Using a linguistic ethnographic approach, the study aims to develop a deeper understanding of how upper school students write texts in school, by exploring students' use of resources during writing activities in Swedish as a second language. The study draws on dialogical and sociomaterial perspectives, viewing resources as parts of dynamic semiotic repertoires interacting in unique and contingent assemblages of meaning making. In the study, students’ ways of using resources when writing are referred to as their translingual writing practices.

The study is a multi-method study, comprising a survey and three longitudinal case studies. The material in the case studies include video and screen recordings, field notes, artifacts and photographs, student interviews, and student texts. 

The results reveal patterns according to preference in each student’s way of using resources, suggesting that translingual writing practices are unique to each student. The study particularly illustrates how the same student’s translingual writing practices vary over time, depending on the availability of resources, previous (school) experiences as well as perceptions of school norms and conventions. When resources are restricted, students create their own writing spaces, sometimes outside the school context. They do this to facilitate their preferred writing practices, such as using translation tools or writing notes in languages other than the target language.

The theoretical perspectives of the study reveal the significance of material resources and spatiotemporal conditions for students’ writing, as well as emphasizing the importance of resources interacting, such as the use of languages and translation tools. In sum, the results indicate the importance of viewing students’ translingual writing practices as individual, dynamic, and spatiotemporally situated, recognising students in Swedish as a second language primarily as writers, rather than merely multilingual students.