The Board of Directors of the Legal Writing Institute (LWI) is delighted to announce that the recipient of the 2022 Hecht Award is Alissa Hartig, Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at Portland State University. The Hecht Award honors the life of our colleague, Deborah Hecht. The award is given to the writing specialist who writes the best article for The Second Draft during a two-year period. Professor Hartig’s winning article is “Not All Errors Are Created Equal: Tailoring Feedback to Meet Student Needs.”
In her article, Professor Hartig provides insight into giving appropriate feedback based upon the circumstances and the student. The author speaks specifically about the needs of multilingual writers being different from those of a monolingual English writer or speaker, which requires a variation in the techniques used to assist the student(s).
Professor Hartig has written several books. The one most pertinent to law is Connecting Language and Disciplinary Knowledge in English for Specific Purposes: Case Studies in Law (Multilingual Matters: 2017). This book addresses how language and disciplinary knowledge are connected in the English for Legal Purposes (ELP) classroom as students learn to read and write new genres in a second language and disciplinary culture.
The LWI Board is grateful for the work of the LWI Awards Committee in identifying nominees and making recommendations to the Board. The Committee includes Chair Brenda Gibson, and members Andrew Carter, Janet Dickson, Kathryn Mercer, Samantha Moppett, Dyane O’Leary, Suzanne Rowe, and Mark Wojcik.