of staying on topic. For international students, those conventions can feel entirely foreign.

That challenge inspired Ashley Murphy, Assistant Director of Lehigh University’s International Center for Academic and Professional English (ICAPE), to create The Writing Process Reader, a new textbook designed to guide multilingual students through the American academic writing process.

Murphy developed the book after years of supplementing existing textbooks with outside readings, since no single book contained everything students needed. The idea came about through conversations with publishing representatives who specialize in creating materials to fill gaps in the academic market.

“Classes assume that students come up in the American K–12 system and have some familiarity with our essay conventions, because it’s all very cultural,” Murphy said. 

Murphy recalled one student who had attended a private school in the U.K. and spoke fluent English but had never learned the writing process.

“She would be told, ‘you have an essay due, it’s 2,000 words, the topic is x,’” Murphy said. “The next day, she would hand it in and would get back a C and didn’t understand how.”

The Writing Process Reader aligns directly with ICAPE’s mission of helping multilingual students succeed in first-year composition. Unlike mainstream composition courses, which often assume familiarity with U.S. academic conventions, ICAPE’s sheltered classes provide detailed instruction on essay structure, topic selection, and grammar specific to non-native English speakers.

The textbook is organized around key stages of writing development. Chapters cover brainstorming, drafting, collaborating, editing and revising, proofreading, and publishing. 

“In the long haul, I hope they gain confidence to take large writing tasks down into manageable chunks, because it’s very, very daunting to hear, ‘You have a 20-page research paper due,’” Murphy said. “But it’s not that daunting to make a list of topics you’re interested in, sit down, and give yourself an hour to find some sources, and then come back and write some things that you’ve noticed.”

She added, “Focusing on the writing process improves their confidence and decreases that fear of writing,” citing positive student evaluations. 

Murphy hopes the textbook will help students build skills they can apply not only in future academic work, but also in workplace communication.

A copy of The Writing Process Reader is available in Lehigh's library for students and faculty to review.