Week 7: Approaches to Classroom Language Policies: Local vs. Global

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“Recognize and take responsibility for the regular presence of second language writers in writing classes…develop instructional and administrative practices that are sensitive to their linguistic and cultural needs”

“instructors should avoid topics that require substantial background knowledge that is related to a specific culture or history that is not being covered in the course.”

“It make take more time for an instructor to ‘hear’ what a second language writer is attempting to communicate through a piece of writing”

“Only 5 of the 59 instructors reported having taken a graduate course related to teaching ESL” (Tardy 641)

“While 5 of 59 instructors indicated that they were [familiar with CCCC’s National Language Policy], no one answered the survey question that asked for a summary of the statement” (Tardy 650)

“a mere 8% of instructors surveyed in my program, few of whom are CCCC members or regular conference attendees, were aware of the organization’s statement on language” (Tardy 651)

The first three of the above statements are quotes taken from the CCCC’s Second Language Statement.  This statement, and the others that we read for today (as well as the opinion article by Horner et al. that seeks to add translingualism to the SRTOL statement), places a heavy, albeit noble, burden on individual writing instructors (and on WPs themselves).  They also come off to me as rather idealistic (perhaps a feature of the “Statement” genre). They often make wide assumptions about broad training for teachers can/will be made available, program ability to limit class size to under 20 students, student interest in a multilingual writing space, instructor ability to spend more time with some students, and instructor ability to write assignments outside of their own cultural, historical situatedness. They also spark a bunch of mind-boggling questions that make the task of working with multilingual students seem impossible for someone without very specific training:

How do we recognize the regular presence of SL writers in our classes, without singling them out? What does it mean to take responsibility for them? What are their linguistic and cultural needs? How do we develop curriculum that meets these needs? How to we avoid writing that does not require specific kinds of knowledges? How do we, as beings embedded in cultural practices, histories, and ideologies, not write assignments that are influenced by our situated knowledges? How do we, overworked and underpaid as we are, find a way to make more time for SL students? How do we become attuned to what students are trying to say?     

Does this mean that the statements are bad or not worth pursuing? No. Am I saying that these are not worthwhile questions to ask? No.  However, the reality of the situation for myself as a writing instructor, and I suspect for many others as exhibited in the red quotations, illustrates just how far the CCCCs statement is from local experiences.  Tardy argues, “broader-level policy statements may fail to reach classroom teachers” (652). She goes on to explain that she believes that local program-wide statements would be more effective, more important (562).  I agree with her that probably they would have more impact on instructors, especially if they have the chance to help craft the policies.  However, I guess I question the local-classroom-changing-ability of one more idealistic statement.

I wonder what else might be useful on a local level? What could our writing program do for us to make working with multilingual writers a positive experience for all involved? How could it better support instructors? How could it better support students?

Week 6: Culture and Pedagogical Assimilation

Culture is : “a set of rules and patterns shared by a given community” (Connor 101)

"with regard to culture, whereas the genre approach and critical literacy view it as a site of struggle implicated in relations of power, traditional contrastive rhetoric assumes the existence of a set of fixed cultural conventions as the norm that is preferred in specific settings yet that differs from culture to culture" 

(Kubota Lehner 15) 

Before I get into the meat of what might end up sounding like a more critical post than I mean it to be, I want to first say that I really enjoyed the Kubota and Lehner article—I think that it did a great job of highlighting a very long list of major concerns about the ideological implications of contrastive rhetoric and the effects of contrastive rhetoric on students in ESL classrooms. Kubota and Lehner productively incorporate poststructuralist, postcolonialist, and postmodern approaches to the major issues in their field. And, in no short degree, their pedagogy is more ethical, more responsible, more caring. I applaud them for this outcome.

However, they argue at the end of their article that they want to install “counter-assimilationist practices within and across classrooms” (22). Perhaps this sounds lovely on the surface, but it makes me concerned.

On some level isn’t any approach taken by an instructor assimilationist to at least some degree? What I mean is, let’s say we are prescribing to the “culture” as multiple, converging, in flux model.  Through our pedagogical practices, our in-class exercises, our assignments, we are always going to be working to in some way to influence our students to that same thinking.

Despite what the authors promise about CCR, I don’t think that ascribing to poststructuralist, postcolonialist, and postmodern notions magically gets teachers out of assimilationist practices, nor does it take away their agency in the classroom. CCR influences students to see cultures and personal identities as shifting and multiple, it highlights the “othering” tendencies of the American classroom on non-American students and cultures, it illustrates unfair power dynamics in relation to language.  I see these as good things, but I’m not willing to pretend that this is not enculturation of a different kind.  

 

 

Week 4: Oh, The Language Games We Play

“The products of academic literacy are freely available, but the processes that led to their construction are known only to the insiders.  What this means is that we scholars in the periphery have access (although belatedly) to the journals, books, and other texts that are important in our field, but we are left to guess the research and writing process from faint hints in the products” (199). 

I had to laugh a little about how easily this particular comment, made by Canagarajah in “A Somewhat Legitimate and Very Peripheral Participation,” could have been written by almost any graduate student regardless of their geographical location.

Of course, no graduate student could get these words published; no one pre-tenure would dare try.  But in any case, as graduate students at the very beginnings of our careers, we too are in several senses on the outer edge of insiders.  Perhaps this is not so much the case geographically for some of us, but it certainly is temporally and emotionally true of every graduate student I know. We are still learning the conventions of our fields; still getting comfortable with the idea of having specific fields.

I was just in conversation with another graduate student the other day talking about trying to get an article together to send out for publication (something that is now in this horrible job market a necessity as soon as possible).  This student was frustrated, they kept saying how they just wanted to put something together that didn’t “scream graduate student paper.”  The person questioned—what is it that they [those reviewers] will see that I don’t that marks my work? [I wonder how often our students ask the same question…]

After reading these articles, especially those of Canagarajah, it strikes me how much of our [those of us that stand in some fashion on the periphery of a given writing situation] academic writing is about “passing” in some fashion.  Canagarajah councils that his audience (other non-Western academics) to name-drop articles/books that are unavailable, to write theoretical papers rather than empirical ones, which use non-western methods of data collection, and, to above all, be thoughtful about the ways in which they infuse the text with their own voices (204). He controls his language use by identifying “sections in the RA [research article] that would tolerate a different discourse more easily” (204).  In other words, he inserts himself quietly, so as to get passed the lurking eyes of the reviewers.

Strikingly, in an article directed at using non-standard varieties of English in classroom writing, Canagarajah invokes a similar mechanism by which he believes that non-standard speakers might be able to learn to “shuttle between communities in contextually relevant ways” (593).  He focuses on the idea of “code-meshing” and calls for texts that are “multidialectical.” He uses articles that rely to a small degree on elements of AAVE to illustrate how this careful negotiation can be made.  For example, here too he highlights that the author uses the vernacular in ‘low stakes’ moments in the text (607).

He sees the examples that he uses in both articles as small steps (“a statement of intent, not a celebration of accomplishment” (613)) in the effort towards envisioning a future of pluralized Englishes. But, thinking about myself as on the periphery trying to gain access to a discourse community, I have some questions that I’m left with at the end of our reading. 

• Are these “small steps” that Canagarajah identifies really moving us towards a pluralized understanding of English in any meaningful and lasting way? Or, is this simply a token move?

• How do you strike a balance between “passing” and “code-meshing” in such a way that you gain access without losing your sense of voice in a text, without setting too much of yourself aside?

• To what degree is gaining access to the “inside” always also about the loss of something of ourselves?